I got my Quintilian exercise thru the New York Times

Let's see now. Today's New York Times says

Loan-Agency Woes Swell From a Trickle to a Torrent

In the beginning was the word:

The word began spreading...

inches go by, lined with journalistic cliches offering what is most accurately described as a phantasm - "tumult" "plunging," the cliched trickle "has suddenly become a torrent" ...

All by way of exordium. That's the part of the oration that is designed to capture attention.

Finally, a few inches down, the hooha - the nut graf - the narratio the place where we learn what's at the root of all this viral panic:

What set off this storm, and what happens next?

The cause of this week’s huge declines remains somewhat unclear.

Having been treated to a personification of Rumor, we learn that Charles Duhigg does not know its basis. Mr. Duhigg is the Times employee typing the vivid portrait. He has a Harvard MBA. He proceeds to the confirmatio - the advancement of proofs. "The appeal to logos is emphasized here," says Quintilian. Mr. Duhigg weaves concatenations of mights and coulds and woulds:

• 5 mights
• 5 coulds
• 7 woulds

In one graf, he niftily manages one should, three coulds and a would:

Should that happen again, Fannie and Freddie could suspend buying some loans — which could bring much of the American housing economy to a standstill. Or the companies could continue doing business, but losing money on many of their deals, which would continue to undermine investors’ confidence in the stocks.

Mr. Duhigg doesn't offer much in the way of reprehensio - the bit where you knock down opposition to your figment:

Opposition:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for their parts, say such talk is dangerous. Both companies say they have capital on hand that exceeds what is required by their regulator.

Mr. Duhigg's reprehensio:

But people are still worried.

His case - of journaljism - is strong. He buggers off with a quick peroratio, quoting a fearful Florida legislator (Mel Martinez) rather than offering some authorial statement:

“All we can do sometimes is grab on and hope we don’t get thrown off the ride.”

Double Feature

As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from the ballroom below.

“That drug-store business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.”

He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing



dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees at

when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath.

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.