that happen to us. The spontaneous
whistling and humming of tunes that indicate a cheerful heart rise
naturally as a response to the sunlight in spring; the fear at the
terror that flies in a nightmare is the instinctive and physical
reaction to indigestion; we sorrow over the loss of our own friends, but
not over the loss of some one else's. The stories that stir us are the
stories that deal with actual, tangible realities in such terms that
they make us feel that we are living the story ourselves. Stevenson has
some wise words on this subject in his essay, "A Gossip on Romance." The
doctrine holds true for the making of arguments.

Even where as in Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America,"
abstractness is not vagueness, the style would be more effective for the
richer feeling that hangs over and around a concrete vocabulary. The
great vividness of Macaulay's style, and its bold over so many readers,
is largely due to his unfailing use of the specific word. If you will
take the trouble to notice what arguments in the last few months have
seemed to you especially persuasive, you will be surprised to find how
definite and concrete the terms are that they use.

Accordingly, if you wish to keep the readers of your argument awake and
attentive, use terms that touch their everyday experience. If you are
arguing for the establishment of a commission form of government, give
in dollars and cents the sum that it cost under the old system to pave
the three hundred yards of A Street, between 12th and 13th streets. The
late Mr. Godkin of the New York _Evening Post_, in his lifelong campaign
against corrupt government, to bring home to his readers the actual
state of their city government and the character of the men who ran it,
used their nicknames; "Long John" Corrigan, for example (if there had
been such a personage); and "Bath-house John Somebody" has been a
feature of campaigns in Chicago. The value of such names when skillfully
used is that by their associations and connotation they do stir feeling.
Likewise if you are arguing before an audience of graduates for a change
from a group system to a free elective system in your college, you would
use the names of courses with which they would be familiar and the names
of professors under whom they had studied. If you were arguing for the
introduction of manual training into a school, you would make taxpayers
take an interest in the matter if you gave them the exact numbers