PLAIN ENGLISH LESSON 5

Dear Comrade:

We want to say just a word about the lesson assignment. This has been arranged on a schedule of days merely to assist you in systematizing your time and making the most of the leisure at your disposal. It is not intended that you should slavishly follow it. We thoroughly believe in individuality and all that contributes toward its development. But we are also confident that many foolish things are done in the name of liberty. Whenever we set ourselves to the performance of any task we necessarily limit our activities in some other direction. Power comes by concentration of force. Whenever we combine with others for the accomplishment of any purpose, it becomes necessary to have some plan of action and we give and take for the end which we have in view. The musician because he follows the law of harmony in music has not given up his liberty. He has only found a new freedom which enables him to make glorious music where only discord reigned before. System in our work does not mean loss of liberty or of individuality but only finding a channel through which individuality can flow into the great ocean of real freedom.

So use this suggestive lesson assignment to meet your own need and find expression for your real individuality in full freedom.

This is the first of several lessons concerning verbs. The verb is perhaps the most difficult part of speech to thoroughly master, so do not be discouraged if there are some parts of this lesson you do not understand. Succeeding lessons will clear up these difficult points. Keep your eyes open as you read every day, and be careful of your spelling and pronunciation.

Some of us mis-spell the common words which we see and use every day. In a student's letter we recently noted that, with our letter before him in which the word was printed in large type and correctly spelled, he spelled College, Colledge.

Do not be satisfied with half-way things or less than that which is worthy of you. Demand the best for yourself. Read aloud this little verse from the Good Grey Poet, Walt Whitman:

"O, the joy of a manly self-hood;

To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,

To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,

To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,

To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,

To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth."

Yours for Education,

THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

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