our mind to other work or talk for some hours between. We can do this
because, if not vigorously prevented, ideas and words keep on
reappearing in the mind." You may utilize this principle in
theme-writing to good advantage. As soon as the instructor announces
the subject for a theme, begin to think about it. Gather together all
the ideas you have about the subject and start your mind to work upon
it. Suppose you take as a theme-subject The Value of Training in Public
Speaking for a Business Man. The first time this is suggested to you, a
few thoughts, at least, will come to you. Write them down, even though
they are disconnected and heterogeneous. Then as you go about your
other work you will find a number of occasions that will arouse ideas
bearing upon this subject. You may read in a newspaper of a brilliant
speech made before the Chamber of Commerce by a leading business man,
which will serve as an illustration to support your affirmative
position; or you may attend a banquet where a prominent business man
disappoints his audience with a wretched speech. Such experiences, and
many others, bearing more or less directly upon the subject, will come
to you, and will call up the theme-subject, with which they will unite
themselves. Write down these ideas as they occur, and you will find
that when you start to compose the theme formally, it almost writes
itself, requiring for the most part only expansion and arrangement of
ideas. While thus organizing the theme you will reap even more benefits
from your early start, for, as you are composing it, you will find new
ideas crowding in upon you which you did not know you possessed, but
which had been associating themselves in your mind with this topic even
when you were unaware of the fact.

In writing themes, the principle of distribution of time may also be
profitably employed. After you have once written a theme, lay it aside
for a while--perhaps a week. Then when you take it up, read it in a