Review exercise: Paragraph development

1. My secretary, incorrigibly English, says a true gentleman "knows instinctively when I prefer to light my own cigarette, never serves aces at me on the tennis court, and always removes his wristwatch." Among the few true gentlemen extant, she says, "Captain Horatio Hornblower, Bob Dylan and Pierre Elliott Trudeau come to mind. Richard Burton, Joe Namath and Front Page Tom don’t." (from Allan Fotheringham, "What is a Gentleman")

2. When I tell young softball players I played the game bare-handed, they regard me warily. Am I one of those geezers who’s forever jawing about the fact that, in his day, you had to walk through six miles of snowdrifts just to get to school? Will I tediously lament the passing of the standing broad jump, and the glorious old days when the only football in the Maritimes was English rugger, when hockey was an outdoor art rather than indoor mayhem and at decent yacht clubs, men were gentlemen and women were persona non grata? No, but I will tell today’s softball players that—with their fancy uniforms, batters’ helmets, dugouts, manicured diamonds, guys to announce who’s at bat over public address systems and, above all, gloves for every fielder—the game they play is more tarted-up and sissy than the one I knew. (from Harry Bruce, "The Softball was Always Hard")

3. To identify the species the wasp apparently must explore the spider with her antennae. The tarantula shows an amazing tolerance to this exploration. The wasp crawls under it and walks over it without evoking any hostile response. The molestation is so great and so persistent that the tarantula often rises on all eight legs, as if it were on stilts. It may stand this way for several minutes. (from Alexander Petrunkevitch, "The Wasp and the Spider")

4. When I was young I often heard people say, "Canada is the Scotland of North America." Only recently did it occur to me that it might be worthwhile considering the extent to which this is true. As Scotland is the hard northern cap to the British island, with the rich farmlands and cities of England just below her, so is Canada to the United States. Both countries were gouged by the retreating glaciers, which left them on the subsistence level as far as good farmland was considered. It also gave them both a heritage of spectacular beauty uncrowded by cities and towns, and of this they were both inclined to boast. (from Hugh MacLennan, "Scotland’s Fate, Canada’s Lesson" [edited])