Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig

because they indicate the transition from one division to the next. Besides those mentioned in Exercise 135, we may use a numeral connection, as, _in the first place_, _in the second place_; or an expression much like a numeral, as, _furthermore_, _in the next place_; or an expression showing that an adverse idea is to be presented, as, _on the other hand_, _however_, _in spite of this_, _nevertheless_. But whatever you do, choose the right link, especially if you use such a one as _possibly_, _probably_, _perhaps_, _certainly_, _surely_. Use the one that expresses your idea exactly. Have none rather than the wrong one. In the following the first and second paragraphs are connected according to (1) above; the second and third are connected according to (3) above. There comes to every prosperous man a time when he wishes to know the best way of securing a steady income from his accumulated savings without the burden of responsibility of managing some property in order to gain his income. The merchant may not wish to put back into the business all the earnings he gets from it, and yet he wishes to prepare for his old age. The farmer may wish to give up active work, but he realizes how soon his broad acres may deteriorate through soil-robbery when he rents his property "on shares." With such a problem before him the thoughtful man makes an effort to _learn_ how to act to secure a good _income_ all his life. One of the first things he _learns_, if he studies the situation carefully, is that there is a wide difference between an _income_ derived from one's business ability, such as the profit secured from running a store, factory, jobbing house, or farm, and the income which is derived as the result of money "working" by itself. In the first case, a man must of necessity keep up his business responsibilities; in the other, once he has selected a safe investment, practically all he has to do is to collect his income from time to time as it falls due. There is in the latter no depreciation of land, buildings, machinery, or the like; no insurance payments to worry about; no crop failures to consider. _It is evident, then_, that if one wishes to put surplus money away--say the proceeds from the sale of a business or a farm--and get a steady income from it without bother or worry, the most important thing to consider is how to go about it to select something which, once purchased, will turn out to be a safe investment. =Exercise 214= In the following paragraphs taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's _The Philosophy of Nomenclature_, point out all the transition words that join (1) sentence to sentence, and (2) paragraph to paragraph: To begin, then: the influence of our name makes itself felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I remember the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood, Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows; and the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did not share with me a single one of my numerous _praenomina_. Look at the delight with which two children find they have the same name. They are friends from that moment forth; they have a bond of union stronger than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats. This feeling, I own, wears off in later life. Our names lose their freshness and interest, become trite and indifferent. But this, dear reader, is merely one of the sad effects of those "shades of the prison house" which come gradually betwixt us and nature with advancing years; it affords no weapon against the philosophy of names. In after life, although we fail to trace its working, that name which careless godfathers lightly applied to your unconscious infancy will have been moulding your character and influencing with irresistible power the whole course of your earthly fortunes. But the last name is no whit less important as a condition of success. Family names, we must recollect, are but inherited nicknames; and if the _sobriquet_ were applicable to the ancestor, it is most likely applicable to the descendant also. You would not expect to find Mr. M'Phun acting as a mute or Mr. M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of dancing. Therefore, in what follows, we shall consider names, independent of whether they are first or last. And to begin with, look what a pull _Cromwell_ had over _Pym_--the one name full of a resonant imperialism, the other mean, pettifogging, and unheroic to a degree. Who would expect eloquence from _Pym_--who would read poems by _Pym_--who would bow to the opinions of _Pym_? He might have been a dentist, but he should never have aspired to be a statesman. I can only wonder that he succeeded as he did. Pym and Habakkuk stand first upon the roll of men who have triumphed, by sheer force of genius, over the most unfavorable appellations. But even these have suffered; and, had they been more fitly named, the one might have been Lord Protector and the other have shared the laurels with Isaiah. In this matter we must not forget that all our great poets have borne great names. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley--what a constellation of lordly words! Not a single commonplace name among them--not a Brown, not a Jones, not a Robinson; they are all names that one would stop and look at on a door-plate. Now, imagine if _Pepys_ had tried to clamber somehow into the enclosure of poetry, what a blot would that name have made upon the list! The thing is impossible. In the first place, a certain natural consciousness that men have would have held him down to the level of his name, would have prevented him from rising above the Pepsine standard, and so haply withheld him altogether from attempting verse. Next, the booksellers would refuse to publish, and the world to read them, on the mere evidence of the fatal appellation. And now, before I close this section, I must say one word as to _punnable_ names, names that stand alone, that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them. These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry laughter into many a home. So much for people who are badly named. Now for people who are _too_ well named, who go topheavy from the font, who are baptized into a false position, and who find themselves beginning life eclipsed under the fame of some of the great ones of the past. A man, for instance, called William Shakespeare could never dare to write plays. He is thrown into too humbling an apposition with the author of _Hamlet_. His own name coming after is such an anti-climax. "The plays of William Shakespeare?" says the reader--"O no! The plays of William Shakespeare Cockerill," and he throws the book aside. In wise pursuance of such views, Mr. John Milton Hengler, who not long since delighted us in this favored town, has never attempted to write an epic, but has chosen a new path and has excelled upon the tight-rope. A marked example of triumph over this is the case of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. On the face of the matter, I should have advised him to imitate the pleasing modesty of the last-named gentleman, and confine his ambition to the sawdust. But Mr. Rosetti has triumphed. He has even dared to translate from his mighty name-father; and the voice of fame supports him in his boldness. =Exercise 215= Turn back to Exercise 210, 1. How are the different paragraphs that you have made connected?