this material is of the best because the ideas are _sure to be your own_.
The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your
own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and
seldom worth doing.

Ideas acquired through experience are not only interesting and your own,
but they are likely to be _clear_ and _definite_. You know what you do and
what you see; or, if you do not, the effort to express your ideas so that
they will be clear to others will make you observe closely for yourself.

Still another advantage comes from the fact that your experiences are not
presented to you through the medium of language. When experience furnishes
the ideas, you are left free to choose for yourself the words that best
set forth what you wish to tell. The things of your experience are the
things with which you are most familiar, and therefore the words that best
apply to them are those which you most often use and whose meanings are
best known to you.

Because experience supplies an abundance of interesting, clear, and
definite ideas, which are your own and which may be expressed in familiar
language, it furnishes better material for training in expression than
does either imagination or reading.


+4. Essentials of Expression.+--The proper expression of ideas depends
upon the observance of two essentials: first, you should say what you
mean; and second, you should say it clearly. Without these, what you say
may be not only valueless, but positively misleading. If you wish your
hearer to understand what occurred at a certain time and place, you must
first of all know yourself exactly what did occur. Then you must express