Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/39

THE INBORN TALENT The Inborn Talent, of course, cannot be taught; but the technique of good writing not only can be taught, but ought to be. Yet at present, and I say this advisedly, we have not a single well equipped school of instruction in technique—nothing which even pretends to do for writing what the conservatories do for vocal and instrumental music, and schools like the Beaux Arts for painting and architecture. The odd thing is that people have fallen into the habit of thinking that we do possess such opportunities for instruction. Our schools and colleges and universities are paying more attention than ever to rhetoric and theme writing. Children daily puzzle their parents with intricacies of sentence diagrams and strange nomenclature of grammar undreamed of in an earlier generation. And yet the average city editor will tell you that the young college graduate has almost as much to [ 25 ]