This book is made up from material used in a course of lectures given in the Lowell Free Classes as supplementary to my previous Talks on Writ ing English. It takes up many of the more deli cate matters of composition which would have been out of place in the earlier and more general course, but repeats nothing except some few things which were needed to bring out fresh points more clearly. Teachers and others who heard the lectures have asked me to print them, and I do so in the hope that as what I have to say is the result of actual.