helpful criticisms on
them. The grateful interest of graduates is a source which has not been
overdrawn for aid in the processes of instruction.

Many of the subjects which I have here offered as suggestions can be
discussed in part, at any rate, within the space of an editorial
article; and that I conceive to be about the length which most arguments
written by students, except those in special courses, will run to. In so
short a space, it is hardly necessary to point out, evidence cannot be
presented and discussed with the detail, say, of Webster's "Speech in
the White Murder Case." It would be a good separate exercise to call for
such detailed presentation of evidence on some single point in the
argument. With most classes, however, the instructor cannot do much more
than rule out wholly unsupported assertion, and insist that the
distinction between fact and inference from fact shall be kept in sight.

The second of the results which an instructor in a course in
argumentation should aim for is the power to analyze complicated masses
of facts and so arrange them and present them as to bring order out of
confusion. President Taft has said that Justice Hughes "won his
reputation at the bar by his gift of boring to the innermost core of a
subject"; and that is what the drill on the introduction to the brief
should to some degree impart to students. The orderly analysis of the
question, step by step, according to the admirable scheme devised by
Professor Baker, cannot help implanting some understanding of what it
means to go to the heart of a question. Every man sooner or later, must
face complicated and puzzling questions; and the ordinary man will give
himself a long start if he will thus put down on paper the points that
can be urged on the two sides of a question, and then study them until
the real points at issue emerge. Then the drill in laying out the
logical skeleton of an argument, so plainly that no false or broken
connection can escape detection, will strengthen the conscience for
clearness and coherence of thought; and the necessity for getting back
to ultimate facts for every assertion, and putting down the source from
which the facts are derived, will help to implant a wholesome respect
for facts as something different from assertion.

Since the argument written out is the final test of the thinking, some
care must be taken that students do not obscure by careless paragraphing
and slovenly sentences such cl