EDUCATION DEPT. A SYSTEM OF RHETORIC. SYSTEM RHETOEIO CT W. BAKDEEN NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY fWM TVS nmm o» A. S. BARNES A CX7. EDUCATION DEPT ComiOBT BT A. S. BARNES tt Ca 1864 ^<\^ Jo r^ < PREFACE In presenting to the public a new text- book on Rhetoric, the author asks attention to these features as characteristic : (1.) It is kept in tlie foreground throughout, that the fundamental law of rhetoric is adaptation ; that the form of discourse, like the fashion of clothing, has no intrinsic beauty, but is or is not artistic as it does or does not pro- duce the effect designed, at the time and under the circum- stances. (2.) That the student may look on rhetoric as an art, not like trigonometry which he may use, but like arithme- tic which he must use, its most important laws are devel- oped in the practical treatment of Conversation and Letter-Writing. The boy who does not care to be taught speech-making and verse-writing may be glad of help to feel at ease among strangers, and to write a business letter. To this is added instruction in Narration and Descrip- tion. These are forms of composition in which the essen- tial element is not literary taste but personal experience. Any man may be called upon to tell or to write for the newspaper what he has done or seen, and every man should be able to do it well. Because Conversation, Letter-Writing, Narration, and ii7iS240573 VI PREFACE. Description are of immediate interest to every one, they are the essential portion of the subject, and for scholars who do not care for more, this part of the book, including a full treatment of Punctuation, is published in a sepa- rate volume, called " The Elements of Practical Rhetoric." (3.) With the Essay begins what is properly literary work. One must converse, write letters, narrate, describe, — and the only question is whether one shall do it well or ill. But one need not write for the magazines or deliver orations or publish poems, unless one has a taste that way. Hence this part of the subject has been kept distinct, and for those who so prefer it is published in a separate volume, called " A System of Advanced Khetoric." Especial pains has been taken in the treatment of Prep- aration and Invention. The principles laid down are familiar to practised writers, but are usually reached by experience instead of by instruction. It is believed that these chapters will do much for young authors to make the way easy and definite. (4.) The mechanism of composition, instead of being scattered throughout the book, is gathered into Part I., serving as an introduction. The treatment differs from that usually found in so-called " Composition Books," in that it treats the sentence from a point of view purely rhetorical. Hence arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses is made prominent, the principles under this head being distinguished from the rest under the title of "Observations." These will be found to occupy more than half the space given, and their importance cannot be too strongly insisted upon. For those who desire, Part I. is published by itself, in a volume called " Outlines of Sentence-Making." (5.) Throughout the book there is a profusion of illus- PREFACE. VU trations, believed in this 8iibject>to be particularly esfien- tialV^^^necdotes have been chosen wherever practicable, because a blunder that is ludicrous is more easily remem- bered and avoided. The bearing of the anecdote on the principle illustrated will not always be seen at a glance by most pupils ; but the point will be found when searched for, and the profit will be greater for the search. Through- out the author has aimed to be suggestive rather tlian ex- haustive ; to quicken thought as well as to convey infor- mation. (6.) The multitude of quotations from leading authors on rhetoric serves a double purpose, the language of most of them being referred to throughout the book in illustra- tion of the qualities of style. It is believed that the fre- quency of credit given will be in most cases sufficient acknowledgment ; but in a few instances the memorandum of the source of a quotation has been lost. Two books, so far the best in their respective departments that intelli- gent treatment must follow them closely, deserve especial mention : these are, " The Art of Extempore Speech," by M. Bautain ; and " The Art of Reading," by M. Legouv^. Upon a subject like this, always a favorite theme with the best writers, it would be preposterous to hope for originality. What is true is as old as Aristotle, and what should be announced as new in principle might safely be condenmed as untrue. Yet because rhetoric is a means to an end, the application of its principles must vary with the age and the people where it is to be exercised. Tliis is an age of newspapers, and we are a busy people — witli little leisure to contemplate beauty of diction, but accus- tomed to glance down tlie column to see what the writer is aiming at and whether he hits it. As a practical art, modern rhetoric must accept and VUl PREFACE. yield to this tendency, and its canons of criticism must be applied to the morning journals. It is nowhere stated in this book at what point in the Iliad the first simile occurs; but there are many quotations from newspapers just now most popular, with some effort to distinguish power from bombast, humor from vulgarity and imbecility. This criti- cism the student is expected to carry further and apply to his daily reading — which is more likely to be of the Kew York Herald and the Burlington Hawkeye^ than of Ilesiod and Catullus. In short, this book is written from the standpoint of one whose daily work it has been for some years to read and select and publish manuscripts, who knows from experi- ence the actual difficulties and faults of young writers, and who would like to help them. Hence the treatn)ent throughout is practical rather than scholastic, adding much that is unusual in text-books of the kind, and omit- ting some things that since the time of Campbell and Blair have been considered conventional. The author hopes that trial will prove these changes to have been made with good reason, and the book to have contributed something toward general culture in good speech and good writing. NOYBMBBB 2, 1883. COJSITENTS. PART I. Sentence Making. "THROUGH PACILiTY TO PEUCITY." Section First. Simple Sentences xvii. Section Second. Complete Sentences xcv. Section Third. Compound Sentences cxiii. PART II. Conversation. MAIN object, to PROMOTE SOCIABILITY. Chapter I, Good Breeding 8 II. Table Talk 13 III. Gossip 82 IV. Commendation and Reproof 45 V. Discussion 62 VI. Story-Telling 81 VII. As to Being Funny 92 VIII. Egotism V.\S IX. Articalation and Pronunciation l')! PART III. Letter-Writing. MAIN OBJECT, TO CONVEY INFORMATION. Chapter X. Rinds of Letters 171 XI. General Rules for Letter-Writing 190 XII. Narration 208 XIII. Description 248 XIV. Punctuation — Arbitrary Rales 256 XV. Rules Dependent on Judgment 276 r CONTENTS. PART IV. The Essay. MAIN OBJECT, TO INTEREST. Chapter XVI. Preparation 805 XVII. Invention 331 XVIII. Style 342 XIX. Parity a53 XX. Propriety 370 XXI. Precision 899 XXIl. Perspicuity 434 XXIII. Power...! 448 XXIV. Perfection ' 465 XXV. Preparation for the Press 491 PART V. The Oration. MAIN OBJECT, TO PERSUADE. Chapter XXVI. Eloquence .')'>:. XXVII. Argument 519 XXVIII. Extemporaneous Speaking 537 XXIX. The Voice 547 XXX. Delivery 562 PART VI. Poetry. MAIN OBJECT, CONTEMPLATION. Chapter XXXI. What Constitutes Poetry 587 XXXII. Figurative Language 601 XXXIII. Rhythm and Rhyme 627 GENERAL INDEX 645 GENERAL GLOSSARY 663 ELEMENTS OF PRACTICAL RHETORIC. PART L Sentence-Making.— Through Facility to Felicity. PART IL Conversation. —Main Purpose, to Promote Sociability. PART III. Letter-Writing.— Main Purpose, to Convey Information. PART IV. The Essay.— Main Purpose, to Interest. PART V. Oratory.— Main Purpose, to Persuade. PART VI. Poetry. — Main Purpose, Contemplation. PART I. SENTEN CE -MAKING PART L SEKTEKCE 'MAKING SECTION FIKST. SIMPLE SENTENCES. Composition is the art of arranging our thoughts, and expressing them in appropriate language. All thoughts are expressed by means of Sentences. The formation of Sentences is therefore the first step in Conip<>siti<»n. The Simple Sentence is the basis of composition, and the foundation of all other sentences. It is so called because it is the expression of a single thought, and con- tains only one Subject and one Predicate. All other sentences are merely combinations of Simple Sentences. They must therefore contain two or more Subjects, and two or more Predicates. The Subject in every Simple Sentence is that of which something is affirmed; the Predicate is that which is affirmed of the Subject xviil THE SUBJECT. Examjples, 8UBJB0T. PRKDICATB. Birda fly. flomebinla fly BwifUy. Some Urda of prey fly very awlftly. victim. fly Tery swiftly with It to the [Part I. In the first example we have the simplest form of the Subject and Predicate ; in the other three, we have expanded forms. The Object. — When the Predicate contains a transi- tive verb, it can be subdivided into Predicate and Object. Thus: SUBJECT. PREDICATE. OBJECT. The BCholar The diligent scholar The diligent scholar beincr always prepared. repeats repeato correctly repeats correctly to his master THE SUBJECT. the lesK>ns. the lessons of the day. the different lessons of day. The Subject of a Simple Sentence may be eitlier (1) a Koun, (2) a Pronoun, (3) an Adjective used as a noun, (4) an Infinitive, or (5) a Participle. Thus : (1) Procrastination is the thief of time. — Young. (2) He taught ns how to live and how to die.— Tickell (of Addison). (3) The vpright shall prosper. (4) To suppress the truth may be a duty to othei-s ; never to utter a falsehood is a duty to ourselves. — Hare. (5) Doing his duty is the delight of a good man. Exercise I. — Complete the following sentences by sup- plying appropriate subjects. Note I. — Every affirming sentence begins with a Capital^ and ends with a Period. See page 257. Example. — The shepherd tends his flock. — tends his flock. — praises the scholar, —overcomes difliculties. — enlightens the earth. — promotes health. — import cargoes. — succeeds sum- mer. — cultivates the groimd. — produces fniit. — moves the train. — gather moss. — lash the shore. — sounds the charge. Sbc I.] PLACE OF THE SUBJECT. XIX — cleaves the air. — plouglis the main. — build nests. — make long voyages. — guards the house. — yields a costly fur. — buries its eggs in the sand. — walks rapidly over the hot desert. — often baffles the hounds. — is adapted to their kind of life. — are termed oviparous. ^ — forms a diphthong. — are called poly- syllables. — is the ear. — directs all animals in the choice of food. — lies between the tropics. — is situated between the torrid and the north frigid zone. — affords a striking iUustration of the doom of insatiable ambition. — cannot vie with the beau- ties of nature. — will prove a source of happiness, Obs. I . — The subject usually precedes the predicate; but may follow it when the sentence is introduced by it^ this, there, now, etc., as in the following sentence: It is easy to go. It is necessary that there should be a general understanding as to tlie relative position of the subject and the object, since both have in English the same form. In the sentence, John struck James, it would be impossible to tell which struck and which received the blow except on the general principle of arrangement that the sub- ject preceo8'Uioiis empliatic he- cause unusual ; as when the subject is removed from the beginning of a sentence, or the predicate is put there. Thus: Much l> this inculcated bj Cicero and Qaintilian.— Bi^ib. FUuked hU their sabres bare.— Tuhtsoh. And »hriekt the wild sea-mew. — Btrom. But whoso went his rounds, when flew bat, flitted midge.— BBOwmia. When the subject is a pronoun, the object may in like manner be put before the verb. Thus : Some he imprisoned, others he put to death. Military courage, the boast of the sottish German, of the MtoIous and prating French- man, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he neither possesses nor values. But where both subject and object are substantives, such inver- sion would produce ambiguity (see Obs. 1, page xix). To indicate emphasis, therefore, the form of the sentence must be changed. In the sentence, " John struck James," we can in speaking give special stress to either of the three words that we vrish especially to emphasize. In writing we can itahcize either of the three, as, *• John struck James," where it is assumed that James is struck, and the question is as to who did it ; or, " John struck James," where it is assumed that John did something to James, and the question is as to what he did to him ; or, ** Jolm struck James,'* where it is assumed that John struck somebody, and the question is as to whom he struck. But both vocal emphasis and written italics are so frequently misused that it is better so to construct the sentence that the arrangement shall make the meaning clear. Thus the three meanings of the sentence given are indicated clearly as fol- lows : It was John that strucV James ; What John did to James was to strike him ; It was James that was struck by John. Sec. I.] PLACE OF THE SUBJECT. XXI The emphasis of the predicate might be shown by this arrange- ment, ''Struck was James by John." This inversion would be suitable in poetry, and is sometimes unobjectionable in prose of an elevated character. But with ideas and words so common- place as these such an arrangement would be bombastic. Obs. 3. Inversion. — We can often put the verb before the subject by beginning with an adverb, or other- wise changing tlie form of the sentence. This structure is called Inversion. Thus : There goes a man, down the road. Scarcely had Tom spoken, when, etc. Then came the crisis. Such was his fate. Now is your time. No sooner had we started, than. How are the mighty fallen. Swiftly flew the arrow. Especially in the Subjunctive Mood, is it common to use such forma as, Were I an officer, instead of, If I were an officer. Some writers practise this degree of inversion, which our lan- gnage bears, much more than others ; Lord Shaftesbury, for in- stance, much more than Mr. Addison ; and to this sort of arrange- ment is owing, in a great measure, that appearance of strength, dignity, and measured harmony which Lord Shaftesbury's style poBsesses. This will appear from the following sentences of his "Inquiry into Virtue;" where all the words are placed, not strictly in the natural order, but with that artificial construction which may give the period most emphasis and grace. He is speaking of the misery of vice : Tbiii, M to the oomplete immonU utate, in whnt, of their own acoctnl, men readily re- mark. Where there U thin alMuluto degeneracy, this total apo^staxy from all candor, trust, or equity, there are few who do not aee and acknowledge the ntittery which is con- sequent. Beldom is the case misconHtrue<1, when at worst. The misfortune is that we look not on this depravity, nor consider how it standH, in leea degree. As if, to be ab- solutely immocml, were, indeed, the greateei misery ; but. to be eo in a little degree, should ho no misery or barm at all. Wbloh, to allow, is just as reasonable as to own that 'tis the greatest 111 of a body to be in the ntmoet manner maimed or distorteti : but XXll THE SUBJECT. [Part I. that, to lone the nw only of one limb, or to be Impaired in aome fdiiffle organ or member, Ih no Ul worth; of the least notice, (ii. 82.) Here is no violence done to the language, though there are many inrersions. All is stately, and arranged with art ; which is the greatest characteristic of this author's style. We need only open any page of Mr. Addison to see quite a different order in the construction of sentences. Our idght ia the most perfect, and most delightful, of all our fcnee*. It Alls the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with it» objects at the p:reate«*t ili^tAiice, and continues the longest in Hction. without being tired, or satiated with its |iru|>er enjoy- ments. The sense ul feeling can, indeed, give us a notion «>f exU nxiun. Khsiie, nnd all other ideas that enter at the eye. except colors; but, at the M.me time, iti» wry much ■trained and conflDed in iu opentiona, etc — SpectaHtr^ No. 411. In this strain he always proceeds, following the most natural and obvious order of the language : and if, by this means, he has less |>omp and majesty tlian Shaftesbury, he has, in return, more nature, more ease and simplicity ; which are beauties of a higher order. — Blair. It is not upon Rnch changes as these that I propose to remark. bi:t upon certain rather newfangled forms of expression which seem to me affected and not felicitous. The fin>t of these which I shall bring up is a change in the position of the verbs &«, have, and do in sentences in which the latter clause makes a comparison with something set foi th in the former. For example : Loni George also was displeased— more thoroughly displeased than had been, his wife. — Tboljx)PE : I'open)oy, Chapter 4. Bankruptcy has tended, as might have been expected, to produce bankruptcy ; and for all purpunes of |>anic as well as business New York and London are as close an were London and Manchest^- a few years ago.— /taW Mall Budget, June 8, 1878. It is needless to give more instances : the writing of the day is full of them, and Mr. Trollopc, the chief, and one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of offenders, is but the fore- most man of a multitude. This placing of the verb directly after the conjunction or preposition is a new trick in style. It is sheer affectJition, and, if I do not err, is quite un- English, In such sentences as those given above, che simple English construction is, " more thoroughly displeased than his wife had been,"' '* are as close ax London and Man- chester were a few years ago." The placing of the su'-ject of the verb .ifter it, except by poetic license, or in very elevated prose (and even there with great diwretion ), is not English, it is not clear, it is not natural. No good si)eake of English would talk iu this style, even in the soberest conversation. If I remember rightly, Macaulajr never uses this construction, nor Cardinal Newman, a very correct writer, whose taste is unexcep- tionable. The fashion came in not long ago through the desire to avoid a verb of one syllable at the end of a sentence. For example : " Mary was not so beautiful as her sis- ter was." To end the sentence with a dissyllable instead of a monosyllable (a very weak affectation), the verb was transjwsed, and we had, "An teas her sister." Whoever wishes to write clear, manly, and simple English will avoid this foolish fashion, which, howeyer, ftRc. I.] INVERSION. XXI 11 has become so prevalent that it appears with a most ridiculous incongruity even in such writing as that of the following passage from a reiK)rt of a dramatic performance by *• Count Joannes ; " " In the audience last night were many Yale students, who were, of course, boister- ous an.1 jolly, and led the attacks, but justice requires the remark that they did not say a« many fimny things aa did two or three newsboys in the gallery."— R. G. Whitb. Exercise II. — In the following sentences, change the form so as to put the Predicate before the Subject. Note U. — An inverted clause is iisually set off from the rest of the sentence hy a Comma. See page 293. Examples.— The express is going ; Thei-e goes the express. The tug of war is coming ; I^ow comes the tug of war. What he said is as follows ; This is what he said. I never before saw such a show. If I had known yon were sick I slionkl liave come np. I am veiy glad to see you again. He jumi^ed up. The thermometer dropped down. The chair fell over. She was, he said, the best of mothers. The issue, my law- yer writes, is doubtful. He was not once defeated. Satan came also, last of all. They didn't care for him. He shall go. After inversion, the usual order of subject and predicate seems awkward ; as, No contemptible orator he was. — Blaib. y Exercise III. — Reconstruct the following sentences so as to show (1) that the emphasis is on the subject ; (2) that it is on the predicate ; and (3) that it is on the ob- ject. Example. — (2) Found was the water by the crow. Water was found by the crow would usually answer for either (1) or (8), but if more positive emphasis is recpiired, (1) It was the crow that found the water ; (3) It was water that the crow found. The crow found the water. The boy threw i)ebbles. Mary broke the i)itcher. The ostrich inhabits the desert. The farmer raises com. XX17 THE OBJECT. [Part I. Obs. 4. — When the subject is long or complicated it is well to summarize it before the verb. For examples, see page 283. THE OBJECT. The Object of a simple sentence may be : (1) a Noun, (2) a Pronoun, (3) an Adjective used as a noun, (4) an Infinitive, or (5) a Participle. Examples. — (1) Wlio steals my purse, steals /rosA. (2) We loved her, but she died. (3) His views and affections take in only the visible. (4) Learn to labor and to wait. (5) He prefers walking to riding. Exercise IV. — Supply objects to the following transi- tive verbs. Example. — The sun gilds the hill-top. The sun gilds—. The diligent boy deserves — . Education improves — . Fools de- spise — . Bain refreshes — . The gardener prunes — , Tfie boy repeats his — . The king le\ied — . The physician prescribes — . Spring revives — . The hunter climbed — . The weary laborer reached — . Good men comfort — . Good kings love their — . The bridge spans — . Ducks frequent — . Participles and Verbal Nouns differ in that a Participle retains the notion of time and agrees with the noun, while the Verbal Noun expresses only the abstract idea of the action, and is the object of the noun in the possessive. Obs. 5. — Verbal Xouns should be avoided wliere verbs can be used instead, because unless immediately preceded by prepositions they may often be mistaken for participles. Exercise V. — Change the following sentences by con- verting the verbal nouns into phrases. Sec. I.] MODIFIERS OP SUBJECT AND OBJECT. XXV Example. — When Horace trembled for the life of Virgil, it was an interesting moment, etc. Horace [Horace's] trembling for the life of Virgil is an interest- ing moment [episode] in the histoiy of poetry and [of] friendship. — Gibbon. I assnre you therefore seriously, and upon my honor, that the carrying [of] this point seems essential to the success of this meas- ure.* — W. Pitt. In hot climates, the letting into a country of a mass [of] stag- nant water, etc. — Bentham. The ascertaining [of] a principle in metaphysical science is sometimes the clearing up of a doctrine of revelation. — W. J. Fox. Mr. Mill will see that the point of dubiety spoken of was one which suggests not the hanging of the culprit, but the sparing [of] him. — P. P. Alexander. In approaching the jiractical problem, there are two parts that will need to be kept distinct — the first starting of the new system, and the keeping [of] it going after it has been started. — Cairns. ' MODIFIERS OF THE SUBJECT AND OF THE OBJECT. Kinds of Modifiers. — The Subject or the Object may be expanded by Modifiers of the following kinds: (1) Adjectives; (2) Possessives; (3) Appositive8;'(4) Parti- ciples ; (5) Infinitives ; (6) Preposition Phrases ; (7) Ad- verbial Phrases ; (8) Clanses. (I) Adjectives may be roughly classed as (a) De- scriptive, or as simply (b) Demonstrative. a. Descriptive Adjectives limit the noun by nam- ing some quality belonging to it. Exercise VI. — Supply appropriate adjectives in the fol- lowing sentences. Example.— A disobedient child is a grief to his parents. A — child is a grief to his parents. A — zephyr played on the surface of the lake. The elephant is a very — animal. Gold is the — of all metalH. A red morning sky betokens a — day. Hiudostau has a xxvi ADJECTIVES. [Part I. —climate. Money is a— source of stiife. Some ground requires — weeding. The — heavens are a sublime spectacle. A — bower is pleasant in Hummer. The sheep supplies us with an endless va- riety of— mateiial. Wheat was at one time a — article of food in this country. The rivers afford an — supply of fish. A — friend is the cordial of life. Milk is an — article of diet. Hannibal was a — enemy to the Romans. Belgium is a very — country. The Dutch are a very — people. Alfred was a — monarch. The wasp has a — waist. Obs. 6.— Fitting Adjectives. — The descriptive adjectives employed indicate more surely than any other feature the quality of the author's style. Don't say It tastes nice^ when tou mban It tastes delicious. She walks nicely ^ She walks gracefully. He did it nicely ^ He did it skilfully. She looks nice, She looks charming. The water is wicc. The water is refreshing. He is a nice man, He is 2^ pleasant man. A nice odor, A savory odor. A nice landscape, A lovely landsca|>e. A nice smile, A winning smile. A nice mansion, A luxurious; mansion. A nice cottage, A snug cottage. A nice companion, An agi-eeable companion, etc., etc. That stupid vulgarism by which we use the word nice to de- note almost every mode of approbation, for almost every variety of quality, and from sheer poverty of thought or fear of saying any- thing definite, wrap up everything indiscriminately in this charac- terless domino — speaking in the same breath of a 7iice cheese-cake, a nice tragedy, a nice oyster, a nice child, a nice man, a iiice tree, a nice sermon, a nice day, and a nice count 17. — Archdeacon Habe. When I first looked upon the Falls of the Clyde, I was unable to find a word to express my feelings. At last a man, a stranger to me, who arrived about the same time, said, *'How majestic ! " (It was the precise term, and I turned around, and was saying Sec. L] CHOICE OP ADJECTIVES. xxvii " Thank yon, sir ! that is the exact word for it," when he added, eodein Jiatu) — •* Yes, how w^ry pretty ! " — Colebidge. V Exercise VII. — Substitute other adjectives in the fol- lowing sentences. Example. — For indigent^ poor, needy ; insufferable, intolerable, unendurable; jeering, sneering, scoffing; community, fraternity, society ; flung, threw, cast ; individual, character, pei*8on ; kicked, drove, spumed ; r«o compels us to say that the Herald is correct in it» criticism, and that the dic- tionaries generally take that view of the question which it propounds. Strictly speaking. Sec. I.] ADVERBS FOR ADJECTIVES. XXXI an alternative relates to the opportunity of choosing between two thingn ; and yet if a writer 8i>eaks of three or four alternatives, his English is not absolutely vicious, because in that case he imagines the choice to Ix? made between one of the things he refers to on one side and all the others on the other. For instance, when the order of the Osmanll was offered to Mr. Bennett in Constantinople, in recognition of his distingtiished talents as a journalist, he had several alternatives, namely, first, to accept the compliment or to decline it ; secondly, to accept it unconditionally, or to accept it on condition that he should be made an Osmanli of the first class, instead of the second or third class, which was offered him ; thirdly, to accept it on condition that the act should be approvj-d by the Administration at Washington and by Congress; fourthly, to accept it, whether with conditions or without, and to keep the fact private ; or fifthly, to accept it and make the fact notorious. Does not this make five alternatives open to Mr. Bennett in regard to this single decoration of Tiirkish knighthood t Could he not choose either one of them and reject all the rest, putting the one he chose on one side and all the others together on the other, thus complying with the strict sense of the phrase by making his choice be- tween two things only ? \Vc take pleasure in the discussion of these nice questions of language with a learned and critical journal like the Herald ; and we trust that whenever it sees us falling into a blander, it will administer the necessary correction. — N. Y. Sun. Exercise IX. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — The mother seemed the younger of the two. The mother seemed the youngest of the two. — Thackeray (in Esmond). If we consider the works of nature and art, as they are qualified to entertain the imagination, we shall find the last very defective in comparison of the former. — Addison. The question may be said to be entirely open to the peculiar views of the presiding judge and the witnesses in each case, yieither of whom have a definite standard of action in law or in medicine to guide them in their investigation. — North American Reriew. That he [Shakspei-e] wrote the plays which bear his name we know ; but except by inference we do not know the years in which they were \iTitten, or even that in which either of them. was fii-st l>erfonned. — Richard Grant White. Peasant, yeoman, artisan, tradesman, and gentleman could then be distinguished from each other almost as far as they could be seen. Except in cases of unusual audacity, neither presumed to wear the dress of his betters. — Id. . Obs. to. Adverbs for Adjectives. — By ellipsis adverbs sometimes do duty as adjectives. Though not without authority, this custom should be avoided. xxxii ADJECTIVES. [Part I. There are a few disagreeable matters of style, such as the re- peated use of the adverb almost as an adjective, ** an almost child ; " and the same misuse of other adverbs, as in — •♦ to think on the once themes is to be by my once self ; " and *' joy at this house's now despair." Such things as these are too dreadful to criticise. — H. B. FiBMAN. We seem to remember remarking that David Davis wouldn't look badly in the chair. — Springfield Republican. ** Look badly " looks bad. Overhaul your grammar. — Lowell Courier. We copy the above in the hope that it may meet the eye of the schoolmaster. Among people who lay claim to culture we know of no more preva- lent solecism than this " look badly," '* feel nicely" atrocity. One might as weU say **feel coldly," or "feel hotly." — Boston Tran- script. Exercise X. — Change the following sentences so as to escape the use of adverbs as adjectives. Example. — In the situation he was then in. In his then situation. — Johnson. The seldom use of it. — Trench. (Here infrequent may be sub- stituted for seldom.) Our Lord's own use so frequently of the term. — Trench. For in my then circumstances, the note was of much more con- sequence to me. — Thackeray. After the then country fashion. — Kingslet. My Lord Duke's entertainments were both seldom and shabby. — Thackeray. Adjectives for Adverbs. — The use of adjectives for adverbs is inexcusable. Thus : If with your inferiors speak no coarser than usual ; if with your superiors no finer. — AiiFORD. He that lays open his vanity in public acts is no less absurd than he that lavs open his bosom to an enemy whose drawn sword is pointed against it ; for every man hath a dagger in his hand ready to stab the vanity of another whenever he perceives it. — Fielding. It should be added that a speaker's being well heard does not depend near so much on the loudness of the sounds, as on their Sec. I ] PLACE OF THE ADJECTIVES. XXXUl distinctness ; and especially on the clear pronunciation of the con- sonants. — Whately. Obs. I I . — The English adjective usually precedes the noun. Tlie advantages of this arrangement are thus stated : si ~ Ib it better to place the adjective before the substantive, or the substantive before the adjective ? Ought we to say with the French — un c/ieval noir ; or to say as we do — a black horse? Probably most persons of culture would decide that one order is as good as the other. Alive to the bias produced by habit, they would ascribe to that the preference thoy feel for our own form of expression. They would expect those educated in the use nf the opposite form to have an equal preference for that. And thus they would conclude that niither of these instinctive judgments is of any worth. There is, however, a philo- aoph cal ground for deciding in favor of the English custom. If " a horse black " be the arrangement, immediately on the utterance of the word '• horse," there arises, or tends to arie considered as uttered at the same moment; and that on hoaring the phrase "a horse black," there is not time to imagine a wrongly colore! horse l>cfore the word '* black " follows to prevent it It must be owne«l that it is not easy to decide by introspection whether this is so or not. But there are facts collaterally imply- inn that it is not. Our ability to anticipate the words yet unsiwken is one of them. If the ideas of the hearer kept considerably Ix'hind the expressions of the speaker, as the ob- it-otion assame^ he could hardly foresee the end of a sentence by the time it was half de- livered; yet this constantly happens. Were the supfiosition true, the mind, instead of iintici|iating, would be continnally following more and more in arrear. If the meanings of wonls are not realized as fast as the words are uttered, then tho l<»8« of time over each word must enUiil such an accumalation of delays as to leave a hearer entirely behind. But whether the foroo of these replies be or bo not admitted, it will soar(*ely t)c denied that the right formation of a picture will be facilitated by present- ing its elements in the order in which they arc wanted, eycn though tho mind should do nothing until it has received them all.— Ukmbert Spbvcbr. Ambiguity sometimes results from a neglect of this princ'i])le. xxxiv ADJECTIVES. [Part I. Thns a newspsper summarizes an official report as follows : The report of Poittinaster D. for the month of July to the I'oHt-offloc Department shows that during that month there were 60 carriers emplojredf who made 24,344 ddivery and 34,546 collection tripe daitw. In other words, each carrier made nearly a thousand trii)s a day. Of course "daily trii)8 " was intended, but the transposition makes of the adjective an adverb. , t / . ^> vv\ hven when the adjective modifiers are many and various, it is sometimes best to bring them in before the subject, especially in poetry. Obs. 12. — In some cases, however, it is better that the adjective should follow the noun. (a) Custom has fixed certain forms ; as : Poet laureate, governor-general, lord paramount, knight errant, States General, court martial, body politic, notary jmblic, sign- manual, Theatre Royal, letters patent, time immemorial, bride elect. Compare lord-lieutenant, duchess-dowager, Knight Templar. (h) Cornplicated Adjectives, whether aggregated or modi- fied, usually follow, that the noun be not too long delayed. Thus: His wife, stout^ ruddy, and dark brow'd. A system worthy of the name of religion. Details requisite for the house of a moderate gentleman. A man wise in his ovm conceit. Obs. 1 3- —A serious and very common error of ar- rangement is to place tlie noun between the adjective and the modifiers of the adjective. High voices in altercation, and voices high in altercation, are by no means equivalent expressions. The first represents the voices as pitched high by native quality, and the other as pitched high by the excitement of the occasion. Sec. I.] THE DEFINITE ARTICLE. XXXV In the following example, tastes would vary as to whether the adjectives should precede : But while long, though unconscious, discipline has made it do this eflSciently.— Herbert Spencer. b. Demonstrative Adjectives distinguish the noun as an individual from others of its class, hy 2>oiiitirvg out instead of describing it. These adjectives may be classified as (i.) Definite, (ii.) Indefinite, and (iii.) Kumeral. i. Definite Adjectives include (a) The Definite Article, (/3) the pronoun adjectives, This and That. a. The Definite Article is used to refer to some- thing already distinguished in the mind from others of its class, or about to be distinguished by limitation. Less frequently it is prefixed to plural odjectivea ; as, " Naught eave good of the de- parted ; " or to singular adjectives to form an abstract noun ; as, " Worship of the visible ; " or before a singular noun to represent a class ; as, "The oak is harder than the elm." It is also prefixed to superlatives to make them more emphatic, and to comparatives when followed by qf, or in phrases like " the more the merrier.'" The definite article is nothing in itself ; it is a pointing word, and what it points to is given in the first instance by a relative clause to follow; "the book that you wish," *' the shoj) that we have passed." By the curtailments of the clause we reach the participial phrase, and then the adverbial phrase, the commonest of all ways of signifying the reference of the article ; "the clock in the steeple," " tlie way to glory," " the Tower of London." The vague preposition ** of " answers the purpose.— Bain. Obs. 1 4. — The article must bo repeated when the sec- ond of two connected nouns refers to a different object (see Obs. 35, page Ivi). Thus : Referring to one object. The secretary and treasurer. A black and white horse. Referring to two objects. The secretary and the treasurer. A black and a white horse. xxxvi ADJECTIVES. [Part I. This applies also to adjectives that accompany the article and belong to both objects ; as, Philosophers rejected with equal fervor the established religion and the [established] political creed. — Leslie Stephen. Exercise XL — Improve the following sentences by re- peating articles and adjectives where necessary. Kmmple. — They possessed both the civil and the ciiminal juris- diction. They possessed both the civil and criminal jurisdiction. — Hume. The elder and younger son . . . were, like the gentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together. — Thackeray. The pursuers and pursued entered together. The lords spiritual and temporal, wisdom and folly, the virtuous and the vile, the learned and ignorant, the temperate and debauched, all give and return the jest. — Bro%\'N. My Christian and surname begin and end with the same letters. — Spectator. The French and English writers. — Blair. Tlie creed of Zoroaster supposes the co-existence of a benevolent and malevolent principle. — Waltkb Soott. Exbroise XII. — In the following sentences, state whether one object or more than one is referred to, and how the meaning may be changed by repeating or omitting the article. Example. — "Wanted a nurse and housemaid, means that the same person is to be both. Wanted a nurse and a housemaid, means that two persons are wanted. The Town and County Bank. Alike the busy and the gay. And owns the patron, patriot, and the friend. — Savage. She never considered the quality but merit of her risitors. — Wm. Penn. Before the use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass. — Dryden. Obs. I 5. — Sometimes, especially when there are more than two connected nouns referring to the same object, the Sec. I.] THE DEFINITE ARTICLE. xxxvii article is repeated for emphasis. In such cases, the am- biguity is usually removed by the context. Thus : Dare any soul breathe a word against the sweetest, the ten- derest, the most angeUcal of young women ? — Thackeray. Of these pamphlets the longest, the bitterest, and the ablest was V commonly ascribed to Ferguson. — Macaulay. I returned a sadder and a wiser man. — (Coleridge. Obs. 1 6. — AV^hether we should say " the first two," or " the two first," is a matter of discussion. The meaning to be expressed is, bring me the first, second, and third of a row ; or bring me all from the first to the third. De- siring a shorter mode of statement, we are accustomed to say " the first three," or " the three first," neither of the forms admitting of being construed strictly. The following occurs in Matzner : In conne<;tlon with flrat nnd other, the cardinal number is found brfore or after : "The four .first acts" (Sheridan, Critic, I. 1); ''For the Jrst ten nnnntes" (Cooiier, Spj/, I'J); "Four other children" (Lewcp, Goethe, I. 18); " Otiier seven days" (Gen. viii. 12). The preference of grammarians is for the " firet three ; " with regard to *' three fii-st," they ask, How can three be first? The only answer is to retort that the " firet three " is inapplicable to tlie first, second, and third of a single pile ; it supposes a line of three abreast. t^A/ v We find in good use such expressions as these : "the tiro high- est men;" " the /*ro .s^/avw/n/^ chapters ; " "the tiro next candi- dates." Of a work brought out in two vohimes, a critic said — " the tiro best volumes of light reading that have appeared this year." ) This wouhl have been a case for •' the best two volumes." Gibbon says of the history of Rome : *' The .s-tfre/j/r.s/ centuries were filled with a succession of tri- umphs." This is hardly to be imitated ; no more can we com- mend "the first seven centuries." Better avoid the form alto- gether. " For seven centuries (from the first) the histoiy was a succession of triumphs." — Bain. xxxviii ADJECTIVES. (Part I. (ff) This and That are used to refer distinctively to two objects already ni*»»itioned. Obs. I 7. — For this purpose we have a series of adjec- tive couples ; as, That, This. The one. The other. The former, The latter. The first. The second. The first named. The last named, etc. By writers generally, the couple •• former and latter" is more used than any of the rest. In my judgment, the other fonns are in many instances preferable. From an extensive examina- tion of cases, I am incUned to believe that the reference by •• former and latter " is frequently very obscure. I subjoin a few examples, selecting first from Gibbon, who makes gteat use of the construction. We have computed the iiihabUants, and oontemplatod tho public teorti ot the Roman Empire. The obiscrvation of the number and grreatnees of it8 cities will Hcrve to con- firm the/ormer and multiply the latter. A most perplexed reference. The antecedent to " former '* should have been *' [we have given] a computatioti of the inJiabitanta,'* while " multiply the latter'* refers simply to pubiic works. There is, moreover, the very common fault of such references — too great a distance from the subjects. Nothing short of repeating the subjects themselves, or gi^^ng a various wording of them, would enable a reader easily to follow the passage. The second sentence might run thus : A consideration of the number and the greatness of the cities belonging to the Em- pire, will confirm oi.r statement of tke population, and enhance our estimate of the pub- lic works. The productions of happier climates and the industry of civilized nations were intro- duced into the West ; and the natives were encouraged to multiply the /ormer and improve the latter. In this case, '• the one and the other," a more homely English form, or "the first and the second," would answer equally well But the double reference itself is of questionable propriety in such Sec. t] THE ONE, THE OTHER. XXXIX cases. It is very artificial and clumsy, if not slovenly. We ara introduced to two subjects, but are not warned to keep in mind the precise order that they are given in ; presently we come upon words that direct us to recall first one and then the other, in the exact order ; the hardship being aggravated by the absence of any marked natural sequence. Further, the suggestion of the idea of zoutrast is not inconsidemble ; a contrast, however, that turns out, on examination, to be merely a contmst of ix)sition, or one of statement. . . . Compare with these instances Macaulay's practice : James had, durinp the last year of his rcipn, been even more hated by the Tories than by the Whigs ; for to the Whign he was only an enemy, and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless friend. Our translation of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is an interesting example of our mode of reference for a twofold object. Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a Pub lican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus . And the Publican, standing afar uff, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heavt n. ... I tell you this man went down to his house justitieil rather than the other. First the subjects are introduced by their special designations, along with the correlatives "the one" and "the other," which serve to indicate a conti*ast, and to warn the reader that they are to be kept distinctly separate. On the fii-st recuiTence of the sub- jects, the names are repeated : on the second occasion, "this" is used for tlie second of the two, being the nearest ; "the other" is used for the first The following old parnplirase of the passage now quoted shows the more usual i)i-actice in making " the one " and "the other " stand for " the tirat and the second," or " the former and the latter." Did two go up to the temple to pray? Or mther say the one went up to bmg, the other to pray. The one the nearer to the altar tnxl. The other nearer to the altar's Ood. In easy cases, I should prefer this form. Next to it, in my judgment, is " (ii-Mt " and " second." — Bain. xl ADJECTIVES. [Part I. Thm BiDl o« TH« Othkb.— *' Say, niiBUr, are wc on thif side of the bridge or the other?** aaked a placM uld Indy of a gentleman on a Court Street car yesterday nioriiiug. ** We are on thiK wide," res|>ondetl the gentleman, gravely. '* Lawa me ! Then we ain't anywhere near (ire«nwoo4l Cemetery yet f " '* Yen, madam, we are within a few squarea of it," *' Bakes a maasy I I thought Greenwood was on the other dde of the bridge I ^ »* No, madam ; on this side." "Well, that peHky condactor told me it wan on the other side when we started." " It wan, madam, on the other side then, but we have crossed the bridge.** " Then we are on the other side ! " " No, madam, we are on this aide of the bridge. We've passed it.** " And is Greenwood on the other side f ** she asked, starting up In alarm. " No, it is on tiiis side.** " Don't try to fool me with yonr nonsense, " exclaimed the old lady, indignantly. *' Don't try to make me think that Groenwootl is on this side of the bridge when I know better, and don't try to make me believe I'm on this side of the bridge when I know I'm on the other ! Don't ye do it.""— Brooklyn Eagle. (II.) Indefinite Adjectives include (a) the Indefi- nite Article ; {(i) the pronoun adjectives, except This and That. ^ (a) The Inderinite Article is the sign of the singular number. Our langnage ha.s, however, two idioms that form exceptions. The article may be used (i.) with a plural adjective, a singular noun, and a singular verb; as, "Many a man does it; " (iL) with an adjective of multitude, a plural noun, and a plural verb ; as, "A thousand liveried angels lackey her."— Miltob. A common noun in the singular, not preceded by some otlier adjective or by the definite ai'tiele, takes the indefinite article, except in the following cases : (i.) In address ; as, Wretch, I dare thee. (ii.) Where the singular is used instead of the plural to express with more emphasis the attributes of a class ; as, Man is moi-tal. Poet and Philosopher alike employ imagination. (iii.) In such exjn'essions as. He became captain, He was elected chairman, The i*ank of major, The relation of mother and child. (iv.) In some few recognized idioms, gro\s^ng out of effort to be concise ; as, brought to table, lea\ing ^-own, going to school, do\NTi hill, and the like. For repetition of the article before connected nouns, see page XXXV. Sec. I.] 0.0 ADJECTIVES. xli Obs. 18. — The Indefinite Article indicates one thing of a kind, and therefore must not be used to denote the whole kind. We may say, The unicorn is a kind of rhinoceros, but not, The unicorn is a kind of a rhinoceros. (Mi.) Numeral Adjectives are the strictest mode of assigning degree, and are used in all exact measure- ments. They are either («) Cardinal, or (|3) Ordinal. Q "John Phoenix" even went so far as to propose a system of numerical atlverbs of degree. Let U8 then represent by the number 100, the maximum, the ne plus ultra of every human quality— grace, beauty, courage, strength, wisdom, learning— everything. Let perfeftlon, I say, be represented by 100, and an absolute minimum of all qualities by the number 1. Then by applying the numbers between, to the adjectives used in conversa- tion, we shall be able to arrive at a very close a|>proximaiion to the idea we wish to con- vey ; in other words we shall be enabled to 8i>c:ik the truth. Glorious, soul-inspiring Idea ! For instance, the most ordinary question asked of you is, '• How do you do * " To this, instead of replying, " Pretty well," " Very well," " Quite well,' or the like absurd- ities — after running through your mind that perfection of health is 10(<, no health at all, 1— you say, with a graceful bow, •' Th..nk you, Tm b'i to day ; " or, feeling poorly, " Tm 13, I'm obligeil to you ;" or " Tm 68," or "75," or "87>^," as the case may be 1 Do you ■ee how very close in this way you may approximate to truth ; and how clearly your questioner will understand what he !-o anxiously wishes to arrive at — your exact state of health ? Ile : As a 19 young and 16 beautiful liidy was 62 gayly tripping down the sidewalk of our 84 frequented street, she accidentally came in contact— 100 (this shouw that .she came m elo«e contact)— with a 73 fat, but87good-humore ' looking gentleman, who wasd:^ {i.e., in- tently) gazing Into the wmdow of a toy-shop. Gracefully 56 extricating herself, she re- ceived the excuses of the 96 eml>arrassever- titken by a 21 young mnn, 32 poorly dressed, but of an 85 expression of countenance ; 91 hastily touching her 64 iKjautifully roundetl arm. he said, to her 67 surprise— "Madam, at the window of the toy-^hop yonder you ilroppe«l this bracelet, which I had the 71 good foriune to observe, and now have the !M happiness to hand to you." (Of oonrae the expression *MM happiness" is merely the young man's ix>litc hyijcrbole.) Blushlirg with 76 nuHlesty, the lovely (76, as before, of ctiurse) lady took the bracelet — which was a 24 magnitl(H-nt diamond clasp (24 magniflcent, playfully sarcastic; it wat probably not one of Tucker's)- from the young man's hand, and 84 heslt-itingly drew from her beautifully 38 embruidcreil reticule a 67 portemonnoie. The young man noticed the action, and 73 proudly drawing back, added— " Do not thank me ; the pleasure of gazing for an instant at those 100 eyes (perhape v^ xlii NUMERALS. [Part 1. too tzaggermted » oompliment) has already more tlum oompenaated me for any trouble that I might have had/' She thanked him. however, and with a 67 blush and a 48 penaive air, turiwd from Iiim, nntl pursued with a 88 alow step her promenade. — A New Stfttem of Knyliak Orammar. (a) Cardinals are used of groups, and show the size of the group ; as, Tliree men ; 365 days. Obs. 1 9. — In writino numbers, round sums are usu- ally 8j)elled out, as are numbers smaller than one hundred. But where statistics are given, figures should be used, how- ever small the number may be. Sums of money should usually be expressed in figures where both dollars and cents are to be expressed. Note m. — Numbers above one thousandj except in elates^ are com- monly divided by commas into periods of three figures each. Thus, «2,4C7. 89 ; 34, 586, 709. See also page 259. Obs. 20. — Collective "Words, like cmiple^ dosen^ etc., should be used to express number only when the objects enumerated are grouped in couples, dozens, etc. Exercise XIII. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — Two days after. (If it is desirable to retain the air of indefiniteness that belongs to " a conple of days after," but is lost in the precision of '* two days after," we may say, "■ a day or iwo after," or "some two or three days after.") A couple ^3f days after. — Thackeray. I have another with a iouple of hundred Continentals behind him. — Thackeray. Wanted three or four dozen females to make match-boxes. (y9) Ordinals are used of individuals, and show the position of the individual in the group ; as, The third man, The 36otli day. Obs. 21 . — The th that denotes the ordinal should be placed at the end of the entire number ; thus: The Evening Telegram says: "The Eev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, preached his seventeenth hundred sermon on Sunday Skc>. I] POSSESSIVES. xliii inoming." The Telegram should explain what a "hundred ser- mon" is, and why Mr. Beecher has preached seventeen of them. Obs. 22.— Usage Differs as to whetlier a nnmeral following a noun is to be considered a cardinal or an ordinal. Thus we may write either Sept. 3, or Sept. 3d ; Pai-t Two, or Part Second. (2) Possessives denote possession, or some kindred connection. For punctuation, see page 259. The tnith is that the English case in a has not only the posse5»8ive use of the Anglo- Saxon genitive, but the othi-r cases which stand nearest to this. Thus ft is constantly employed to denote connection in family, or state, or society : as in John's bfother, Hfnru'H tieighbor, EnglaiuCH queen, the king's enemien — in old English we find even the kiny'n traitors. Mr. Manning might pt-rhaps argue that to say the ling's enemies im- plies that "tlie king has enemies," and expresses therefore a ixisst-sKive relation. But the verb have is a word of very general ireaning, which can be useerly so called, and sometimes even where our pos- resaive case would be inadmissible. Thus, every apple has a half, but we cannot say evert/ apple's half. Still farther our case in « is used to express the subject of an action or attribute: as in cofo«rartitive (not icomen's loveliest, but loveliest of women) ; nor as a genitive of ma- terial (not leather's girdle, but girdle of lenthrr) : nor as a genitive of designation (not Ilalij'H kingdom, but kingdom of ftalt/).— J amjm llADiiKY. Obs. 23.— The Objective Cenitivey or the rela- tion of the possessive to its noun as the object of the action implied in the noiHi, not being permitted in English, snch expressions as " In our midst," for " In the midst of ns," nuist be carefully avoided. An attorney not celebrated for his probity was robbed one night on his way from Wicklow to Dublin. His father, meeting Baron O'Grady next day, said : " My lord, have you heard of my .«?w^'4 robbery?" "No, indeed," replied the Baron; "pray whom did he rob ? " — Uodoson. xliv POSSESSIVES. [Part I. Obs. 24. — A Relation of Persons. — "Another rule is to avoid converting mere alistructions into persons. I believe you will very rarely tind in any great writer be- fore the lievolutioii the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as, ' the w^atclfs hand,' for * the hand of a watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive w^as confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects." — Coleridge. In modem English the inflected possessive of nouns expresses almost exclusively the notion of property or appurtenance. Hence we say a marCB hat^ or a man*8 hand, but the description of a man, not a man's desci'ipliou. And of coui-se we generally limit the ap- plication of this form to words which indicate objects capable of possessing or enjoying the right of property : in a word, to persons, or at least animated and conscious creatures, and we accordingly speak of a woman's bonnet^ but not of a house's roof. — Marsh. % Obs. 25. — Whose as the possessive of whwh (neu- ter) is therefore subject to criticism. The author asks credit for his having here and elsewhere re- sisted the temptation of substituting '' trhose" for *' of trhich"— the misuse of the said pronoun relative "whose," where the ante- cedent neither is nor is meant to be represented as either personal or even animal, he would brand as one among the worst of the mimicries of' poetic diction, by which imbecile writei*s fancy they elevate their prose— would but that to his vexation he meets with it of late in the compositions of men that least of all need such ar- tifices, and who ought to watch over the purity and pri\41eges of their mother tongue with all the jealousy of high priests set apart by nature for the pontificate. Poor as our language is in tennina- tions and inflections significant of the genders, to destroy the few it possesses is most wrongful. — Coleridge. At present the use of whose, the possessive of wJio, is jDretty gen- erally confined to persons or things pei-sonified, and we should scruple to say, '* I passed a house whose windows were open.** — Marsh. Sec. I.] WHOSE AND ITS. xlv Yet in " Man and Katiire " Mr. Marsh writes, " a quad- rangular pyramid, the perpendicular of whose sides " (p. 14^). Campbell says: The possessive of who is properly irhose; the pronoun which, originally indeclinable, Iiad no possessive. This want was sup- plied in the common periphrastic manner, by the help of the l)rei>osition and the article. But as this could not fail to enfeeble the expression, when so much time was given to mere conjunc- tives, all our best authors, both in prose and in verae, have come now regularly to adopt in such cases the possessive of tt'ho ; and thus have substituted one syllable in the place of three, as in the example following : ** Philosophy, wJioae end is to instruct us in the knowledge of nature," for, " Philosophy, iJie end of which is to instruct us." — Bhetoi'ic, ii. 375. Its has a curious history, showing the prejudice that had to be overcome in establishing a neuter possessive. In AngrloSaxnn the pemonal pronoun representetl in English by he, fihe, it. made the genitiveorpoflsessiveAfo for the mtisculine and neiitt-r gender, her (hire) for the feminine, and HO long as grammatical gender had not an invsiriablu relation to sex, the employment of a common form for the m&-'ition, and several instances of this occur in Shaksiiere, as also in Leviticus xxv. 5, of the Bible of 1011 : "That which growcih of it own accord." /tt, although to be foimd in printed books of a somewhat earlier date, ir« not once used in that edition, hU being in all ca-ses but that just riu stnick with terror ■< (2) he rapidly retreated. (3) //"he is ) { (3) he will Hoon retrent. *• Desertetl by his friends, he was forced to have recourse to those who had been his enemies." Here, if we write, "He, de- serted by his friends, was forced," etc., he is unduly emphasized ; and if we write, ♦' He was forced to have recourse to his enemies, having l>een deserted by his friends," the effect is verj' flat. Of course we might sometimes write, " He was deserted and forced," etc. But this cannot be done where the ** desertion " is to be not stated but implied. Obs. 32. — The participle being is often omitted; as, 1 INFINITIVES AS MODIFIERS. [Part h France at our doors, Jie sees no clanger nigli, for, France beiju/ at our doors, etc. (6) Infinitives used as adjective modifiers are in the form of appositives ; as, The best course — to treat him kindly — occurred to me. He replied by a i>er8i8tent refusal to enter his service. He gave me adnee how to behave. An invitation to pass the summer. It is to be noted in passing, that the English infinitive corre- sponds not only to the A.-S. infinitive, but also to the A.-S. genmd. The A.-S. infinitive was characterized by no seimrate sign, but by the termination -an. For example, Itif-i-aUf to love. The A.-S. genind was a verbal noun ending in -imne or enne, and invariably preceded by the preposition to. For example, to lufigetiney for loving. These two forms were practically confounded through the influence of the Norman conquest — the teiminations being dropped, and the sign to indifferently prefixed both to the infini- tive and the gerund. Hence, in many cases, what we now regard as an infinitive might, properly, be regarded as a relic of the A.-S. gerund. For example, "He is to blame,*' means, " He is for blaming," and need not be corrected into, "He is to be blamed." So also, " A house to let." — Gilmore. (6) Preposition Phrases may be used to express almost every sort of relation. Obs. 33. — Care must be taken to employ the preposi- tion fixed upon by usage as appropriate to express a cer- tain relation. Usage, and that alone, determines our choice of prepositions ; and in language usage is jDerpetually changing. Injlueiice into^ contempm'ary to, and independent upon, ouce were good English ; and such synonymous to has been within the last hundred yeai's. To sympathize in the misfortunes of another does not appear to us a whit stranger than it appeared in the days of Shenstone ; any sym- pathy in her general principles was the expression preferred by Coleridge in 1800 ; and sympathies toward may claim the sanction Sec. I.] PREPOSITION PHRASES. H of Landor. Sympathy /o?- has the consentient authority of Sterne, Gray, Burke, etc. — Fitzedwakd Hatji. An educational journal thus describes the trouble a Frenchman hnd with the verb " break." '* I begin to understand your language better," said my French friend, Mr. Dubois, to me, " but your verbs trouble me still ; you mix them up bo with prepositions." " I am sorry you find them troublesome," was all I could say. •* I saw your friend Mrs. Murkeson, just now," he continued. " She says she intends to break down house- kin-pinp ; am I ritiht there ?" " Break up house- keeping, she must have ^aid.*' " Oh, yes, I remen-.ber ; break up hor.Be-kecping.'* ** Why does she do that ? " I asked. "Because her health is broken into." *' Broken down," "Broken down? Oh, yes. And, indeed, since the small-pox has broken np in our city " " Broken out." " She thinks she will leave it for a few weeks." *• Will she leave the house alone ? " " No, she is afraid it will be broken— broken— how do I say that ? " " Broken into." " Certainly, it is what I meant to say." *' Is her son to Ixs married soon ? " "No, that engagement is broken — broken- - " " Broken off." '• Yes, broken off." '• Ah, I had not heard of that." "She is very sorry about it. Her son only broke the news down to her last week. Am I right ? I am an.xious to speak English well." '• He merely broke the news ; no prei>osition this time." " It is hard to understand. That young man, her son, is a fine young fellow ; a breaker. I think." •* A broker, and a very fine yoimg fellow. Good-day." So much for the verb " to break." A country editor, referring to visiting a family wlio gave him a meal, said : '• We are indebted to Mr. and Mrs. , with whom we should be pleased for further acquaintance." This is about on a par with the young orator in a country debating club, who said : " Mr, Chainnan, every community is divided into two classes — the educated and the uneducated — one of whom I am which." Appropriate Prepositions.— The followiiii? list incliidcs most of the phnises in which prepositions are coinnionly misused. It is made up from the tables in lu PREPOSITION PHRASES. (Part I. Worcester's Dictionary (pages xl., xli.), Angus's "Hand- book of the English Tongue '' (pages 325, 326), and Canip- belPs " Hand-book of Synonyms and Prepositions" (pages 141-153). Tlie last is esj^ecially recommended to tliose who would be exact in their use of prepositions, as it gives a multitude of quotations, illustrating the nicer distinc- tions. •bhorrrnoe of. Bbhorrent to. abound in, with. abaolTe from, •ooedeto. Rcoept (of). •coommodate to (of thingv). with (of per- bodr). acoompanied by, with, accord with (neuter), to (transitive), accordance with, according to. accuse of. aoqnaint with, acquiesce in. acquit of. adapted to, for. adequate to. adhere to. admission to, into, admit to, into. (of), advantage of, over, advocate of, for. affinity to, with, between, agree with (a person). to (a proposal). upon (conditionn). in (thinking). among (themselves), aprecable to. alien from, to. allie«l to, with, alter from, to, into, n Iteration in. ambitious of. amuse with, at. analdgoup to. analogy between, to, with, angry with (a person). at (a thing). ant4igonistic to. antagonism to, between. antiv»athy to, against. anxii>ns for, about, applicable to. appoint to, over, apprehensive of. appropriate to. approve (of). argue with, against array with, in. arrive at. in. from, ascertain from, aak of (a iwrson ). for (a thing). after (to inquire), aspire to. after, assent to. aaainiilate to. astoiiiahed at. attend to (listen)- upon (wait), attended by, with. Us on* avail one's self of. avenge one's self on. •Teraeto. banish from. base on. upon. believe in, on. bestow npm. bonnd lor. brag of. bump against burn up, down, out with. capable of. call on (a jterson). at (a house), in (question), aftt-r, by (name). care for, about, of. careful of. in. caution against (calamity). in (action), celebrated for. certain of. change for, with, to, into, from, charge (a crime) on, against (one), (one) with (a crime), (a trust) to (one), cheat of, out of, with, by. clear of (harm). from (guilt), coincide with, collide with, combine with, into, common to, with. communicate to (transitive), with (intransi- tive), compare with (for judg- ment), to (for illuHtrarion). comparison with, between. c4)ni|Hitibie with, complain of. complaint against, of. complinnt-e with, comply with. c<»mi>o«etl of. conct-med at, for (a thing), with (a person), in (a proceeding). concnr with (a peraon). in (an opinion). condole with (a person). for (a loss), confide in (intransitive). (a thing) to. conform to. , conformable to. ! confuiniity with, to. ! congi-nial to. ccmgratnlnie u)K»n. j conne<-t with. to. I connive with (a person). at (a thing). I consist of. in (substance). I with (harmony). ; consistent with, in. I consider (of). j consonant to. with. I contend with (a person). ' for (a principle, ob- ject), againet (an obsta- cle). I contiguous to. ' contradictory to. I contrary to. contrast with, to. between. ', controversy with (a person). I ' about (a mat- I ter). I convenient to, for. j conversant with, in, about. ! convert into, convict of. copy after (an example). Sec. I.] APPROPRIATE PREPOSITIONS. liii copy from (nature), out of (a book), correspond with, to. corrc«|)ondenoe with, conplc by. with, together, to, in. covered by, with, cure of. danger of, from. daltHi at, from, (leal with, by. tloftnd from, atrainRt. deference to, for. toward. deRcieiit in. •leliKhted by, at, with. in. deliver from, out of (trou- ble), over (a package), demand of, from, denounce upon, against. «;e|>pnd up«in. de|Hjndcnt on. deprive of. dero^te from. derf>Kation to, from, of, derogatory to. deserve of, from (a person). de«ire for, of, after, desirous* of. desist from, devolve on. die of. with, from, by. differ among (thomKelves). from (one another), from, with (irt opin- ion), about, concerning (a qneHtion). difference with (a penion). between (objects), different from, difficulty in. diliit«» upon, diiiiinutiim of. direct 14), toward, dimgree with (a pernon). to (n proposition). dlMgreeablc to. diaapiiomtod of (Momei bing not gr>t). in (Mtmething got). dlHapprove (of). diKcontcntod with. diMCOurage from. diiioounigt>ment to. diRorimiiiate between (two thingH). (one) from (an- other), difidain for. dii>ongaged from. diMgUHtvil with (a iiemon). with, at, by (a tiling). dinlike to, of. diwiualify for, from. dissimt from. dissuade from. distiuKuishcHl by, for, from. distinction from. divest of. divide between (two). amcmg (Reveral). into (parts), due from, to. eager in, for, after. earnest in, for. embark in. embellished by, with. employ in, on, about. enamored of, with. encounter (with). encouragenieut to. encroach on. enon (enemies). to. on (the ground), familiar to, with. favlu for. to. favorite f>f, with, filled with, fulloweti by. forbear froin. foreign to. from, formed of. from, found upon, in (truth), free from, with, friendly to, with, frightened at. frown at, on. frugal of. fruitful in, of. fall of. glad of, at. glance at. upon, good at, for, to, toward, graduate at, in. gradiiateerson). for (a thing), greedy of, after, grieve at, for. guilty of. hanker after, for. happen to, u|>on. harass by, with, hatred to, of. healed of, hinder from, hold of, on, hunger for, after. ill of. illustrated by, with. immersed in. impatient with (a (wrson). at (his conduct). of (restraint). for (something wantetl). under (misfo.*- tune), impose upon, impress upon, with, by. imprint u|K)n. incapacitate by, from, inocnsec] with, againsL incentive to, include in. incompatible with, incorpornte into, with, incunib«>nt upon, indo|H>ndent of, indifferent to, indis|)i. prejudice against, prejudicial to. prewnt to, with. pre*«id»» over, prevail upon, with, over, against, prevent from. proon. remetly for. ngninst. rcuioriKtiatf with, against. roiimt (a iMi-wige) of, from, out «»f. repent of. I repine ni, for. replete with. re«pii>>ite fruach with, for. nitearch into. reMenibiancc to. reside at, in. resolve upon, respect lor. to. reward witb, by, for. rich in. Mil for. to. ■ated with. satisfy with. •earch for, after, into, out ■eairc of, fr<>m, against. seek for, afU-r. seised by, with. sell for, by (auction) in Eng- land. at. in United States. share in. of. sick of, with. similar to. similarity to, between, of. situated on (thii^ side). in (.Main Street). skilful in, of, at. smile at^ upon. solicitous about, for. ! speak to, with, about, npon. ] strive with, against, for. j snflftcient for. I suitable to, for. I Buite-l to, with. surpriseii at, by, with. surround by, with. I swerve from. sympathize with, in. sympathy with, for, l)etween. taste of. for. thick with, think of, about, on. thirst for, after, threaten by, with. Skc. I.) APPROPRIATE PREPOSITIONS. Iv tire with, of, by. | VRrinnoo with. trantilate from, oat of, into. treat of. trust in, to. nnison with. unite to, with, in, by. unworthy of. vtThcd in. vi-st in, with, vexed with, at. view of, to. wait upon, for. want uf, with. weary of, with, in. worthy of. write from, down, out. yearn for, after, toward, yoke with. eealouH for, in. The mistakes of most frequent occurrence in this con- nection consist in making one preposition tlie complement of two different or contrasted words. Thus: lie was a man witli whom he agreed on a few subjects but [from whom he] differed on many. ExKKCisK XVII. — Replace the prepositions in the fol- lowing sentences by those appropriate: Example. — It is abhorrent to my instincts. It is al)boncnt from my instincts. He accused me with false- hood. He is acquitted from suspicion. "What atlvantage is it, above being recognized ? The wagon collided against the car. It was in compliance to my request. In compliance of your message I have come to see you. This is different to that. He allied differently than I. He disagreed from the report. They dissented to the plan. He took exception from the remai'k. Why take ex- ception at a hasty word? It is incompatible from my principles. He is indoi)en(1cnt from the society. These aj^ples are inferior than the last. The thought is insei)arable to the proposal. What is the matter of the cat ? He was named George for me. There is need for more money. Do you object against him ? I have no prejudice to him. I rely in you. It has great similarity with his former book. The Iioumo is on tlie ]>riii«'ii)al street. He is zealous of gooly to one object. One example — the following, from the Loudon li PREPOSITION PU RASES. [Part I. Spectator — will be enough, for the construction is so common that it is not only found in almost all writing, but has invatled every- day speech. He knowK, farther, thiit the keeper of the Mylam has either been deoeired by, een deceived by these doctoi-s, or is an accomplice of theirs.** The attempt at elegance produces awkwardness. The leaWng of words like bi/, of^ throtiyhy for^ eated want of success—. No opportunity of doing good — . The peace of the community — . The leader of the rebellion — . The long- expected friends — . The source of the Nile—. A large portion of Central Africa—. A great number of vessels, unable to with- stand the fury of the storm — . Many of the descriptions of travel- lers — . The veteran warrior, rushing into the midst of the battle — . The errors of previous generations — . AUXILIARIES. Obs. 40. — As expletives, do and did should be used sparingly. (See Obs. 92, page cxxvi.) And does not Soutliey use too often the expletives f/iV/and does? They have a good effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes when they mark a style.— C. Lamb. Sec. L] auxiliaries. Ixv Thus, As it does not only, like other pictures, f/ive the color and figure, but the motions of things it represents. — Addison. Pbofeb Use. — Do and did, as the signs of the tenses, are fre- quently necessary, and sometimes emphatical. The idiom of the language renders them for the most imi-t necessary in negation and interrogation ; and even in affirmation they are found in cer- tain cii'cumstances to give emphasis to the expression. For in- stance, '• Did I object to this measure formerly '? I do object to it still." Or, ♦' What I did publicly affimi then, I do affirm now, and I will affiim always." The contrast of the different tenses in these examples is more precisely marked by such monosyllables as are intended singly to point out that circumstance, than they can be by the bare inflections of the verb. — Campbell. Thus, No man is so positive in his prejudices against that of which he knows little, as the man who is master of a certain domain of knowledge, and therefore assumes to measure and judge that which he does not by that which he does fully know. — Porter. Obs. 41 — The uses of Shall and Will must 1)0 discriminated. (a) In Affirmative Sentences there are two distinct future tenses, as follows : Future qf Expectation. I shall go, We shall go. Thou wilt go. You will go. He will go. They will go. Future of Determination. I will go. We will go. Tliou shalt go. You shall go. He shall go, Thoy shall go. Thus, " I shall be drowned ; nobody will help me," is the de- si)airing cry of a man who expects to drown ; " I will be drowned ; nolwdy shall help me," is the cry of a man determined to drown. The radical signification of tcill (Anglo-Saxon willan) is purpose, intention, determination ; tliat of ahall (Anglo-Saxon scenl, ought) is obligation. / trill do means, I puri>oae doing— I am determined to do. / sh(dl do means, radically, I ought to do ; and as a man is sui)i>OHod to do what ho set^s he ought to do, / sliall do came to mean, I am about doing— to be, in fact, a mere announcement of future action, more or less remote. Bnt so you shall do means, radically, you ought to do ; and therefore unless we mean to im- l>08e an obligation or to announce an action on the part of an- Ixvi AUXILIARIES. [Part I other person, over whom we claim some coutrol, shall, in si^caking of the mere voluntary future action of another j)ei-8on, is inappro- priate; and we therefore say i/ou will, assuming that it is the volition of the other person to do thus or so. Hence, in merely announcing future action, we say, I or we shall, you^ he, or they trill ; and, in declaring purpose on our own part, or on the part of another, obligation, or inevitable action, which we mean to con- trol, we say, / or we will, you, he, or they shall Official orders, which are in the form you will, are but a seeming exception to this rule of speech, which they, in fact, illustrate. For in them the courtesy of suijerior to subordinate, carried to the extreme even in giving command, avoids the semblance of compulsion, while it assumes obedience in its very language. — B. G. Wurrfl. Shall remain I H«ar yoa this Triton of the minDows? mark yoo Uis abHda e dhall 1—CoriolcnuM, This child I to myaelf wiU take ; She shall be mine, and I will make A ladj of my own. The slan of midnight shall be dear To her ; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulet* diince their wayward roand, • And beanty bom of mnrmoring sound Shall pass into her face.— Wordbwobth. Then wilt thou not be loth To leaTc this Paradise, but shalt posseas A paradise within thee.— Miltoh. Shall I, wasting in despair, Die beoanse a woman's fair ? . . . . If she love me, then helieve I will die ere she shall grieve. — Wither. If she hate me, then believe She shall die ere I will grieve.— Parody ofUu above by Be.s Jonsor. Med. Where shall we dine to day ? Dor. Where you will.— Ethkbegx. Exercise XXIY. — Correct the use of auxiliaries in the following sentences : Example. — It is intended that the army shall march to-morrow. It is intended that the army will march to-moiTow. He says he 8«j. L] SHALL AND WILL. Ixvii shall be glad to see you. He replies that he shall be happy to go. He promises me it will soon be ready to saiL We will never look on his like again. I fear that I will lose it. I hope that I will be well. I believe that I will catch cold. I hope I will not be missed. I fear we \^ill have rain. I will enjoy the visit. (Compare " We will be satisfied," the cry of the Citizens to Brutus, meaning that they were determined to have satisfaction.) It is requested that no one will leave the room. I think I will be contented, but I don't know. As, besides the general fault of prolixity and indistinctness, this sentence contains several inaccuracies, I will be obliged to enter*into a minute discussion of it« stnicture and parts. — Blair. A young men's Institute for Discussion on Self-Improvement is reported in a Scottish provincial paper to have met and dis- cussed the question, " Shall the material universe be destroyed? '* — Alford. I am not able to devote as much time and attention to other subjects as I will be under the necessity of doing next year. — Chalmers. I do not expect that any word of praise which this work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me. — Vestiges of Creation. We know to what causes our past reverses have been owing, and we will have ourselves to blame if they are again incurred. — Alison. You must make haste and gather me all you can, and do it quickly, or I will and shall do without it. — Johnson. But I will dei)cnd on your coming over with Mr. Whistler in the spring. — Shenstone. (b) In Interrogative Sentences, the forms are: Future of Exf>ertation. (Will I go?) (Will we go?) Shalt thou go ? Shall you go ? Putur* tif DetermttiatioH. Shall I go ? Shall we go ? Wilt tliou go ? Will you go ? Will he go? Will they go? l Shall he go? Shall they go? In Intbbbooation, the auxiliaries are ruled by the same princi- ple. " Shall " expresses that the subject is under external influ- ence ; *• will " implies that the action is entirely within the control of the subject IxN iii AUXILIARIES. [Pabt I. Determination. — The only complete Interrogative forms are those expressing will or determination on the part of the second person. ** Will you be this honest gentleman's cupbearer, or shall I f (" Pirate," ch. 30). The action is left in the power of the person addressed : ** Are you willing to ? " "Is it youi- will or inclina- tion to ?" There is no pressure from without. On the other hand, ** Shall I?" indicates that the speaker is under out- ward oontrol, — in this instance, the control of the person ail- dressed. " If you should think fit not to do the action, then it will fall to me ; " the action of the s])eaker is entirely dependent upon the will of the second person. So, •* Shall he ? " would im- ply that the speaker expresses the action of the |)er8on *' he " as resting on the will or control of the second pei-son. Win yoa give thanki. sweet Kate t or else shall I f ••What shall we drink?" I submit my taste to yours; the choice lies with you ; yours is the determining voice. " If we refuse, what shall we suflfer?** Our fate depends on your will or determination ; we are in your power. " Shall I pour your honor out a glass of sack to your pipe ? " " Do, Trim," said my uncle Toby.— Sterne. BamUi. One word more, good lady. Qvesn. What shall I do ? The Queeyi asks Hamlet, What wilt thou do ? thoa wilt not murder me ? There is more than mere futurity here ; the Queen inquires of Hamlet what his own will or resolution is. The action is alto- gether dependent on Hamlet^ who is addressed. Antony says to the citizens, Shall I deeoend ? and will yoa glTe me leave ? The orator professes to be the humble servant of those he ad- dresses. Shall our coffers, then. Be emptied to redeem a traitor home ? The speaker puts it to his hearers to say whether they can rea- sonablv sanction the action. S«c. L] SHALL AND WILL. Ixix Shall he expire. And unATenged r I put it to you ; whether he shall or shall not rests with you to decide. Hector is gone : Who shall tell Priam bo, or Hecuba ? What I 8hall an African, shall Juba's heir Reproach great Cato'a son ? Ftiturity. — Next as to the Interrogative form available for mere futurity. '• Shall I ? " is already set apart for the case where the first person acts under the control of the second person or per- son addressed. Still there is no other form for simple futurity with the first person as subject. ** Will I?" is obviously impossi- ble as a direct question ; yet it is the regular Scotch form. For inquiring as to a future action on the part of the second person, we have to consider two forms. *^ Shall you 7^* would naturally inquire as to the influence of external circumstances upon '• you ; " and, being not an affirmation but merely a question, it is not considered as at all uncourteous. '* Will you ? " would be the form of courtesy, were the expression of this considered neces- sary or desirable ; it is a form, moreover, that is already engaged to make inquiry as to the second person's will or determination. However, "Will you?" is used for mere futuiity side by side with ♦•Shall you?" •♦ What shall you do ? " *' WTiat tcill you do ? " *' Shall you come back to-morrow ? " — may inquire as to the future merely. The meaning is—*' What are you to do ? " Are you to come back ? For the third iHjrson, ** Shall he?" puts the action as dej^endent on the second person, and accordingly must l>o set aside. Ajiart from this pre-occupation, it might have stood for simple futurity : the motive of courtesy, which caused the substitution of •♦will" in the affirmative form, has no influence here. •* Will he?" while naturally inquiring as to " his " will, inclination, or determination, is also the form used for the case of mere futurity. •♦ WtU they be present?" ♦•Who will be next president?" express simple futurity : much the same as •• Are they to be present?" •♦Who is to be next President?" Wm U be dMk before yoa NMb Um tower? ^XX AUXILIARIBa fPABT I. What, wUi the M|>iriiig Mood of Laitcsater Bliik in Um ground 7— BAn. Exercise XXV. — Correct the use of auxiliaries in the following sentences. Example. — Shall I put the tea on ? Will I put the tea on? What will I do. Come, will we go? When will we get tlirough tliia book? Will we see you again soon? Where will I get it? Will you prefer to accent it ? Whiit will you do about it? Wliere will you be next week? When will you go? Obs. 42. Would and Should follow in general the buiue rules as shall and will. Thus, "He said he should be drowned; nobody would help him." *• He said he would be drowned ; nobody Hhould help him.** As to would and shouUl^ it will be found that, \\ith one excep- tion, to be remarked upon hereafter, whatever the connection in which they appear, they are used, the former with some implica- tion of will, the latter with some implication of obligation. For example, trould^ when it expresses a habit or a custom, as, •* She would weep all day," " He would bluster like Herod," implies a habitual exercise of will. In such phrases as *' W^ould that it were night ! " *• Would that it were morning ! " mere will or strong wish is expressed, and would can hardly be called an " auxiliary" by any grammarian. Consequently, when will or wish is expressed in any other part of the phrase, would becomes superfluous and out of place. Expressing willingness, we say, ** I would gi-ant your re- quest ; ** but if we introduce willingly or with pleasure^ we use should, and say, " I should willingly, or with pleasure, grant your request," not "I would willingly," etc. In like manner we say, " I will see you to-morrow ; " but if we add an expression of pleas- ure, ** I shall be glad, or happy, to see you to-morrow," not ** I will be glad," etc. . . . There is a use of sJiould which can hardly be determined by the rules, or disposed under any one of the heads above given. It generally appeai-s in an impei-sonal constniction ; as, "It should seem thus," " Should it prove so." As would conforms to willy and Sbc. I] WOULD AND SHOULD. Ixxi as we have "He (or it) will seem," we should expect "He would seem," and so, " It would seem." But the best use for centuries has been, " It should seem," " One should think," etc. . . . The impersonal use of should where, according to analogy, we should look for would, I shall not undertake to explain. ... To my readere I shall venture to say that if they express hoping and wish- ing and the like with will and irould, and command, demand, and mamlatory desire with shall and should — for example, "I hope that Mrs. Unwin will invite them to tea " and **I wish that Mi-s. Unwin would invite them to tea ; " but *' He commands that Mrs. Unwin shall invite them to tea," and " He desired that Mi's. Unwin should invite them to tea ; " and, impersonally, " It is wished that no per- son shall leave his seat," and *' It was requested that no pei-sons should leave their seats " — they will not be far fiom right. — R. G. White. Exercise XXVI. — Correct the use of auxiliaries in the following sentences. Rmmple. — It was intended that the army should march the next day. It was intended that the army would march the next day. (In like manner, throw the rest of the short sentences in Exer- cise XXrV". into the past tense, and give the con-ect auxiliary.) He recommended tliat the place would be given to a man that should bo atH'eptable. I would be glad to go. We would be happy to see you. He hastened to return, lest liis absence would cause anxiety. He was afraid that he would be burnt. The father was afraid his child should jump in. Had I been thy son, I think I would not only have been grieved on account of that which I hatl done, but also would have regretted that I had caused soitow in the breast of him who lovetl mo so tenderly. — Hart's (irhould. I hupeil tboQ sbould'st have been my UMOlet's wife. Ixxiv THE INDIRECT OBJECT. [Part I. You wonld not listen to our advice. How often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . and ye would not I I believe soon I shall bear to see nobody. I do hate all here- abouts already, except one or two. I will have my dinner brought U|X)n my table in ray absence, and the plates fetched away in my absence, and nobody shall see me. — Shk^stone. I have an old aunt that visits me sometimes, whose conversation is the perfect counterpart *of them. She shall fetch a long-winded sigh with Dr. Young, for a wager. — Shenstone. The minister who should propose it would be liable to be told, etc. — Helps. THE INDIRECT OBJECT. An Indirect Object is required to complete the meaning of some verbs. Tliis may be (I) a Noun, (2) a Pronoun, (3) a Preposition Phrase, (4) a Con j miction Phrase, (5) an Adjective, (6) an Infinitive, (7) a Participle. Thus, (1) They made Cromwell Protector ; (2) I gave him bread ; (3) The people counted him for a prophet ; (4) He named his son as his heir ; (5) The ;jury found him guilty ; (6) Tell him to wait ; (7) They heard him walking. (1) The Noun is the Indirect Object proper, and some verbs take this object only. (6) The Infinitive in this use is thus explained by James Harris : It naturaUy coalesces with all those verbs that denote any Tend- ence^ Desire, or Volition of the Soul, but not readily with others. Thus it is sense as well as syntax, to say, / desire to live ; but not to say, I eat to lire. The reason is, that though differ eiit Ac- tions may unite in the same Subject, and therefore be coupled to- gether (as when we say, He icalked and discoursed) yet the Actions notwithstanding remain separate and distinct. But it is not so with respect to Volitions and Actions. Here the coalescence is often so intimate, that the Volition is unintelligible, till tlie Action be fec. l] series of infinitives. Ixxv expressed. I desire, lam willing, I want — What ? The sentences, we see, are defective and imperfect. We must help them, then, by Infinitives, which express the proper Actions to which they tend, / desire to read, I am willing to learn, I want to see. Thus is the whole rendered complete, as well in sentiment as in syntax. — Hermes. See also note from Gilmore, on page L Obs. 46. — A series of infinitives may cause ambiguity even in a short sentence. Thus, "Do you intend to come to help me work or to play ? " may have any of the following meanings : (1) Do you intend (to come to help me to work or to play), or do you not intend to ? (2) Do you intend to come (to help me to work or to play), or must I go to you ? (3) Do you intend to come to help me (to work or to play), or must I work or play alone ? (4) Is it to help me that you intend to come, or is it in order to work, or to play ? (5) Is it in order to help me to work that you intend to come, or is it in order to play ? (6) Is it in order to help me to work that you intend to come, or is it in order to help me to play ? BesidM the abore distinct mean.ngR, tlicre are nameroaa shades of difference, like the following : (7) Do you intend to come to help me to work or to play, whichever I happen to be doing? Obs. 46, — To distinguish the infinitive of purpose, in order Ut may be substituted for to^ or the infinitive may l>e changed to a finite form introduced by that. Thus, to express the third meaning in the sentence just given, we might say, " Do you intend to come in order to help me ? " or *' Do you intend to come that you may help me ? " ExERcisK XXVIII.— Point out the ambiguity in the infinitives following, and reconstruct the sentences so as to convey each meaning unmistakably. Ixxvi PREDICATE MODIFIERS. [Part I. Example. — " He said he wished to take his friend with him to visit the capital and to study medicine." Here it is doubtful whether the meaning is He said that he wished to take his friend with him, (1) and also to visit the capital and study medicine, or (2) "that his friend might visit the capital and might also study medicine," or (3) " on a visit to the capital, and that he also wished to study medicine. " —Abbott. He started to go to try to help him. To travel to Europe to seek to find how to leam to live to be comfortable is preposterous. MODIFIERS OF THE PREDICATE. The Predicate may be modified by (1) Adverbs, (2) Preposition Phrases, or (3) Participle Phrases. Obs. 47.— Adverbs must be inserted with care to distinguish by tlieir position which word tliey qualify. Thus, Only the boy hit the bird ; the boy only hit the bird ; the boy hit the bird only. Exercise XXIX. — Supply appropriate adverbs to the following sentences. Example. — The lark sings merrily in the clear heavens. The lark sings — in the clear heavens. Assistance was— given, and — received. The appearances of nature are — changing. The archer handled his bow — . The terrified animal rushed — through the arena. The orator declaimed — on his favorite topic. The lady was — attired. The boy was — warned of his danger. Men — pursue fortune. — soared the eagle. Bad habits are too — ac- quired. The moon shone — . The ship was driven — . The boy wrote his exercise — . Eliza dances—. Judge not — of your neigh- bor. He acted — to his promise. The soldiers were— attached to their general. Fortune does not — attend merit. Obs. 48. — When modifying the predicate as a whole the adverb usually precedes the verb ; or if the verb is I.] POSITION OP THE ADVERB. Ixxvii composite usually comes between tlie parts ; but it must not separate the parts of the infinitive. Thus, He carefully discriminated ; He has carefully discrim- inated ; He tried carefully to discriminate (not, to carefully dis- criminate). The law of Priority rests upon certain distinct and important considerations. The first is that, on the most general principle of construction, the qualification should precede the thing qualified. In our language, this is the usage with the adjective, and to a considerable extent with the adverb. Hence, if a qualification lies between two words, and is not specially excluded from the one that precedes, the mere principle of order would make us refer it to the one that follows : we always by preference look forward. Another important circumstance connected with Priority is that a qualifying adjunct bears upon all that follows, until there is a break. It is not simply the word or phrase immediately following, but the entire group of circumstances up to the end of the sen- tence, or at least to a comma pause. — Bain. Obs. 49. — When emphatic, the adverb follows the verb ; as, He left the room very slowly. When the verb is a single word, if the adverb precedes the verb it will seem to modify the entire predicate, but if it follows the verb it will often seem to modify more especially the action. Thus, in the sentence, " Government naturally forms itself," the meaning is that it is a natural thing for government to form itself ; while in the sentence, "Government forms itself naturally," the meaning is that government forms itself in a natural way. —Day. So in "He very slowly left the room "the emphasis is upon the /act of hia leaving ; in " He left the room very slowly," the emphasis is niK)n the manner of his leaving. The following sen- tence from Huxley is therefore faulty : " We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, . . . imless we are penetrated with an unhesitating faith,** etc. Obs. 50. — Though not wrongly placed as regards the words with which they are immediately connected, ad- Kxviii ADVERB MODIFIERS. [Part! verbs may cause confusion at tlie end of a clause wlien followed by another clause beginning with a participle. Thus, He left the room very simply repeating his determination not to obey. Here ambiguity should he avoided by throwing the adverb back to its unemi)hatic jwsition before the verb. Though it may be remedied by punctimtion (see page 294), it is much bet- ter to make the arrangement clear in itself. Compare, They seized on him suddenly making his way through the door. In practice an adverb is often used to qualify a remote word where the latter adverb is more emphatic tlian any nearer word. This is very common where the adverbial motlifier is placed in an emphatic |X)sition at the l>eginning of the sentence : " On this very sjiot our guide declared tliat Claverhouse haer place and character. *' The men are not present," " the stars are not visible," ** metals do not occui* in the newer rocks." This is the mild form of universal denial ; and, for ordinary pur- poses, it is quite sufficient. The other form should be reserved for occasions where there is need to deny with energy. * ' Men have nerer seen God," is substantially a univei*sal denial. The strong form is " No man hath seen God at any time." Etpially emphatic, without any license, would have been, ** Never has any man seen God." The energy consists in placing the negative word first in the clause. " Jfo mere man, since tho fall, U able iu this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God ; ^ " Since the fall, mere men are xnable in this life .'* ** yo golf balls coming over thew walls will be returned." " Golf balls will not be retarned." **iVb d'y tyjw the following useful rule : ** In all styles, especially in letter-writing, a final emphasis must not be so frequent as to be- come obtrusive and monotonous." What he means is, '* Not in any style, especially in letter- writing, must a final emphasis ," etc. Negative Prefixes. — It should be remarked that the prefixes un-, in-, etc., do not, as " not " does, extend over a conjunction to the next adjective, making it negative. Thus, It was not safe or secure, means that it was not safe and not secure, but It was unsafe or secure, means that though not safe it was secure— an absurdity ; though we might say It was un- moved or steadfast. Hence the error in the following sentence : Began and Goneril aie the only pictures of the unnatural in Ixxxii ADVERB MODIFIERS. [Part I. Shakspere ; the pure nnnatiiral — and you will observe that Shak- spere has left their hideousness urasof teued or diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. — Coleridoe. Exercise XXX. — Transfer the negation so as to bring out tlie meaning intended in the following sentences, ex- plaining just what is meant by the words as they stand, and how the meaning is changed. Example. — As written the statement is that all of them are in- applicable, while the meaning of the author is that some are ap- plicable and some are not. Hence the predicate should be made positive, and the subject jiartial. *' Not all the rules of Latin syn- tax can l>e ap))licd to our language.'* All the rules of Latin syntax, it is true, cannot be applied to our language. — Blaik. Everything favored by good use is not on that account to be re- gained. — Campbell. But it ought carefully to be noted that every address, even every pertinent address to contempt, is not humorous. — Campbell. The result is not pleasant to us only because it fulfils our predictions, but because any other would have been productive of infinite mischief. — The Spectator, Mr. Ris was not happy because Nature had ordained it so before- hand ; ... he was happy because, etc. No essay should terminate very abruptly, nor too gradually. — Parker's Hcercises in English Composition. Obs. 53. — Double negatives in English no longer con- vey a negative sense. In Anglo-Saxon, two negatives strengthened the negation, as in Greek. Even in Shakspere we find many illustrations of this use. I never was, nor never will be false. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. This England never did, nor never shall Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. Sbc. I.] NEGATION. Ixxxiii Thackeray thus reproduces in a novel of the age of Queen Anne a usage then common : And then she said that wc mast leave directly, and abased my mamma,— who was oognizant of the basiness; bat she wasn't never thinkinR of anything but father.— E$mond. *• Wasn't never " and similar expressions are now expected only from the quite illiterate, but more subtle blunders are still not uncommon. Exercise XXXI. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — ** any more than velocity," etc. Popularity alone, therefore, is no test at all of the eloquence of the speaker, no more than velocity alone could be of the force of the external impulse originally given to the body moving. — Campbell. I won't never see you no more at no time. He couldn't throw it over, no more than as if it had weighed a ton. Obs. 54. — Negative sentences can be made affirma- tive in form by substituting a negative or obveree of the predicate. Thus, *• They are not here " — " They are gone elsewhere ; " "No man is perfect " — " All men are imperfect ; " " Matter is not self- moved" — " Matter is moved from without." This is an oi)eration of great significance in logic, and not with- out importance in grammar ; it is the mode of giving the reality apart from the form of negation, and should be familiar to those that are tracking out the varieties of English expression. General Uavelock addressed the Indian army in these terms : Soldiers, yoar labors, yonr priYation^ yonr sufferings, your valor, will not be forgotten (will be reoiembered) by a grateful country. Tlie negative form is hero chosen for emphasis ; it is the case that ])eople are in a more energetic mood when denying than when affirming ; denial implies an opponent to fight ; afiirmation not necessarily so. — Bain. Ixxxiv ADVERB MODIFIERS. [Part I. Exercise XXXII. — Transform the following negative into affirmative, and the following affirmative into nega- tive sentences. Example. — I fail to nnderstand jou. I do not nnderstand you. She acted unbecomingly. He did not see through it accurately. The cars never swerved from the track. Obs. 56. — Only should generally l>e placed before the word it is meant to qualify. But it should not separate two emphatic words, or be used where alofie can be substi- tuted. Thus, not •* Only CaBsar came,** where the moaning is, "Caesar came alone." If the meaning is, "Nobody but Ciesar came," or *' Nobody of any more consequence than Csesar came," with a somewhat contemptuous fling at Ctesar's lack of importance, then ** Only Caesar came," would be correct. On Postal Cards. — The diflSculty of properly placing the word only is shown in the history of the inscription on postal cards, which has been thus given : The direction at flntt was, " Write the address only on this side." If onlv is read in oonnectioD with oddrvM, as intended, the meaning is clear : but if read in cmnection with on thi* aide, it becomes ridiculoufs for nobody would write the address on both sides. Then : " Write the address on this f^iiie — the message on the other/' Bat this seemed unnecessary, for any one accnstomed to writing letters would put the address upon the same side with the stamp. Finally : " Nothing but the address can be placed on this side."" Of this it has been well remarked that the average school -boy knows better. He " can " place a good deal more than the address on that side, and he concludes that the authors of that statement hrnl a more varied ability than the boy who oooldn't tell a lie, for they have demonstrated that they can. (See page Ixxiii.) Better : "Place on this side nothing but the address." At the beginning of a serUence^ only is equivalent to but, as, "I don't like to importune you, only I know you'll forgive me." This may lead to ambiguity, as, ** Help youi-self to these oranges, only a dozen were eaten yesterday." According as one has a basket of oranges or a box, this may mean, I want to be generous, but you must remember that a dozen are gone already : or, I am afraid Bkc. L] ''ONLY." Ixxxv they will not all be eaten ; no more than a dozen are gone so far. In conversation the doubt would be removed by the emphasis, but in a letter it might lead to unfortunate mistakes. The location of an adverb is one of the most perplexing details of composition. One must have a very well-trained and quick taste to decide upon it intuitively with uniform accuracy. Take, for example, the word " only," which is sometimes adverbial, and sometimes adjective, in its qualifying force. I select from Gib- bon's History a sentence of moderate length, which contains the word. Observe how many distinct meanings may be obtained l)y simply sliding it gradually from the beginning to the end of the sentence. First, Only they forgot to observe, that, in the first ages of society, a successful war against Mtvage animals is one of the most beneficial labors of heroism ; that is, they did some things well, but one thing not well — they forgot to observe, etc. Secondly, They only forgot to observe, etc. ; that is, either they were the only persons who did so ; or, thirdly, they did not intentionally neglect the fact, they only forgot it. Fourthly, They forgot to observe that only in the Jtrst ages of society ; that is, there is but one period in the history of society in which the fact observed is true. Fifthly, They forgot to observe that, in the fint agen only of tocMy, etc.; that is, it is not true in the ages preceding organized social life. Sixthly, They forgot U> obwrvc, that, in the first ages of aodeij, only a jtmccm^/W war against ■avago animaK etc. ; that is, not war which is a failure. Seventhly, They forgoi to otMenre, that, in the first agee of aodety, a wiooMiful war only aotUnu ■avage animals, cto.; that iBf not a war for their preservation. Ixxxvi ADVERB MODIFIERS. [Part I. Eighthly, They forgot to obaerve, that, iu the flint ages of iiooiety, araooeKfol war against only tttvage animals, etc ; that is, not a war against animals of domestic use. Ninthly, They forgot to obscnre, etc., war against savage animals is only one of the most bene- ficial labors ; that is, there are other snch labors of heroism. Tenthly, They forgot to obeenre, eta, a Hiooestfii] war against savage animals is one of only the mott beneficial labors of herolRm ; that is, it is not to be deemed a labor of inferior worth ; or. Eleventhly, They forgot to observe, etc., that sach a war Is one of only the moist beneficial labor* of heroism ; that is, it is not to be regai-ded as a pastime. Twelfthly, They forgot to observe, that, etc., is one of the most beneficial labors of herottni only ; that is, no virtue inferior to heroism is competent to the task. Here are no less than twelve distinct shades of thought, not all of them elegantly, not all precisely, but all perspicuously ex- pressed, with the aid of emphasis in the reading, by simply slid- ing one word from point to jioint from the beginning to the end of a sentence of twenty -four words.— Phelps. Carelessness. — The fact is, with respect to such adverbs as otili/, whoUy, at leasts and the rest of that tribe, that in common discourse the tone and emphasis we use in pronouncing them generally serves to show their reference, and to make the meaning clear ; and hence we acquire the habit of throwing them in loosely in the course of a period. But in writing, where a man speaks to the eye and not to the ear, he ought to be more accurate, and so to con- nect those adverbs with the words which they qualify as to put his meaning out of doubt upon the first inspection. — Blair. People who have practised composition as much and with as vigilant an eye as myself know also, by thousands of cases, how Skc. I.] "ONLY;" "AS" AND "SO." Ixxxvii infinite is the disturbance caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word so despicable as the word " even." . . The station of a syllable may cloud the judgment of a council. -De Quincey. Exercise XXXIII. — Change the following sentences so as to convey the meaning intended. Example. — I shall give only one sentence more on this head. I shall only give one sentence more on this head. — Blair. But though we were ten days in Naples I only saw one quarrel. — HowtelijS. A style of writing "which," as Junius said of the character of Sir William Draper, " will only pass without censure when it passes without observation. " — Moon. Existing laws on the subject of insanity are mainly judicial, legislatures not having been able to formulate a statute on the question, only in the most vague and indefinite manner. — N. A. Jietieic. (Here either not should be omitted, or only should be- come except.) He could only live in agitation ; he could only breathe in a volcanic atmosphere. — Alison. Wlien Napoleon's system of government became unfortunate alone, it was felt to be insupportable. — Alison. Obs. 56. — As and So are frequently misused. After Negatives. — In the best usage, so is used after a negative in preference to as ; thus, " I like him as well, but I do not like her so well." The negative may be only implied ; as, " There are few that could do so much," which is equivalent -to " Tliere are not many that .* Art may, in the execution, be as polished and delicate as na- ture ; but in the design can never show herself so august and magnificent— Bl UK. Mistaken firr ConjunctwDR. — Care must be taken to avoid the ambiguity of ]dacing^/^f where it might be either an adverb or a conjunction. Ixxxvii/ ADVERB MODIFIERS. [Pabt I. Thus, " For though they may appear as l)eautifnl or strange." — Addison. Here the meaning may be that they api)ear as beauti- ful or as strange as something else appears ; or that they appear as beautiful or strange, and not as commonplace or familiar. Exercise XXXIV. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — I did not think it so bad as that. I did not think it as bad as that. I have been as idle since, but never as happy. — Esmond, He was not as prosperous or as contented. She seemed as intelligent. Obs. 57. — At Least is a phrase often nsed am- biguously. Thus, *' I think you will find my Latin exercises at least as good as my cousin's." Does this mean (1) " my Latin exercises, though not perhaps my other exercises," or (2) ** tliough not very good, at least as gootl as my cousin's?" Write for (1) ** At least my Latin exercises you will find;" for (2) "I think you will find my Latin exercises as good as my cousin's, at least." — Abbott. (2) Preposition Phrases. (See page 1.) (3) The Participle Phrase, when modifying the predicate, as when modifying the subject, is often a source of ambiguity unless carefully placed. Thus : A Senior distinguished himself yesterday by killing a huge rat while sunning himself in the gutter on Lake Street. Rev. Dr. Hands, sir, ha^'ing been elected president by the unani- mous vote of the boards of trustees and overseers of Bowdoin Col- lege, I come on their behalf to induct you, etc. — Quoted by Phelps. Don't repeat anecdotes, good or bad. A very good thing be- comes foolishness after hearing it several times. — Don't ; a Manual of Mistakes. Few need to be infoi-med that one Herod caused to be slaugh- tered the babes of Bethlehem, commonly called '* The Slaughter of the Innocents." — Popular Rhetoric. Ssa L] ARRANGEMENT OF PHRASES. Ixxxix Found— Evidently by mistake a package was put in my carriage while standing in Fayetto Street, supposing it was left by my wife, but found it was not ours. The owner can have the same by calling at No. ti Saboy Place and proving property and paying for this advertisement. John Raynor. Arrangement of Phrases. An Absolute Phrase should stand at the beginning of the sentence ; as, The king being dead, a dispute arose as to the succession. Note V. — The absoltUe phrase is set off from tlie rest of the sen^ tetice by a commtt. Obs. 58. — Priority among adverbial modifiers fol- lows the general order of first those of Time, then those of Place, last those of Manner. Thus, " MaiTied, Sept. 8, 1883, in Syracuse, N. Y., by the Rev. S. S. Smitli, Henry K. Wilkes and Emma F. Lane," The law of PRioRrrY rests upon certain distinct and important considerations. The first is that, on the most general principle of constraction, the qualification should precede the thing qualified. In our language, this is the usage with the adjective, and to a con- siderable extent with the adverb. Hence, if a qualification lies be- tween two words, and is not specially excluded from the one that precedes, the mere i)rinciple of Order would make us refer it to the one that follows ; we always by preference look forward. Another important circumstance connected with Priority is that a qualifying adjunct bears upon all that follows, until there is a break. It is not simply the word or phi*ase immediately following, but the entire group of circimistances up to the end of the sen- tence, or at least to a comma jmuse. — Bain. In poetry, and occasionally in impassioned prose, a series of adverbial modifiers may be accumulated before the verb; as, High on a throne of myal utate which far OutRhone the wealth of Orniiis and of Iiul. Or where the gorgeous Fjwt with richcMit hand Shnweni on >ier kingH barbaric- goUi anower of superstition, once more ruled over the prostrate nations. " Martha Qrant attempted to force the collection of twenty-flvo centa from Sally Jones for making a dreas by the use of an axe and a raior. Bncted to the memory of John Phillips, accidentally shot as a mark of affection by his brother. Wc should be employed in doing good to our fellow-men daily. The highwaynuw not only robbed the gentleman, but even the lady. Man not only desires to be loved, bnt to be lovely. The Romans understood liberty at least as well aa we. We admit oar total inability to remedy the evil sorrowfully. To man has been given the power of speech only. The memoirs of his father HufRciently appear to repel those acciuatlofia. They are men who nobly know how to die. He almoKt found fanlt with every one, at all events of the poeCs minor pieoea. Philosophers have bti>n at a Ioms, to explain always the aeeret of the strange power, which patriotic tunes exercise over the armies of i TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Composition, p xvii. The Subject, i». xvii. Ex. 1.- Supply subject*, p. xviii. Obs 1. - rofiitiou of subject, p. xiz. Obfl. 2. — Position varied for empbasis, p. zx. Obs. 3.— Precision, p. xxi. Ex. II.— Putting predicate before subject, p. xxiii. Ex. III. — Variation for emphasis, p. xxiii. Obs. 4. —Summarizing a long subject, p. xxiv. The Object, p. xxiv. Ex. IV. — Supply objects, p. xxiv. Obs. 5. — Verbal nouns to be avoided, p. xxiv. Ex. V. — Verbal nouns changed to phrases, p. xxiv. Modifiers of Subject and Object, p. xxv. ADJECTIVES, p. xxv. Desc'RIITIVK, p. xxv. Ex. VI. — Supplying adjectives, p. xxv. Obs. 6. — Fitting adjectives, p. xxvi. Ex. VII. — Substituting fit adjectives, p xxvii. Forms in Oomparimmy p. xxviii. Obs. 7. — Comparative degree, when applicable, p. xxviii Oba. 8. — Superlative degree, when applicable, p. xxix. Ex. VIII. — Comparison wrongly used, p. xxix. Obs. 9. — The superlative of two dual forms, p. xxx. Ex. IX. —Superlative for comparative, p xxxi. Obs. 10. — Adverbs used for adjectives, p. xxxi. Ex. X.— Escaping use of adverbs as adjectives, p. xxxii Obs. 11. — Adjectives usually precede, p. xxxiii. Obs. 12. — Sometimes adjectives follow, p. xxxiv. Obs. 13. — Adjective and its modifiers separated, p. xxxiv. DeMONSTR.\TIVE, p. XXXV. DefiniU, p. xxxv. Definite Article, p. xxxv. Obs. 14. — When articles are to be repeated, p. xxxv. Ex XI. — Repeating articles and adjectives, p. xxxvi. Ex. XII. Meaning shown by articles, p. xxxvi. Obs. 15. — Article repeated for emphasis, p. xxxvi. Obs. 16. — The first two, p. xxxvii. Sec. I] ANALYSIS. XCiil Tltis and That, p. xxxviii. Obs. 17. — Couples for distinguishing, p. xxxviii. Indefinite^ p. xl. Indefinite Article^ p. xl. Obe. 18. — Not to be used to denote the whole, p. xli. Numeral, p. xlii. CardimUs, p. xlii. Obs. 19. — When to spell numbers, p. xlii. Obs. 20. — Use of collective words, p. xlii. Ex. XIII . — Correcting expressions of number, p. xlii. OrdinalSt p. xlii. Obs. 21.— Position of the th, p. xlii. Obs. 22. — Choice between cardinals and ordinals, p. xliii. POSSESSIVES, p. xliii. Obs. 23. — No objective genitive in English, p. xliii. Obs. 24. — Possessive a relation of persons, p. xliv. Obs. 25. — '* WhosH " as a neuter often condemned, p. xliv. Obs. 26. — Ambiguous possessives avoided, p. xlvi. Obs. 27. — Adjectives and possessives, p. xlvi. Ex. XIV.— Possessives changed to phrases, p. xlvi. APPOSITIVES, p. xlvii. Obs. 2b. — Two sentences made one, p. xlvii. Obs. 29 — Appositives to be near their nouns, p. xlvii. Ex. XV. — Arrangement of appositives, p. xlvii. PARTICIPLES, p. xlviii. Obs. 30. — Position of Participle, p. xlviii. Ex. XVI. — Changing position of participle, p. xlviii. Obs. 31.— Participle resolved into clause, p. xlix. Obs. 32.— The participle •♦being" omitted, p. xlix. INFINITIVES, p. I. PREPOSITION PHRASES, p. 1. Obs. 33 — Selection of the appropriate one, p. 1. Table of appropriate prepositions, p. li. Ex. XVII.— Replacing inappropriate prepositions, p. Iv. Obs. 34. — Wrong insertions or omissions, p. Iv. Ex. XVIII. — Prepositions removed or inserted, p. Iv. Obs. 35. — Repetition of prejwsitions, p. Ivi. Obs. 8H. — Prepositions after conjunctions, p Ivii. Ex. XIX. — Repetition of prepositions, p. Ivii. Obs. 37. — Position of preposition phrases, p. Iviii. Ex. XX. — Position of preiH)8ition phrases, p. Iviii. Ob«. 88. — Two prepositions with one object, p. lix. Obe. 89. — Splitting of particles, p. Ix. Ex. XXL— Rearrangement to avoid suspense, p. Ixii. ADVERBIAL PHRASES, p. Ixil. CLAUSES. (Soe Complex Sentences, pages cix-cxii), p. Ixii. The Predicate, p. Ixii, Ex. XXII.— Completing sentences, p. Ixiii. Ex. XXIII.— Supplying predicates, p. Ixiv. i x^MV ANALYSia [Part I. Auxiliaries^ p. Ixiv. Obs. 40. — Do and did as ezpletiyes, p. Ixiv. Ol». 41.— Distinction between shall and will, p. be v. (a)— In affirmative sentences, p Ixv. Ex. XXIV.— Corrections in the same, p. Ixvi. (b)— In interrogative sentences, p. Ixvii. Ex. XXV.— Corrections in the same, p. Ixx. Obs. 42. — Distinction between would and should, p. Ixx. Ex. XXVI. — General correction of auxiliaries, p. Ixxi. Obs. 4;i. — Subtle uses of shall, will, etc., p. Ixxii. Obs. 44.— Maj distinguished from can, p. Ixxiii. Ex. XXVII. — Meaning of auxiliaries, p. Ixxiii. The Indirect Object, p. Ixxiv. Obs. 45.— Series of infinitives ambiguous, p. Ixxv. Obs. 4<) — The infinitive of purpose, p Ixxv. Ex. XXVIII. - Ambiguity shown and avoided, p. Ixxy. Modifiers of the Predicate, p. Ixxvi. ADVERBS, p. Ixxvii. Obe. 47.— Care required in inserting adverbs, p. Ixxvi. "Ex. XXIX. — Arrangement of adverbs, p. Ixxvi. Oba. 48. —Adverbs usually precede, p Ixxvi. Obe. 49. — When emphatic, the adverb follows, p. Ixxvii. ObB. 50. — Adverbs before participles, p. Ixxvii. Obs. 51. — Modifiers of special words next to them, p. Ixxviil Obe. 52. — Not connected with part denied, p. Ixxviii. Denial of the subject, p. Ixxviii. Universal, p. Ixxviii. Partial, p. Ixxx. Denial of the predicate, p. Ixxx. Denial of a modifier, p. Ixxxi. Ex. XXX. — Transferring negation, p. Ixxxii. Obs. 53. — Double negatives, p. Ixxxii. Ex. XXXI.— Correction of negatives, p. Ixxxiii. Obs. 54. — Negative sentences made affirmative, p. Ixxxiii. Ex. XXXII. — Transforming negative into affirmative sen- tences, p. Ixxxiv. Obs. 55. — *' Only" placed near word qualified, p. Ixxxiv. Ex. XXXIII. — Changing position of ''only," p Ixxxvii. Obs. 56. — As and so frequently misused, p. Ixxxvii. Ex. XXXIV. — Corrections of as and so, p. Ixxxviii. Obs. 57. — '* At least " used ambiguously, p. Ixxxviii. PREPOSITION PHRASES, p. Ixxxviii. PARTICIPLE PHRASES, p. Ixxxviii. Arrangement of Phrases, p. Ixxxix. ABSOLUTE PHRASES, p. Ixxxix. PRIORITY, p. Ixxxix. Obs. 58. — (1) Time, (2) place, (3) manner, p. Ixxxix. Obs. 59. — Scattering modifiers, p. xc. Obs. 60. — Scattering not to produce ambiguity, p. xci. Ex. XXXV. — Correction of use of modifiers, p. xci. SECTION SECOND. COMPLEX SENTENCES. A Complex Sentence is one in which a subordinate sentence is used either as the Subject, as the Object, as tlie Predicate, or as a Modifier. (F'or convenience, sentences in which one member begins with "if are in thisvohime treated as Compound Sentences, though often considered Complex.) Hence, the Subordinate Sentence must be one of three kinds : (1) a Noun Sentence, (2) an Adjective Sentence, or (3) an Adverb Sentence. Note. — The Predicate may be made up of a Copula and a Noun Sentence ; as, All things are not what they seem. (I) Noun Sentences occupy the place and follow the construction of nouns, and may therefore be either (a) the Subject, (b) the Object, (c) the Indirect Object, or (d) tlie Predicate of the principal sentence. Though usually introduced by thaty they sometimes begin without it. Thus, (a) That a historian should not record trifles, is jwrfectly true.— Macaulay. Whatevor is, is right. That you have wronged me, doth appear in this. (I)) She knew that his 1 ; .*.., «larkcned with Xxw .sluulow.— Byron. I thought ten thousaml swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge oven a look that threatened her with in- sult.— BuBiiK. I perceive you feel the dint of pity. XCVl NOUN SENTENCES. [Part I. (c) I was taught is mj youth that to know how to wait is the secret of success. (d) I am not what I used to be. Exercise XXXVI. — Point out the Noun, the Adjec- tive, and the Adverb sentences in the following exercise, and tell how each is used. Example. — She is eight yean old, is a noun sentence, used as the object of said. She was eight years old, she said. What you say is true. The dog is where it ought to be. What touches us ourselves shall be last served. Tea I thy proud lorda, nniiltkd knd ! ihaU we That man hath yet a eoiiL That malioe, not repenUnoe, brought thee hither. Doth in this appear. That is what I told you. I fear our purpose is discovered. That they ai*e free, they know. Man cannot cover what God would reveal. That some one had blundered soon became apparent. By my word, the Saxon said. The riddle Is already read. You said the enemy would not come down. That they escaped unhurt seems a miracle. I trow they did not part in scorn. Exercise XXX YII. — Fill the following blanks by in- serting Noun Sentences : Young people too often imagine . I promise to do . No one can deny . It is easy to prove . His excuse for not being present was . A glance at the map of Eiiroi>e will show us . Time will discover . Leaves are to plants . His courage and success illustrate the proverb . has been called the golden rule. requires no demonstration. Sec. II.] DIRECT AND INDIRECT QUOTATIONS. XCVU The king could not understand . I am more willing to give , than to ask , doth appear in this. When the trial is concluded, we shall know . We believe , and . It has often been observed . is right. After the accident, the children gathered round their father, and asked . He complains of our being late, but he did not tell us . I have tried every means, but I cannot discover . is a traitor. Though we have sought him everywhere, we cannot tell . Obs. 61. — When the noun sentence is (a) a Direct Quotation, or (b) is preceded by an interrogative pronoun, no connecting particle is required. Thus, (a) Buflfon used to say, •* Genius is patience." " Genius is common sense intensified," is another definition, (b) I know not who you are, or what you want. Obs. 62. — Even when a speech is reported in the third person, it often adds life, and sometimes adds clear- ness, to omit the thai. Thus, "He said he took it ill," or, "He took it ill, he said," is better than •' He said that he took it ill." Obs. 63. — Dependent clauses introduced by thai must be kept clear from those that are independent. Thus, " He replied that lie wished to go, and intended to get n>ady," may mean, " He replied .... and he intended," or, " and that he intended." ExKRcisE XXXVIII. — Change the following passages from the Direct to the Indirect mode of speech. Example. — I said within myself that I had behaved very ill, but that I had only just set out on my travels, and should learn better manners as I got along. "I have behaved very ill," said I within myself; "but I have only just set out on my travels, and shall learn better manners as I get along." XCVlll NOUN SENTENCES. [Part I. " The virtue of prosperity,*' says Lord Bacon, '* is temperance ; the virtue of adversity is fortitude." "I trust," said Lord Brougham, "that at length the time is come when Parliament will no longer bear to be told that slave- owners are the best law-givers on slavery." "English ladies," says Erasmus, "are divinely pretty and too good-natured." Cato the Censor concluded all his speeches in the Boman Sen- ate with the words, ** Carthage must be destroyed." Agis, King of the Simrtaus, on being asked how many men he hatl, confidently replied, " Enough to put the enemy to flight." When Alexander commanded the people to give him divine honors, the Spartans replied, "Since Alexander wishes to be called a god, let him be a god." When Xerxes summoned the little army of Leonidas to lay down their arms, they retorted in scorn, " Let liim come and take them." On discovering the principle of specific gravity, Archimedes rushed out of liis bath, exclaiming, " I have found it ! " Dr. Guillotin, in describing his beheading machine, aftei-ward called the guillotine, said, " With my machine I whisk ofi" your head in a twinkling, and you feel no pain." Wlien the Chesapeake was boarded by the crew of the Shannon, the gallant Captain Lawrence fell exclaiming, " Don't give up the ship ! " On reading Macaulay's "History of England," Sydney Smith remarked : " I \*'ish I knew anything as well as Macaulay thinks he knows everything." At Worms, as at Augsburg, Luther replied briefly : " I will re- tract when my doctrines are not merely declared to be false, but are proved to be so." On seeing the formidable Chateau Gaillard rise, King Philip exclaimed in wi-ath, *' I would take it, were its walls of iron." "I would hold it, were its walls of butter," was the defiant answer of King Richard. "I cannot, my Lords," said the Earl of Chatham, " I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adula- tion ; the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and SBC. U.] DIRECT AND INDIRECT QUOTATIONS. Xcix awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth." He said with great emphasis, *' I assure you there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman orators." **If it feed nothing else," said Shylock, "it will feed my re- venge." I would not have a slave to till my ground. To carry me, to fan me while I sleep. — Cowp«». I have had playmates, I have had companions. In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days.— Lamb. King Charles wrote to Prince Rupert in the following terms : ** First, I must congratulate with you for your good successes, assuring you tliat the things themselves are no more welcome to me than that you arc the means. I know the imiwrtance of STip- plying you with jwwder, for which I have taken all possible ways, and have sent both to Ireland and Bristol." The Marquis rose and said : "Nor is it of the insufficiency of any future evidence only, that I complain. Even of the past I must express my fear that much must be obliterated, and the whole rendered obscure from the various lapses of time since it was delivered." Mr. Burke said : " Let me for a moment quit my delegated character, and speak entirely from my personal feelings and con- viction. I am known to have had much experience of men and manners — in active life, and amidst occupations the most various ! From that exjierience I now protest, I never knew a man who was bad, fit for sen-ice that was good ! There is always some dis- (jualifying ingredient mixing and spoiling the compound." Mr. Fox, assuming the language of the unfortunate prince, ex- claimed : " I was the sovereign of a fertile countiy, hapi)y and beloved ; I endeavored to conciliate the friendship of all around me, and, as I thought, with a success which impressed me with every sensation of f«dicity. This was the situation of which I boasted ; but what is now the reverse ? I am a wretched exile, dependent on tlie bounty of those who were my enemies, but whose enmities are now burietl in their symimthy for my distresses. What liave I done to deserve this punishment ? " C NOUN SENTENCES. [Part I. Exercise XXXIX. — Change the following sentences from the Indirect to the Direct form. Example. — The sage mafnstrate said: "Beef is the king of meat ; beef comprehendfl in it the essence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and plam-pndding, and custard." The sage magistrate said that beef is the king of meat ; that beef comprehends in it the essence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and pluni-])udding, and custard. Before the great battle which closed his briUiant career. Nelson displayed his famous signal, that England expected every man that day to do his duty. Douglas told Hotspur that he would carry his pennon into Scotland, and fix it on the tower of his Castle of Dalkeith, that it might be seen from far. The Bruce kept looking at his weaix)n, which was injured by the force of the blow, and said that he had broken his good battle- axe. Pompey told Lucius Sylla that it was vain to oppose him, for men worshipped the rising rather than the setting sun. A short time before his death. Cardinal Wolsey said that if he had been as diligent to serve his God as he had been to please his king, He would not have forsaken him in his gray hairs. Archimedes said that if a fulcrum and a point to stand on were given him, he would move the world with his lever. Alexander the Great, on being asked why he did not contend in the Olympic Games, said that he would do so when he had kings for his competitors. When Pyrrhus had shown the utmost fondness for his expedi- tion apfainst the Romans, Cyneas, his chief minister, asked him what he proposed to himself by the war. Pyrrhus said that he meant to conquer the Romans and reduce all Italy to his obedi- ence. Cyneas asked, what then. Pyn-hus said that he would pass over into Sicily, and that then all the Sicilians must be their sub- jects. Cyneas asked what his Majesty intended next. The King replied that he meant to conquer Carthage and make himself master of all Africa. Then the minister asked what was to be the end of all his expeditions ; and the King said that for the rest of Sia II.] ADJECTIVE SENTENCES. CI their lives they would sit down to good wine. Cyneas then asked if they could have better than they had then before them, or if they had not already as much as they could drink. (2) Adjective Sentences occupy the place and follow the construction of adjectives (see page xxv). They are all connected with the principal sentence by relatives, or such equivalent words as when^ y^hy^ hoio^ etc. ; though when the relative is in the objective case it may be omit- ted without confusion ; as, " The message you gave me I have told him." And made ns low the good we oft might win.— Jfea«ttr«/or Mmsurt. Blair, criticising Addison, says : "In conclusion, instead of [it gives] the things it represents^ the regularity of coiTect style re- quires the things which it represents." But the sentence is better without the correction. Exercise XL. — Fill the following blanks by inserting Adjective Sentences. Example. — Alfred the Great was one of the wisest monarchs that have ever reigned. Alfred the Great was one of the wisest monarchs — . Botany is the science — . A metal — is said to be ductile. The earth — is a globe or sphere. The age — has been called the era of inven- tions. Elasticity is that property — . Tlie man — shows prudence. The Nile is one of those rivers — . He received the reward — . The rtowers — have all faded. Offices of trast should be conferred only on those — . Autumn is the season — . Trafalgar was the en- gagement — . France is the country, where — . The structure of the camel is wonderfully adapted to the countries -. The prisoner confessed the crimes — . The stoi*m — passed away without harm. I should not like to be the man — . The house — has been burnt. I have often wished to revisit the place -. Tlie clergyman — died yt»sterday at the voiy hour—. Ho could not have anticiimted the fate— . The motives — are difficult to understand. John Wycliffe — died in 1384. We had not proceeded far when a shower over- oil ADJECTIVE SENTENCES [Part I. took ns— .. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle — was concluded in 1748. He — need not hoi>e for that success — . The statement — does not agree with that — . They — cannot look for the protection of the government — . Obs. 64. — III poetry and in collo(|uial prose the rel- ative 16 sometimes omitted when a nominative. Thus, *TU disUnoe lends ctiduuitoient to the view. And robes the mountain in its anre hoe.— CAltrsELL. Obs. 66. — A blunder as common as it is absurd is the insertion of aiul before adjective sentences. Thus : The principal and distinguishing excellence of Virgil, and which, In my opinion, he possesses above all others, etc.— Blaib. Obs. 66. — A general rule for adjective sentences is to place the relative as near as possible to its antecedent. This is an application of the rule of proximity that, Obs. 67. — Pronouns should follow the nouns to which they refer without the intervention of another noun. Ambiguity from the neglect of this rule is shown in the follow- ing sentences (see others on pages 291-294) : King John of France was led in triumph throagh the streets of London by the Black IMnce, the Bon of Edward III., u-ho had defeated him, and taken him prisoner, at the battle of Poictiers. Any cn3 unacquainted with the historical facts would be doubt- ful, from the construction of this sentence, whether it was the Black Prince or his father that had taken John j^risoner. The fol- lowing arrangement would remove tbe ambiguity : " King John of Franco, who had been defeated and taken prisoner at Poictiers by the Black Prince, the son of Edward III., was led in triumph through the streets of London by Lis conqueror." Many clergymen act so directly contrary to this method, that, from a habit of saving time and paper, which they acquired at the Sec. II. 1 RELATIVE CLAUSES. t.Mii university, they write in so diminutive a manner that they are hardly able to go on. — Swift. To the group of Dino8a^l^8 belongs the Inquenadon of the Wealden beds, first made known by Dr. Man telly, whose body was 28 to 30 feet long.— Dana. ^Vheu, however, one of two preceding nouns is decidedly supe- rior to the other in empliasis, the more emphatic may be presumed to be the noun referred to by the pronoun, even though the noun of inferior emphasis inters'enes. Thus : " At this moment the col« onel came up and took the place of the wounded general. He gave orders to halt." Here he would naturally refer to colonel, though general intervenes. A conjimction will often show that a pronoim refers to the subject of the preceding sentence, and not to another intenening noun. *' The sentinel at once took aim at the approaching soldier, and fired. He tlien retreated to give the alarm. " — Abbott. ExEBCisE XLI. — Correct tile following sentences. Example. — This is a glorious scene, which cannot be surj^assed. This is a gloiious scene, and which cannot be surpassed. In fact, scarcely anything of Milton's poetic diction has become obsolete, except some un-English words and phi-ases of his own coinage, and M'hich foiled to get admittance at all. — Marsh, To heatl a sect, to infuse i)ai'ty-spirit, to make men arrogant, un- charitable, and malevolent, is the easiest task imaginable, and to which almost any blockhead is fully equal. — (Umpijell. Find eiTor in quotation from R. G. White, page Ixxii. I with my family reside in the paiish of Stockton, which con- sists of my wife and daughters. — Quoted by Alford. The most interesting news from Italy is that of the trial of the thieves who robbed the bank of Messrs. Parodi, at Grenoa, on May 1, 1862, in oijeu daylight, which commenced at Genoa on the 5th. -Id. A child was run over by a wagon three years old and cross-eyed with pantalets on which never spoke afterward. A child eighteen months old tumbled into a well used to catch min-water that fell headlong into the fi-ont area of the house and nime near drowning, there boing about two feet in the well. We have recoivetl a bunch of grapes from our friend Williams, CIV ADJECTIVE SENTEMCBS. [Part I. for which he will please receive our compliments, some of which are nearly two inches in diameter. The hotel will be kept by the widow of the former landlord, Mr. Brown, who died last summer on a new and improved plan. A Howard may look upon scenes with a stoical composure, nay with a seeming hard-heartedness, which at first dissolved him in tears. — Good Words. Frank S. Fay, of Meriden, Gonn., u bony picking ont shot from hik face that was in- tended for a ralibit. His friend, B. C. Birdwy, who wa« hunting with him on Thnrtdajr, got Fay in range with the game.— .V. F. Sun. Questions suggest themselves as to how the reporter knew that Frank Fay's face was intended for a rabbit, and how it became misplaced. The committee would further recommend that the south room should have new furniture, as the rear seats have all the year been occupied by children that have.no backs. They lay down to rest behind their steeds, picketed to the wall which hail accomiwrnied them from the Volga to the Don. — Alison. Obs. 68. — The antecedent must be either a noun, a pronoun, or an infinitive — never an adjective. Thus sentences like the following are incorrect (see also page cxiv) : Some men are too ignorant to be humble, without which there can be no docility and no progress. — Berkeley. Obs. 69. — Awkwardness results when the antecedent is implied in a possessive case not close to the relative, es- pecially if the possessive be a pronoun. Thus : This way will direct you to a gentleman's house, that hath the skill to take off these burdens ; better, to the house of a gentle- man that hath skill, etc. I am his first-bom son that was the last That wore the imperial diadem of Rome.— Titus Andronicus. Obs. 70. — Avoid constructions in which the relative may refer either to a noun in a preceding clause, or to the entire clause. Sbc. il] relative clauses. cv I have before remarked, aiid the remark deserves to be repeated, that nothmg is a more certain sign of careless composition than to make such relatives as which not refer to any precise expression, but carry a lower and vague relation to the general strain of what had gone before. — Blaib. Thus : There was a public house next door which was a great nuisance. Here it is doubtful whether the obnoxious fact is the existence of the public house, or its position. This am- biguity is couiuion after a negative. Thus : He said that he would not hear me, which I confess I had ex- pected. Here the ineaum*^ may be either that I had expected or tliat 1 had not expected he would. To avoid such ambiguity the antecedent should be re- peated in some new form. Thus : There was a public house next door, the proximity of which was a great nuisance ; or, There was a public house next door, the existence of wliioh was a great nuisance. He said that he would not even hear me, a favor I confess I had expected ; or. He said that he would not even hear me, a refusal I confess I had expected. Exercise XLII. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — an accident which broke the gates down and alarmed the neighborhood. At four o'clock yesterday morning a lot of wood piled in a shetl at No. 144 Eastern Avenue, belonging to the B. Hub Cki., fell down with a loud noise which broke the gates down and alarmed the neighborhood. The ten high windows have been filled with colored glass, which lends a subdued religious radiance to the entire interior. cvi ADJECTIVE SEN I ENCES. [Pakt I. Precision imports pniuing the expression so as to exhibit neither more nor less than an exact copy of his idea who uses it. — Blair. Obs. 71. — When the relative is either implied (in a participle), or repeated, the antecedent must often be repeated also. Thus: Bnt if there were in any part of the world a national chnrch re- garded as heretical by four-tifths of the nation committed to its care ; a church established and maintained by the sword ; a church producing twice as many riots as conversions ; a church which, though possessing great wealth and i)Ower, and though long backed by persecuting laws, had, in the course of many genera- tions been found unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground ; a church so odious that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of proi^erty, were gen- erally regarded as fair play ; a church whose ministers were preach- ing to desolate walls, and Mtith difficulty obtaining their lawful sustenance by the means of bayonets— such a church, on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended. — {Quoted hy Abbott.) Obs. 72- — Avoid " the sin of tcA/cA-craft " — the enn- ploynient of which to introduce heterogeneous clauses. Every repetition of the relative introduces a new possibil- ity of ambiguity. (See example, page 292.) The following example, though perfectly grammatical, is felt to be very awkward : "The King marched from Exeter into Cornwall, irhich having pacified, he returned to Winchester." Better " which he pacified; he then returned to Winchester ; " or, '^ and having pacified tliis countt/y he returned." They leave us The dangers, the repulses, judgments, wants; Which how long will you bear *— Bkm Jonsom. A daring inversion. The relative is close upon the antecedent ; but objection may be taken to the position of the interrogative word after it. Yet the infrequency of the construction gives it great emphasis ; and we may regard it as a sudden and direct Bbo. U] RELATIVE CLAUSES. CVIl rhetorical stroke for *• vhich you will surely not bear much longer." So glistcr'd the dire anakc, and into fraud Led Kve, our crcdulou8 mother, etc. Whidi when she saw, thu8 to her guide she spake. The Latin constniction Qum quum, etc., is apt to get translated in this form, which is not common, and should not be encouraged. — Bain. ExKRCisE XLIII. — Correct tlie following sentences : The sharks who prey upon the iuadvei-tency of young heirs are more pardonable than those who trespass \\\)on the good opinion of those who treat them upon the foot of choice and respect. — Guardian. One may have an air which proceeds from a just sufficiency and knowledge of the matter before him, which may naturally produce some motion of his head and body, which might become the bench l>etter than the bar. — Guardian. The Earl of Falmouth and Mr. Coventiy were rivals ^rho should have most interest with the duke, wlio loved the eaii best, but thought the other the wiser man, who supported Pen {who dis- obliged all the courtiers), even against the earl, who contemned Pen. — Loud Clarendon's Life. Obs. 73. — The relative should be who or which where the meaning is and he^ aiul it., etc., for Ju\ for «V, etc. ; otherwise it slionld be that^ if euphony allows. There is a marked distinction between adjective sentences where tho relative whoy etc., is di\'isible into the demonstrative with some conjunction, and he, for he, etc., and where the relative is in- diWsible. The divisible relative merely introduces an additional fact, and the sentence it introduces may be omitted without changing the esseniiAl statement. Thus : There were very few peieengere who e«ioaped wtthout aerioiu injury. Here the meaning do^tends ui)on whether trho may be resolved into and ikey. If it may be, the sentence may read : There were Tery few pueeii«en, and th^y eeo^ied wtUioat eertoaa injury. CVlli ADJECTIVE SENTENCES. [Part I. In the best usage, this meaning would be expressed by the sen- tence as originally written. But if the who may not be so resolved, the icho should be thcU^ and the sentence means that nearly all of the passengers were injured : There were tew p— we ngeni that eatmped without aerioiu injary. This distinction in the use of that and of who, or which, is so closely associated with the question of inserting or omitting a comma before the relative clause, that we have treated it at length under the head of Punctuation (see pages 289-298). Obs. 74. — Adjective sentences may often be improved (a) by Resolution of the llelative, (b) by Composition of the Relative, or (c) by Inversion. Thus, (a) He was a hero, who never flinched. For who, substi- tute ami he. (Omit the comma, and this resolution cannot occur. See page 289.) (b) The time drew near at which the Houses must reassemble. — Macaulay. For at which, substitute when. (c) The man who wants food is despei-ate. Bead, In want of food, a man is desperate. Obs. 76. — Relative clauses may often be condensed into adjectives or participles. Thus, for *' The wind which never ceases," we may have "The never-ceasing wind." (3) Adverb Sentences take the place of and follow the construction of an adverb (see page Ixxvi). They may describe Place, Time, Manner, or Cause. They usu- ally modify the Predicate. Thus : Their ashes flew. No marble tells us whither.— Cowper. Wlien I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. — Much Ado about Nothing. sbc. il] adverb sentences. CIX Exercise XLIV. — Fill the followiDg blanks by insert- ing adverb sentences. Sample. — He had just completed his work when his life ended. He had just completed his work — . It was not known — until — . We are often beset by temptation -. The righteous shall flourish — . Government has oflered a reward for the rebel — . He will suc- ceed -. The evils of war are great — . The king fitted out an ex- l>edition — . Obs. 76. — Adverb sentences are sometimes abbre- viated, either by omitting tlie verb, or by changing the verb into a participle. Thus : When young he learned Hebrew, and though he afterward for- got it all, he died repeating the 23d Psalm. The participial adverb phrase must be carefully dis- Jinguished from the paitieipial adjective phrase (see page xlviii). It is necessary only to remember that the adjective always modifies a noun or pronoun, while the adverb never modifies a noun. In the sentence thus given the last four words do not describe the person, but they tell liow he .lied, and therefore perform the function of an adverb. Obs. 77.— It is in the construction of complex sen- tences that one has occasion most frequently to recall the principle that a sentence should not end with an uneui- (♦hatic word. Thus, " The evidence proves how kind to his inferiors he is/* ' uould read, " The evidence proves how kind he is to his Infeiiors." Exercise XLV. — Improve the following sentence. Example.— In my neighborhood, yesterday, while I was preach- ing, a young woman died in a beastly state of intoxication. A young woman died in my neighborhood, yesterday, while I was preaching in a beastly state of intoxication. Obs. 78. — Like all other sentences, a complex sen- ex COMPLEX SENTENCES f Part I. tence must have one, and only one principal subject of tliought. The leading editorial article of the New York Herald of Septem- ber 28, 1881, certainlj intended to represent the best literaiy work of which that journal was capable, began thus : With the buritil by the lakm aide amoog the maple* reddening with their aotnmnal rhaiifrns which abound to cIm SMMt bamitifM d^ of that vmi* Wwleni rtOtj of which he wan the child, the oeramonlea of the maaioiial w«ek i-inoe Praeidant Oarfleld'e death hare ooaic to a doae, and the paopla reCorn to the ordinary tenor of their occnpationa. Not to qieak of the dooht reraltliic fram the podtkm of laMeA as to whether It ia the Wi yfi* or the ekamget that ahooiid (aee pi^ cU), the whole adjective danae mtrodooed by wktck is onfortonate, beoaoae it diatract* attention from the main idea. It haa no qjeciiil bearing npon General OarflehTa faaeral that maplea are abondant in Cleveland, or that Cleveland la the moat beaottful cl^ of that valley, or that the valley itnlf is vast. To a majority of the reodem of that journal these three etatements are nafamlliar, and brintc the momentary suriniae o< new tmdU. One of the three, that Cleveland is the mont beaatif ul city, is a qoestion of judgment, and in many minds absortM all the interest of the sentence . Hcnoe the unltgr of the Motoaoe is d e troy ed. Then is not one principal subject of thought, but there are two, three, four, aooording aa theae three statements are familiar and accepted. Again: Three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast territory comprised be- tween the Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps, and the Rhone, liv«l six or seven millions of men a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them bailt of wood and clay, covered with branches of straw, made in a single roand piece, open to daylight by the door alone, and confnsedly heaped together behind a rampart, not inartistioally composed, of timber, earth, and Rtone, wh i-h supported and protected whut they were pleased to call a town. — Massom's OuUlnet of lUe llmory of France. The inversion of lived is nnfortunate. to begin with, and the rdations of the snbse- quent clauses are as difficult to trace at; those of the children in a family where a widower marries his step- mother. What was eticUt^ed in ilwellingt dark and loic — the men or their life? " The best of them built," etc., undoubtedly refers to dwellings, and it was the dwellings that were covered with branches of atrato, but it mnst have been tho branches of straw that were made in a tingle rottnd piece. No ; whatever were made in a single round piece had a door in them, and that must have been the dwellingn, which were also heaped. But it was the rampart that was composed ; it must have been the timber^ earth, atid Uone that supported, and it was they who called the collection a town. &» we have the following subjects, all in one sentence : Six or wven millions of men — liven the other side even better at once my native iimbility to stand a peer of such f imouB forerunners, and also the stem, distracting prcHKiirc of cla- mant and inceiwant work in this fresh field and amid a thousand thought- troubling clrcum- stanoes which made adequate preparation for me an insutierable imposHibility, I had twice felt it my plain duty to put away from me the delightful labor and the teni(>ting reqtiest. —Rev. John I. Macintosh, D.D , Oration on ♦' The M'hUe Suntif/t o' I'uUiU Worda.'^ Here, out i)f one hundred and twenty-one words, twenty-one an- ciualfymg adjectives. The tptakern are dinthyuWied and nuuierly ; the profit is pletixrd ; this HUige is of »pe4ch and song : and the itpeech is per/eit, the aong purest. Thi-* oi ation is (predica- tivrly) not only an honor and a duty, but a high honor, and a toil-/, aught duty. The speaker's inability w native, his fore-runnera, though already called dittinguiithed snd miiHierly. must be referred to Rufumoua, his pressure is alern and diatrw ting, his wrt U clamant anil incetaant, his fleld is fresh, and his thousand circumttea are tliought- iroubltng. Preparation is for him so meaningless that he tacks adequate upon it, and intfM>»sibility is so slight an obstacle that to give it force he puts before it insuperable. Hix duty is plain, hia labor is delightful, the requeet is tempting. His first definition in rtyujology would be: Norx : A dummy to hang adjectives npon. Now, to find fitting adjectives to cover the snp{K>seollo Belvedere in a plaid ulster), requires lH>th a broad vocabulary and a discriminating jud.'ment. The author lacks both, or ho woidd never talk of pfea>>ed profit and inauperable iinpo'tiKi ity. Nor i« work harder in n f\t'\t\ liccause it is/rwA. Whnt he means is that the field is unarcuntomed. No h'^vier burden can fall upon a would-be orator than to establish a sort of ideal rhythiii and conform his ideas to it, instead of letting his ideiw determine the form of their expn>SHion. The same false taste that leads the author to insert su|terfluouM ndjec- tive«. l«^dH him to double his phrases. In this one sentence he see saws to your profit ir fame ; perfect apeech and pureH aong ; high hotmr and toil-fraught duty : -ure snd th4ntgkt-troubling rircnmatancea : delightful la' or and tempting re- ■- ' -Tilts, an It always raui«t in nonsense. Take the last pair, for instani-r. t, the requeat or the labor? To gratify an unhealthy rhytlimlcal taMe, iito nil ub-'iird nnt 'cllmax. Mient. " Knowing on the one side so wall the distingnWieit io' know them on, the Hgi.t side or the left side, the oatakle or ihr inHJ.!.' ? .Maiiir -. »,. . *ilch might easily be distributed. -ntrace is a compi«heaii>iveembodlm«nfc . udied with abundant profit. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Noun Sentences, p. Kx. XXXVI. — N rtnjitiiii»- unn. ct^sarv, p. xcvii. ObB. 62. — •' That ' Bometimes omitted, p. xcvii. Obe. 68. — Dependent cl«nw»« difttinct fiom independent, p. xcvii. Ex. XXXVIII.- -Changing from direct to indirect mode ot speech, p. xcvii. Ex. XXXIX.— Changing from indirect to direct form, p. c. Adjective Sentences, p. ci. Ex. XL. — Inserting adjective sentences, p. ci. 0\>s r»4. — Relative nominative omitted, p. ciL Obs. 05. — "And '* before adective sentence, p. cii. Obs. 66. — Relative to be near antet^ent, p. cii. Obs. 67. — Pronouns to be near nouns to which thej refer, p. cii. Ex. XLL — Arrangement of relative clauses, p. ciii. Obe. 68. —Antecedent never an ad ective, p civ. Obs. 69. — Antecedent implied in pos.sessive, p. civ. Obe. 70. — Ambiguity of antecedent, noun or clause, p. civ. Ex. XLII. — Antecedent noun or clause ? p. cv. Obs. 71. — Antecedent often repeated p. cvi Obs. 72. — *• WTiich-cra't ' to l>e avoided, p. cvi. Ex. XLIII. — Which with heterogeneous clauses, p. cvii. Obs. 73.— Distinction of '* Who ' and '"Ihat," p. cvii Obs. 74. — Resolution, composition, inversion, p. cviii. Obs. 75. — Relative clauses condensed, p. cviii. Adverb Sentences, p. cviii. Ex. XLI v.— Inserting adverb sentences, p. cix. Obs. 76. — Abbreviation by omission or change, p. cix. Obs. 77. — Ending with unemphatic word, p cix. Ex. XLV. — Improvement in construction, p. cix. Obs. 78. — One subject, and only one, p cix. SECTION THIRD. COMPOUND SENTENCES. A Compound Sentence contains two or more principal and co-ordiuate assertions ; as, I came, saw, con- quered. NoT«.— For convenience, *'i(" sentencea, often called complex, are here treated an compound. Obs. 79. — The members of a compound sentence must have a natural and perceptible connection in thought. Tlius, The procession was very fine, and nearly two miles long, as was also the report of Dr. Perry, the chaplain. Here the reporter mentally connected the procession and the report by thinking of them both anjine, and endeavoring to say so. But, except as an exi)ression of approval, the adjective ^we lias no common application to a procession and to a report, and though no ambiguous clansr> iiiten'eued, the members of the sentence would be incongruous. The last clause should therefore be a sep- arate sentence, something like this : The report of Dr. Perry, tho chaplain, was able and comprehensive. He expired. . . . having enjoyed, by the benefit of hi« nirimen, n ;_■ w i healthy life, and aKoiitle and eauy death.— Johnsom^r Life of Jforin. This extraordinary person not only enjoyed his death, but first died and then expired. — Hall. At the upper Methodist conference, at Marion, the other day, the Rev. R. W. Coatee, In making a report of his etawardahlp, vald he had pae w e d three very mooeMfnl and pleaa- ant yeara nt Le Clair, having ha-l an unusual number of faneral wrvioM dnrlng that tima.— Aoiix Ctty Jimmal. CXIV COMPOUND SBNTENCB8. [Pabt L Of oonne jndgmeDt will differ as to whether the connection of thought in two sentences is sufficient to warrant their combination into one. For instance : I am an mriy riaar, bat mj wtfa la a Prt«bjt«rlan.-A. Wako. " Hare yoaerar been moch at aea f ** ** Why, no, not aiaolly : bat my brothar marriad a oanal-oaptain's danglilar.** *' Why, no, not anotfy ; bat my motlMf^ maktan name waa PmMh.** Marshal Soult was aoonstomed to saj of a Spanish painting which he had compelled two persons to sorrender on iiain of death : ** That picture I value highly ; it saved the lives of two persons." This is almost equal to the school-bo j's statement in a composition, that pins have saved the lives of a good many people ; being asked how, he replied, ** By their not swallowing them/' Priaooer at the bar, natara ha^ endowed yoa with a good edaration and rmpectaMe family oonneetlonm laatand of wkkh yon go aroond ahooft the ooantry ateRling doeka. A Weafeern |iaper annoanced a* foUowa : " Mr. Maffoire will wash himnelf befoce he oAoe of ahcrifl.** ThU made Magnire angry, and he demanded a rptracUon, Ida thna: ** Mr. Mjigoire wqneiii na to deny oar •taiement that he will waih himaelf befbre he aanunea the office of aherlff." Oddly eooagb.thii only en- raged Maguire the moie. Some peofde are ao hard to pleaae. It is not the form of the compound sentence that makes the in- consecutivenees of two thoughts manifest. This may be just as marked in successive single sentences. Thus : One of the pa— engeri on the iU-fated Metia, at the time of the disaster, was an ex- ceedingly nenroas roan, who, while Duating in the water, imtigined how lils friends woald acquaint his w fe of his fate. Saved at last, he rushed to the telegraph office and Mnt thia measage : '* Dear P , I am saved. Break it gently to my wife ! ''— Spring- JUU R^ubtiean, The Hon. Newton Bateman, LL.D., has accepted the presidency of Knox College, Oaleftbnrg, IIL, but will not enter upon it8 duties till neor ihe close of the academic year. Tkit givet great •oU^fatMon to tke friends of the college,— CoUege Courant. The church was erected durinK the ministry of the Rev. Klihu Whitcomb ; and the dedication sermon was preached February IS, 1806. It waa ninety feet in length and fifty-four in breadth. — Newspaper in Saco^ Me. A young lady went to a drug store for a preacription. " How much ? " she asked. " Fifty cents," said the clerk. "But I have only forty-five cents with me," replied the customer; "canH you let nte have it for that ? ^^ " No, ma^am,^ said the clerk, '• but you can pay me five cents when you come in again." " But snppoae I were to die ? " said the lady, jocularly. SBC. IIL] UNITY OF THOUGHT. CXV •' Well, it wouldn't be a very (P'eat low," wa« the smiling response. The BOiilingr clerk gathered from the indignant flush on the ladyV f«oe that he had been miBonderBtood, but before he could aHKure hur that it -^as the little balance that would be no great Iosh, she was beyond the sound uf his voice. Exercise XLVI. — Resolve the following sentences into simpler ones, so far as necessary to preserve unity of thought. Example. — The dog, which had previously bitten his wife, died on the Monday following. The dog had previously bitten his wife, and on the Monday following it died. The town farm-house and alms-house h|ive been carried on the past year to our reasonable satisfaction, especially the alms-house, at which there have been an unusual amount of sickness and three deaths. Any person driving over this bridge in a faster pace than a walk shall, if a white person be fined five dollars, and if a negro, receive twenty-five lashes, half the i>enalty to be bestowed on the informer. Wanted, by an apothecary, an assistant to take an interest in a small first-clas-s trade and in a quiet family. Even Mrs. H. B. Stowe, in her great work, "Uncle Tom," and in other writings, uses this phrase incessantly, and although, per- haps, not exactly a model of composition, her authority is of some weight, as she puts it into the mouth of educated as well as of illiterate people. — Schele de Vekr. Chaucer seems to affect monosyllabic rhymes in verse, and in- deed seldom employs double ones, unless we count as such words in e final, which perhaps we should do, for there is no doubt but tliis letter was sounded in CMiaucer's time, as it is now in the cog- nate languages and in French verse.— Marsh. There are a great many different kinds of trees, some furnishing us with wood for common purposes, such as flooring for our houses and frames for the windows, while others afford us more beautiful wood, which, when polished, is made into tables and chairs and various articles of furniture. Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a CXVI COMPOUND 8ENTENCBS. (PART L day may bring forth ; and for the same reason, despair not of to- morrow, for it may bring forth good as well as evil ; which is a ground for not vexing thyself with imaginary fears ; for the black cloud, which is regarded with so much dread, may pass harmlessly by, or may find thee, before it breaks, the tenant of that lowly mansion which no storms can touch. The Britons, daily harassed by the Picts, were forced to call in the Saxons for their defence, who, after having repelled the in- Taders, turned their arms against the Britons themselves, drove them into the most remote and mountainous parts of the kingdom, and reduced the greater part of the island under their dominion, so that in the course of a century and a half the countiy became almost wholly Saxon in customs, religion, and language. LMt ymr a papar wm broutbt here from England, called " A Dialogue between tha Ardibbdiop of Cantcrtrary and Mr. Himrin* ** which we ordered to be burned by the oommon hangman, as it wdl deHcrvml, tbongb we bare no more to do with HiR Graoe of Oanterbury than yon hare with the An^bi»hop of DnMIn, whom yon tamely milTer to be almwd openly and by name by that paltry raacal of an obaervator ; and lately upon an alEalr wherein he bad no concern ; I mean the hoeineM of the mieaiooary of Drogheda, wherein an exoellcut primate wan engaged, and did nothing but according to law and diHretion. — Swirr. The naoal aoeepteUoa takes Profit and neamre f6r two different things, and not only oalls the fbllowers or Totariee of thrm by the eereral namea of Bosy or Idle men, but dis- tingnishes the facoltiea of the mind that are conversant about them, calling the opera- tions of the first Wisdom, and of the other Wit ; which i* a Saxon word, naed to expres « what the Spaniards and Italians call Imgenio, and the French Esprit^ both from the Latin ; thoogh I think Wit more particalarly signifies that of Poetry, as may occur in remarks on Runic language.— Sia WtixiAM Tkmplk. To this succeeded tha'. liceniionoieM which entered with tlie Restoration, and from infecting onr religion and morals fell to corrupt our language (which last was not likely to be much improved by those who at that Ume made up the court of King Charlcx the Second : either such who had followed him in his banishment, or who had been alto- gether convemmt in the dialect of those fanatic times or young mm who had been edu- cated in the same company) ; so that the court (which had used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech) was then (and, I think, hath ever since coniinned^ the worst school in En^lnnd for that accomplishment : and so will remain till better caro be taken in the education of our younR nobility, that they may set out into the world wiUi some fomidation of literature in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness. — Obs. 80.— In the members of a compound sentence the construction must not be changed without good rea- son. sbcul] uniformity op construction. CXVU Exercise XLVII. — Correct the following sentences. Example.— 1 should have sent the brooches before, but have been unwell. The brooches would have been sent before, but have been un- well. — Notifrotn Jeiwller to Dean Alford. Mrs. A.'s compliments to Mrs. B., and begs to say that C. lived with her a year and found her resi)ectable, steady, and honest. R. C. begs to aijologize for not acknowledging P. O. order at the time (but was from home), and thus got delayed, misplaced, and forgotten. Gentlemen's materials made up and waited on at their own homes. — Tailor's A dvertiseinent. It requireth few talents to which most men are not bom, or at least may not acquire. — Snvtfi. A Methodist church in Baltimore advertised that it would pay ten dollars reward ' ' for the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons who defaced the parsonage steps, or for any mutilation of church property." Tickets once nipped and defaced at the barriers, and the i>as- sengers admitted to the platform, will be delivered up to the com- jiany in the event of the holder subsequently retiring, and cannot be recognized for reatain, and will be attended by the wliole oompanj, in fatigue jackets and cape. The Oaptain frill oondact the aolar eclipee in peraon. Slioald it rain, the edipae will take place in the drill lihed.— A'. >'. 5mm. Obs. 81. — Correlative conjunctions, as where not only precedes hut^ hut also, or hU even, should each be followed by the same part of speech. Thus, "The sportsman was not only huutiug all the morning, but all the afternoon/* should read, *' The sportsman was hunting not only all the morning, but all the afternoon.** Exercise XL VI II.— Correct the following sentences. Excnnple, — I estimated myself neither high nor lowly. I neither estimated myself high nor lowly. — Ds Quincet. He not only gave me advice but also help. liothair was unaffectedly g^tified at not only receiving his friends at his own castle, but under these circumstances of inti- macy. — Disraeli. He not only spoke forcibly but tastefully, and not only this, too, before a small audience, but in a large public meeting also, and not only were his speeches successful, but also worthy of success. You are not obliged to take any money which is not gold or sil- ver ; not only the halfpence or farthings of England, but of any other country. — Swift. Aristotle would be, indeed, the sorriest plagiary on record, were the thefts believed of him by his Oxford votaries not false only, but ridiculous. Psychical states that often recur in a given order not only be- come increasingly coherent, but the transitions from each to the next become more rapid. Because here the similitude is not only pleasant, but the pat- tern more perfect. — Blair. This class is believed to be not only very limited in number, but of this number very few ever commit capital crime. — y. A. Review. Would neither have b( en so neat nor so clear as it is by the pi-esent const ruclion. — Blair. 8bo. III.] USES OF CONJUNCTIONS. CXlx Because we neither know the nature of our own ideas nor of the soul.— BiiAiB. A petty constable will neither act cheerfully or \si8ely. (A dou- ble mistake : neither must always be followed by nor.) By greatness I do not only mean the bulk of any single object, but the largeness of the whole view. — Addison. They will, too, not merely interest children, but grown-up per- sons. — Westminster Review. Their language frequently amounts not only to bad sense, but nonsense. — KirklianCs Grammar. For position of the adverb not, when alone, see page Ixxviii. Obs. 82. — In general, only the same parts of speech should be united by conjunctions in the same construction. Thus, Campbell says : ** Personal relations are of various kinds. They are consanguinity, affinity, friendshij), acquaintance, being fellow-citizens, countrymen, of the same name, religion, occupa- tion, and innumerable others." Here we have firet four abstract nouns ; then a participle followed by (1) two class nouns, (2) three preposition phrases, and finally a x>ronoun. The sentence is not an easy one to reconstruct, but the following form escapes the violation of unity : They are of oonaangainity, affinity, friendship, acquaintance, citixenship, nation- ality, ■arname, reliKion, occuiiation, and innumerable otherH. Exercise XLIX. — Correct the following sentences. Example. — Their success or failure indicated, etc. Their success or otherwise indicated, etc. — Westminstfr Keciew, His style is awkward and slovenly, that of his antagonist re- markably terse and clear, and bearing witness to a sensitiveness of ear and taste which are glaringly deficient in his opponent. — West- minster Jieview. We saw it thrown through the window and flat on the ground. She was a woman of taste, and wearing a green velvet dress. The fact is well known and obvious. Obs. 83. -The use of ''And'' indicates that the new statement is superadded to, and distinct from, the pre- CXX COMPOUND SI N TIVCES. (Part I. vious ; its omission, usually tliat tlic new statement is in substance the sanie as the j)ievie better, " Ideas quickly fade ; they often vanish quite out of the underatanding.** He WM (kvply oonveiMuit with th« MMl•llt^ boCh Graak «ad LAtta. and he borrowed boldlj fMm tben ; tbw fa wa w » pwt ar hktcriMi auMiOfftbe llonun muthun whom he han not tmn fated in Sejanos ami CaUUoe. The and in. the first member is strictly correct ; borrowing boldly is a fact additional to being conversant with. Equally proper is the omission of the conjunction at the commencement of the second member, which repeats in greater detail the same act of borrowing.— Bain. The madumitm of ivnteDoes vamj tmtitt mmntf fnrtber bj tke «oiiMioiia nee or o«ii»- ■fan of Um oonjnnct Ive bpRinniiig. I have joM observed that the word *' and ** probablj begins more aenU-nces in the iwodoctionB of inexperienced write s than any other in the language This act giveM im»ortanoe to intelligent ciitidnn of all fonns of oonjnnctive beginning. Let it be obenrei^ then, that the eonjonctiTe beginning is forcible if the ■oooeaidon r" is used alternatively or disjunctively. In ita alternative nae or introdocee a synonymous or explana- tory oxpression ; as, *' He is a lientenant, or subordinate officer.'* In its diAJanctive use, it introduoes a contradictory expression ; as, " He is a liontenant or a captain." It will l)e noticed that in its disjunctive use, or is followed by the article repeated. GampbelFs rule is as follows : ''If the first noun follows an article, or a preposition, or both, the article or the preposition, or both, should be repeated before the second, when the two nouns are intended to denote different things ; and should not be repeated when they denote the same thing. If there be neither article nor pre|M>sition before the first, and if it be the intention of the writer to use the particle or disjunctively, let the first noun be preceded by either ^ which will infallibly ascertain the meaning. On the contrary, if, in such a dubious case, it be his design to use the particle as a tx>pulative to synonymous word;*, the piece will rarely sustain a material injury by his omitting both the conjunction and the synonyma." Bain gives several illustrations, as follows : In a sentence alreatly quoteil (page cxx) there occurs the phrase — "there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman au- thors.** The weakening effect of the use of or for synonymous phrases is felt here. But for our knowledge of the meanings, wc might easily suppose thatpo«/ and historian were two names for the same person or class. To bring out the alternation of meaning or subject, we must say, " scarcely either a poet or a historian ; " "scarcely a Roman author, either poet or historian." Or put in positive form — "nearly all the Roman authors, poets and histori- ans alike." "They who have no real feeling always pitch their expressions too high or too low." The or is inadequate to the occasion. There is an alternative contrast amounting to opposition. Say, "either too high, or else too low." More decided thus : "They that want real feeling never pitch their expressions at the right p^int ; they are either too high, or else too low." " The thing was done by force or fraud." li force &nd fraud are Sec. III.l rSES OF "OR," AND OF "IF." cXXlll to be marked out as two distinct facts, one of them (and not the other) being the instrument assigned, we shoukl at least repeat the preposition— "by force or by fraud;" the alternation being fm-ther improvable, as in the other instances, by else. [It will be observed that Bain uses the term alternative where the distinction above made would require disjumtive. He speaks of alternative in the sense above given as "a synonymous, or ex- planatory alternative."] It may be added that the distinction may be further made in punctuation. The expression introduced by or alternative, being explanatory, would be set off by commas (see page 271). ^Vhere this does not sufficiently mark the character of the phi-ase, it may be put in parenthesis. Thus : They were both much more ancient among the Persians than Zoroaster (or Zerdusht). As for such animals as are mortal (or noxious), we have a right to destroy them. Obs. 86. — "i)^" clauses should be avoided except emphaticiilly to express that the action of the predicate hangs upon an uncertain event. Thus, "If stones are dropped into water, they will sink," is more simply expressed, "Stones sink in water." "If you will come, I shall be delighted," is better thus : " Your coming will de- light me." *' If it would lain, we should get much good ; " read, "Rain would do much good." On the other hand, to say, "If he is guilty, his punishmont will \ye severe," expresses a doubt of the issue which disui)]H'rtrs in, " His guilt will be followed by severe punishment." Frequently the imi)erative may with advantage be jsuhstituted for an (/'clause. Thus : " If you search through history, you will tind — " may become, " Search through history and you will find — " etc. ExKRCiSE LI. — Vary tlie conditional expression in the following sentence. Krample. — To l)e large uiul liberal, the scholar's mind must come in contact with other minds. CXXIV COMPOUND SENTENCFIS. [Pabt I. The mind of the scholar, if yoa would have it large and liberal, must come in contact with other miuds. — Lonofsllow. Obs. 87. — In conditional sentences, the "jf" clause must be kept distinct. It should usually come first. Thus in " The lesson intended to be taught by these manoenvres will be lost, if the plan of operations lb laid down too definitely before- hand, and the affiur degenerates into a mere review. ' The meaning may be, either, (1) If the plan of operations is laid down too definitely before- hand, the lesson intended to be taught by these manoeuvres will be lost, and the afiair degenerates into a mere review ; or, (2) If the plaa of operations is laid down too definitely before- hand, and the affidr degenerates into a mere review, the lesson in- tended to be taught by these manoenvres will be lost On the general principle of Climax (see page cxxxi) the " if " clause should come first. Every one will see the flatness of ** Revenge thy father's most unnatural murder, if thou didst ever love him," as compared with the suspense that forces an expression of agony from Hamlet in — OAmL If thou didst ever thy dear father love— HitmUt. O, God ! Oko)U. Revenge his foal and moat nnnatoral morder. The eflTect is sometimes almost ludicrous when the consequent is long and complicated, and when it precedes the antecedent or *' if -clause." I shoald be delighted to introdace yon to my friemlfi, and to show yon the objects of interest in oar city, and the beaatifal scoiery in the neighborhood, if you were here. "Where the "if-clause" comes last, it ought to be very em- phatic : "if you were only here.'* The introduction of a clause with "if "or "though" in the SiiC. 111.1 REPETITION OF TENSE-FORMS. CXXV middle of a sentence may often cause ambiguity, especially when a great part of the sentence depends on •' that." His eneroieR answered that, for the sake of preserving the public pence, they would keep quiet for the present, though he declared that cowardice wan the motive of the de- lay, and that for this reason they would put off the trial to a more convenient aeaaon. So, The Secretaiy is a traitor, if he realli/ wrote the letter in question. — Abbott. Obs. 88. — Where two diiferent forms of the verb are connected by a conjunction, such parts of the tense-forms as are not common to both mnst be repeated in full. Thus, we may say, I am sui^prised that he has acfed as he has [acted] ; but not, I am suqmsed that he should net as he has [acted]. ExKi:ri8K LII. — Fill out the improper ellipses in tlie following sentences: Example. — This dedication may serve for almost any book that has been, is, or shall l>e published. This dedication may serve for almost any book tliat has, is, or shall be published. I shall do all I can to persuade othera to take the same meas- ures for their caix» which I have. — (iuardian. The forms of English are so few, its syntax so simple, that they are learned by u.se before the age of commencing classical study. — Mabsb. We are too apt to imagine that what is, alwnvs h;is. and always will he.— Too Much Alone. But you will boar it as you have so many iliin^«. J. T. Cole- UIDOB. I am anxious for the time when he will talk as much nonsense to me as I have to him. — Lantx^r. But the problem is one which no research has hitherto solved, and probably never will.—H. Holland. Failing, as others liave, to reconcile poetry and metaphysics. he succeeds better in 8])ecuIation8 inspired by the revolHtioiis of leu8 and laboratory. — £. C. Stxdmav. CXXVi COMPOUND 8ENTENCB8. [Part I. No introduction haa, nor in any prolwbility ever will, authorize that which common thinkers would call a liberty. — 8u£Lley. Some part of this exemption and liability may, and no doubt is, due to mental or physical caaaea in the unhappy or fortunate indi- \*idual. — Spectator. He ridicules the notion that truth will prevail ; it never has, and it never will pre\'ail.— Lbslix Stkphen. I never have, and never will, attack a man for speculative opin- ions.— Bugklb. Obs. 89. — The copula must be repeated when the second of two connected attributes is not closely associated with the first in meaning, especially if it is contrasted in meaning. (See Obs. 12, page xxxiv. ; Obs. 36, page Ivii.) Thus, They will admit that he was a gpreat poet, but deny that he was a great man. Here will should be repeated before deny. Obs. 90. — The verb to he must not be made to do duty at once as a principal verb and as an auxiliary. Thus, The doctor was a very great favorite, and received with much respect and honor. — Thacksrat. Say was received. Waste are those pleaint famu, and the farmer* forever departed.— LoirorBLLOw. Obs. 9 1 . — The verb should usually be repeated after asy thauy etc. ; and in general wherever it is necessary to distinguish the subject from the object. Thus: "I esteem him more highly thii Charles," may mean : (1) I esteem him more highly than I do Charles ; (2) I esteem him more highly than Charles esteems him. Sometimes the bre\'ity of Antithesis (see page cxxxvii) must be sacrificed to clearness ; as, Flatteiy gains friends ; truth, foes. Obs. 92. — It is better to repeat tlie verb itself than to represent it by do or diL (See page Ixiv.) Thus, I have furnished the house exactly according to your Sec. m.J REPETITION OF VERBS. cxx\ u fancy, or, if you please, my own ; for I have long since learned to like nothing but what you do. — Spectator. DOKK is frequently a very great offender against grammar. To do Ik the act ofdO' ing. We nee people write, " I did not 8|)cak yesterday bo well a« I wished to hate done."' Now what is meant by the writer ? He nieann to say that he did not speak so well as he then wished, or was wishing, to apeak. Therefore the sentence should be " I did not apeak yesterday so well a« I wished to do it," that is to say, to do or to (terform the act oj •peaking. Take great care not to be too free in yonr use of the verb to do in any of its times or modes. It is a nice little handy word, and, like our oppressed it, it is made use of very often when the writer Ik at a loss for what to put down. To do is to act, and, therefore, it never can, in any of its parts, supply the place of a neuter verb. " How do you do f " Here do refers to the state, and is essentially passive or neuter. Yet, to employ it for this purpose is very common. Dr. Blair, in his twenty-thinl Lee urp, says: "It is «ome- what unfortunate that this number of the Spectator did not end. as it might have done, with the former beautiful period." That is to say, done it. And then we ask, Done what? Not the act of ending, because in this case there is no nttion at all. The verb mvMU tu come to an end, to ceaae, not to go any fitrtlur. The winie verb to end is some- times an active verb : " I etui my sentence ; " then the verb to do may stipply its place : a.% ** I have not endeund sentences the 8iil)ject miKst l>c ie|)eated, to prevent ambiguity, especially after a CXXVlil COMPOUND SBNTENCBa. [Part I. relative standing ae subject, or where the relative is the subject of several verbs. Thus, " He professes to be helping the nation, which in reality is suffering from his flattery, and (he ? or it ?) will not permit any one else to give it adviee.** — Abbott. Wlien denied in one member and asserted in the other, the subject should of course be stated in both members. Thus: No line of it, however seemingly discursive, should be aim- less, but [every line] should have some relation to the matter in hand. --James Path. A similar principle may require the repetition of the predicate, or of ♦^^'^ entire statement, in a changed fonn. Thus: Retaining the color of their uniform, they have replaced an ugly shako by one altogether as smart and soldier-like [as the for- mer shako was ugly?]. — London Telegraph. There are those who never reason on what they should do, but what they have done, as if reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backward. — Fielding. Obs. 94. — When there are several verbs at some distance from a conjunction on which thej depend, the conjunction should be repeated. Thus: When we look back upon the havoc that two hundred years Iiave made in the I'anks of onr national authors, and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect that lies before the authors of the present day. [Here, if when be omitted, the clause becomes parenthetical.] — Abbott. Obs. 95. — Corresponding conjunctions, like not only, but ii/'^o, mid clearness, as the construction assures the Sac. Ill] CONJUNCTIONS— FINAL CLAUSES. CXXIX reader that the sense will be incomplete until the full stop is reached. But when unnecessary, they encumber and stiffen the sentence. Thus, Abbott gives the following sentence : Ton rnoKt Uke this extrenrly periloas oonne, in which sncoem is nnoertain, and failare diKi?racefal, m well m ruinons, or else the liberty of your country is endangered. Here the meaning is liable to be misunderstood till the reader has gone half through the sentence. Write, •' Either you must," etc. , and the reader is, from the first, prepaied for an alternative. Obs. 96o — The omission of conjunctions sometimes gives forcible abruptness ; as, You say this ; I deny it. For it is a remarkable peculiarity of language that' the omission of a connecting particle should sometimes serve to make objects appear more closely connected ; and that the repetition of it should distinguish and separate them in some measure from each other. —Blaik. Obs. 97. — Short and unemphatic clauses should not be introduced unexpectedly at the end of long sentences, except to produce a special effect. After a long and tedious journey, the last part of which wa.s a little dangerous, owing to the state of the roads, we arrived safely at York, which is a fine old town. AVhen the short final clause is intended to be unexpect- edly emphatic, it comes in appropriately, with somethinjx the sting of an epigram (see page cxxxvi). Thus : The old miser said that he shonld have been delighted to give the poor fellow a shil- ling, but moat unfortnnately be had left his pane at homo— a habit of his. Bnspense naturally throws increased emphasis on the words for which we are waiting, i.«., on the end of the sentence. It has been pointed out above that c monotony of final enipha-sis is ob- jectionable, esjHHMally in l<»tter-writing and conversation. — Abbott. With these writings young divines arc more conversant than CXXX OOMPOUND SENTENCES. [Pabt I. with those of Demoetheoes, who by many degrees excelled the other, at least as an orator. — Swift. ExERci8K LIV. — Correct the following sentence. Example,— A» this is not the case, the faulty order of words cannot properly be considered as rendering the sentence ambiga- ons, bat can be considered as rendering it obscure. As this is not the case, the faulty order of the words cannot properly be considered as rendering the sentence ambiguous, but obscure. — Camfbbll. Obs. 98. —Clauses that are graminatically connected should be kept as close together as possible. Thus, in the following : Thr result of tbme obMnratioM appaan to ta in oppositioti to the view now generally raodved in thia oountrjr, that in niMoalar affort tha enbatanoe of the mnade itanlf onder- goaa diaintegratioa. Here it is difficult to tell whether the theory of *' disintegration " is (1) '*the result,*' or, as the absence of a comma after *'be*' would indicate, (2) **in opposition to the result of these obserra- tions.*' If (1) is intended, add " and to prove '* after " country; ** if (2), insert ** which is" after "country." There is an excessive complication in the following : "It cannot, at all events, if the oonaideration demanded by a mibject of mich impor- tance from any one ixofeaaing to be a philoaopher, be given, be denied that," etc. Where a speaker feels that his hearers have forgotten the con- nection of the beginning of the sentence, he should repeat what lie has said — e.g.y after the long parenthesis in the last sentence he should recommence, ** it cannot, I say, be denied." In writing, however, this license must be sparingly used. (See page c\-i.) A short parenthesis, or modifying clause, will not interfere with clearness, especially if antithesis be used, so as to show the con- nection between the different parts of the sentence, e.g. : "A modem newq;iap« statement, though probabty true, would be laughed at if quoted in a book as testimony ; but a letter uf a court gossip Ib thought good historical evidence if written some centuries ago." Here, to place '* though probably true" at the beginning of the sentence would not add clearness, and would impair the emphasis Sec. Ill] CLIMAX. CXXXl of the contrast between **a modem newspaper statement " and *• the letter of a court gossip." — Abbott. (But see below.) Obs. 99. — The first clause should prepare for the second, the second for the third, etc., in an increasing scale of interest and importance. Wbately remarks, in a sentence that itself illustrates the prin- ciple he states : If A sentence be bo constructed that the meaning of each part can be taken as we pro- ceed (though it be evident that the sense in not brought to a clo-oe), itA length will be little or no impediment to perspicuity ; but if the former part of the sentence convey no dintinct meaning till we arrive nearly at the end (however plain it may then appear), it will be on the whole deficient in perspicuity ; for it will need to be read over or thought over a second time, in order to be fully comprehended ; which is what few readers or hearem are willing to be burdened with. It is with discourses as with bodies, which ordinarily owe their principal excellence to the assemblage and just proportion of their members, in such a way that although one member, separated from the others, may have nothing remarkable about it, still all of them together do not fail to make a perfect body. — Lonoinus. The following is an instance of defective comV)ination : A modem newspaper statement though probably true, would be laughed at, if quoted in a book a« teetimony ; but the letter of a court goasip is thought good historical evi- dence, if written some centuries ago. A rearrangement of this, in accordance with the principles ad- vocated above, will be found to increase the effect. Thus : ThoDgh probably true, a modem newapaper statement quoted in a book as testimony, wooid be laughed at ; but the letter of a ooort gossip, if written some oentories ago, is ihooght good historical evidenoe. By making this change, some of the suspensions are avoided and others shortened ; while there is less liability to pro not much to do, it may be well able to grasp all the preparatory clauses of a sentence, and to use them effectively ; but if some subtlety in the argument absorb the attention, if every faculty be strained in en- deavoring to catch the speaker's or writer*s drift, it may hapiKMi that the mind, unable to carry on both processes at once, will break do^n, and allow the elements of the thought to lapse into confusion. — Hkbbebt Spbmckb. Examples (see also page cxxiv) : With tbM oooTerricg, I focset all tiiiM.— Mzltoh. Formed 1^ thy oooTene, hAm>Uj to iteer From grave to gmy, from Urdy to levere. — Popa. Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some men, some women, and some children much more by listening than by talking. — Ck>im)N. Exercise LV. — Give strength to the following sen- tences by arranging the members according to the natural order of circumstances. Example. — Improvidence is the parent of poverty and depend- ence. Improvidence is the parent of dependence and poverty. Gentleness ought to diffuse itself over our whole behavior, to form our address, and to regulate our speech. Aml)ition creates seditions, wars, discords, hatred, and shyness. Chanty breathes long-suffering to enemies, coui*tesy to strangers, habitual kindness toward friends. A virtuous and pious life will prove the best preparation for im- mortality and death. bec. iil] climax— bathos. cxxxv In this state of mind, every employment of life becomes an op- pressive bnrclen, and every object appears gloomy. Virtue supports in sickness, comforts in the hour of death, strengthens in adversity, and moderates in jjrosperity. The study of astronomy elevates and expands the mind. Since man is on his very entrance into the world the most help- leas of all creatures ; since he must at last be laid down in the dust from which he was taken ; and since he is for a series of years en- tirely dependent on the support and protection of others; how vain and absurd does it appear that such a being should indulge in worldly pride ! That morning he had laid his books, as usual, on the table in his study. I sliall never consent to such proposals while I live. Many changes are now taking place in the vegetable world, under our immediate notice, though we are not observant of them. By those accustomed to the civilization and the warm sun of Italy, it must have been felt as a calamity to be compelled to live, not only in a cold, uncultivated country, but also among a bar- barous people. Let us not conclude, while dangers are at a distance, and do not immediately approach us, that we are secure, unless we use the necessary precautions to prevent them. You may set my fields on fire, and give my children to the sword ; you may drive myself forth a houseless, childless beggar, or load me with the fetters of slavery ; but you never can conquer the hatred I feel to your oppression. Meanwhile Gloucester, taking advantage of the king's indolent disposition, resumed his plots and cabals. In all speculations ui>on men and liuman affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes. At Bath, the remains of two temples, and of a numl>er of statues, liave been dug up, in laying the foundations of new streets and squares. ObS. lOO. — A sudden descent in interest is called Bathos. Thus, '* To gossip is a foult ; to libel, a crime ; to slander, a sin.** She was a woman of many accomplishments and virtues, grace- CXXXVi COMPOUND SE.NTENCES. (Part I fnl in her moTements, winning in her adilress, a kind friend, a faithful and loving wife, a most affectionate mother, and she played beaatifnllj on the piano-forte. A clergyman, preaching to a oodintij congregation, naed the fol- lowing persnasire argnments against swearing : *'Oh, my brethren, aroid this practice, for it is a great sin, and, what is more, it is uu- genteeL** It follows that if Beanty hath her habitation in onr nnivers* living in the setting son, or in *' eve's one star," or sitting on the rainbow that spans the heavens, or walking over the green fields and tree-clad hills, or wading through the running brook. Making cweat miMle with the enamriled •tone*— if she dwelleth in the lily*e cup or is mantled in the iris-hued mist that presides over the cataract's roar, or floateth in the fragrant air — she doth so because man is. — B. A. Thu o*er Um ijittg lamp tta* naaleady flam* Haaga qnivering on a point, leaps off by flti^ And falla again, an loth to qoit ita hold. Thoa naniit not go ; my aool still hovers i^er thae^ And can't get looae.— Amusoii, Cato. When the sudden descent (anti-climax) is intentional, tlie effect is humorous, or ironical. Qo. wondrooa creature, mount where aoience gnidea ; Go, meaaore earth, weigh air, and atate the tidea; Instmct the planeta in what orbs to run ; Oonect old Time, and regulate the Sun ; Qo, soar with Plats in th' emp)Teal rphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Oo, teach Sternal Wisdom how to rale, Then drop into thys^, and be a fool.— Popk. Obs. I O I . — A sudden anticlimax may have the effect of wit, by the collocation of ideas that at first seem incon- gruous. Thus : and dia- monds. — X 1 • 1 Climax. The Russian grandees came to court dropping pearls -{ min.--4n^t- . climcu. Sec. ULJ ANTI-CLIMAX —ANTITHESIS. CXXXVll These two nations were divided by mutual fear - and the bitter remembrance of recent losses. — Climax. and mountains. — Anti-climax. Obs. 1 02. — Antithesis adds force and clearness, but must not be excessive. Thus : All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle, and obedi- ence voluntary, are now to be destroyed. There is here a kind of formula : Gentleness: power:: spontaneousness : obedience. — Abbott. That kind of period which hath most vivacity is commonly that wherein you find an antithesis in the members, the several parts of one having a similarity to those of the other, adapted to some resemblance in the sense. The effect produced by the coiTespond- iug members is like that produced in a picture when the figures of the group are not all on a side, with their faces turned the same way, but are made to contrast each other by their several positions. Besides, this kind of periods is generally the most per- spicuous. There is in them not only that original light which results from the expression when suitable, but there is also that which is reflected reciprocally from the opposed members. The relation between these two is so strougly marked, that it is next to impossible to lose sight of it. The same quality makes them easier also for the memory. — Campbell. Mind U inTidble, bat 70a may find A mothod h«te to let me wo your mind.— Mortooicxbt, in an amtograph eated, p. cxxv. Ex. LU. — Improper ellipses tilled, p. cxxv. Obs. Sd. — Copula to be repeated, p. cxxvi. Obs. 90. — ** To be " as principal and copula, p. cxxvi. Obs. 91. — Verb repeated to distinguish subject from object, p. cxxt' Obs. 92. — ** To do " not to be used instead of verb, p. cxxvi. Ex. LIII. — Repetition of verb, p. cxxvii. Obs. 93.— Subject to be repeated, p. cxxvii. Obs. 94. — Conjunction to be repeated, p. cxxviii. Obs. 95. — Corresponding conjunctions, p. cxxviii. Obs. 96. "r— Conjunctions omitted for abruptness, p. cxxix. Obs. 97. — Short clauses at end, p. cxxix. Ex. LIV. — Arrangement of sentences, p. cxxx. Obs. 98. — Connected clauses to be together, p. cxxx. Obs. 99. — Climax, p. cxxxi. Ex. LV. — Arrangement of members, p. cxxxi v. Obs. 100. — Bathos— Anti-climax, p. cxxxv. Obs. 101. — Anti-climax, with effect of epigram, p. cxxxvi. Obs. 102. — Antithesis, p. cxxxvii. Ex. LVI. — Complete antithesis, p. cxxxviii. Ex. LVII. — General arrangement, p. cxxxviii. PART II. CONVERSATION PART II. COJ^VERSATIOJ^. CHAPTER I. GOOD BREEDING. All are not gentlemen by birth ; but all may be gentlemen in opennesB. in modesty of language, in attracting no man's attention by singularitien, and giving no man offence by fcwwardnen : for it is this, in matter of speech and style, which is the mre mark of good tante and good breeding.— Dean Alfokd. Awkwardness in conversation usually arises from a nervous dread of saying the wrong thing. A sudden ques- tion discomposes. No answer is at hand. To consider and devise an answer would make too long a pause, even if the mind were collected, while in fact to think coolly under the awaiting eye of the questioner is impossible. So the victim begins a i*eply without a hint as to how lie shall complete it, stammers, blunders, and retires despairingly. A shy person not onXj feels jmin but gives imin ; but, what is tlio worst, he incurs blame for a want of that rational and manly co - fidence which is so useful to those who possess it, and so plea-san to those who witness it. I am severe against shyness, because i' looks like a virtue ; and l)ecau8e it gives us false notions of what the real virtue is. — Sydney Smith. Recognized Phrases. — There are few such emer- gencies for which society has not provided. To devise an ori- ginal greeting for each of our acquaintances would be a task 4 * ^ OOCD BREEDING. [Part It qiiJtu nejondng; bnt it is conventionally agreed that all 8iiall l>e contented with " How do yon do ? " When we know this form of greeting, and know that it will be con- Bidcred sufficient, our mental energy, no longer paralyzed hy the dread of being found at a loss, enables us to gro)>c about for a more special salutation, assured that if we fail to find it we have at our tongue's end a formula adecjiiate to the occasion. The first requisite to swimming well is to be assured one is not going to drown. A diner-out of long experience has left succeeding generations heir to these two rules : 1. Always know what it is conventional to say ; 2. Say something else. A man meeting another grasped his hand cordially and exclaimetl in tones of polite but uncertain recognition, **Mr. Brown, I be- lieve ? ** ** If you believe that," calmly replied the stranger, whoso name was Hamilton, "you*ll believe anything.*" Mr. Brown re- cognized and responded to the humor of the reply, and a pleasan'. acquaintance followed. Frank confession, from its rarity, often produces the effect of wit. Thus a man in whose honor a dinner was given, responding; to the toast offered him, declined to make a 8])eech on the ground that a morbid dosire for originality restrained him from saying that this was the proudest moment of his life, and it really didn't occur to him to say anything else. The conventionalities of society are comparatively few in number and easily acquired. How little of the phrase of common intercourse is of modern origin is amusingly shown in the still familiar forms laid down in Swift's " Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversa- tions,-' and even in the " Colloquies " of Erasmus. It is not so much that the words are stereotyped, though there is considerable uniformity of expression. But it is imder- stood, for instance, that when one meets an acquaintance, one is to greet him, and show interest in him by inquiries Chap. I.] ACQUAINTANCE WITH CONVENTIONALITIES. 5 as to liimself, his family, his friends. Tlvese inquiries are to the well-bred man a matter of course, and are made through habit without thought or effort. Meantime one has recovered from one's surprise, has recalled what one knows of the acquaintance, his position, his history, the circum- stances under which one has met him, and is ready without a break in the conversation to sugjijest some topic likely to be of interest. AVere there no established forms of greeting, but were the two re(juired from the first word to evolve the proper thing to say and the proper way to say it, we may be sure such encounters would be awkward and dreaded. Erasmus (1526) gives a multitude of forms for all ordinaiy occa- sions, between all sorts of persons, a fair proportion of which are still in use. Thus for "Farewell," at i)arting, we have: "Fare ye all well. Farewell. Take care of your health. Take a great care of your health. I bid you good-by. Time calls me away, fare ye well," etc., etc. Swift (1730) in playful sarcasm published a collection of "at least a thousand shining questions, answei-s, rei^artees, replies and rejoinders, fitted to adorn every kind of discourse that an assem- bly of English ladies and gentlemen, met together for their mutual entertainment, can possibly want ; " he boldly aflBrmed that " the w hole geniu.s, humor, politeness, and eloquence of England " were summed up in it, the last six or seven years not ha\'ing added above nine valuable sentences; he further faithfully assured the reader that there was not a single witty phrase in the collection which harl not received the stamp and approbation of at least one htiudred yours, so that all might be relied upon as "genuine, ster- ling, and authentic." As might )k; expected, the collection is of shallow and slang phrases, which one might think ephemeral. Yet no small propor- tion may Ik; heard at this day wherever people are gathered in idle mood. Some of the commonest are the following : IS ST. JAMBS' PARK. CoL Atwil, How do yoa do, IHim ? Tom S*9trtmL Never the better for y«>n. CoL Why, every one m they like, u the good woman aaid when she kiieed the oow. GOOD BREEDING. [Part IL IN LORD SMABTS H0U8B. Nettr. Come, • penny for yotir tbooflit. iHm Notable. It lunoi worth • farthing ; for I «•• thinking of yoa. Ladt Anawra L WHI. bat tit while yoa aUy ; *tfo •• cheap utttiiig m ■tmnding. Ijat9 BmmrL Go, run girl, and wmnn knbo fraah cwt Smif. Indeed, ma'am, there'iinaoe Ml; for the oaihMMteQ it alL Ladif A I donbfc It wa« a oat with two Icfu. LadgA, Pnj. mjkrd, did joo walk through the Parte fai the tain? Lord apar*UL Tea, madam, we were neither et^ar nor Mlt ; we wen not afraid the rain would melt na. CM. Indeed, madam, that*« a He. Ladw A. ... I don't lie ; I dt. Him. Pray, ooloneU let me eee that bos. Col. Madam, there's never a Con it. Jfle«. Mi^be there la, colonel. 'CoL Ay, bat May beea dooH fly now, mlaik Jitter, Well, miea, FO think on thia. Jfiie. That'll rhyme. If yoa take it in tima^ NtMT. What ! I eee yon are a poet. Jfiet. Yes,lf Iliadbotthe wittodMWit. . . . Bnt fway, Mr. NeTeroat, what lady waa that yoo were talking with in the lide-baK teat Tneeday ? 3>r«r. Mim, oan yoa keep a aeciett JfiM. Ye^ I can. JTeeer. Well, ndae, and eo can T. (A wmM tf mmote comet ttown th« oAtmiwy.) LcH9 A. Lord, madam, does yoarladyriilp*>dliimneyamoke? CW. No, BMdam ; bat they aay smoke always pannes the feir, and yoor ladyship sat XotCr S. Madam, do yoa loTO bohea tea ? Xodlr A. Why, madam, I most confess I do Ioto It, bat it does not lore me. 5>r«r. MethinkN miss, I dont mndi like the color of that ribbon. JflM. Why, then, Mr. Nereroat, do yoa see, if yon don't ranch like it, yoa may look off it. . . . Pray, colond, make mc a present of that pretty penknife. CM. Not fnr the world, dear miss; it will cat lore. Jf las. My oomf mt is, 'twill bo all one a thoosand years benoe. Never. Why, mim, yon are so ctoob I ooold And it in my heart to hate yoa. Mist. With all mj heart ; there \ri11 be no love lost between ns. Ladif S. Colonel, methinks yonr coat is too short. CoL It will be long enough before I get another, madam. . . . Miss, you have got my handkerchief ; pray, let me have it. Ladv S. No ; keep it miss : for they say posseadon is eleven points of the law. Col. Will your ladyship be on the Mall to-morrow night ? Lat^^ S. No, that wont be projier : you know to-morrow's Sunday. Col. What then, madam ? they say the better the day, the better the deed. . . . Die I'aniiliar with the phrases customary to polite society ; and, indeed, this knowledge should extend to all its u«iges. No one can talk well while doubtful whether he is behaving properly, 8 GOOD BREEDING. [Part IL nor will bis best talking avail bim witb tbose wbose eyes are fixed on tbe social enormities of wbicb be is guilty. Sainte-Benve was noted for his charm in conversation, but lie never received a second invitation from the Empress Eugenie, be- cause at his first breakfast he unfolded his napkin and laid it over both knees, instead of dropping it carelessly over his left knee, and broke his egg into the cup, instead of eating it from the shell. At first thought it seems ridiculous to insist upon such nicety in so- cial usages ; but, after all, these rules have reason behind them, and seem unreasonable only to those who either cannot perceive their purpose, or are careless of the comfort in little things of those about them. It takes many of these trifles to make perfection in social intenM>ur8e ; but this perfection is no trifle, and must not be underestimated. Insolent {in solenSy Latin) is literally only unaocus- toinetly and one is indeed insolent who presumes to mingle yni\i others without regarding the ways and habits to which they have been accustomed. Defect in manners is usually tbe defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We imperatively require a perception of, and a homage to, beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and work-yard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat i^-ith one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable. Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. — Eicebson. • Hardncm is a want of minute attention to the feelings of othen. It doe«< not proceed from malignity or careleamess of inflicting pain, but from a want of delicate perception of thom little things by which pleasore is conferred or pain excited. A hard person thinks he has done enough if he does not speak ill of your relations, your children, or your country ; and then, with th» greatest good-humor and volubility, and with a total inattention to your individnal lUte and position, gallops over a thoosand fine feelings and leaves in every step the marks of his hoofs upon your heart. Analyxe the conversation of a well-bred man who is clear of the besetting sin of hard- nen; it is a perpettial homage of polite good-nature. He remembers that you are con- nected with the Church, and he avoids (whatever his opinions may be) the most distant refleotions on the Establishment. He knows that yon are admired, and he admires you as ftur as Is compatible with good breeding. He sees that, though young, yon are at the head of a large establishment, and he infu'cs into his manner and conversation that re- spect which is so pleasing to all who exercise authority. He leaves you in perfect good- Chap. L] IMPORTANCE OF GOOD MANNERS. 9 htunor with yoanelf, beoanw joo perceive how much and bow suooessfnlly yoa have been ■tadied. In the meantime, tho gentleman on the other aide of you (h highly moral and renpect- able man) htm been crushing lit Ic bcnRibilities and overlooking little discrimiuHtionft, and without violating anything which can be called a rule, or committing what can t>e denom- inated a fault, has dlHploaKed and dinpirited yon from wanting that fine vision which aeoa little thing*, and that delicate touch which handler them, and that fine sympathy which this («u|)orior moral ii of tlie >auK! ]»iiiicij>lc that oiui should to OOOD BREEDING. [Pabt IL not be ostentatious of fine manners. Ill-breeding is never more offensive than when, by doing tilings in an obtru- sively different way, it seeks to make others feel that they have done a thing improperly. The same motive whicli leads one to observe how well-bred persons do things, in oixler to avoid giving weU-bred people offence, leads one to avoid doing things at all, or even to do things improp- erly, when to do them properly would make some one present feel that he had committed a solecism. As nuumera go, few things are to well-bred people more dis- agreeable than to convey food to one's mouth with a knife ; and yet if one were dining with an elderly person, likely to be sensi- tive, who had began the meal by eating with his knife, or if one were a gaest at a table where there were only two-tined steel forks, and an attempt to eat with them might make the hostess blnsh becaose she could not f umiBh silver, it would be one's duty to con- ceal as much as possible that he was eating with lus fork, or even to eat with his knife. No mere conventionahtv must interfere with the broad principle that it is the part of a well-bred person to put those about him at their ease. Observe Conventionalities. — The first lesson to impress upon those who would excel in conversation is to be watchful of conventionalities. Xo written pi-ecepts can inculcate them. They are subject to constant devel- opment, and increase in complexity as one mingles with those more and more fitted by nature and position to give prominence to the courtesies of life. But with a disposi- tion to put others, and to leave others, at their ease, even at personal sacrifice, with an observant eye, and here and there with a hint from older persons, one may learn so to comport one's self that one's manner will never make others uncomfortable — an essential prerequisite to success in conversation. Chap. L] SELFISHNESS OF ILL MANNERS. 11 Emerson defines manners as the happy ways of doing things, once a stroke of genius or of love, but now hardened by usage into habit. How much more gi-aceful is this way of putting it than the corresponding i)a8sage in Swift: "Therefore, I insist that good sense is the principal foundation of good manners ; but be- cause the former is a gift which very few among men are possessed of, therefore, all the civilized nations of the world have agreed upon fixing some rules upon common behavior best suited to their general customs or fancies, as a kind of artificial good sense, to supply the defects of reason." Ill- breeding, says the Abbe Belgarde, is not a single defect, but it is the result of many. It is sometimes a gross ignorance of decorum, or a stupid insolence which prevents us from giving to others what is due to them. It is a peevish malignity which inclines us to opi)08e the inclinations of those with whom we con- verse. It is the consequence of a foolish vanity which has no com- plaisance for any other person ; the effect of a proud and wliimsical humor, which soars above all the rules of civility ; or, lastly, it is produced by a melancholy turn of mind, which pampers itself with a rude and disobliging beliavior. — Fieldino. Sydney Smithes Vefinltimi of " A Nice Person^ A nice person w neither too Ull nor too i>hort, looks clean and checrfnl, has no prom- inent featnro, makes no difncultics, is never misplaced, sits bodkin, is never foolishly affronted, and is void of affectations. A nice person heliw you well at lUnncr, understands you, is always gratefnily received by yoang and old, Whig and Tory, grave and gay. There is aomethlng in the very air of a nice person which inspires you with confl- denoe, make* you talk, and talk without fear of malicious ir.i8re|ireM>ntation : you fevl that yoa are reposing on a nature which Ood has mailc kind, and created fur the benefit and happineas of society. It has the effect upon the mind which soft air and a fine climate have upon ttie body. A nice person is clear of little, tmmpcry pamionN delights in Ulent, shelters humility, pankNM adversity, forgivea deficiency, respects all men's rights, never stops the bottle, is never kmg and never wrong, always knows the day of the m(»th, the name of everybody at t«>>le, and never gives iiain to any human being. If anybody is wanted tot a party, a nice person is the fln>t thought of ; when the child is duriatoncd, whm the dangbter is married— all the joys of life are ramnuinicated to nioe peopte : the hand of the dying man to always held out to a nice person. A nioe piTson never knocks over wine or melted bntter. dues not tread niton tho dug'a foot, or molest tho family cat, eats soup without noiiw, laughs in tiia right place, and has % watchful and attentlTe eja. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. GOOD BREEDING. AWKWARDNESS:— Its source, and iu dissdranUges, p. 3. Esosped bv acquaintaiic« with couveutionaUtie8, pp. 3-7. RecogniztHi forms few, and easily ac(}uired, p. 4. Specimens from Eraimius, and Swift, pp. 5-7. USAGES OF SOCIETY not unreasonable, pp. 7-U. Defect ir -^^ is duftct in line perceptions, p. 8. GOOD MAN ! X^UISITE TO SUCCESS, p. 9. Never o= n. », 10. Dependent • > : 1 ness, p. 10. The happy u:> iig things, p. 11. Selfishness of ill manners, p. 11. Sydney Smith's **Nioe Person," p. 11. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS Do you approve the conduct of the young prelato'on page 92 ? Do vou justify the remarks made in the anecdotes uu pages 265, 2CC, 268? * Was the editor justified in rebuking the remark on the weather, as told on pp. 253, 254 ? What do you think of the action of Mrs. Stephen A. Douglass upon the following occasion ? A constituent, unaccustomed to polite society, was dining at her house, and let fall a tea-cup of exquisite design and great value. As it shivered into pieces, he was greatly disturl)ed, but Mrs Douglass, taking up her own cup, remarked lightly, '' It i^ curious how easily these cups break : see, I can crush it like an egg-shell," and did so crush it. What do you think of the following remark of Emerson's ? *' The basis of good manners is self-reliance (and rie^ rerm). Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. Those who are not self-possessed ob- trude and pain us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a Fa- riah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and apoloarize, and walk through life with a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed company wit}iout any coat, so God >ey acts ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circumstance. The hero should find himself at home, wherever he is; should impart comfort by his own security and good-nature to all beholders." CHAPTER n. TABLE-TALK. No fair adTenary would nrge loose table-talk in controTerey, and bnlld serious infer- upon what was spoken in jest. — Attbrbury. quoted in Johnson's Dictionary. Readiness in Light Conversation. — In Dore's illustrations of La Fontaine's Fables, the generalization of the fox who found the vines too high for him repre- sents two seedy cavaliers jeering at the social enjoyment of a company from which they are excluded. The hit is liappy, for no other discomfiture is oftener excused by the sneer, " Sour grapes." Particularly common is it to afiPect contempt for readiness in that free and easy form of con- vei*sation, which from the place that most frequently affords it opportunity, is known as " Table-talk " — the pri- mary object being rather social than intellectual, rather the promotion of pleasant feeling than a search for new truth. Tho awkward man remind.s biuiBelf that a groat ti-agedian, smil- ing at his insignificance in a social gathering, boasted that, *' want- ing in all thingH, he was not the less Corneille ; " that Rousseau, who in talking with Hume " kindled often a degree of heat w hich looked like inspiration," was yet ingeuoial conversation "remark- ably trite, never warmed by a word of fancy or elotjuence ; " tliat Addison was as shy among strangers as he was delightful in his talk with a chosen com})anion, and used to say that though he could draw a check for u thousund ])ounds, he never carried a guinea in his pocket. But surely to walk lii.^ -mm .i^. ptnniless when one lias a thou- sand i)ounds in the bank shows deplorable lack uf judgment. Such 14 TABLE-TALK. [Part IL a man may Ix) congratulated u|)on LIh ixxwcssion of resouroes, but not upon his use of them. Rich as he is, he may iiiiss the greatest opportunity of his life because he has not an omnibus fare in his pocket, nor will his chagrin be the less that he might just as well have had witli him a thousand omnibus fares. The ))arallel holds. Two richly gifted men, who would keenly liave enjoyed a conversation, may ride together for hours in awk- ward silence, for want of the mutual recognition which a little small-talk would liave developed. Not seldom are well-filletl minds stagnant for want of an outlet. Many a man goes through life a hermit because he has not learned how to begin a conversa- tion. A well-known modem astronomer, attending a wedding, passed up to offer his congratulations, shook hands in a solcum sort of way, and uttered not a word. **Why didn't you say something to them?" queried his wife, respectfully. "I don't know,** replied the absorbed professor; "I didn't think I had any new facts to impart." Table-Talk an Art. — Failure in table-talk results oftenest f rum lack of appreciation that it is an art. Poems, orations, essays, even letters may be perfected by acquaint- ance witli the principles of rhetoric, but surely anybody can say what he means: that is one mistake. Another is at the other extreme: that the agreeable talker is bom, not made ; that conversation is a matter not of education but of instinct. The difBculty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean ; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the case of books or set orations ; even in making your will or writing an explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world. But one thing you can never make the Philistine natures understand ; one thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains as nnseizable to their wits as a high flight of metaphysics — namely, that the business of life is mainly carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and Chak IL] table-talk AN ART. 15 according to a man's proficiency in that art shall V>o the freedom and the fulness of his intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is 8up}K)sed, can say what he means ; and, in spite of their notorious exi)erience to the contrary, so jKioplo continue to suppose. An orator makes a false step ; he employs some trivial, some absurd, some ^'ulgar phrase ; in the turn of a sentence he insults, by a side wind, those whom he is laboring to chaim ; in Kj)eaking to one sentiment he unconsciously mffles another in imrenthesis ; and you are not surprised, for you know his task is delicate and filled with jKjrils. "O frivolous mind of man, light ignorance." As if yourself, when you seek to explain some misundei-standing or excuse some apparent fault, sj^aking swiftly, and addressing a mind still recently incensed, were not harnessing for a more peril- ous atlventure ; as if yourself required less tact and elo'8olf," ^-as the solemn reply. A ixTson took the liberty to question Alexander Dumas rather closoly concerning his genealogical tree. '• You are a quadroon, M. Dumas ?'* he began. "lam, sir." "And your father?" " Was a mulatto." " And your grandfather ? " " A negro," hastily answered the dramatist, whose patience was waning. "And may I ask what your great-grandfather was ? " "An ape, sir," thundered Dumas ; " my i>edigi-ee begins where yours terminates." Discretion in Personal Remarks. — As one set- ting out in a sail-boat glances ahead over tlie water to avoid ill time any rocks or shoals before him, so one's first thought in beginning a conversation should be a review of what one knows of one's companion, with a view to escape blun- dering upon an untimely topic. And as one sails freely in (MAI 11] DISCRETION IN PERSONAL REMARKS. 19 the open sea, but slowly and cautiously as he approaches an unknown shore, so in talking with a stranger the skilful converser keeps among life's generalities, and bears himself warily as subjects are suggested that may have personal application. Punch delights to illustrate how hazardous in a mixed company are criticisms upon individuals. *' Pray who is that awkwai'd creature by the piano ? " asks a stranger of a chance companion. ** That is my sister," is the grim reply. ** Oh, I don't mean the handsome woman to the left ! " cries the first speaker, hoping to retrieve himself, '• but that red-haired Amazon to the right, whose dress makes up in boldness of color for its scantiness of material." " That, sir, is my wife." It is a peculiarity of this sort of blundering that the victim, having taken a false step, is apt to flounder and mire himself the deeper. " Who is that distressingly homely woman in the comer? " asks one, and when he gets the reply, " She happens to be my mother, sir," he exclaims in confusion, '* I really beg your pardon ; it was so stupid of mo ; the resemblance is very marked." Of a stranger at an art-exhibition a lady inquires : *• Pray, how did they come to admit such a picture as that ? " " I am sorry you don't like it, madam, for it is mine." •' Why, you don't mean to say you bought it ? " *• Oh, no ; I only imintcd it." *' I beg ten thousand pardons ; but you mustn't mind me, I only repeat what evert/hod 1/ gai/s." Now and then one has the tact gracefully to escape. " Do tell me who is that woman on the ottoman, that looks like a Chinese," asks a lady of the gentleman with whom she is prome- nading. •' Tliat is my wife, mmlam ; and pray might I inquire in what particulars she reseuiblcH a Chinese?" " Why, in the exquisite smallucss of her feet. You must intro- duce me.** 20 TABLE-TALK. [Part II Not long after his removal from the liouHe of Commons to the House of Lords, Disraeli met a broth»^»- i »• '»»' t»'o ^*^f^ot who asked him how he liked the change. "Like it?** exclaimed Disraeli, forgetting hiuiiielf for the mo- ment and blundering out the tnitli, " I feel as if I were dead or buried alive.** Then seeing the expression of discomfiture on the nobleman's fjico, he added hastily, with a courtly bow and an irresistible smile — " and in the land of the blessed.** But such tact, however desirable, is rare, and it is the safest rule, when one has heedlessly injured the sensibilities of another to manifest no perception of it, but quietly and naturally to change the subject, taking especial pains to select one that shall gratify one's companion in some other direction, if it cannot repair the hurt he has suffered in this. It is true that ill-natured remarks like those just quoted are in themselves reprehensible. But even if one is scrupulous to speak no ill of one's neighbor, one will not always avoid giving offence. Though one go to the other extreme, and smear everything one encounters with indiscriminate eulogy, one will occasionally find that his words are as wormwood. The man of tact will therefore learn all he can of those with whom he is to converse ; will select those topics most likely to be of agreeable interest ; and when after all his ])ains he stumbles into a bhmder, will be quick to discover it, and (juick to withdraw from it. Developing the Subject. — Not only the choice of a subject, but the manner of treatment should be deter- mined by consideration for one's companion. If it prove familiar and interesting to him it should be continued even after one has tired of it, or should be so changed as to seem to be dismissed, not because it is exhausted, but be- cause with such a companion there are so many other sub- jects one longs to discuss. Kothing is ruder than to yawn, to seem abstracted, or abruptly to terminate a conversa- tion still fascinating to one's companion. This not only wounds his self-love bv sliowinsf him that he fails to talk riiM II ] HE TALKS BEST WHO LISTENS BEST. 21 interestingly, but discloses a lack of sympathy in thought which is fatal to intimacy. A tedious person is one a man would leap a steeple from, gallop down any steep hill to avoid him ; forsake his meat, sleep, nature itself with all her benefits, to shun him. A mere imj^ertinent ; one that touched neither heaven nor earth in his discourse. He opened an entry into a fair room, but shut it again presently. I spake to him of garlic, he answered asparagus ; consulted him of marriage, he tells me of hanging, as if they went by one and the same destiny.— Ben Jonson. Bores and Hobbies. — Against the bore, or the man with a liobby, cMie must of course protect one's self ; though this is done most skilfully by avoiding the former and by steering the latter away from his morbidly devel- oped ideas. But when a person will insist npon tiring one with his pet tlieory or grievance, it is better to say frankly : '* Mr. , you really must excuse me from discussing this subject further," than to look exhausted, or to run away from him. In the former case one w\\\ seem to him to fail to appreciate the subject, in the latter to fail to appreciate the man himself. But the necessity for such pronounced measures is not common in small talk, where the object is rather to develop conversation in one's companion than to limit it or direct it. If he is a stran- ger, one vriW not be sorry to see him mount his hobby for the first time, and if he is an acquaintance, one can usually manage that the interview be brief. In this light conversation it is a general rule, at least to seem to follow the lead of one's companion, so far as he is willing to assume it. Importance of Listening.— It is a fundamental principle that he seems to l»is companion to liave talkeened to meet in a railway carriage a gentleman with whom he proceeded to hold conversation. ** I am going to Vienna,'* said the merchant, '♦ to see my daugh- ter, who is well married there. My son-in-law deals in paper and fancy leather work, and has a good trade. He is very prosperous." " I, too,'* said the good-natured stranger, "am going to see my daughter and son-in-law." '* All, is your son-in-law well off?'* '* Pretty well ; but as he has to carry on his work all alone, it is rather tiresome." *• Is your daughter rich ? " *• Not as rich as she would like to be." " She likes to spend a good deal on her toilet ? " "No; but she would like to be able to give a good deal in charity." " She is a good woman," said the merchant, heartily ; " it*s to be hoped your son-in-law's business will improve. Good-by, sir. C5ome to see us, and bring your daughter ; we shall be happy to make her acquaintance." The train arrived at the station, and the traveller, whose son-in- law's business was only pretty good, was immediately surrounded by grand personages in uniform. After having politely saluted the amazed merchant, he stepped into the carriage of the Emperor of Austria. The good father-in-law of the dealer in paj^r and fancy leather goods ha'alae. Playful Liberties. — As one may speak with frolic- some e.xjiggeration of one's preferences, so one may take playful liberties with the dignity of one's companions. 28 TABLE TALK. [Pari IT Liglit conversation is dull without soinetliin*^ of the ^'cou« tagion of hardihood'' that Disraeli describes. But nothing is more difficult to hedge abont with mles. JoM phine is a strong, vigorous girl, with more muscles than nerves, and more appetite than sensibility. The severer a joke the more keenly she enjoys it, and not the less if it is aimed at herself. She cannot understand why Carolin should be hurt at a hearty laugh over a blunder committetl or a weakness manifested ; and so without an unkind thought she is continually rasping Carolin's finer feelings, and wondering why the silly creature cannot take a joke. Never Twit on Facts. — One should never rally an- otlier on a real weakness, however freely a^'knowledged. Constitutionally large eaters should be able to endure almost any kinti of a joke, and especially a gleeful refer- ence to their appetites ; yet it often happens that a per- son so rallied, though too proud to show it, and therefore quick to join in the laugh that follows, is really annoyed, and loses much of his pleasure at meals because of his sen- sitiveness to the imputation of greediness. Every one has his pet foible which may not be rudely jostled ; and one should know a companion well before one ventures to poke at him any fun which has a basis in fact. A certain confidence is shown hy bantering a person upon an assumed fault which the fact that we banter him upon it shows we are sure he is free from. A more unfortunate blunder, except that it was so stupid as to be ridiculous, could hardly be imagined than that of the clerk in a New Haven shoe-store who, when a lady who had dragged for half a block before she perceived them a pair of light shoes accidentally attached to her crinoline, returned to the store to remove them and to laugh over the queer accident, repUed gravely, " I saw you take them away, madam, but I did not like to speak of it." Chap. II. ] THE LICENSES OF TABLETALK. 29 Banter. — There is in personal banter an element of sauciness as hazardous as it is delightful. Just what it is safe to say, and just when and where to say it, only native tact and quick perception can determine. It is here more than anywhere else that the artist shows above the arti- san. No rules will avail, except the general rule, that the person who has usually blundered should hereafter leave badinage to more skilful hands. Irreverence and Indelicacy. — A similar rule ap- plies to anything bordering upon the irreverent and the indelicate. In such allusions there is an element of daring which gives a sensation of keen enjoyment to those who feel secure, but corresponding uneasiness to those uncer- tain of the issue. The difficulty is complicated among strangers, because ideals of the reverent and delicate vary so widely, that being commonplace to one which to an- other is shocking. But no caution is better worth heeding than to keep well within the danger-line. A man advertised for a coachman, and received three appUcants. Of each he asked,: •• Suppose we were riding on top of a bluff, how near could you drive to the edge of the precipice, and there should be no danger?" "Sir," replied the first, •' I could drive within an inch of the edge, and there should be no danger." " And I," said the second, "could drive within a hair's breadth, and there should be no danger." " As for me," said the third, "I should keep as far away from the edge as I could ; " and the third was engaged. Prudery. — It by no means follows tliat one should be prudish. To speak of one's leg as a limb, or to shrink from mentioning articles of apparel when there is occasion, reveals either a lewd mind or a habit of mingling with those adhering to traditions of impropriety suggested by lewd minds. 80 TABLE-TALK. [Part IL Ignoring Discourtesy.— The skilful con verser ig- nores discourtesy iu speech. If Jiis companion is rude he does not revenge liiniself by severe retort, however apt, as lie would thereby lower himself to the other's level, and encourage a wrangle. If his companion inclines to irrev- erence or indelicacy lie turns the subject into other chan- nels, careful not to show approval, but equally careful not to pronounce judgment of reproach for what may have been a fault of early training or the accident of the moment. His companion will recognize that he has blun- dered, but he will not be compelled to show that lie recog- nizes it, and thus a conversation that would otherwise have been cut unpleasantly short may be diverted into less ob- jectionable channels. Perhaps no general role is so nearly without exception, as that one should never permit one's self to repeat a >'ulgar story. Even that peculiar appropriateness of circumstances which, except for its coarseness, would make it precisely the fitting thing— a rare temptation to story-tellei-s — will not atone for its introduction. When a man cleai-s his throat and hesitates and ^ays he does not usually indulge in that sort of anecdote, some good friend should jog his elbow and warn him to pause. We have heard worthy men yield to this temptation, but never without being apprehensive for them when they began, and sorry for them when they finished. Wit, hilarity, promotion of the good fellowship prevailing, all prompt the man who knows a story just apropos to tell it. But not for all these considerations should he yield that essential ele- ment of a gentleman — a cleanly tongue. While one should never tell such stories, there are times when he must listen to them. With those of one's own age and posi- tion it is often possible simply and quietly to decline to listen ; but with those whom it would be unbecoming thus to reprove one must simply show lack of interest. A lady of tact used to discourage scandal by looking stupid when it was talked to her. Such refuse is not poured profusely into an unwilling ear. Harpies fly in flocks. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. VALUE OF READINESS in conversation, pp 1, 14. EASY CONVERSATION AN ART, pp. 14-16. Often even direct preparation required, pp. 15, 16. Conversational artists succeed because they try, p. 16. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, not to sliine, but to please, pp. 16-18. Attention to others the tutor of the tongue, p. 17. CHOICE OF SUBJECT with reference to one's companion, p. 18. Rude questions rebuked, p. 18. Discretion in personal remarks, pp. 18-20. False steps lead to floundering, p. 19. Escape by rare tact, pp. 19, 20. Usually wise to betray no recognition, p. 20. DEVELOPMENT OF SUBJECT determined by consideration foi others, p. 20. Not to be abruptly discontinued, p. 20. Protection against bores and hobbies, p. 21. IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING, pp. 21-25. Blindness of monopolizing a conversation, p. 22. The wise always ready to learn, p. 23. Rudeness of interruptions, pp. 28-25. Listening received as a compliment, p. 25. DESIRE TO BE BRILLIANT, pp. 25, 26. Whatever cards you hold, give your partner a chance, p. 26. FRANK GOOD NATURE, p. 26. EXAGGERATION OF PREFERENCES, p. 27. PLAYFUL LIBERTIES, pp. 27-29. The contagion of hardihood, p. 28. Never twit on facts, p. 28. Confidence shown by absurd accusations, p. 28. Banter, p. 28. Irreverence and indelicacy, p. 29. Safest to keep away from the edge, p. 29. But prudery to be avoided, x>> 29. IGNORING DISCOURTESY, p. 30. Uow to treat mlgar stories, p. 80. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONa What should the astronomer have said * (page 14). What do you think of the speakers in the incidents mentioned on page 18 ? How should AdolphuH (page 25) have begun the conversation ? What do you think of this remark of Emerson's ? *' Tis not a compli- ment but a di.sparagement to consult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, whenever he appears, con- siderately to turn the couveftatiou to the bantling he is known to fondle. CHAPTER III. GOSSIP. The proper Mtndy of mankind \n man.— Pors. Interest In Our Neighbors. — Xo subject is more fertile than the doings and characters of our neighbors. Few objects of observation are so varying, so personally interesting. Daily circumstances keep revealing new feat- ures, and dim or deepen impressions already formed. A pleasant nod, a rude reply, a becoming gown, a boisterous laugh, ill-temper toward a child, attention to the aged — trifles like these are constantly noted and accumulated to make up our final estimate of the individual. It is not that we pry into secrets. Xo one is more to be pitied than one so empty of mind that one's curiosity must be fed by impertinent watchfulness and inquiry about one's neigh - boi« ; but without disposition of this kind we cannot fail to keep learning of those about us from what they tell us of themselves, and from what thrusts itself upon our ob- servation. That we should consider these indications, compare them, and gradually form convictions as to our neighbors' characters is inevitable. If we do so charitably, unbiassed by envy or prejudice or whim, we are wiser and happier for it. That we should compare and discuss these impres- sions of a new neigrhbor with tried and trusted friends — still charitably, without envy, seeking simply to know our neighbor as he is — is natural and jjesirable. A rule that Chap. Jil.j To W lio.M. AND H<»\V. WHEX, AND WHliUE. 33 forbado iis tu dirtc-nss those 5ilK)iit us, or to discriminate in discussing them, would be severe and unwise. The Scandal-Monger. — But on no subject does it more become us to —Beware Of whom yoo speak, to whom you apeak, and how, and when, and where. For no character is more detestable than his who delights to speak evil of his neighbors in any of the degrees of gossip, babbler, scandal-monger. There are people who covet no higher triumph than to be the first to tell of somebody's misfortune or crime. Like flies that fasten only upon putrid meat, they remember notliing of the vir- tues of their neighbors, but let slip no single item from the catalogue of their vices. To judge from their reports of their companions, one would think they had never as- sociated with a human being w^orthy of respect. It is within the power of every young man to make and keep a resolution never to utter a word directly or indirectly uncompli- mentary to any one. If such young persons should be offered a fortune dejiendcnt ujjon success in this, how eaniestly would they guard every uttemnce. And yet no fortune would be of such real benefit to any youth oh a luart pure and free from all cai-piug and censure. — Hervfi'. ONving to a strange dflusion, very few are really aware of their ovm habit of indulgence in this vice, though they readily remark it in others. Indeed, the worst offenders would be amazed should thoy learn the truth. If one lias any doubt about it let him set down thrice a day in a blank-book, as nearly as one can recall it, every word which one has said of anybody which one would not repeat to his face or have said of one's self. If one occasionally re- \new8 the volume one will, in all probability, be induced to reform the habit. — Art of CmiverscUion. Truth Often a Libel.— Detractors often excuse themselves by asserting that they disseminate only facts. 34 GOSSIP. [Part II. Even if this were true it would not excuse them. It is a maxim of English law that the greater the truth the greater is the libel. To tell what is strictly tme to the injury of another is frequently as criminal as to tell what is false to his injury. It may be the same both as to the motive that actuated it and the results which eventually follow. It is oftener worse than better in every respect. If one circulates what is wholly false the chances are that the slan< der will soon be detected and the person ^-ilified emerge from the cloud with brighter honors than ever ; whereas if we tell of a real misdeed of another he may never have the boldness to deny it, so that it will go on circulating and gaining belief all his days, and perhaps long after he is dead. It will exert a secret yet blighting influence on his reputation and move on before him like some im- seen hand, closing in his face every door to usefulness. No matter that he has repented of his transgression, and has radically re- formed ; no matter that he is now entitled to the highest admira- tion of mankind, some detractor has wliispered a word that can never be recalled — a word which, most likely, represented him to be what he is not now, if not worse than he ever was. Yet every- body boldly and industriously circulates the report because, as he says, it is true. — Hebvey. Exposure Sometimes Necessary. — Exposure of wrong-doing is sometimes an imperative duty. The good of the State, of the community, at least of individ- uals, may be imperilled by a mask of hypocrisy which only we can or have courage to remove. But we should be sure that our motive for interfering is really the welfare of others, and not the gratification of our own envy or fond- ness for gossip. We have no occasion to interfere with the good name of another unless we are convinced that he is making use of it to accomplish some evil purpose. A point of special difficulty arises when a person whose guilty secrets we know, and we alone, is injuring us before the public by repeating tales to our injury which an un- Chap. III.] LIBEL SELDOM TRUTH. 85 covering by iis of his real character would deprive of harmful ness. Under these circumstances it is sometimes necessary to speak, and to speak severely. But as a gen- eral rule, time and character are the surest vindicators. The very fact that we are aggrieved prejudices the public against our story, and often makes it wiser for us to suffer in silence. The greatest and most numerous wrongs are those which the strong commit against the weak in circumstances where none but the parties are witnesses to the oflfence, and in cases in which, from the imperfections of human law, redress is not to be obtained. The wise suppress such grief in their own hearts, considering that so- ciety takes no pleasure in hearing individual grievances. Though it is extremely difficult to hush injured justice, as she laments bit- terly within us, we can seldom speak in our own defence except at the cost of dignity, or probity, or candor. The aggressor who does not trouble others with arguments in his own defence is bet- ter received in society than the aggrieved who oppresses them with the story of liis wrongs, by rei)eating which he is sure to suffer additional wrong from their reviews of the case ; he be- comes like a column wliich, having once begun to settle upon its treacherous pedestal, is pressed still lower by bringing down upon its capital a mass it did not before support. "We had bet- ter bear in silence the wrongs we suffer than by our groanings wake up a crowd of sormisers who will, in all likelihood, take sides against us. When, however, it becomes our duty, as it sometimes does, to declare what is discreditable to anotlier, wo must strictly limit ourselves to the fact, carefully keeping clear of all comments, in- ferences, and opinions. The witness may not assume the task uf the advocate or of the judge. — Hervey. Libel Seldom Truth.— But libel is seldom truth. "'Hie originator only suspects Mr. Such-a-one has done the deed, or hopes he did it not ; the second person be- lieves it, or thinks it would be in keeping with his known 36 GOSSIP. [Part II. cliaracter to do it ; a third has no doubt about it ; a fourth offers to make oath that he is worse tlian at first sus- pected. Thus does it go on increasing both in enormity and credibility. 'Behold how great a matter a little tire kindleth : ' " Two hooMt trmrtwnwi meeting in the Strand, One tuok the other briddj by the hand ; • Hark ye," nakl he, '* tis ua odd rtorj- thU, Abriscd at that ; Wh( re I come from it i« the common chat ; Bnt von Khali henr : an odd afFair indeed t And that it happened they lure all ngraed. Not to detain yon from a thing ao strange, A gentleman, that Uvea not far from 'Change, Thi« week, in short, as all the alley knows. Taking a poke, has thrown up three black crown** " ImiwsKible ! "— *' Nay, but it'*« really true, I had it from good hand«^ and so nviy yon.'^ " Prom whoiw. I pray f" 80 having named the man. Straight to inqnire his rorioDs ctimrade ran. *' Sir, did you tell " — relating the affair — " Yes, sir. I did ; and if it's worth your care. Ask Mr. Soch-a-one, he told it me. But, by the by, *twa« two black crows not three.** RenolTed to trace so wondrous an events Whip to the third the virtuoso went, " Sir"— and so forth—' Why. yes : the thing's a fact. Though, in regani to number not exact ; It was not two black crows, 'twas only one ; The truth of that you may depend upon. The gentleman himself told me the case." " Where may I find him ? "— " Why, in snch a place.** Away he goes, and, having found him out — " Sir. be so good as to resolve a doubt," Then, to his lart informant, he referred. And begged to know if tme what he had heard. •* Did yon. sir, throw up a block crow ? "• " Not 1 1 ** " Bless nic I how people propagate a lie ! Black crows hare been thrown np. three, two, and one. And here I find at last all comes to none ! Did yon say nothing of a crow at all ? " " Crow — crow— perhaps I might, now I recall The matter over.'' *' And pray, sir, what was't?** *' Why. I was horrid sick, and, at the last, I did throw up, anil t<»ld my neighbor so. Something that was as black, "bir, as a crow.** Chap. III.] MEAN SELF-INGRATIATION. 37 Calumny May Start from Raillery.— >* Calumny many times originates in raillery and extravaganza. Loose- tongued people say the worst things of the best men for the sake of raising a laugh at the incongruity ; else they invent strange stories concerning some distinguished per- son, and tell them to the unsuspecting in order to amuse themselves with their credulity. These experiments often turn out more serious results than were at first anticipated. These sayings are believed and spread till they are gener- ally received as true, or till the gay babblers who started them are convicted of libel. ' As a madman who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor, and saith, * Am not I in sport ? ' " Another type of woman frequently encountered in society is the plausible, specious, but selfishly insincere one, designated by those who know her best as a thorough humbug. Although not intending to be directly uutrathful, she is very far from being ac- curate, and it is even doubtful if she endeavors to bend her steps in that direction. Strangers consider her delightful until they have known her long enough to discover that she is dangerous, and tliat the pleasant things she says to them she has an un- pleasant habit of unsaying of them. Thus, wishing to ingratiate herself, she would say : " How rery handaome 3-onr danRhter looks toniffht ; how bpautifuDy she in d r o w e d ; ** •nd more in th« hutm strain ; while of the «me young lady 8hc would remark, " I cannot any that I admire Mim D., and how over-dreMied she is ; with her mother'n Hmall income, it in abaard the money npeot on that girl's dreaa ; she actually wore velvet the other night much too heavy for her,** and eo on ; or abe would perhapa nay to aome other member of the family : *' I hear yon are not goinc to atey with your brother and hia wife in Scotland thia autumn ; I thoogbt yon want evary year : '* to which her friend, not having been invited, would reply briefly, ** We oaoally do eUy with them in Septomber, but they hava not aaked ua thU year.** " I aboold think yoo found it rather dull there,** would be the aympathelio rejoindar. " Anjoob ao bright and clever aa you are muat feel the want of congenial oompantoaahip ; aome people, I know, consider your aiater-ln-law rather heavy to get along with.** " She Im very qniei and reanrad, e^MwiaUy with people whom aha doea not know rtrj well." mljfht be the reply. " 80 I have heard ; but then your brother is so very genial and agreeable that if aba 38 GOSSIP. [Pabt II toiMftaTer]rgoo4bfaiw of her friend, and enacting some madh part, and carrying on some such dlalogoa aa the f oUowlnfc : " What s pity it fai your idstei^ln-law doeo not oare to stay with you at your beaatifal place in Scotland. I ean*t understand how she can poislbly And it daU there.** *' Did she tdl yon she found ItdoD with nsf ** would be the abrupt query. " She always appeared to be very pleased to come to us.** " I understood her to aay that nothing could be fo dnil as it wan. She gave me the Impressioo that die thought you did not pay her snfBcient attention when she was np in Scotland with yon ; In fact» that you did nothing to amuse her, bnt I dare Ray she did not mean it. She Is a little jealous prob^dy of your inflnenoe over her brother ; she cannot hdp seeing how he naturally defers to you in everything.** *• I cannot fonrive her calling it dull with ns." remarks the aggrieved sisterin law ; ** she has been w> mnch with us since her marriage ; but I certainly shall not ask her so often in future, if that is her opinion.** • ** Oh, I should not take any notice of tiiis sort of thing if I wem yon. People of her volatile temperament say a great d«)al more than they mean ; in fact, many things which it Is 80 mnch wiser not to mnember ; " and by this nrabignoas way of speaking she con- voys the idea that far more renuiins to be told, bnt which is discreetly withheld. The lever on which this distorting principle is worked by theee ladies is not thedown right intention of maligning and misrepreeenting s friend or acquaintance, but is th selfish desire of talking themselves into favor at another's expense ; and displacing th,i» other, and usurping the vacant place by mmnlating an interest and strong liking, is the easiest way of accomplishing this object. Thus they conrinne to hnmbng their friends and acqaaintances, and establish many fends in many families, and create no little mischief one way and another, but are tolerated in a certain degree by some people who think it rather pleasant than not to be hnmbnggrd when thoronerhly on their pnard acainst the n.lministrator of the dose ; and by others, because, rather afraid of what may be said of themselves, thoy think it wisest to stand well with the hnmbng ; while others, again, have yet to learn of what these wily ones are capable and the worth of their agreeable speeches.— Soc«/y Small Talk. ( iiAi III.] THE POET ROGERS. od Acerbity of Tongue a Temptation. — Ill-nat- ured remarks are the sorest teiuptatioii young conveners encounter. Human nature is so weak, so common is the disposition to feel better content with ourselves if others are brought down to our level, that tiie satirist and the scandal-monger are usually listened to. This attention they receive as complacently as though it were a compli- ment paid to their wit. But the real fact is that tlie lis- teners, though they are mean enough to like to have the bitter things said, are too timid to say them ; so, by their attention, they reward the back-biter as the monkey might reward the cat which burned its paws in pulling from the fire the chestnuts the monkey wanted but was afraid to reach for. "When I was young," said Rogers, **I found that no one would listen to my civil speeches because I haul a very small voice ; so I began to say ill-natured things, and then people began to at- tend me." •' Is that the contents you are looking at ? " asked an anxious author, who saw Rogers's eye fixed on the early pages of a work just presented to him. *' No," replied the i>oct, jwinting to the list of subscribers, ** at the inting out its dangers, or to clear themselves of a charge by showing where the blame ought to lie ; but what begins with gold often ends with clay. It is an inclination of the human heart to hate those whom it has injured. . . . Solomon says, "A lyinc^ tongue liateth those that are af- flicted by it."' Even when any one reports what is true, if he Chap. Iir.l SHARP TONGUES MAKE HARD HEARTS. 43 knows he has douo it impnidently as to maimer, or uncharitably as to motive, or, at any rate, to the tmnecessary injuiy of another, he can hardly help regai'ding the injured i)erson with unhappy feelings. Self-accusation follows eveiy recollection of the pei*son concerning whom he has so sjxjken, and he no longer finds pleas- ure in the company of one the very sight of whom brings to mind the wrong he has done him. — Hervet. Dean Swift says : " They have never foi^ven us the injury they did us." Acerbity Becomes Morbid. — The ability to say severe and cutting things, if cultivated into habit, becomes a disease, often leading even great men to strive rather that their remarks be caustic tlian tliat they be true. It most liave been from what Mr. De Quiucey happily calls the overmastering spirit of stating everything "in a spirit of amplifi- cation, with a view to the wonder only of the reader," that he was induced to 8j)eak as he has spoken of numerous literary celebri- ties. "Hazlitt had read nothing;" "Rousseau, like William Wordsworth, had read at the outside twelve volumes octavo in his whole lifetime;" and Porson's "knowledge of English was so limited that his entire cargo might have been embarked on board a walnut -shell on the bosom of a slop-basin, and insured for three half-i)ence." Edmund Burke " was the most double-minded i>er- 8on in the world," and Lindley Murray, the American, is called *' an imbecile stranger." Dr. Johnson " hati studied nothing," and Boileau and Addison were "neither of them accomplished in scholarship." — Fftzedward Hall. Mark the coai-seness into which Sydney Smith could degener- ate : " He is of the utilitarian school. That man is so hard you might drive a broad-wheeled wagon over him and it would make no impression ; if you were to bore holes in him with a gimlet I am convinced saw-dust would come out of him. That school treat mankind as if they were mere machines ; the feelings or affections never enter into their calculations. If everything is to be sacri- ficed to utility, why do you bury your grandmother at all ? "VNTiy don't yon cut her into small pieces at once, and make portable soup of her?** TOPICAL ANALYSIS. INTBREST IN OUR NEIGHBORS, p, 82. THE SCANDAL-MONGER, p 38. Truth ofUn a lib«l, p. 8;i. Exposure sometimes necessarj, p. 34. Libel seldom truth, p. S.*). Exaggeration, p. 85. 'Hie three black crows, p. 36. Calumnj from railU ry. p. 37. Meaii wlf "U p. U7. ACERBITY OF 1 A TKMITATION, p. 89. FAMILY BirK-r.l;i\..-, j, .40 Endeariii:: ;• '.u,- in ]-u- ','■.'■. \> I'l. OFF^V^" ' lA.MIi lAKirV, p 41. IM ) 1 I A N < ; I A(iE .OX CHARACTER, p. 42. :r..„.^. .v,;ijiiu.- iiiik. li:ireak trutli— one to speak and another to hear." Do you agree with him, and why f What do you think of the following extract from J'hf Century? **Of all the sources of bad manners, we know of none so prolific and pernicious as the license of familiarity. There is no one among our readers, we presume, who has not known a village or a neighlK>rhooes, and asswiations. A very beautiful woman who believes that she has excited a deep admiratiou for some quality other than her beauty — esijecially if it be one for which the world gives her little credit — is always gratilded. — Art of Conversation. It should be remembered that no woman ever fully foregoes her claims to personal attractiveness. ♦' How ehaiTuing Miss Pulchra is looking to-night,'* remarks Mr. Juvenis to his hostess. "Yes," replies the lady with a sigh, " and none can admire her more than those who like myself have no pretensions to beauty." '* All ! " replies Mr. Juvenis, sympathizingly, " but one so men- tally gifted as yourself can well afford to dispense with charms of )>er8on." And then he wonders why he gets no more invitations to that house. After all said on the subject, it is certain that to an intelligent and cultivated mind there are few women of intelligence entirely devoid of i>ersonal attractions ; and almost every human being, though he or she may have even relinquished all claim to be beau- tiful, still clings to the veiy last to a faith in a certain " expres- sion," which, if proi)erly appreciated, must raise the whole per- sonality to admiration. And instances are not imfrequent in which women who were either beautiful, piquant, pleasing, or "sympa- thetic," have heard so little of the language of admiration that the first report of a really gonial compliment i)aid them thrilled through the heart like fire. This is sometimes the case w hen a sister has attracted all the admiration. There are again instances in which a lady may have a good enough opinion of hci-self and yet be quite inca])able of ap])reciat- ing the i)eculiar or real reason why she is admired. I could cite the instance of a lover of art who had a special admiration for the singular face of a statue in the Louvre, and who had the stituige fortune to find it almost identically realized in the features of a young girl who was by no means accustomed to praise of her Ijeauty. Very often {)eculiar associations like this will render cer- tain countenances charming to us, which is the secret, by the way, why ignorant boys and girls, who are without such associations, are extremely critical and couventional in the judgment of per- *^ COMMENDATION. (Part TI. sonal attractionn, while men of wide experience and knowledge are far more generally appreciative and more easily pleased. In short, where we wish to oomplimenti the opportunity to do so with sin- cerity and credit to ounelves is seldom wanting where our tastes are cultivated. — Ari <^ Ckmvenation, It is said that WiUiam Collen Bryant was very loath to condemn the flrst book of a young author. Entering the editorial room one day he found a critic gloating over the flatness of a volume of poems. " Surely there must be some good point about the book,** plead- ed Mr. Bxyant. " Not one,** protested the critic ; *' the book is utterly Htale, flat, and unprofitable." "At any rate,** said Mr. Biyani, handling the volume, ''you might say that the binding is neat, and that the edges are evenly cut** Praise Should be Definite. — To a commence- ment speaker, as lie parsed down tlie aisle, one friend said : '' That was capital, capital ; you have made us all proud of jou." At the close of the exercises another said meditatively : " Tom, your oration was one of the three best, and I think one of the two best." Which comment is Tom likely to remember the longer ? To speak in terms of general commendation often implies no more than good will. To specify and limit shows at- tention and discrimination. Those who intend really to praise another should not speak of him in the language of hyperbole. They run the hazard of inflam- ing the envy or the jealousy of their hearers, who are tempted to run him down as far below the merited mark as he was raised above it. It is more judicious to set some bounds to our admiration and mention some fault which may be justly imputed to him, so we shall set off his ^-i^tues to better advantage, by way of shading or of contrast, and hold out to others no temptation to attack his im- perfections. — Hervey. Cua:\ IV.] HOW TO BESTOW PRAISE 49 Few compliments bear more Ktamp of the genuine than the Latin verses that Adilison has thus translated : TO A CAPRICIOUS FRIEND. In all thy huuioiii, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt nuh a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast HO much mirth and wit and spleen about thee, There is no livine with thee nor wirlinut thte. Praise Should Come from Those Qualified to Bestow It. — " We cannot properly praise a work in art, science, or literature, unless we possess a tolerable knowledge of the subject. A person who is not compe- tent to judge of a work is permitted to say that a treatise, or sermon, or painting, or statue, pleases him, or tell how it strikes his mind ; but for him to declare, in a decisive tone, liis opinion of such a work is to incur the con- tempt or the derision of adepts. Men of sense are not proud of laudations tliat do not come from equals or superiors." Do not go oflf into raptures at the first sight of a work of nature or of art unless you mean to show your enthusiasm rather than your taste. You had l)etter keep silence till you have formed some opinion. While Sir Joshua Reynolds was at Rome studying the works of Itapliuel in the Vatican he obsen-ed that most strangera who came to soo them began to pmise tliem the moment their eyes fell uix>n them, whereas he was rather dita))pointed in them at first, and did not begin to appreciate them till he had made them the objects of i)rotracted study. Minds of sensitive and poetic mould are at first sight awed when they contemjjlate natural scen- ery of great Wauty, grandeur, or sublimity ; while ])ersons of less taste are talkative, and are apt to give the objects before them any- thing but their right names. — Hebvky. A young lady who was askeil if she had seen Niagara replied that she never had ; but lest this should seen) a refle<*tion ni>on the cataract she hasten«<) *> "Id that she lia<,l heard it highly spoken of. 50 COMMENDATION. [Part II. Praise Should be Given Incidentally and Unobtrusively. -Tu hurl an unexjHicted cuinpliment often pruiiures eiubarrasfiinent. rersons uiifaiiiiliar with tlie world, or unskilled in ounversatiou, often express and usually feel a dislike for public praise, because they fiJhl themselves unable to make adroit reply, and are conse- quently more vexed to be embarrassed than gratified to be complimented. Few have the frank self-pofiseesion of the young woman who said in reply to an overwhelming compliment from a German offi- cer, " Really, general, we American girls are so nnused to compli- ments that we never have anything to reply; we only giggle.** A compliment is most grateful when it comes from one who seems unconscious that he is bestowing it. An ad- miring glance, a disposition to linger near one, close atten- tion when one is speaking, appeal to one^s judgment and deference to one's decisions — all these silent manifesta- tions of respect carry weight that words can hardly add to. The slightest turn of a reply may convey a delicate compliment, as where one, instead of congratulating a friend upon securing a position, expresses his pleasure that the iwsition is to be so well filled. To one who was humbly grateful for an office bestowed, Louis XIV. replied : " Had I known a more deserving person I would not have selected him." By omitting the not in this reply Ma- thews (in The Great Conversers, page 25), sjwils the story, making the monarch ileclare that he knows no jjerson more deser\-ing. As spoken, the compliment only implied this, and was thus grace- ful instead of fulsome. Campbell tells the same story, but locates it in England. To the question, "Are you engaged fortius dance?" some fool- ish maidens reply that they do not think they are engaged, at the same time being thoroughly aware that they are not, and the young Chap. IV.] WHERE TO BESTOW PRAISE. 51 men arc also aware that the maidens are finessing and avei'se to making the direct admission that they are in want of partners. A young lady with tact and aplnijib escapes this dilemma V)y replying with great readiness to the question, * * I am very glad to say that I am not," which rejoinder is flattering to the young gentleman, giWng him the impression that the young lady could have been engaged for this dance had she so pleased, but that she greatly preferred waiting for the chance of his asking her to dance. Sho may or may not liave been actuated by this hope, but if by some expression of pleasure at not being engaged for the dance which is at the moment asked for she puts her partner on good terms with herself and himself it argues well for her success in the ball-room. —Society Small Talk. Attention to the Neglected. — Compliments are especially grateful to those accustomed to be somewhat neglected. The snob is never more offensive than when in company be hastens to show his intimacy with the lead- ing persons })resent. The gentleman is never more to be envied than when, by choosing the society of those whom others have passed by, he shows that he has no apprehen- sion of being, like a silk hat, distinguishable only by the l)er6on to wliom he is attached. The root of all exclusiveness lies not only in pride, but in f«'a •. It is a sign not only of selfishness, but of weakness and insecurily. —Tfte Spectator. A word of kindness or acknowledgment, or a single glance cf approbation, might have changed Esmond's oinnion of the greali man (the Duke of Marlborough); and instead of a satire, which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that the humble historian might have taken the other side of panegyric '? We have V)ut to cliange the point of view and the greatest action looks mean ; as wo turn a pcr8i>o(>tive glass and a giant api)ear8 a pigmy. You may dos<'ri1)o, but who can tell whether your sight is clear of not, or your means of information accurate ? Hail the great man wiid but a word of kindness to the small one (as he would hiuo 8tepi>ed out of his way to shake hands with Loz- 53^ COMMENDATION. [Part II anu in imgs and sores, if he thought Lazarus could have been ol any senrioe to him), no doubt Esmond wouhl have fought for him with pen and sword to the utmost of liis might ; but my lord lion did not want mnstinions suddenly of value in the eyes of your fellow, that you lull to rest the spirit of doubt which rises within you, and you resolve to believe your new friend an exceed- ingly i>olished tuid veiy delightful man. —Home Journal. Chap. IV.] METHODS OF BESTOWING PRAISE. 53 But there is no resentment more bitter than one feels on being convinced that what one had received as genuine admiration was but a skilful semblance, fabricated per- haps with a sneering contempt for the weakness that could be cajoled by it. To this danger the indiscriminate flatterer is constantly exposed. Each of a dozen acquaintances yields ear to his adulation and trusts him as an appreciative friend ; but when a few of the dozen get together and compare notes, their chagrin at being deceived is transformed into resent- ment against the deceiver, the more bitter from recogni- tion of their own blindness. The Safest Praise is Quotation. — No form of commendation is more unobjectionable than the repeti- tion to a person of pleasant remarks others have made about him. If I tell John that James says he shall never forget John's kind- ness to him in sickness, John is trebly gratified : first, that James is appreciative, which James may have been too bashful to say di- rectly ; second, that James has spoken well of him to others ; and finally, that I show my good will by repeating what James has said. As the busy-body creates dissensions by tattling unkind words, so he that will take {rnins to remember and to repeat the happy things his friends say of one another brings those about him into amity and goine, taking her hand, " to oondnct perfection to the sweet peas." To Ck)nd^', afflicted with gont, who apologized for mounting the stairs slowly on his return as victor from the battle of Beuef, Louis XIV. replied, ''Do not hurry, cousin; no one so loaded with laurels could come more quickly." At this court even a protest was so uttered as to confirm the obnoxious judgment while it diverted it. Annoyed at the perti- nacity of an officer, the king exclaimed : " That gentleman is the most troublesome officer in the whole army." "Your majesty's enemies have often said so," was the reply. " Will madam permit me to take her portrait in profile ? " asks a French painter of a patron who had the misfortune to be cross- eyed ; " there is a shyness about one of her ladyship*s eyes that is as difficult in art as it is fa.scinating in nature." Bantering Compliments. — Among those quick of wit and L^peecli compliments often pass into banter, a humorous exaggeration as far removed from flattery as from ill-nature. Thus in the ball-room a gentleman remarks : " I envy that butterfly perched so daintily on your hair, close to that shell-like ear. What secrets would I not whisper were I so near. Happy butterfly ! " The rejoinder might be made in the same spirit of fun : " The butterfly is not so happy as you think ; I shut it up in a velvet case when I go home, for fear of losing it. Now, one could not shut you up, and you would not like it if one could." Or the retort might be, ' ' Unlike you, my butterfly has no feeling, so it does not appreciate its happiness, which is, I believe, charac- teristic of butterflies ; i^ou ought to know something about it." Here the answer might be : "You are kind enough to anticipate my future. I have not found my wings as yet ; I am still in a chrssalis state." A lady desirous of ha\-in*:!j the last word mij?ht be tempted to say : " Then you ai'e safer to hold, if not so pretty to keep ; so I think Chap. IV.] HOW TO RECEIVE COMPLIMENTS. 55 on the whole yon had better retain your chrysalis state for the l)resent." — Society/ Small Talk. Small talk like this is possible only when both persons have good sense and ready humor. 'No blander could be more mortifying than to reply seriously to a compliment of this sort ; and it is a mistake to press such compliments upon those so matter-of-fact or so slow of wit as to be un- able either to reply to them or to understand them. Receiving Compliments. — Except from an older or a trusted companion, the safest way to receive compli- ments, however genuine, is to turn them lightly, or to treat them as banter or good-natured exaggeration. A French writer recommends that when praised by another one seem to be inattentive, or in a reverie. This is as mde as it is absurd, and seems to say, "Go on with your compUments ; I en- joy them too much to interrupt you." Two gentlemen, occupying similar jx)sitions, were introduced to the same audience, in speeches equally laudatory. One began his remarks by expressing the \nsh that these commendations had been reserved for the close of his discourse, when it might be bet- ter judged whether they were deserved — an introduction meant to be modest, but really implying that the si>eaker thought it quite l)ossible they would prove to have been deserved. The other laughingly waved ofT the compliments with his hand, remarking that he used to have the chairman for a pupil, and though, on the whole, he was proud of him, he was sorry to see that the boy's early habit of exaggeration was not yet outgrown. *• But of course you all know him well enough to make duo allow- ance," he continued, and then went on with liis address, already secnze of the good-will of his audience. REPROOF. Occasion Less Frequent than for Compli- ment. — The true friend finds reproof sometimes neces- sary, but he will assure himself that it is necessary, antl he 66 REPROOF. [Pakt II. will convey it with all the disci-etion and delicacy of which he is capable. Young people usually have to learn by experience that when their friends exhibit peculiarities the probability is that the peculiarities have reasons which, though perhaps concealed, are entirely adequate. It is in presumptuous- ly meddling with other people's affairs that fools of tenest rush in where angels fear to tread. The late Professor Skoda, one of Vienna's greatest snrgeons, had nntil a year or two before his death worn garments of a moRt un- fashionable cut; the trousers were baggy, and the coats most ingeniously ill fitting. His friends often joked with him about the matter, and Skoda bore their ridicule good-naturedlj, without making any explanation. One day a friend observed that he was for a wonder clothed in well-fitting garments of the latest cut. **This is an unhoi>ed-for pleasure,*' he cried, •• to see you for once properly dressed.*' ** Say no more;** said the surgeon gravely, ** he who has made my clothing for all the years you have known me did not, it is true, give it a very fashionable shape. But he let me have it long before I achieved success ; and he never pressed me for money when he suspected that I was pressed for it myself. How would you do, my friend — leave such a man for one who cut clothing of a differ- ent shape ? " " But why, then, do you leave him now? " " He is dead," repUed Skoda. Reproof Wlay be Disguised. — The emperor Ad- rian, seeins: a chief officer whom he knew to be envious and malignant turn his back to desert him in battle, stopped him and said affably, '* You are going wrong, I perceive ; this is your way." The officer turned his horse as if it had been a simple mistake of his, and not a pre- meditated flight. Often reproof may be effectually conveyed by good- natured ridicule or exaggerated imitation. " Are your Chap. IV.] HOW TO CONVEY REPROOF. 67 apples no larger than that in this country ? " asked an Eng- lishman, pointing to the pumpkins on a market-man's stand. " Apples," replied the market-man, with great contempt ; " do you call them little things apples ? Them's huckleberries." It happened in a New Hampshire town that a young native after fteveral years of knocking about returned to his home. There was a gathering round the stove in the village store that winter evening, and he was listened to with open-mouthed wonder as he related his experiences. But there was one in the company who sat apart, smoked his pipe in silence, and gave no sign of either interest or astonishment. At last one of the party, nettled by his apathy, turned to him and said : " What's the matter with you? You don't seem to warm up a bit." "No," he replied, slowly, removing his pipe from his mouth, " I'm a Uar myself." — Boston Cultivator. But where given directly it should be open and manly. "If I must suffer," said the old philosopher, "I would rather it should be from the paw of a lion than from the hoof of an ass." Sometimes circumstances seem to warrant somewhat vigorous treatment. "What would you do if yon were I and I were you ? " tenderly inquired a swell of a young woman whom he had insisted upon es- corting home from church. " Well," she replied, '* if I were you I should throw away that vile cigarette, cut up my cane for fire- wood, wear my watch underneath my coat, and stay at home nights to pray for brains." The walk was finished in silence, and it is presumed that for once in his life the young man thought hard. — Hackenmtck Republican. Reproof Should be Private.— When Socrates ropn»v('(l I*l:ito at a foast, Plato replied that it had been better to tell him of his fault in private, for to mention it in public was an impropriety. S()crate8 answ^ered : " And so it is for you publicly to condemn that impropriety." 58 REPROOI*. [Part IL Commendation Should Accompany Re- proof. — It .should be niaiiitest t^ut we disapprove not the mail but this particular fault iu the man, and the more because we iiud so much else iu the man to like. Thus given, reproof becomes a compliment, for unless we felt a special interest in the nffcuder we should not di.sturh our- selves to correct him. The second class of old people nr. n't iin < lotic ; they are rather hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an amnsed and critical attention. To have this sort of intercourse to perfection I think we mnst go to old ladies. Women are l>etter hearers than men, to l)egin with ; they learn, I fear with angnish, to boar with the tedious and infantile \-anity of the other sex ; and wc will take more from a woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting comment. Biting comment is the cluef part, whether for profit or amuse- ment, in this business. If the old lady that I liavo in my eye is a ver}' caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, is in abso- lute command, whether for silence or attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please, even sUghtly, you will be hHtened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the vantage ground of age, to deal these stimning corrections among the coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of \*-it ; it is administered as a compliment — if you had not i)leased, you would not have been censured ; it is a personal affair — a hyphen — a trait (Tunion, be- tween you and your censor ; age's philandering, for her pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very much of a fool ; but he must be a j^erfect Malvolio, sick with self-love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The correction of silence is what kills ; when you know you have tmnsgressed, and your friend says nothiuf?, and avoids your eye. If a man were made of gutta-poreha his heai-t would quail at such a moment. But when the word is out, the worst is over ; and a fellow with Chap. IV. ] HOW TO CONVEY REPROOF. 59 any good humor at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism, even' bare place on his houI hit to the quick ^sith a shrewd missile, aiid reapi»ear, as if after a dive, tingliug with a fine moral reaction— and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a rejxitition of the discipline. — Cornhill Magazine. Faults Should be Mentioned One at a Time. — " We ought to beware of reminding another of too many faults at one time. Tliere are few who can bear accusa- tion upon accusation. It is wisest first to suggest amend- ment in one particular, and then wait to see whether the hint is heeded ; if not, we can hardly hope that farther admonition will be." Qneen Caroline pressed Bishop Bunkle to tell her of her faults. "If it so please your majesty," said he, " I will tell you of one. It is to be lamented that you talk so nmch with the king during divine service." " Thank yon, my lord bishop," said the queen ; •*now tell me another of my faults." " That I will do with great pleasure," said he, " when you have corrected the one I have just mentioned. "— Heu^-ey. The Command of Friendiy Solicitude. — Finally, reproof should be tlie command of friendly solici- tude. As the offspring of vanity, of censoriousness, of brutality, of desire to trample on another's feelings and wateh his wri things — it is detestable. " Many coarse and curt-tongued people who boast themselves honest, are base mongrels generated Ixjtween the knave and the fool." It la MtonishitiK how verj many people tliere are who, aeetninKly unable to draw a line be t ween dMeption and ntioenoe, commonly aaeodate indnoerity with ooartesy, bliintaew with honeaty, aa though the attempt to make thingi pleasant must neconarily invulve deoeit« aa if there were a certain incompatibili^ between tmthfnlncoa and oon- Mkleratiun for the fmlingN of other*. How often do wc hear tho reouu-k, "Oh, ia a \cry jroocl fellow, but I don't quite trurt him, he'« too civil by half," or " You mnrt not mind '* rough manner, it** only his honetit, outspoken way ; he cnnnot help naying what he thinks.** And so, on the etrength of a repntation for honesty, the plain, blunt man MMera at or ignores the polinh which prevents unpleasant friction, and expects to be allowed toeltiow his way thnuiKh lift*, i riiliii^' himself u|ion the abrupt utterance of un- pleasant truths, diaconccrtiug some pcoplv, irritating and vexing others, and, by way of fiO REPROOF. [Part II. I own ladivkhMUtgr, treading wiihoitt oompimotkNi apon his nei^ibor's flaeM ftding*, and oftentiiiiM loaTing hU heavy footprinU opon hearU that are tandflr, Md, vr ■orrowfnl. Pcnons of Mroog wOl and ■troof opiniouii are, perhaps, the moat prone to this tptcim of aelf aawrtion, batng mmeh gtwn to meawirteg and jodging evarything by th«ir own fixed Ideaa, and to aboving an nBdi^gaiied oontempt for thoae who diffv from tham; bat ao far tnm a blunt, dlaoonrtaooa, fSaaU^flndlng apirit, with a keen eye for Uem- ^haa and dafaola, and a doll apprahanalon of merit, being in any wnj deairable, it only |MroT«a a man wanting in one of tho moat neoiwaary of aoeial Tirtnea, ria. : aympathy. In arefy dlaooortaona not he aaya pnoUoaliy, ** Tour oomfort and oonvenienoe are of no importanoe to ma, yon are a peraon of no conaaqnence whatever," and naturally under It ia aronaed, good-wiU Taniahea» and affection melta away.— When Mr. BmorMn^a cela et ial hlde^nd aoek waa over, and the entnmoed an d l e ace wen reluctantly going down the aiale, a venrrahleold tmatee of the college, whoae bean- ttfnl wlUte head waa ita crown o( glory for many yean, wliiapered to me with a maile and half a nigh : " Timea have changed I It i« just twenty yoan ago dnoe we had him hare laat to addrceA thla mdm literaiy aodety. When lie had flniahed, the preaident, as waa the cuatom, called upon the clergyman to oooclade the aervioe with prayer. Bev. Mr. , of W , in thia State, atapped intu the pulpit which Mr. Emeraon had just Tuoated and uttered a very remarlcabte prayer, of whidi I can ramamber only one aen- laooa exactly : * We beeeedi thee, O Lord, to deliver na from ever hearing any more anch tra na o and ent nonaenae aa we liave juat liat e ned to from thia aacred deak.' ^ ''And what did Mr. Bmeraon aty ? ** ** Nothing— oh, yea ; after tho benediction he aaked of his next neighbor tlie name of the oOoiating dergyman, and, when falterfngly anawered. with gentte aimplidty remarked: *He aaema a rvj oonedentkma, plain-«q)oken man,' and went on hia peaoeful wmj.'"—AaamHe Monikig. The following anecdote of the founder of Methodism hai% we believe, never been pub- lished. It reachea ua from a tmatworthy aoorcc, and it iUuatratea in a remaricable man- ner the mingled piety and tact cf that eminent man. Although Wesley, like the Apoetles, found that his preaching did not greatly affect the mighty or the noble, still he numbered some families of good poeiticm among his fol- lowera. It was at the house of one of theae that the incident here recorded took place. Wealqr had been preaching, and a daughter of a neighboring gentleman, a girl re- markable for lier beauty, had been profonndly impressed by his exhortations. After the sermon Wesley wasinvitctl to the gentleman's boose to Inncheon, and with himself one of his preachers was entertained. This preacher, like many of thn class at that time, was a man at plain manners, and not oonacious of the restraints of good society'. The fair young Methodist sat bobide him at the table, and be noticed that she wore a number of rings. Daring a pauw in the meal the preacher took hold of the young lady's hand, and, raising it in the air, called Wesley's attention to the sparkling jewels. " What do yoa think of this, sir," he said, *' for a Methodist's hand ? " The girl turned crimson. For Wesley, with his known and expressed aversion to finer)', the question was a peculiarly awkward one. But the aged evangelist showed a Uct which Chesterfield might have envied. He looked up with a quiet, benevolent smile, and simply said : " The hand is very beantiful." The girl had expected something very different from a reproof wrapped up in such a felicity of compliment. She had the good sense to say nothing ; but when, a few homrs later, she again appeared in Wesley's presence, the beautiful hand waa stripped of every ornament except those which nature had given.— loruto/t Society. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. CX)MMENDATION. IMPORTANCE OF APPRECIATION, p. 45. PRAISE should be judicious, p. 46. should be definite, p. 48. should come from those qualified to bestow it, p. 49. should be given unobtrusively, p. 50. should be given where most needed, p. 51. should be honest, p. 52. The safest praise is quotation, p. 53. COMPLIMENTS THE HAPPIEST AVENUE OF WIT, p. 53. Bantering compliments, p. 54. How to receive compliments, p. 55. REPROOF. Occasion less frequent, p. 55. Maj be disguised, p. 56. Should be open and mauly, when direct, p. 57. Should be private, p. 57. Accompanied by commendations, p. 58. Only occasional, p. 59. The command of friendly solicitude, p. 59. 8UGGB8TIVB QUESTIONS. What do yoa oonsider most important, and most likely to be useful, praise or reproof ? Do you agree with Sydney Smith (page 128) that the dread of ridicule improves manners ? What had Mr. Juvenis (page 47) better have said ? How may young people (page 47) most quickly " unlearn contempt" ? Would Mr. Bryant's praise (page 48) have pleased the anther ? Do you jostify Plato (page 57) ? fc CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION. In raply to m q a a rt lo n wb«th«r tliwv tad been »nj oonvenntion iit a party from whfcdi he had Jnafc oome, Dr. Johnaon rp|>li»l : *' Nn, sir ; we had $tUk enoufch, but no con- Advantages and Dangers.— Sydney Smith has thus epitomized the advantages and the dangers of argu- ment in conversation : " When two men meet together who love truth, and discuss any difficult i>oint with gooerienced, at least), all the indications which in- fluence the judgment of an acute and practised observer. And hence it has been justly and happily remarked that " he must be an indifferent physician who never takes any step for which he can- not assign a satisfactoiy reason." — Whately. Besides, there is liardly any question so firmly settled that ingenuity will not devise an argument plausible enough to startle one if it come upon one unexpected. A criminal, convicted of the murder of his father and mother, and asked if he had anything to say for himself, merely begged that the judge would have mercy upon a i)oor orphan. An Iowa man, annoyed that a relative would concede no supe- riority in that State over New Hampshire, at last exclaimed, "At least you'll admit tliat Iowa is bigger." *' I don't kn()w about that,'* was the cautious reply ; " maybe it is a little further from end to end, all tluttoned out into a level ; but if you wrinkled it \\\) into mountains six thousand feet high, I guess you wouldn't cover much more floor-sjmce than the old Granite State." Archdeacon Denison was once closely pressed in an uimiinent, but haared tt) make an admission of that imi)ortAnce," replied the archdetvcon, *« till I liave given the sub- ject the maturest consideration. Sometimes it is supi)Osed that they make twenty-two." Perhaps notliing could seem more ho{>eleHs than to argue that revenge was a factor of civilization, and yet it will probably be no 64 DISCUSSION. [Part II. slight task to refute the following plea from a recent number of the PaU MaU GateOe: " In MTag« mxAatj, that la, in vaj aodety where law baa no foroe, from Tezaa to Greenland— re veng* tokea the place of faith, hope, charity, and jnatloe. It la the virtue wiihoot which the aodal orvanlntkm would oeaaa to exiat Trlbea and families could ■oaroely have anrvived if the membem of either aaaociation had good-naturedly abstained from revenging themaelvea. Nothing could have prevented the aoorea of rival families and tribea from extarminattng people who did not reeent an injury. " Now, it ia tapradflat to make a duty which is univerMl too dilBcult of aooompUsh- nMat It would have been difflcolt always to hit upon and slay the man who wan guilty of each particular offence to peraon or property. Barly cnaiom, therefore, permitted re- venge to be taken on any bkwd ralatiooa of the culprit within aeven degreee. A man qieared your grandmothflr baoaaae your nncla had devo u red bia nephew. Your duty was done if yon tortured hia aaoond oooatn to death over a dow fire. Honor and custom were aatisfled for the moment. "This doea not aaem a promialag state of thingt, and yet it was full of the seeds of milder manners. Familiee became interested in preventing even thetr poor relations from ufdng axe or bow too hastily. There was no satisfaction In being apeaeed because some lung-lost unde or cooain, with whom one was not on speaking terms, had indulged him- t>4dt in a man-slaughter. Thus the members of families found it convenient to keep an eye on each other's movements and to give up their culprits to be dealt with by a central authority. Gradually law came into existence, and revenge ceased to be the chief end of The fact is, few people appreciate the difficulty of de- fending an opinion against a skilful opponent ; and those who fail to detect a fallacy, or lose sight of their own main argument, have the annoyance of feeling that though they are right they cannot prove that they are. Sometimes the truth may be established by reducing a fallacious conclusion to a practical absurdity. •* Father," said a Freshman, home on his first vacation, " how- many chickens are there on the table ? " *• Two, my son." ** No, sir, there are three, and I can prove it. There is one, isn't there?" •* Yes, my son." ** And there (pointing to the other) is two, isn't there ? " "Yes, my son." " And one and two make three, don't they ? " " Yes, my son ; what a great thing learning is, to be sure. Well, since there are three chickens there, I will hand this one to your Chap. V.] DIFFICULTY OF DEFENDING AN OPINION. 65 mother, I will take this one myself, and you shall liave the third for your logic." Especially humiliating are the defeats of those who, having listened to a single argument or read a single treat- ise on some subject hitherto uninvestigated by them, sup- pose that they have mastered the subject itself, and in proceeding to make converts happen upon somebody who knows not only this argument and its history, but a dozen that refute it. How such a disputant appears to a man of broad information is thus illustrated in Coleridge's " Table-Talk : " Mr. is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of the day ; yet he went on talking the other evening and making remarks with great earnestness, some of which were palpably irreconcilable with each other. He told me that facts gave birth to and were the ab- solute ground of principles ; to which I said that unless he had a principle of selection he would not have taken notice of those facts on which he grounded his principle. You must have a lan- tern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you could not find them, and if you could you could not aiTange them. "But then," said Mr. , ** t?iat principle of selection came from facts." "To be sure," I replied, "but there must have been again an antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried in imagination backwards forever, but go back as you may you cannot come to a inan without a previous aim or principle." He then asked me what I had to say to " Bacon's Induction." I told him I had a good deal to say, if need were ; but that it was perliajM enough for the occauon to remark that wliat he was very evidently taking for the Baconial /nduction was mere Deduction — a very different thing. When practical demonstration is impracticable, and es- pecially when one begins to feel his position really inse- 66 DISCUSSION. [PiLRT It cure, the temptation is strong to make up in loudness of tone what one lacks in clearness of thought, and to substi- tute contradiction for argument. Since this impulse is felt even by a man honestly defending his convictions, it is easy to conceive the fascination it has for the young man without convictions who is merely anxious to attract attention. '* What did you think of mj argament ? ** asks Jones of a com- rade. "It was sound — ^veiy sound; in fact, it was nothing bnt sound.** Here even Dr. Johnson showed weakness. This grew in part out of his love for paradox, in which feature he bore a strong resemblance to the wits of Madame Geoffriu's salon. To this source is to be attributed the strange lack of uni- formity and consistency in his opinions, it being lus custom to be iu the opposition, to whichever side of the question he might be driven. At one time good and at another evil was i)re(lominant in the constitution of the world. Now he would deplore the non- observance of Good Friday, and now deny that there was any de- cline in the observance of religious festivals. He would sometimes contradict self-evident propositions, such as that the luxiuy of the country had increased ^lith its riches, and that the j^ractice of cartl- playing was more general than formerly. He would meet a sound argument \^-ith a "What then, sir?" or a "You do not see your way through the question, sir," or, " Sir, you talk the language of ignorance ; " and when he was compelled to give his assent, whicli he always did reluctantly, he would preface it \*-ith a "Why no, sir.*' — Hervey. The habit of contradicting, into which young men — and young men of ability in particular — are apt to fall, is a habit extremely injurious to the powers of the imdei-standing. I would recommend to such young men an intellectual regimen of which I myself, at an earlier period of life, have felt the advantages : and that is, to assent to the first two propositions that they hear every day ; and not only to assent to them, but, if they can, to improve and embel- lish them, and to make the speaker a little more in love with his Chap. V.] NOT VICTOUT, BUT TRUTH. 67 own opinion than he was before. When they have a little got over the bitterness of contradicting they may then gratlually increase the number of assents, and so go on as tlieii* constitution will bear it, and I have little doubt that in time this will effect a complete and perfect cure. — Sydney Smith. The Strife Should be Not for Victory, but for Truth. — Among the advantages of discussion enumerated by Sydney Smith there is no mention of gratifying one's vanity by showing that one can confute a companion ; yet with many disputants that would seem the sole occasion for argument. No self -defeat could be more utter. Grant that such a one has nothing to learn, that wisdom will die with him, that the sole purpose of argument is to display one's skill, and yet he fails of his end ; for the success in argument is attained not by confuting, but by convincing ; and a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. It costs a man less to admit that his heart is hard than that his brain is weak. Often one j^ersists in error to escape confessing that he has been in error. Such a person may be led gently and cirruitously to i>o8itions into which he could never be jmshed, as has been illustrated so well in the fable of the north and the south winds. By a series of flank movements, skilfully continued, he may bo induced to propose as original, and to urge upon his op- |K>nent the very view which that opponent has ai'tfully implanted, knowing that the germ thus uncons<*iously received would develop into a conviction against which in its completeness he would have revolted. This is art concealing art, a i>orfection impossible to the egotist, who is never content unless his agency is manifest. As he is the best executive who never meddles Nnth wliat is al- ready satisfactory, and who knows that he is governing l>est when he seems not to l>e governing at all, so ho nohievos the greatest victory in argument who seems never to care for victory, who is ^^illing to seem to l)e informed by his opi)onent of the very prin- ciples it has taken him hours to instil into that opponent. It may bo urged that this mode of argument is insidious ; that ^^ DISCUSSION. [Part II to seem to be oooTinoed by another of what one is really oonvin- oing him involves an element of deception. But in itself the method is simply a coooeanon to another's weakness, and to em- ploy it is right or wrong according as otir ])nrpose is to impi^ss the truth or to iiistil an error. That it is a frequent device of evil men merely shows that it is time good men were familiar with it. We are commanded to be wiae as serpents, as well as harmless as doves. Besides, among fair-minded men this is much more likely to lead to triitli than the '* bow-wow " manner of Dr. Johnson, crushing down opposition and enforcing si- lence where one cannot carry conviction. One often starts out to convert another, and ends by being himself con- verted, because a fair discussion reveals new considera- tions. But if one is intent upon discomfiting and deniol- isliing an opponent, one will seek rather to silence him than to hear him. " I am one who would gladly be refuted if I should sav any- thing not true, and would gladly refute another should ho say anything not true ; but would no less gladly be refuted than re- fute ; for I deem it a greater advantage to be freed from the greatest of evils than to free another ; and nothing, I conceive, is so great an evil as a false opinion on matters of moral concern- ment." — SocBATES (in the Gorgias of Plato). Swift has obsen-ed that " it is a short way to obtain the reputa- tion of a wise and reasonable man, whenever anybody tells you his opinion, to agree with him." But this is satire, and must be taken with a whole bag full of salt. The companion we value most is he who gives us new thoughts and suggestions, but so skilfully as never to wound our self-love. We enjoy most, not the argument in which our opjwnent yields without an effort, but that in which he strives manfully and ably, and finally barely yields, just as we were ourselves losing confidence in our own side. A story is told of a man thrown from his horse and obliged to lie for weeks at an inn where he could get no other reaat(Hl efforts to disconc<>rt her, sho calmly continued her testi- mony, until WabNter, becoming fearful of the rcsnit, made a supreme effort. He arose, apparently in great agiution, drew out his largo snuff-box, tliru»t his thumb and tinger to the very bottom, carried the deep pinch to b«>th nostrils, and drew it up with « gunto. Then extracting from hi^ pocket a very largo handkerchief, which nowcd to his ft'ial in itself, is likely to gain currency from the earnestness and pre- tension of its advocates, it then becomes our duty to set it in a proper light. In silencing such i>ersons we must proceed accord- ing to the lights and shades of circumstances. Solomon points out both the Scylla and the Charybdis, of which he would have us steer clear. On the one hand we have, " Answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit ; " on the other, "Answer not a fool according to his folly lest thou bo like unto him." The first direction is applicable to cases where pride or vanity calls aloud for rebuke. If he is impudent or j-ude, we are to treat him with severity ; if positive, we miLst bo equally positive, and not be tender of the feelings of one who is destitute of the sensibilities of the human kind. By a satirical imitation of his own language we are to show him to himself as a mirror ; by copying his air, tone, or mode of reasoning ' we are to make him ashamed for his corruption and sliallowness. By the second direction we are to understand that it is not our duty to correct an immoral i>erson in his own language, when it is profane or obscene, or to rei»ly at all when his sjK»ech or bchaWor is of a des<'ripti'ing of the intert^oui-st' cif his species, or when a reply would be a self-degradation. — Hri;' ' v 74 DISCUSSION. [P4BT II. ▲ 4korortir»«ffowbeiiaMnrmDtopen«dtlMti(UiloorofalioaM on Biblqr SCrMi, In iwponM to a tnunp*! knock, her face kmked to kind and benevolent that the hungry man had BO doabi that a good dtoner nwaifeed hfan. He had, however, laid out a cenain pro- '*Uj dear woaian, I haven't had anything to eat for two days* and I wanted to aik if yoa wrndd epare me one of tlMee lutolee whkh hae fallvn from the eaveef ** ** Wen, I dumo,** idle alowty rapliad, as aha fciokad oot, ** I aoppoae we might qian joa one, if yon are raally nflHlug, hot, of ooone, yoa won't take the hurgeet and beet ? ** He etepped down and ■■leOed an iokl* about two feet long, and, in a '"■^trttng man- oar, inqaired: " If yoo wookl only eprinUe a Itttlo pepper on thia Z woold be forever grateful.'* **It*a rather bold la yon to adc It, bat I aoppoae I oon aprlnkle oa a Uttie-a very little,** ahe rapllad, aod ahe got the pepper and daatod hia ** loarheon " very aiiariogly. He atarted to mora away, bat, aaaming to raooUeot aomethiag, he tamed and Raid : **ToaMamaobe«evolBntmaakyoato«dnkleoaallttiaadtaa welL I like my ** Too are a bold man, air, and lt*8 plain yoa have the ^>petite of a glntton, bat m give yoa a bit of aalfc aad then yoo moat be gooa^** ahe repUed. When the icicle had been daly salted, the man impnaaml his th.•lnk^ bat didn't move away. His game waaB*t worfetng to anlt him. Some folka woa1dn*t have stood there and eeenhimbiteofftheeBdo(abigielele,bat thegiri did. And, farther, when he heat- fated to go, she indignantly odled oat: *' I know what yoa want Yoa now want mo to warm the idole in the ov«i for yoa and then pat on some onufeanl. I«t ni never, never do it ! ** Th% man moved alowly oatof the gata, and, as be threw his idde at a pasaing dcnr. he gave atteranoe to hJa diagoat in langoage pouctoated cntirdy with alangshots.— />e- trott /Vvc JVvss. 3. Avoid Discussion Too WeujJUy for the Occasion. — A tlioiiglitful man, introduced at a party to a lady whose ap- pearance pleased him, found that she was familiar with the kindergarten system of instruction, in which he was just becoming interested. An earnest discussion followed, 60 delightful to both that they were thoroughly engrossed in each other, and parted with the warmest expressions of good will. Soon after, seeing her again, he was about to readdress her, when a friend interj)osed and said, " Mrs. made me promise that I would keep you away from her this evening. She was so wrought up by your conversation the other night that she was ill for some days. She says your t^lk is too fascinating ; she cannot bear the mental strain." Tlje irentleiiKiii wa- incliiitid to i-et^ent this excuse a- Chap. V] WHEN TO AVOID DISCUSSION. 75 sarcastic, but his friend assured him the lady was entirely candid. She enjoyed talking with him ; in the exhilara- tion of the moment she could sustain her part ; but it was mental exertion too vigorous for her, and the reaction was painful. 4. Do Not Introduce a Knovm Hobby. — A hobby is by definition unreasonable — that is, unsustainable by argu- ment ; hence, after it has been stated and has become famil- iar, it is wearisome. In general one should be wary of in- troducing and contmiiing the discussion of subjects that cir- cumstances make more interesting to him than to the rest of the company. The author's books, the actress's triumphs, the traveller's adventures, the veteran's battles, even a man's daily experience in his business or profession, all have their place in convei-sation, but only such place as the others cheerfully grant. Even when a hobby is attacked, you will not aid youi*self or your cause by disputing over it. If you are boldly attacked rep- utable people will give you much more credit for gi-acefully evaeing able to make his ad- versary appear determined to api>car disagreeable and discouHcous. — Art of ConverwUion. For the same reason one should avoid reference to tlie hobbies of otliors. You run a great haasard by making the slightest allusion to their favorite theme ; they will, in all likelihooower, and like a musical instrument will give out certain tones under their manipulation. It does not increase the respect for a man, but it does the feeling of fellowship with him, that he is sure to respond in a certain way to a certain stimulus, and that you possess the means of applying that stimulus at will. Such a man is liked, partly as a natural phenomeuon, on the dis- play of which under given circumstances you can always rely. Just as men like to show off a fine echo in a particular spot, and will elicit it tlay after day to the admiration of their different guests, so they like to show off the flashes of temi)er with which a fiiend answers the application of the well-known irritant. The pleasure in it is almost like the professional pleasure with which a medical practitioner sees the blister rise when he has ai)plied the plaster, or the chemist, when he has predicteon character. — Foreign Magazine. How unmanly it is thus to be played upon is well illustrated in Hamlet's rebuke of Guildenstem. ffom.— Will yon play npon this pipe ? (?««.— My lord, I cannot. nam.—l pray yon. Ouil. — Believe me, I cannot. Bam.—l do beseech yon. OuU.—l know no tonch of it, my lord. ffitm. — 'Ti« a8 easy as lying : govern these ventages with your fingers and thnmb, give it breath with your month, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. Ouil. — But these cannot I command to any utterance of hiirmony ; I have not the skill. ffam, — Why, look you, now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play Chap. V.] DANGER OF FIERY WORDS. 79 upoo me; you would Mxm U> know my stops ; you would pluck out the he«rt of my mys- tery ; you vvoulil suuiul me from luy lowest note to tin; top of my compass ; aud there is much music exccUcut voice in this little urgiui ; yet cannot you make it 8|>eak. S' blood, do yon think that I »m euier to be plajod en than a pipe ? But temper uncontrolled is more than weakness. Fiery words are the hot blast that inflames the fuel of our pas- sionate nature, and foimulated doctrine a hedge that confines the discursive wandering of the thoughts. In a personal altercation it is most often the stimulus men give themselves by stinging words that impels them to \'iolent acts, and in argumentative discussion we find the most convincing support to our conclusions in the in- ternal echo of the dogmas we have ourselves pronounced. Hence, extreme circumsi>ection in the use of vituperative language, and in the adoption of phrases implving particular opinions, is not less a pnidential than a moral duty ; and it is equally important that we strengthen in ourselves kindly sympathies, generous impulses, noble aims, and lofty aspiration, by habitual freedom in their ex- pression ; and that we confirm ourselves in the great political, so- cial, moral, and religious truths, to which calm investigation has led us, as final conclusions, by embodying them in forms of sound words.— Mabsh. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Advantages and dangers, p. 02. Contradiction not argiuneut, pp. G2-67. Difficulty of proving our beliefs, p. 64. Strife for truth, not victory, p. 67. SPECIAL SUGGESTIONa a. Be always ready to listen, p. 60. b. Concede all that U unessential, p. 6i). Legal cross-examination, pp. 70, 71. '-. Stop when no approach is making to truth, p. 79l 1. Never compel discussion, p. 72. 2. Avoid discussion with thoee unfitted, p. 73. so TOPICAL ANALYSIS. [Part 11. 8. Avoid discassion too weighty for the occasion, p. 74. 4. Do not introduce a known hobby, p. 75. d. Yield gracefully when convinced, p. 70. Wrong to be always right, p. 76. «. K«ep good-natured, pp. 77-79. SUQOBBTiVK QUKSTIONa Is the oobbler*8 mle (page *M7) a correct one ? Do you agree with the Foiriffn MagagiM (page 78) that a fiery temper obtains sympathy, and are the reasons given for this sufficient ? What portion of the chapter do the following lines illustrate 1 The Centipede was happy quite. Until the Toad, in fun. Said, " Pray which leg goes after which ? " That worked her mind to such a pitch. She lay distracted in the ditch. Considering how to run. CHAPTER VI. STORY -TELLING. It baa often been my lot, in preaching to a rustic congregation, to be told by my bearers, by umuistnlcable outward signs which every preacher oughc to be quick to recog- nize, that 1 have been running too long in one groove. On audi occasions 1 generaliy use at the end of my period the cabalistic formula, Xow I am going to tell you a ntory. It ia like the adjutant's cry of " 'tteution ! " to the regiment standing at ease ; it is the nnfailmg ** Open sesame '' ti blinking eyes ; it acts as the sound of Blucher's guns at Waterloo, and gives the victory at once to virtue and wakefulness in those struggling hearers whose whole reserve of vital power has been engaged by nature in the huge ef- fort of digesting their one weekly dinner worthy of the name.— Bi^cklkt. As Illustration In Argument. — The mind may reach a given truth either by studying cause and effect, or by perceiving an analogy. The first method requires trained faculties, and demands close attention. The latter is natural to every human being, and demands only com- parison. Hence illustration is a main resource in argu- ment. He who has at hand an apt story will carry con- viction where logic would fail. Of course, a storj' carries weight in argnment only so far as it accords with general experience. A country deacon, riding to church with his daughter, snw two strange boys making for the brook with fishing-poles. "My boys," the deac>on said solemnly, **I knew two boys who went fishing on Sunday, and one of them was drowned." " Pooh, that's nothing," was the indifferent reply ; "I knew an old man who went to ride >\ith a young woman on Sunday, and they were both struck by lightning." Anecdotes Only Adjuncts of Conversation. — In general society stories are told less fre(iuently to con- vince an opponent than to promote hilarity. When sub- 82 ftTORY-TELLINO. [Part II. jects of general interest seem to have been exhausted they are sometimes a substitute for conversation ; but usually they should be only adjuncts, suggested by something al- ready said, and serving to illustrate it. The professional story-teller, especially the man with some two or three stock stories, is commonly as dreaded as he is despised. Doddington falling asleep one day in the company of Sir Rich- ard Temple, Lord Cobham, and others, one of the party reproached him for his drowsiness. He replied that he hatl lost nothing, for he could repeat all that Lord Cobham had been saying ; and when challenged to do so, he repeated a stoiy which Lord Cobham could but confess he had jnst told, and told no better. •* And yet," said Doddington, "I tlid not hear one word of it ; I went to sleep be- cause I knew you always told this story at about this time." On an occasion when Colonel Barre brought forward a motion on tho British na%y, Lord North said to a friend of his sitting next him : ♦' Now Barre will give ns our naval liistory from the begin- ning, no!; forgetting Sir Francis Drake and the Armada. All that is nothing to me, so let me sleep on, and wake me when we come neai' our own times." His friend at length aroused him, when Lord North exclaimed: ''Where are we?" "At the battle of LaHoguo, my Lord." " O, my dear friend," said North, "you have waked me a century too soon." Especially contemptible is he who watches for opportu- nity so to turn the subject as to introduce his anecdote, and who thinks nothing of breaking into a conversation inter- esting and profitable, provided he thereby get an opening for his pet story. An old gentleman whose favorite anecdote was about a gun, and who found it difficult to establish any natural connection between it and whatever happened to be the topic of conversation, used to stamp loudly upon the floor and exclaim : "Bless me, what's that ? a gun ? By the way, talking of guns, ..." And then he told his story. Men so obtuse are apt to miss the point of the stories they tell. Chap. VI. ] ANECDOTES A MEANS, NOT AN END. 83 A man at dinner where a servant dropped a dish of tongue ob- serving that a gi-eat laugh was created when the host remarked, ••Merely a lapsus lingiup," stmightway prei>ared a dinner, invited his guests, and instnicted his servant to let fall the roast mutton. The senant did so, and as the guests turned the host exclaimed, •• Only a lapsus lingwF, ha ! ha ! h— ; " and then he paused, won- dering why nobody else laughed. From such temptations he will be rclieved wlio consults not his own glorification but tlie liappiness of the com- pany. He will be prompted only to sncli stories as nat- urally suggest themselves, and as are fitted to promote the discussion or the pleasant feeling of the moment Adaptation to the Time and the Company. — He will be esjiecially wary of giving offence. However humorous and upt may be tlie story, he will withhold it if it seem likely to wound the feelings or to shock the sensi- tiveness of anyone present. Not only will he scrupulously avoid any approach to irreverence or indelicacy (see page 29), but he will bear in mind the peculiar history and prejudices of those present (see page 18). Stories Should Not be Allowed to Weary. — Stories are usually pungent in proportion as they are con- densed. Sir William Temple says that there used to be at the inns of Scotland tale-tellers, wliose business it was to lull restless travellers to sleep with stories of giants and dwarfs. One should have enough oratorical power to perceive whether he ie retaining the sympathy of his audience. If their attention is roused by his beginning, and if he perceives no signs that the story is an old one to his Iiearers, he may elaborate and dwell u|K)n details till lie has made the scene as vivid as life, and holds his listeners trembling with eagerness for the climax. 84 STORY-TELLING. [Part IL It is not becanse stories are long that they weary. John B. Gough ^ill spend ten minutes upon an anecdote which the morn- ing newspaper told in five lines. Once sure that it is appropriate, and that the point will penetrate, he will give his imagination rein and surround the incident with a wealth of details. But he will be sure tliat every one of these details shall deepen the interest of the audience and heighten the climax. When one's story is coldly received, or wlioii tlic interest first wakened begins to wane, one sliould hasten to con- clude it, and if it falls flat should neither repeat nor ex- plain. If interrupted in the midst of the narration by some accident or rudeness, one should not return to one's story unless invited to do so. We must never forget that a story should be told, not for our sake, but for that of the company, and that the company is the best judge whether it wants to listen. Stories Should be Artistically Told. — Most faihires in story-telling result from lack of preparation. One forgets or altogether misses the point. He remembers that he laughed over something he once lieard told, and he tries to repeat it without a clear notion of where the laugh came in. Perhaps the fun lay in the circumstances under which the story w^as told, which cannot be reproduced ; or in the peculiar manner of the speaker, which cannot be imitated ; or in the hilariousness of the moment, which is now wanting. But oftenest the fault is in failure to recover the art with which the story was told — the quiet introduction, the unobtrusive but skilful arrangement of details, every- thing being omitted that did not bear on the conclusion, and every incident so introduced as to accumulate interest till the climax was sprung: u]K)n the hearers just as their attention was stretched to the utmost. Chap. VI.] ARTISTIC STORY-TELLING. 86 An artistic bit of story-telling is Sydney Smith's reference to Mrs. Partington in a speech on the "Reform Bill," delivered at Taunton : " I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town — the tide rose to an incredible height, the waves mshed in ujwn the houses, and everything was threat- ened with destruction. In the midst of tliis sublime and terrible storm Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trandling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and ^^gorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up ; but I need not tell you that the contest was un- equal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was ex- cellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease, be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington." Contrast with this the following : Mark Twain, writing upon Franklin, mys : "He waa twins, baring been bom nimnl- taneooaly in two houses in Boston." There Ir an unconscious organic assumption that both bouses, since people insist apon both, mast have been the spots of his birth. If so the birtha in tbe two hoaaaa moat hare been simultaneooF, but the two Franklins not Identical. Of coarse, then, they most have been twins. . . . But I am reminded of a famous wit who, after Tiewing the Siamese twins for awhile, quietly remarked, " Broth- ers, I Buppoed."— ir«eakcr liimself jx^rceives it and bases his remark upon it. How much funnier is the stoiT of the learned professor who iualling the story was indescribably droll, and then all parties turned toward the presiding officer, who was reoogniaed as the hero of the narrative. He roae slowly to his feet ; the blue went out of his face, and even the scarlet turned to the rosy flash which is hatdtoal to it, and he smiled cheerfnlly by the time the cheers and gafEaws whldi g r ee t ed him had died away. '* The fact is.'' he beRwa deprecatlngly. and then there was another great roar ot Uughtar. " Tea : I well remember the drcnmstances. I aooepiod the sketch to keep its writer from inflicting it on some weaker magaxinc. [rx>ud laughter.] Our honse is rich. I can afford to stand in the brsaoh. If it were not for the work we do in bury- ing •rtiolas capable of injury, the mortality among magailnee would be inoalonlabia. [Laagfat«> and ebMrs.] Yea, gentleman, whea a perwm with a flighty t«mp«mmMit 90 STORY-TELLING. (Part II. onnes in [laughter] we exert every nerve to get )>os8e8.sion of hii mantucript to prevent the desulation that might otherwise ensue. [Cheers and jingling of glasses.] 8uch an article might fall into the hands of men who would inadvertently print it [Cheers and cries of ' Hear ! hear I '] We lock it up in a Htrong safe." The company, led by the journalist, who blusheught and paid for. some of the matter extcndmg back many years. '* If nobody should write u wonl for the body of our magazine for the next ten yctrs," he said, ** it would appear regularly every month, and I doubt if its quality would be at all impaired."— JV. Y. Letter to the Inter- Ocean. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Use of stories in argument, p. 81. In conversation should be only adjuncts, p. 81. Should be adapted to place and company, p. 83. Should not be allowed to weary, p. 83. Should be artistically told, pp. 84-86. Accurate in details, p. 8(5. Told simply, p. 87. CAXJTIONS. Do not touch up an old story as new, p. 88. Never retell a story just told, p. 88. Personal and private allusions, pp. 88-90. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. Are the rules for newspaper writing (pages 192 to 193) applicable to story-telling ? What improvement can you suggest in the manner of telling any of the stories in this or the preceding chapter ? Which of the following stories is the best told ? Wliat improvement can you sug- gest in any of them ? What changes would you make in telling instead of reading them ? PERSEVERANCE. King Robert Bruce, the restorer of the Scottish monarchy, while re- connoitering the army, lay down in a barn. In the morning, still reclin- ing on his couch of straw, lie saw a sj^ider climbing up one of the rafters. The insect fell, but immediately made a second attempt to ascend ; and with regret the hero saw the spider fall a second time. It made a third unsuccessful attempt, and with miu-li interest and concern the monarch saw the spider baffled in its aim twelve times. But the thirteenth at- tempt was successful, and the king, starting up, exclaimed, "This in- significant spider has taught me patience, and 1 Avill follow its example. Have I not been twelve times defeated by the enemy's superior force ? On one more fight hangs the independence of my country." In a few Chap. VII TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 91 days his anticipations were realized by his glorious victory at the battle of Bauuockburu. A boy's ambition. A few days ago Justice of the Peace John Weber took his little son down to Toledo on an excursion. The lad interviewed the man at the wheel and gathered much information relative to the business of steam- boating. 1 resently his father joined him on the hurricane deck and asked him liow he was enjoying himself. " tirst-rate," was the enthu- siastic reply, '* I'm goin' to be a steamboat man, pajia." '* All right," re- sponded the '* judge," " but you'll have to study navigation, a.'^tronomy, and divers other sciences, in order to become a got)d one." The lad said n«>thing at the time, but appeared to be revolving the difficulties* of the case in his mind. Perhaps half an hour later, he remarked with much gravity, *• Papa, I guess 1 won't be a steamboat man. I'd rather be a justice of the peace ; you don't have to know anything for that." — De- troit Free Press. Pkokk.'^sou (to student)— '* You wish me to give you a recommenda- tion y I don't remember ever having seen you at any of my lectures." Student -'* Ah, ])ro'Vssor, you evidently confound me with another man who looks very much like me, and who, it is true, has never attended your lectures." Professor — *' Yes, yes, very likely." (Gives him the recommendation. ) PEDANTIC CKITICISM. •'And how did (iarrick speak the soliloquy, last night?" "Oh! against all rule, my lord; most ungramniatically ! betwixt the substan- tive and the adjective, wliiith should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus— stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, thre»^ seconds and three-filths, by a stop-watch, my lord, each time." "Admirable grammarian ! but in sus]>ending his voice, was the sensi* suspended likewise f did no cxpre.ssion of attitude or countenance till up the chasm f was the eye silent y did you narrowly look ? " "I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord." "Excellent observer"! — Stbrnk. ovbrrracued. A wealthy man died suddenly without leaving any will. The widow, desirous of securing the whole of the pro|>erty, concealed her husband's death, and persuaded a ynwr shoemaker to take his place. Accordingly he was closely muffled in lied, as if he was very sick, and a lawyer was called in to write the will. The shoemaker in a feeble voice biMjueathed half of the pn>i>erty to the widow. " What shall Ik» done with the re- mainder," asked tiie lawyer. "The remaindt-r," replied he, " I give and bequeath to the puOr little shoemaker across the street, who has been a good neighbor and a deserving man." CHAPTER Vn. AS TO BEING FUNNY, The music that can deepest reach. And care all ill, is contial speech ; Marie thy wisdom with delight. Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. Of all wiVs uses, the main one Is to live well with who has none.— Need of Relaxation. — lleproached for frolicking with his children, ^sop pointed to an unbent bow, and asked how long it would be an effective weapon if kept con- stantly strung. Disraeli tells of the Jesuits that they had a standing rule that after two hours' study the mind should take some relaxation, however trifling. Petavius used to twirl his chair for five minutes, Ilichelieu jumped with his servant to try which could reach the higher point on the wall, and Samuel Clarke used to leap over chairs and tables. A young prelate was sent with a message to the stem Cardinal Mazarin. By a blunder of a servant he was admitted to the august presence unannounced, and to his consternation he suii^rised the great man amusing himself by jumping over articles of furniture. For a moment the embaiTassment was mutual, but the young courtier soon recovered himself. " I will bet your eminence two gold pieces that I can beat that jump," he exclaimed, pulling off his shoes as if eager for the sport. The Cardinal accepted the challenge, and the two contested like school-boys. The young man lost his wager, but won the lasting favor of the haughtiest dignitaiy in Europe. But the relaxation most universal among men is the contemplation of the ludicrous. Thai- VII. ] THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. 93 There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different charactei-s of men ; than to observe it ex- imnding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness, teaching age, and care, and i>ain to smile, extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer to- gether, and like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and inno- cent wit like this is surely the flavor of the mind. Man could direct his ways by i)lain reason, and suj>i)ort his life l)y tasteless food ; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and jjerfumes, to enliven the days of man's jwlgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl. — Sydney Smttu. THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. Hobbes. — The lowest, narrowest view of the laughable is presented by Ilobbes, and is characteristic of all his phi- losophy, lie says ; Laughter is a sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some emiuency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others or our own former infirmity. The insufficiency of this explanation is well pointed out by ('anipbell, who remarks: If you make but a trifling alteration of the expression, so as to destroy the wit (wliich often turns on a very little circumstance), without altering the real imjwrt of the sentence (a thing not only possible but easy), you will produce the same opinion and the same contempt, and consequently will give the same subject of triumph, yet without the least tendency to laugh. Haven. — Even Dr. Haven, who points out that it can- not be simply the conception of inferiority in others which causes laughter, since if it were so the proud, self -conceited, and supercilious would abound in that genuine and hearty 94 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. [Part II. merriment which in fact they never experience, liimself accepts what llobbes considers the essence of tlie ludicrous as at least an invariable accompaniment. Thus: The person laogliing is always, for the time being, superior, in his own estimation, at least, to the person or thing langhed at. It is some awkwai ilness, some blunder, some defect of body, mind, or manner, some lack of sharpness or of sense, some perceived in- congruity between the true character or position of the individual and his present circumstances, that excites our laughter and con- stitutes the ludicrous. Hazlitt goes further: The ludicrous is when there is a contradiction between the ol>- ject and our expectations, heightened by some deformity or incon- venience, that is, by being contrary to what is customary or de- sirable ; as the ridiculous, which is the highest degree of the laughable, is that which is contrary not only to custom, but to sense and reason. Bain quotes from Quintilian : A saying that causes laughter is generally based on false reason- ing, has always something low in it, is often purposely sunk into buffoonery, is never honor atfle to the subject of it. Sir Philip Sidney argues that laughter is notw^holly agreeable : Delight we scarcely do but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves or to the general nature. Laughter almost ever cometli of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present ; laughter hath only a scornful tickling. Laughter Not Necessarily Scornful. — This last phrase at once embodies and refutes this class of theories. We know that our merriest laughter is not scornful, and that any theory that so represents it must be erroneous. * HM VII.] LAUGHTER NOT SCORNFUL. 96 For instance, good Deacon Robinson, lieading a proces- sion of Sunday-school scholars as they march tlirougli the aisles of a crowded church, strikes up, '' Hold the Fort," forgetful that the second stanza will begin : " See the mighty hontM lulvaiicing, Satan leading on." AVhen that lino is reached everybody smiles. But the smile is directed, not at the deacon, but at the incongruity ; and in proportion to the incongruity will be the feeling of annisement, so that the louder the laughter the more em- phatic will be the testimony tliat the deacon's life is ex- emplary. There is no sudden conception of inferiority in the deacon, as Ilobbes would have it. The audience is not rendered superior to him, even in its own estimation, as Haven woidd niake us believe. The laughter is not the '' scornful tickling " of Sir Philip Sidney, but a burst of merriment, in which the deacon himself is probably the heai-tiest to join. When the good brother, in a prayer- meeting, attempted, in the absence of the chorister, to start the hymn, " I loTe to steal a while away," and after beginning several times, "I love to steal ,'* " I love to steal ," " I love to steal ," found it impossible to carry on the tune, and broke down, it was very much to his credit if liis fellow- worshippers were simply amused ; for there have been men from whom that unpremeditated avowal woidd produce an awkward silence. Wlien a bereaved widower, answering a condolinpr friend who asks if the recent death was not sndden, replies donbt fully, '* Well, yes, rather, for her ; " wlien a bashfiil wedding-guest wishes the bride many happy returns ; when a college professor, asked for leave of absence to attend the funeral of a second cousin, tells the student he supposes he shall have to let him go, but that he really 06 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. [Part II. wishes it were a nearer relative ; when typographical errors give us a list of awards at the Paris Exposition, issued *' by order of his Royal Highness, the Prince of Males ; ** report that a cow upon the railway track was literaUy cut into calves, and transform a fa- miliar sentence in the Prayer-Book from " We shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye " into * * We shall aU be hanged in the twinkling of an eye," — in all these and thousands of similar instances there is in our laughter no ingredient of contempt. We simply perceive an incongruity that provokes our merriment, and tliat meniment is thoroughly good-natured. Those who see in such in- stances a disparagement of the individual, fail to distinguish be- tween the absurd in conception and the absurd in reality. Does the pupil who in the expression, "Mrs. Caudle's husband,** pai-ses Mrs. Caudle's " as a proper feminine noun, third, singular, possessive, and governed by husband," suppose that Mra. Caudle herself was governed by her husband ? Not if he has been taught to distinguish between a grammatical relation of two words and a real relation of the two objects that the words represent. No more should he fail to see that it is one thing to laugh at the absurdity of associating a lidiculous idea with an individual and quite another to laugh at the individual as himself ridiculous. The keenest thrusts are those of the tongue. The bitterest enmity may wreak itself in a jest. But sarcasm, irony, contempt, are not essential to the ludicrous. The truly funny is impersonal. "To resolve laughter into an expression of contempt,'' says Coleridge, " is con- trary to fact, and laughable enough." A later writer tells us : That a gratified sense of superiority is at the root of barbarous laughter may be at least half the ti-uth. But there is a loving laughter in which the only recognized superiority is that of the ideal self, the God within, holding the mirror and the scourge for our own pettiness, as well as our neighbor's. We may go further than this. Much that is ludicrous is sheer nonsense. De Quincey tells us how Charles Lamb Chap. VII. ] HERBERT SPENCER'S THEORY. 97 used to visit liiin, ami j<»iii witli him in laughter over the silliest (jonceits. J^eigh Hunt says: " The difference between nonsense not worth talking and nonsense worth it is simply this : the former is a re- sult of want of ideas ; the latter of a superabundance of them/' He adds that nonsense, in the good sense of the word, is a very sensible thing in its season, and is confounded with the other only by people of a shallow graWty who cannot afford to joke. " These gentlemen, he says, live upon credit, and would not have it in- quired into. They are grave, not because they see or feel the con- ti-ust of mirth, for then they would feel the mirth itself ; but be- cause graWty is their safest mode of behavior. They must keep their minds sitting still, because they ai-e incapable of a motion that lA not awkward. They are waxen images among the living, the de- ception is undone if they stir ; or hollow vessels covered up, which may be taken for full onen ; the collision of wit jai-s against them, and strikes out against their hoUowness." Nonsense talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the very finest essence of conv-iviality, and a treat delicious to those who have the sense to comprehend it ; but it implies a trust in the company not always to be risked. — Dis- RAEIJ. Herbert Spencer. — A wholly different account of laughter is given by Mr. SjuMicer. He starts with the as- sumption that a given /mionnt of feeling nmst somewhere generate an equivalent manifestation of force, and that if of the channels the force would naturally take, one or more are closed, more most be taken by the other chan- nels. He goes on to show that the muscular action of laughter has this j>eculiarity, that it is purposeless. The conti-actions of the muscles are quasi-convulsive, and result simply from an uncontrollable discharge of energy that takes the most familiar paths, first through the organs of speech, producing a smile; and, if that proves insuffi- dS THEORIES OF TFTE LUDICROUS. [Part IF. cient, through the organs of respiration, producing laugh- ter. Now, why is our nervous energy prompted to escape through these paths upon certain perceptions of incongruity ? ** It U an inrafflcient explanation that in these cases laughter In a result from the pleasure we take in ewaping from the restraint of grave feelings. That this is a part cause Is true. DoubtlesM very often, as Mr. Bain says, ' it is the coerced form of serious- ness without the reality that gives us that stiff position from which a contact with trivial- ity or vulgarity relieves us to our uproiirious delight.' And in so f sir as mirth is caused by the gn«h of agreeable feeling that fc^ows the cesaafeion of mental strain it further il- lustrates the general principle above set forth. *' But no explanation is thus afforded of the mirth which ensues when the short silence between the andante and allegro of one of Beethoven's symphonies is broken by a loud sneeze. In this and ho^ts of like cases the mental tension is not coeroe«t. but spontaneous — not disagreeable, but agreeable ; and the coming impressions to which the attention is directed promise a grrattfication which few if any desire to escape. Hence, when the un- lucky sneeze occurs, it cannot be that the laughter of the audience is due simply to the release from an irkso:iie attitude of mind ; some other cause must be soughL "This cAUso we shall arrive at by carrjing our analysis a step farther. We have but to consider the qti mtity of feeling that exists under such cinnmstances and then to ask what are the conditions that determine itti «1:» hiirpr, to at once reach a solntion. " Take a case. You are sitting in a theatre absorbtvl iii the progress of an interesting drama. Some climax has been reached which arouses your sympiithies— say a reconcilia- tion between the hero and heroine after a long and painful misunderstanding. The feel- ings excited by this scene arc not of a kind from which you seek relief, bnt are, on the contrary, a relief from the painful feelings with which you have witnessed the previous estrangement. Moreover, the sentiments these fictitious personage-, have for the moment inspired you with are not such as wuuld lead you to rejoice in any indignity offered to them, but rather such as would make yon resent the indignity. ' ' And now, while you are contemplating the reconciliation with a pleasurable sympathy there appears from behind the scenes a tame kid, which, htving stared at the audience, walks up to the lovers and sniffs at them. You cannot help joining in the roar which greets this contre'emps Inexplicable as is this irrasistible burst on the hypothesis of a pleasure from relative increase of self-impcrtance when witnessing the humiliation of others, it is readily explicable if we consifier what in such a case must become of the feel- ing that existed at the time the incongruity arose. " A large mass of emotion had been produced, or. to sixsak in physiolc^cal language, a large portion of the nervous system was in a state of tension. There was also great expectation with regard to the further evolution of the scene — a quantity of vague, nas- cent thought and emotion, into which the existing quantity of thought and emotion was abjut to pass. *• Had there been no interruption, the body of new ideas and feelings next excited would have snfficed to absorb the whole of the liberated nervous energy. But now this large amount of nervous energy, instead of being allowed to expend itself in producing an equivalent amount of the new thoughts and emotions, is suddenly checked in its flow. The channels along which the discharge was about to take place are suddenly closed. The new channel opened — that afforded by the api^earance and proceedings of the kid — is a small one ; the ideas and feelings suggested are not numerous and massive enough to Chap. VII. J INADEQUACY OF MR. SPENCER'S THEORY. 99 carry off the ncrvoun cnerxy to bo ex(>cnded. The excess inuKt therefore diHcharge itself in some other directions ; and in the way already explained there results an efflux through motor nerves to various classes of mascles, protlucing the half-convulsive motions we call laughter." Mr. Darwin quotes this explanation, and thus corrobor- ates it : " An observation bearing on this point was made by a correspondent dnring the recent siege of Pari^ namely, that the (;erman soldiers, after strong excitement from exposure to extreme danger, were |)urtieulnrly apt to burst into loud laughter at the sniallest joke. So again when young children are just b«>ginning to cry an unexpected event will some* times suddenly tnm their crying into laughter, which apparently aerves equally well to expend their surplus t-neri^y." The difficulty with Mr. Spencer's theory is that it accounts for everything except just what it purports to ex- plain. AVhat we call laughter is not the half -convulsive motions. These are but the expression of laughter. To draw out the muscles of the face into a forced smile is tire- some, and becomes painful if continued. Still more tiresome and painful is the muscular motion of a hearty laugh. Says Mr. Darwin : During excessive laughter the whole hody is thrown backward and shakes, or is almost convulsed ; the respiration is much dis- turbed, the hea«l and face become gorged with blood xsith the veins distende\'idely different ©motions that hysteric ])er8ons alternately laugh and cry with violence, and that young children pass suddenly from one to the other state. Another scientist says : No doubt the sound of laughter is one of the very earliest and oddest of human cries. It is certainly an astonishing sountl, and one that is very difficult to listen to and analyze without imgudice, and a remote feeling of sympathy. Tlie best way to study it that I know is to seize on opportunities when one is being constantly in< 100 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. [Part II. terrupted in reading a serious book by shouts of laughter from a imrty of strangers ; one can then note the curious variety of spas- modic sounds produced, and maivel that men in the midst of ra- tional conversation should be compelled by necessity to break off suddenly their use of language and find relief and enjoyment in the utterance of perfectly inarticulate and animal howls like those of the Long-armed Gibbon. We all know what it is to laugh till we ache ; till we ai*e compelled to beg our cx)mpanion to desist from his fuiiTiy stories, and forcibly to wrest our mind from a con- templation it too keenly enjoys, lest we laugh ourselves to death. The phrase is not extrayagant. People do laugh themselves to death. On December 13, 1878, Joshua Walker, a resjjectablo col- ored man living in the city of Providence, undertook to make some brine for pickling pork, and went to the cupboaid for salt. Ho mistook the article, and his vdlo Bosa, twenty years old and re- cently happily married, found him salting the pork with granu- lated sugar. She burst into a hearty laugh ; she laughed, and laughed, and kept on laughing. Her husband became alanned and ran for assistance, but in vain. The woman literally laughed herself to death. Such instances are not frequent, but a year's file of any New York daily will report at least one or two. Many I)eople are in greater danger of laughing themselves to death than of being struck by lightning. If Mr. Spencer's theory of laughter were adequate, therefore, laughter would be a painful experience, to be avoided, like a severe cold or the fever and ague. But, as we have seen, he describes everything but the laughter, lie tells us what are the motions that accompany laughter, and why we laugh with certain muscles, instead of swing- ing our arms or turning a somersault. But in what the amusement of laughter consists, and why we so enjoy it that in this amusement we forget the discomfort of the accompanying motions, he wholly ignores. Chap. VII.] A THEORY "AS GOOD AS TAN 'BE." rlOl Aristotle. — From these and many other theories we go back to the definition made by Aristotle, whicli Coler- idge declares '' as good as can be." A definition which twenty-two centuries cannot improve is worth attention. " The Ivdicrous arises,^'' says Aristotle, '"''froni aurjnnse tit perceiving sometfdiig out of its usual place when the finusualness is not acconvpanied hj a sense of danger ^ Such surprise is always pleasurable ; and it is observed that surprise accompanied by a sense of danger becomes tragic. Here, tlien, are the two elements of the ludicrous — the incongruous and the inconvenient. Between the two is a poise, and the balance differs with every mind. What annoys one amuses another. Even to the same mind an- noyances may bo repeated till they become amusing, and one rather hopes they will accunmlate in order to complete the joke. Sam AVeller and Mark Tapley were too ab- sorbed in the incongruous to be disturbed by the incon- venient. A hoy was ctiffod, r.nd 8lapi>ecl, and Hhaken, and pounded for Rnow-balHng an ira-sciblo old farmer. The boy langhed. The farmer cuffed and slapped and shook and ponnded harder. The boy langhod Idndor. rinally llio farnior became exhausted, and exclaimed : " Boy, what are you hiughing at ? " •• Why, at the joke on you : I ain't the boy ! ** The same difference is observed in the effect on us of the expe- rience of others. For instance, a man in Fulton laid his finger on the table in front of a buzz-saw to feel the motion of the air. In the rapid revolution of the saw he did not perceive how far the teeth extended, and his finger \*'as instantly cut off. Even his pain was lost in astonishment, and the foreman approached to ask how it happone<1. •' Wliy, I just laid my finger down so," he explained ; and whiz went the saw through a second finger. '• - THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. [Part II. Now, that story will be funny or tragic according to the physical sympathy of the pei-son who hears it. It appeared in the funny columns of the newspapers ; but it was read by many who have a Donatello's shrinking from the sight or even the thought of physical suffering, in whom the recital of the story made the flesh creep. Nothing is more to he rernevibered in conversation than that the ludicrous is not an absolute relation^ hut depends entirely upon the mind of ilie person perceimng tJve incon- gruity. Tlie merry jokes of the dissecting-room would cost many a man his dinner and many a woman her con- sciousness. Hence the would-be wit is often a terror to society. Where he sees only the incongruous he forces upon his hearers the vulgar, the disgusting, the terrible. . Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native ixjignaucy. A jest calculated to spread at a gaming table may be received with i>erfect indifference should it happen to drop into a mackerel-boat. — GoiiDSMiTH. Those who have seen the play of "Jane Shore" will remember what a huge joke it seemed to her keepers to hurl the poor frozen, starving creature upon her feet again, and drive her on into the pitiless storm. Well is it for any of us if we have never laughed at the misery of others because we lacked the sympathy to per- ceive it. A lady attired in profound crape entered a car and abandoned herself to melancholy. A woman behind her, with red nose, blue veil and green spectacles, leaned forward and inquired : '* Lost somebody ? " A barely perceptible nod answered the question without inviting another, but the inquisition proceeded. ''Father?" A shake. " Brother ? " A shake. ** Husband?" A nod. Chap. VII. J THE RELATION OF THE LUDICROUS. 103 " Church member ? " A nod. " Life insured ? ** A nod. •• Then what are you moping about ? He's all right, and so are you." Sacred Subjects are never to be trifled with. Kor will the gentleiiniii restrict this reserve to those jBubjects that are sacred to himself. To find matter for jesting in any sincere feeling, whether of religion or of affection or of principle, betokens a selfish heart and a shallow intel- lect. Mr. Weiss, in his "Wit, Humor, and Shakspere," frequently blunders here. The following paragraph has almost every literary fault : IVrhapK the purcdt ioRtanoc of thorotighly French wit is to be credited to Mr. Emer- son. An amiable rustic once heard him lecture, but a)uld make nothing of it. Tum- Inif to R friend, he said: *'Darn it! I'd like to know what Emcnwm thinks about (iod. I iKt I'll aKk him." Ho did, when Mr. Emcniou came down the ainle. "God," replied he, "is the x of algebr«," — that is, the unknown (luanlity in every problem. Nothing ooold bo more admintble.— P. StSw The sense of the Immorous is as incompatible with tenderness and respect as with comiwussion. No man would laugh to see a little child full ; and ho would bo shocked to see such an aivident happen to an old woman, or to his father. It is a beautiful thing to obKorvc the boundaries which nature has affixed to the ridicu- Ions, and to notice how soon it is swallowed up by the more illus- trious feelings of our minds. Wliere is the heart so hard tliat could l>ear to see the awkward resources and -contrivances of the poor turned into ridicule ? Wlio could laugh at the fractured, mined body of a soldier? Who is so wicked as to amuse himself with the infirmities of extreme old age? or to f!nd subject for hu- mor in the weakness of a perishing, diasolring Ixvly ? Wlio is thet© that does not feel himself dis]io«eerception of a joke in some minds. Miss Jackson calletl, the other day, and siH)ko of the op]>rossive heat of last wet»k. ** Heat, madam," 1 said, " it was so dreadful here that I found nothing IOC WHY THE LUDlCliOUS GIVES PLEASURE. [Part II left for it but to take oflf my flesh and sit iu my bones." '* Take oil your flesh and sit in your bones, sir ? Oh, Mr. Smith, how could you do that?" "Nothing more easy, madam; come and see me next time." But she ordered her carriage, and evidently thought it a very unorthodox proceeding. — Sydney Smith. A college profefwor, lecturing on tlie eflect of the wind in West- ern forests, remarked : '^In travelling along the road I sometimes found the logs bound and twisted together to such an extent that a mule could not climb over them, so I went round." "John," said a gentleman to his new servant, **did you take that note to Mr. Jones ?'* " Yes, sir ; but it didn't do him any good I ** ** How do you know that ? '* '* Because he can't read.'* " Mr. Jones can't read ? Why, what do you mean, John ? " *' \Miy, he's blind, blind a.s a bat. While I mus in the room he asked me three times where was my hat, and there it was right on my head in plain sight all the time." The works of many standard authors abound in passages where through lack of this perception grave issue is taken with state- ments, the only point of which is their humor. Thus, in a noted rhetoric : But of all kinds the woret is thnt wherein the words, when constmed, are carnble of no meaning at all. Such an expression is the following: "There wore seven ladies in the contpany, every one prettier than another," by which it is intended, I suppose, to in- dicate that they were all very pretty. One prettier implies that there is another less pretty, but where every one is prettier there can be none leaa, and consequently none more pretty. Such trash is the disgrace of our tongue. — Campbelx.. In a play of Douglas Jerrold an old sailor, attempting to snatch a kiss, gets a box on the ear. ** Just my luck," he exclaims ; '* al- ways wrecked on the coral reefs." TMien the manager heard the play read he could see no point to this remark, and insisted that it should be struck out. Not to he Acquired. — Xor can a sense of the humorous be acquired. It must be felt, and instantly, or it vanishes. The moment you seek to ii.K it, to study it, to analyze it, the virtue has departed. Tliough you should resolve into its elements every funny thing that had ever liappened Chap. VII. 1 PERCEPTION OF THE LUDICROUS. 107 you might still be blind to the next that occurred, for tlie humorous is mercurial in its manifestations. Sometimes it lieth in jjat allusion to a known story, oi iu a sea- sonable upplicution of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale ; sometimes it playeth iu words and phrases, taking advan- tage from the ambiguity of their sense or the aflinity of their sound ; sometimes it is \sTapped up in a dress of humorous ex- pression ; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude ; some- times it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkisli reason, in cunningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection ; sometimes it is concealed in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a stai'tling metaphor, iu a plausible reconciling of contra- dictions, or in acute nonsense ; sometimes a scenical representa- tion of iHji-sons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth for it ; sometimes an aflected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bhmtness giveth it being ; sometimes it riseth only upon a lucky hitting upon what is strange ; sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the puqiose. Often it consist- eth in one hardly knows what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how, being answemble to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. — Babrow. Value not Factitious. — It is largely because this sense of humor is unattainable that its possession gives such pleasure. We value most what is hardest to get. l^ut the value of a sense of humor is by no means factitious. Mirth is a.s innate in the mind as any other original faculty. The absence of it, in individuals or in communities, is a defect ; for there are various forms of imposture which wit, and wit alone, can exjiose and pimish. Without a well-trained capacity to per- nne to discuss, for tho 108 WHY THE LUDICROUS GIVES PLEASURE. [Paet XL Pope to decide, and for the mathematician to go to heaven in a perpendicuhii* line. In one of the mysteries enacted in Germany, toward the end of the last century, the Creator of the world was represented a* an old gentleman in a wig, who groped about in the dark, and after running his head against the posts exclaimed in utter peevishness, ♦* Let there be light," and there was light— the light of a tallow candle. So in a grave sermon, Francis Meres (the same to whom we are indebted for the earliest critical mention of Sliakspere) made out addition an 1 multiplication to be God's arithmetic, because when he had made Adam and Eve he caused them to increase and multi- ply, but subtraction and diWsion to be the devil's arithmetic, be- cause the arch enemy subtracted Delilah from Samson and divided Michal from David. From absurdities like these the slightest sense of the ludicrous would protect a reverent mind. ** In every condition of man it is play, and i)lay alone, that makes him complete," says Schiller. ♦' Humor is the harmony of the heart," says Douglas Jerrold. " Even genius and philanthropy,'* to quote again from Whipple, •* are incomplete without they are accompanied by some sense of the ludicrous, for an extreme sen- sitiveness to the evil and misery of society becomes a madden- ing torture if not modified by a feeling of the humorous, and urges its subjects into morbid exaggeration of life's dark side." Not to he Obtruded. — It should be noted tliat those in whom the sense of humor is keenest often display it least. When a man explains liis understanding of a joke his enjoyment of it is superficial. Such a one is so impatient to obtrude his appreciation of the fnnny that lie never permits the funny fully to develop itself. The trne humorist is never in a hurry. If you bungle in telling a story familiar to him he does not interrupt you, even to hint that he has heard it before, but lets you blunder on to the conclusion, finding it doubly ludicrous that you suppose he is laughing at the story, while in fact he is laughing at you. Chap. VII.J PERCEPTION OF THE LUDICROUS. 109 A common incident is the tii*Ht visit of the beardless boy to the barber's ahop. In all these stories the barber parades his face- tiousness. For instance, he lathe;*? his customer's face and then sits do\*Ti to read the morfting newspaper. ♦' What are you waiting for? " asks the boy ; and the barber re- plies : " Waiting for your beai'd to grow." Now, the bai'ber spoils the joke by obtruding his own smart- ness. The true humorist would lather and shave the smooth face as if it were a Leadville miner's ; would inquire if the razor took hold well, and if all the beard should be removed or a small goatee left to sort of balance the moustache, like ; and all so deftly and imperturbably that the boy would pay his bill with the air of a vet- eran, and swagger oflf like a drum-major. In a recently published book of memoirs we are told that some- thing in the appearance of Professor Buttmann, the profound Greek scholar, irresistibly impressed every one he met with the idea that he was a barber. Passing along the street one day he was hailed from an upper window by some one to him unknown, wlio beck- oned to him to ascend ; and when the wise man entered command- ed curtly : " Cut my hair." The professor meekly obeyed, and had abput half- concluded the "operation when the victim, looking into .he glass, discovered that one side of his head had been redujed to baldness, while the other looked as if it had been gnawed by an absent-minded mule. "Merciful Heaven! " he yelled, "you don't know how to cut hair." *• You did not ask me whether I did or not ; I am Profes.sor Buttmann," and with a low bow the h'anuHl niau dej>arted. Hf was a true humorist. Enjoyed in Proportion to Difficulty. — I^ike all our other powers, the faculty of appreciating the funny is enjoyed in proportion to the difficulties it encounters. There is most zest in the game of chess that we barely win, and that is to us the funniest, joke which we barely see and our neighbors do not see at all. 110 WHY THE LUDICROUS GIVES PLEASURE. [Paut II. Cue who lu4s aiUlresiMHl cliffereut audiences knows how iiii)>o8si- ble it is to pvedict the reception a certain anecdote will receive. Told precisely alike in three difiereut places, one audience will laugh till the tears come, another will sit stolid because it fails to see the point, and the third will sneer because it sees the point too easily. It must be confessed that one must listen to many stories to find a point new enough to occasion the surprise which is the chief ele- ment of the ludicrous. Dr. Johnson jnojected a work " to show how small a quantity of real fiction there is in the world and that the same images, with very few variations, have ser>'ed all authors who have ever written." Certainly a baie dozen would make up a majority of the paragraplis gleaned for in the funny columns of our newspajjers. It would be worth the student's while to count the proportion which relate to the mother-in-law, to big feet, to doc- tors killing their ])atients, to the jKX)r mule that won't work both ways, and to the sei-vant-girl who kindled a file with uai^litha and nothing has benzine of her since. Conventional Jokes. — ^Xot only are a niajonty of jokes built on a few dummy ideas, but the ideas themselves are only conventionally funny, so that the laugh is not at the idea, but at some peculiarity in the expression. For instance, the world has agreed to smile when it is suggested that a doctor kills his patients. As long ago as w hen Martial WTote this was an accepted joke, and one of his epigi-ams may be thus translated: A doctor lately was a captain made ; It is a change of titlcR, not of trade. Now the ways in which this assumption may be suggested are numberless. A physician's wife looking out of the window sees her husband in a funeral procession. "I do wish he would not go to the grave," she complains, "■ it looks so like a tailor canying home his work." Two teams are travelling along a lonely road. One tries in vain to pass the other, and the driver calls out, '* Say, man, what's vour business ? " Chap. VII. J PERCEPTION OF THE LUDICROUS. HI " I am a physician, sir," replies tlio other Htiffly. •• All right, then, you ouglit t(j keej) ahead ; I carry coffinH." A practitioner liiicU a lady reading «' Twelfth Night," and aaks ; '* When Shakspere wrote about Patience on a Monument did he mean doctors' patients ? " " No," is the reply ; ** you don't find doctors' patients on monu- ments, Imt under them." The essence of the ludicrous is incongruity, and in the best jokes the incongruity lies in the ideas. But here the main incon- gruity lias in as.sumiug that doctore, whose business it is to cure l)atieuts, really kill them. In tliis there is no longer any novelty, luul therefore whatever is funny must come from the jwirticulai- form of expression. The novelty of expression in anecdotes like these is largely ba.sed upon punning. The jokes are mere twist- iiigs of words, ai-tificial, and at the best but dexterous. But with the man deficient in humor they are favorites, because he can commit them to memory and remember to laugh at them whenever they are dressed up and trotted out. Esjiecially gmteful to such a mind is the joke tliat derives all its humor from frequent rei)etition. In the play of the "Mighty Uollai-" the jMn-sistent misuse of capital letters is regarded as a " K. CI." — t'apital joke — '• by a large majority." American humor is cliaracteri/xHl by what may be termed the omission of the major premise. The logicians i-esolve every judgment into a syllogism. Tims, if we conclude that a heavy fall of snow is a blessing because i: pro- vides iKwr j)eople with work in shovelling otf sidewalks, our entire thought is this : Major premise — Whatever pro>'ides jwor people with work is a blessing. Minor premise — Such a snow im>\'ide8 poor i)eople with work. Conclusion — Therefore such a snow is a blos.sing. Now, we do not usually stop to expre.ss tho major pre- mise, but go at onco from (h(^ minor to the conclusion. A syllo- gism ^-ith one of the premises omitted is called an enthymeme, and the word is worth remembering because it describes it exactly to call the tyjucal joke of the iM>riotl an enthvmeme. " Will the boy who threw that red i>ep|K»r on tho stove come forward and get a nice book ? " asked on Iowa Sunday-school su- 112 WHY THE LUDICROUS GIVES PLEASURE. [Pakt IL perintendent, with a bland smile. But the boy never stirred. He was a far-seeing boy. Now there is a capital enthymeme. The major premise is that if the boy had come up he would have got wallojjed ; but that is left to the imagination, being, in fact, implied in the pepper. A Western coroner's jury brought in a verdict that the deceased came to his death from calling Bill Jones a liar. A Sharon man stole a peck of dahlia-roots under the impression that they were sweet -jiotatoes. He felt the deception keenly. A New Fairfield man who failed to get a thirty-cent pineapple for a quarter of a dollar wanted to know whether we were breath- ing the pure air of freedom or being strangled by the fetid fumes of a foreign despotism. The store-keeper said those were the only pine-apples he had. A man from Maine, who had never paid more than twenty-five cents to see an entertainment, went to a New York theatre where the play was " The Forty Thieves," and was charged a dollar and a half for a ticket. Handing the jjasteboard back, he remarked, •' Keep it, mister ; I don't want to see the other thirty-nine." A Milford resident came to New Haven for a spree. He had it. In a dnmken stupor he stumbled into the Fair Haven rolling-mill, where he awoke at night to see molten iron glaring, })right sparks flying, laboi-ers gliding to and fro in the lurid flame, and honible shadows. As he nibbed his eyes a workman asked him where he came from. He gasped : *' Wlien I was on earth I lived in New Milford." In this sort of anecdotes it is assumed that the hearer's mind is briglit and quick enougli to supply the missing connection. The hearer is gratified by this confidence, and by his ability to justify it, and would resent your thinking it necessary even to hint, " This is a goak. — A. "Ward." While this omission of the connection adds to the pleas- ure of those able to supply it, unfortunately it produces confusion or blankness in the minds of those who are una- ble to do so. The great success of Artemas "Ward's career was his lecture on Utah, delivered in Egyptian Hall, London. After a prologue, in- Cbap. MI] PERCEPTION OP THE LUDICROUS. 113 tended, as the programme stated, to show what a good educaliou the lecturer had, Artemas went on to inform his audience that it was an error to call Salt Lake City the City of the Plain, as some of the women were really vei-y pretty. The Mormon's religion, he said, was singular, but his wives were plural. The " Lady of Lyons" was produced at the Mormon theatre, but failed to satisfy the au- dience because there was only one Pauline in it, and it seemed ridiculous to make so much fuss over a single woman. The play was revised at once and presented the next evening with fifteen Paulines in the cast, whereupon it became a great success. "Brigham Young," he said, "is an indulgent father and a nu- merous husband. He has two hundred wives. Just think of that ! Oblige me by thinking of that. Two hundred souls with but a single thought, two hundred hearts that beat as one. He loves not wisely but two hundred well. He is dreadfully married. He is the most manned man I ever saw in my life. I saw his mother- in law w hen I was there. I can't tell you exactly how many there is of her, but it i 5 a good deal. It strikes me that one mother-in- law is about enough to have in the family — unless you are fond of excitement. A few days before my arrival Brigliam Young was man-ied again to a yoimg and really pretty girl. He told me con- fidentially that he shouldn't get married any more. He says that all he wants now is to live on in peace for the remainder of his days, and to have his dying pillow soothed by the loWng hands of his family. Well — that's all right — I suppose ; but if he lias his dying pillow soothed by the loving hands of all his family, he'll have to go out of dooi-s to die." Robert Lowe lieanl this lecture, and laughed heartily all the evening. John Bright sat stolid, listening with grave attention, and afterward remarked : ** I must say I tmn't see what people find to enjoy in this lecture. The information is meagre, and is presented in a desultory', discon- nected manner. In fact, I can't help seriously questioning some of his statements." WIT AND HUMOR The ludicrous has two general divi&iuns, not always dis- tinguished, and not easy accurately to define, yet between 114 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. (Part II. which it is iinjmi'biiit to discriiiiiiiate. These are wit and humor, some differences between which may be pointod out in a series of parallel descriptions. 1. Humor is enjoyed in j}rojwrtion as it is exj^ected / wit in proportion as it is unexpected. Tlie first limit to be affixed to that observation of relations which protluces the feeling of wit is tliat they must be relations which excite surprise. If you tell me that all men must die I am very little struck with what you say, because it is not an assertion very remarkable for its novelty ; but if you were to say that man was like an hour-glass — that both must nin out, and both render up their dust, I should listen to you with more attention, because I should feel something like suiprise at the sudden relation you had stnick out between two such apjmrently dissimilar ideas as a man and a time-glass. — Sydney SMrrn. To compare one man's singing to that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object by tliat of milk or snow, or the variety of its colors by those of the i-ainbow, cannot be called wit, unless besides this obvious resemblance there be some further congi-uity discovered in the two ideas tlia'j is capable of giving the reader some sui'prise. Thus when a poeb tells us the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow there is no wit in the comparison ; but when he adds with a sigh that it is as cold, too, it then grows into wit. — Addison. Hence wit beai*s no repetition. If we enjoy hearing or telling a witty thing a second time it is not for the sensation of perceiving the \\-it itself, but to observe its expression in those who have not before heard it, a pleasure akin i*ather to humor. In anti hesis the pleasure of wit is increased by prevision of the witty climax. Thus when a man holds up a letter left at his door containing only the words "April Fool," and says, "I have often heard of people who wrote letters and forgot to sign their names, but this is the first instance in which I have kno^^•ll a man " — bv this time the quick hearer has completed the anti-climax and anti- cipates the conclusion — " to sign hi; name and forget to vrriie the letter." Take another utterance of the same preacher : *' Tlie fii-st day I was sea-sick I was afraid I should die ; the second day I didn't care Chap. VII. ] EXPECTEDNESS ; IXSTANTANEOUSNESS. 115 whether I did or not ; the third day — I was afraid I shouhln't." The hearer jumps at the olinia\ tind begins to laugh before it is enunciated. When Dean Stanley cauie to this country the proprietor of a cer- tain hotel, anxious to do honor to his guest, stationed a boy at the speaking-tube leading from the dean's room, and said : "Now, boy, be very resi)ectful. Listen attentively, and when you hear him call answer at once, and if ho asks who is there re- ply, • The boy, my lord.' " The l)oy tried to follow instructions, but gi'ew so nervous over their imi>ortance that when at last the dean did call tlirough the tube and ask who was there the little fellow piped out : — * By the time the story has got this far everybody knows the boy cried, " The Lord, my boy." Hero it might at fii-st seem that the mind enjoyed the Avit better because it was prepared for it — in other words, when there was less surprise. Btlt the wit lies, not in enunciating the entire sentence, but in conceiving it, and gives the hearer greater pleasure because th3 mind is able to d ) more than is asked of it ; not only appre- ciate the i>oin\ bu*; anticipate it. Brevity is the soul of wit, and wit is most enjoyed by those who can communicate it by short -hand reporting. To j)erceive in the middle of a sentence what most of the world will catch only at, the end is a mental triumph as grati- fying as it is exhilarating. On the other liaiul, to appreciate the humorous tlie mind needs, as it were, to adjust itself, and sometimes loses the pleasure of the first sentence or two of a humorous descrip- tion because it is n(>t quite certain whether what is said is to be judged by matter-of-fact standards or looked at tlirough the spectacles of humor. When it is assured of the latter it drops the customary attitude of critical judg- ment and settles down to enjoyment. 2. Wii is i7istnntaneoiis ; humor u cofdifiuous. A witty story may he long, hut only that the hearers' minds may he thoroughly prepared to ap}>reciate the catas- trophe ; or if it consist of witty dialogue, each happy hit 116 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. [Part IL gives its individual pleasure, like so many taps ; the taps may even be too frequent, as in Sheridan's comedies. Humor may characterize an entire description, a whole l)Ook, all that is known of an intimate acquaintance. Hu- mor pervades, while wit embellishes. Humor glows, wit sparkles. 3. Ilurtwr may he inanlfest in action. WU must be eQ> 'pressed in words. In both there is perception of incongruity, but in wit the connection of the two incongruous ideas is made by language, while in humor it may result from movement. As you increase the incongruity you increase the humor ; as you diminish it you diminish the humor. If a tradesman of corpulent and respectable appearance, with habiUments somewhat too ostenta- tious, were to slide down gently into the mud and decorate a pea- green coat, I am afraid we should all have the barbarity to laugh. If his hat and wig, like treacherous servants, were to desert their falling master, it certainly would not diminish our propensity to laugh. But if he were to fall into a violent passion and abuse everybody about him, nobody could possibly resist the incongruity of a pea-green tradesman, very respectable, sitting in the mud and threatening all the passers-by with the effects of his wrath. Here every circumstance heightens the himior of the scene — the gaiety of his tunic, the general respectability of his appearance, the rills of muddy water which trickle down his cheeks, and the harmless violence of his rage. But if instead of this we were to observe a dustman falling into the mud it would hardly attract any attention, because the opposition of ideas is so trifling and the incongruity so slight. — Sydney Smtth. 4. Wit may he wholly im^iriative. Humx/r involves sentiment and character. In fact the quality of wit exists wherever imagination percolates through the understanding ; the sediment is the grain-gold of wit. But the quality of humor, depending upon various moral traits, exists only wherever a broad imagination is combined with a sweet Chap. VU.] HOW MANIFESTED AND LIMITED. PUNS. 117 and tolerant moi'al sense that is devoid of malice and all imcharit- ableness and at peace with all mankind. — Weiss. In the simply laughable there is a mere disproportion between a definite act and a definite person or end ; or a disproportion of the end itself to the rank or circumstances of the definite person. Com- bination of thoughts, words, or images will not of itself constitute humor, unless some peculiarity of temperament or character be in- dicated thereby as the cause of the same. The excellencies of Sterne consist in bringing forward into dis- tinct consciousness those miiiuticp of thought and feeling which appear trifles yet have an importance for the moment, and which almost every man feels in one way or other. Thus is produced the novelty of an individual jjeculiarity, together with the interest of ft something that belongs to our common nature. In short, Sterne seizes happily on those points in which every man is more or less a humorist. And, indeed, to be a little more subtle, the propen- sity to notice these things does in itself constitute the humorist, and the superadded power of so presenting them to men in gen- eral gives us the man of humor. — Coleridge. The four humors in a man, according to the old physicians, were blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy. So long as these were • duly mixed all would be well. But so soon as any of them unduly preponderated the man became humorous, one huMior or another bearing too great a sway in him. As such his conduct would not be according to the received nile of other men, but have some- thing peculiar, whimsical, self-willed in it. In this self-assert- ing character of the humorous man lay the point of contact between the modem use of humor and the ancient. It was his hnmor which would lead a man to take an original view and aspect of things, a humorous aspect, first in the old sense, and then in that which we now employ. The great passage in English literature on humor and its history is the prologue, or "stage," as it is called, to Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humor." PUNS. The most purely abstract form of wit is pnnning, wliich Weiss defines a constraint of two difterent ideas to be ex- 118 WIT A^D HUMOE DISTINGUISHED. [Part II. pressed by one word, while wit proper is the constraint of two different objects to be expressed by one idea. Several classes of puns have been distingnished. i. WJiere t/ie same form lias several meanings ; as Fair : 1, beanti- fill ; 2, just ; 3, a market-place. At one light bound high overleajjcd all bound. — Parcuiise Lost. " I'm transported to see you," as the convict said to the kangaroo. *' You are very pressing," as the filbert said to the nut-cracker. A gentleman observed one day to Mr. Erskine that punning was the lowest kind of wit. ** It is so," he replied, "and therefore at the foundation of them all." I am something like a corn-field, with plenty of ears but no particular idea of music. — John Phcenk. Dean Ramsey tells of a soaked Scotch minister who was rubbed down at the kirk, and told he need not feai* ; ho would be dry enough when he got into the pulpit. ii. Where two words of different meaning are pronounced alike though sjyelled differently ; as son and sun, peer and pier, etc. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew. — Merchant of Venice. Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads. — Id. They went and told the sexton. And the sexton tolled the bell. — Hood. Theodore Hook said of an author who gave his publisher a din- ner, "I suppose he poured his wine-cellar into his book-seller." John Phoenix tells of a mother so fnigal that her verv^ first ad- monition to her infant was, " Buy low, baby." "While in the city of the Golden Gate I sent to the cook for a broiled chop, but he sent me a fried one. It must be a satisfaction in one's last moments to receive consolation from a San Franciscan friar. — Id. The shadow of myself formed in her eye, Which, being but the shadow of your son. Becomes a sun, and makes your son a shadow. — King Johyi. iii. A third class is of those that are spelled differently, and pronounced nearly though not quite alike ; as, baron, barren ; sea- son, seizing, etc., though these more frequently produce malaprops than puns. Ohap. VILJ puns. 119 Mrs. Malaprop talks of contagious countries, and recommends a nice derangement of epitaphs. iv. There are cases in which a phrase or idiom consisting of two or three words may be used equivocally y and thus considered as a pun. Sydney Smith, hearing a boy read of patriarchs as partridges, declared it was too bad to make game of them. •* Is Mr. Smith a legal voter ? " asked a politician at election. "Yes," replied a by-stander, ** but being sick abed he is an ill-legal voter to-day." One day, observing on a board the warning, ** Beware the dog,** Hood wrote underneath, '* Ware be the dog ? " John Phoenix tells of an inquisitive man who married simply be- cause, having exhausted all other subjects of inquiry, he asked the young lady if she would have him. For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, ril pay it instantly with all my heart. — Merchant of Venice. V. In Milton there are less puns than conceits^ after the spirit of Italian literature. Highly they raged against the Highest. — Paradise Lost. His only pleasure is to be displeased. — Cowper. "There's something in that," as the cat said when she peeped into the milk-jug. vi. Tlie double pun is usually too elaborate to have the mark of spontaneousness indispensable even to moderate enjoyment of a pun. Freshman. — ^May I have the pleasure ? Miss Society.— Oui. Freshman. — What does *• we " mean ? Miss S.— O, U and I. When Ouida asked Charles Beade for a name for her dog ho suggested " Tonic," adding, "it is sore to be a mixture of bark, steal, and whine." " Ten days or ten dollars," said the judge, and the prisoner, a snllen-looking fellow, paid the fine and was discharged. He walkeil moodily out of the court-room, but when he reached the door turned and showered a tirade of profane abuse upon the 120 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. [Part II magistrate. Then he ran into the corridor, but before he could reach the street he was recaptured, and stood again before the bar. "Ten dollars more," said the judge ; " if you had used language more chaste and refined, you would not have thus been chased and refined." Coleridge remarks : '• Baxter, bke most scholastic logicians, had a sneaking affection for puns. The cause is — the necessity of at- tending to the primary sense of words, that is, the visual image or general relation expressed, and which remains conunon to all the after-senses, however widely or even incongruously differing from each other in other respects. For the same reason schoolmasters are commonly punsters. *I have endorsed your Bill, sir,' said a pedagogue to a merchant, meaning he had flogged his son William." But no man of sense betrays an affection for puns which is not sneaking. The temptation is often irresistible, but the offence should be accompanied by an apology, at least implied in the in- flection, or in an humble drop of the eyelids. Let it never be for- gotten that a pun for its own sake is at best but playful, and is per- missible only when play is permissible. Think of finding in grave disoonne a triviality like this : " When the infinite I AM beheld his wtMic Off creation, he said Thoo Art, and ART was.^ While the mere pun is at best a childish frolicsomeness, the pun as an adjunct to wit may intensify the effect. WTien Sydney Smith recommended the bishops to lay their heads together to make a wooden pavement, and when Burke pointed out that majesty, de- prived of its externals (m | a jest | y,) was only a jest, judgment un- derlay the puns and converted the thought into sarcasm. Sometimes, however, a pun blunts the shaft of wit. For in- stance : Irony employs wit to feather its purport. A Frenchman said of a man who really did never make a witty remark : ' ' How full of wit that man must be ! he never leu any eKcape." That when translated is improved, because the English word any can refer at once to no wit and to no person's escaping the effect of wit Thus the irony is increased. — Weiss. On the contrary, so far as any doubt is produced as to whether the meaning is, let any man escape — which is pure irony — or let any wit escape — which is wit edged by a pun — the hearer is con- fused, and his perception, divided between two ideas, is not strongly impressed by either. Chap. VU.] PUNS. 121 It moat be admitted that Charles Lamb, a capital anthority, defends this rery indefi- Biteneaa ai foUown : An Oxford ■cholur, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare through the streets, aoooeti him with thia extraordinary question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare or a wig?" There is no excusing this and no resisting it. A man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of it against a critic who should be laughter-proof. The quibble itself is not considerable. It is only a now turn given by a little false pronunciation to« very common though not very courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party it would have been vapid ; to the mistress of the house it would have shown much less wit than rudeneM. We must take in the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled porter ; the one stopping at his leisure, the other hurridng on with his burden ; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextrica- ble irrelevancy of the second ; the place — a public street, not favorable to frivolous inves- tigation ; the affrontivo quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) Invidi- OQsly transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire — namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties — which the fellow was beginning to understand ; but then wig again comes in, and he can make nothing of it ; all put together constitute a picture : Hogarth coold have made it intelligible on canvas. Yet nine out of ten critics will prononnce this a very bad pan, because of the defect- iveness in the concluding member, which is its Tery beauty, and oonstitates the surprise. —Popular FaUadea. When the purpose of puns is to enliven what otherwise miglit be monotonous and dreary, puns appropriate and facile are often very entertaining. "Mr. Dnyckinck truly says that ' an auctioneer is bound to hold his own against all in- ierlocators. . . . It is his business to control the audiences and their purses. To do this he mtist keep his company in good humor, and least of all suffer any intellectual dis> oomflture. Keeae never lost his superiority.* " But let us get into the auction-room. A narrative of the Battk) of Waterloo is put op. ' How mnch for it f * Twenty-five cents was bid. - There waa no quarter at the Battle of Waterloo, my dear dr.* I believe it was the loto Mr. Qowans who, when the anotionMr h^d in his hand ' Some Accooa'.. d ^ihe Centoun,* declared thcX there couldn't be a history of what never existed, and wanted an instance of n Centaur ; whereupon the doubter was referred to the Biblical record of the head o£ John too Buptist coming in on a charger. " A wittidam MMMtiiiMi miffht be beyond the k«o of a portioa of his audience, as when he spoke of Cadmus as the ' first poat-bQj,* beoaww 'be carried letters from Phoe- nicia to Greece ; ' but when he knocked down Dagley's 'Death's Dotngs* for serenty-flra cent* to • a decayed apotheoinr,* with the oonaoiatorT comment of ' smallest fn«r9 gratefully recelTed,* there was no lack of comprehension. Selling a black letter volume 'Concerning the Apparel of MiniKtcra,' he supposed it referred probably to their 'surplus omamenta ; * and he aasnred hia audience that the ' Poems of the B«v. Mr. Logan ' w«ra the Banka and Braaa of Bonnie Dooo>-«t all •vanta tha bcaja. 122 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. [Part II *' An iUnstntion of his readinen was when » imroel of fancy envelopes was pahsod up to be sold in one lot ' How manj are there ? ' was shouted from various paru of the room. * 1 I Awper'B Task to count them,* instantly exclaimed the aucti' with. Wit pirn- islies, but discourages ; liuinor is a solvent in which the severest admonishings niaj be accepted hopefully. We do well to consider that wit is an untractable faculty. Un- less it is well bridled it will overieap the bounds of propriety. Most of the keen darts of wit that one hears whizzing by have been ix)inted, barbed, and poisoned by malignity, and fix on some pei*son the stigma of vice, folly, or weakness. . . . The wit can hardly prevail on himself to withhold a gibe for the sake of affection. He falsely presumes that his friends will not smart under the thrusts he gives them ; or if they do, that they vnlV forgive the of- fence since it is committed by him. So he goes on, putting their patience to the proof, till he has provoked them past endurance. He who would be a wit must be content to boast few friends. A joke is an * ' aii'-di-awn dagger," from which our flesh instinctively Chap. Vll] THE SPHERE OP EACH IRONY. 123 shrinks. We see not the hand that gi-asps it, and cannot diviue how deep it will strike ; should it prove harmless, we do not thank it for startling us.— Hebvey. This sharpness of tongue provokes retort, the bitterness of which is not softened to the victim by the reflection that he has deserved it, and that the sympathy of by-standers will be with the one fii-st offended. •• No woman is worth looking at after thirty," remarked a bride with youthful arrogance. '* Quite true," calmly replied her com- panion a few yeara older, ** nor worth listening to before." Talleyrand was lame, and Madame de Stael was cross-eyed. There was no love lost between them, and both disliked to be re- minded of their infirmities. "Monsieur," said madame, meeting her deai'est foe one day, " pray how is that i)oor leg ? " " Crooked, as you see, madame," was the reply. Frederick the Second haetulant Greek, objecting to Anacharsis that he was a Scythian— •♦True," says Anachai-sis, '* my country disgraces me, but you disgrace your country." IRONY. Where wit is sarcastic, liuinor is ironica]. Irony is jesting hidden beneath gravity, while humor is gravity concealed behind the jest. . . . The mind uses irony when it gravely states an opinion or sentiment which is the opposite of its belief, with the moral purpose of showing its real dis.sent from the opinion. It must, therefore, be done with this wink from the pur- pose in it, so that it may not pass for an acquiescence in an oppo- 124 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. [Part II. site sentiment. It may be done so well as to deceive even the very elect ; and perhaps the ordinaiy mind complains of irony as wanting in straightforwardness. There is a moment of hesitation, when the mind stoops over this single intention with a double ap- pearance, and doubts upon which to settle as the real prey. So that only carefully poised minds with the falcon's or the vulture's glance can always discriminate rapidly enough to seize the point. In this moment of action the pleasure of irony is develo|>edt which aiises from a discovery of the contrast between the thing said and the thing intended. And this jdeasure is heightened when we observe the contrast between the fine soul who means nobly and his speaking as if he meant to be ignoble. Then the ignoble thing is doubly condemned, first, by having been briefly mistaken to be the real opinion of the speaker, and then by the flash of recognition of the speaker's sui)eriority. . . . In matters which are morally indiflerent irony is only a jesting which is dis- guised by gravity, as when we apparently agree with the notions of another person which are averse from our own, so that we puzzle him not only on the point of our own notion, but on the point of his own, and he begins to have a suspicion that he is not sound in the matter. This suspicion is derived from the mind's instinctive feeling that irony is a ti*ait of a superior i^ei-son who can aflford to have a stock of original ideas with which he tests opinion, and who holds them so securely that he can never play with them a losing game. . . . Amanwhopretendstoliold the opposite of his own belief is morally a liyjK)crite until we detect that slight touch of banter which is the proof of genuine irony. Then we see that he is honest though he equivocates, for he belies himself with sin- cerity. A man who can afford this is to that extent superior to the man who, whether right or wrong, is hopelessly didactic, and in- capable of commending his own opinions by the bold ease with which he may deplore them. — Weiss. Irony assumes on the part of the hearer a certain acquaintance with the speaker which gives the hearer rea- son to believe that the sentiments uttered cannot be the genuine belief of the speaker. Only so far as this ac- quaintance is rightfully assumed has the speaker any right Chap. VIL) IRONY. 125 to complain if his irony is received as statement of fact, and if he is himself rated accordingly. Thus if an artist were to point out the superiority of a wretched wood-cut over a fine steel-engraving, a person who knew the wood- cut to be wretched would do well to smile over the criticism as ironical. But if a stranger should gravely utter the same remarks, the same person might listen respectfully, having no reason to suppose that the stranger was less of an ignoramus than he repre- sented himself, and not wishing to hurt his feelings by exposing his stupidity. Genuine humorists are occasionally rebuked by the grave stare of surprise called forth by a remark meant to be received as ironi- cal. Especially common is this experience with children, whose calm glance of disapproval is often more effective than a stinging reply. Irony is often carried beyond decent bounds. When Sydney Smith explained to a shocked parishioner that he kept his dog chained because it had acquired an unfortu- nate habit of eating up the parish boys, buttons and all, his humor is possibly within reason, the buttons making it at least thoroughly obvious. But the question becomes doubtful when lie informs a gentleman that he has one secret wish — ^to roast a Quaker ; adding that it may be wrong, that the Quaker would undoubtedly suffer acutely, but that every one has his tastes, and his own is to roast a Quaker ; one would satisfy him, only one ; but it was one of the peculiarities he had striven against in vain, and he trusted his hearer would pardon his weakness. In like manner Charles Lamb, asked how he liked babies, stammered: " B-b-boiled." A modem ''humorist," plagiarizing the irony and the pun, has elaborated them into a paragraph fit only for the Fiji-islanders : In every age and every clime the best and noblest men loved children. Even wicked men have a tender spot left in their hard- 126 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED [Part a ened hearts for little children. The great men of the earth love them. Dogs love them. Kamahamekemokimodahroah, the king of the Cannibal islands, loves them — rare, and no gravy. Ah, yes, we all love children. — Burlington Hawkeye. Equally revolting is the following : The best thing to make grape-vines grow is dogs ; bury *em right down among the roots. Some people prefer grandmothers and their other relations. But gi* me dogs and cats. — Max Adeler. Swift's " Modest Proposal " for preventing the children of the poor in Ireland from being burdensome, and for making them beneficial by using them for food, was seri- ously quoted and condemned. The impulse to irony has been thus explained : Suppose I venture to play before a company a sonata of Beetho- ven, and that as I rise a lady rather gushingly exclaims : ** Oh, thank you, thank you ; we have all enjoyed it so much ! " Now, if I have played to my own fair satisfaction, I simply bow and say I am glad to have given pleasure. If the s})eaker is a friend, and I feel that I have done particularly well, I may even unbosom myself to the extent of remarking that I think the per- formance was tolerable for me. If I have been nervous, have blundered, have played much be- low my possibilities, I shall probably endeavor to suppress my an- noyance, accept the compliments without comment^ and change the subject. If I have played shockingly, losing all grasp of the spirit of the composition, and merely striking upon the piano the ivory and ebony equivalent of the notes on the score, without other thought than the set purpose to grit my teeth, sit firm on the stool, and get to the end of the piece without breaking down, I shall probably look my flatterer steadily in the eye as I remark that she is very kind to say so. But if in addition to utter failure in this instance I see that to attempt to play was idiotic, such pieces being far beyond my lim- ited accomplishments, and if this individual discomfiture sinks in- distinguishable into the general consciousness of ineffable weak- ness and stupidity, which alone could have persuaded me to try Chap. VII] THE IMPULSE TO IROmr. 127 what a well-constructed automaton would know I was incapable to do, so that I long to get into the attic of an empty house and snort at myself, then I shall probably smile blandly on my tormentor, assure her that in congratulating mo she chooses the right word, since the audience should share the honor of the performance, the finest artistic efforts being possible only in a company of artists, and that if I seemed at the moment to be inspired it was because the sympathy and appreciation of my listeners lifted me out of my- self, so tliat instead of playing the sonata I had really been played by it, and so on. This I conceive to be irony. Whether I shall so turn the ex- pression as to show my companion that I mean it for irony dei)end8 uix)n the re8i>ect I have for her. If I like her I shall very likely intensify my expressions until she recognizes the sarcasm, even if I have to go to the extent of promising some time to play for her a piece really worthy of myself and the audience — " Silver Tlireads among the Gold," for instance. But if I think her silly or malicious, it will probably relieve me a little to have her either believe all that I say, or believe that I believe it, in which case I shall gratluate my exaggeration according to her credulity. There are three degrees of indignation. The first, indignation pure and simple, finds sufficient expres- sion in strong words that directly manifest the feeling. Beyond this is a stage where language is inadeqiiate, and one turns away with a gesture, a shrug, a withering glance. Tliis is scorn. But there is a step beyond scorn, where the indignation is too bitter for silence, and must, by elaborating and exaggerating, grind the shameful conviction into one's soul, gloating over its artistic completeness. This is irony. Banter is the badinage of the French, irony their persiflage. Real irony seems to stand midway between banter and sarcasm. Banter is the playful and sarcasm the ferocious form of irony. . . . The peculiar mode of disputation adopted by Socrates consisted in a playful entanglement of his opi)oneut in admissions which, while appearing to support and strengthen the argument of his opponent, in reality involved him in an absunl conclusion. He waa made to take the bait^ all unconscious of the hook by 128 WIT AND HUMOR DISTINGUISHED. [Pabt IL which he was to be captured. There was a perfect antagonism b©« tween the appearance and the fact — the appearance being the as- surance of yictorj, the fact the certainty of defeat ; and the defeat was brought about by the use of the very weapons on which the disputant relied for success. This the Greeks called tlfjuiPtia. — L. A. 1742. A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick — it appears at first sight to be much more innocent than it really is, till, of a sudden, there leaps something out of it — sharp, and deadly, and incisive, which makes you tremble and recoil. — Sydney Smith. In polished society the dread of being ridiculous models every word and gesture into propriety, and produces an exquisite atten- lion to the feelings and opinions of others ; it curbs the sallies of eccentricity, it recalls the attention of mankind to one uniform standard of reason and common-sense. — Sydney Smith. Hence, too, the true ludicrous is its own end. When serious satire commences, or satire that is felt as serious, however comi« cally dressed, free and genuine laughter ceases ; it becomes sar- donic. — COLEBIDOE. Ridicule is not only confined to questions of less moment, but is fitter for refuting error than for supporting truth, for restraining from wrong conduct than for inciting to the practice of what is right. Nor are these the sole restrictions ; it is not properly lev- elled at the false, but at the absurd in tenets ; nor can the edge of ridicule strike with equal force every species of misconduct ; it is not the criminal part which it attacks, but that which we denom- inate silly or foolish. — CAMPBEiiL, i. 59. See also 64, 69. 7. Wit is »ponta7ieous / humor iruiy he cultivated. If you have real wit it will flow spontaneously, and you need not aim at it ; for in that case the rule of the Gospel is reversed, and it shall prove, seek and ye shall not find. — Chesterfield. It does not, however, follow that no study is to be given to the expression of wit. The idea may be an inspiration, but not necessarily at the time of utterance. Oftener it is conceived in solitude, turned and polished in the mind, and Ohap VII ] MISERIES OP A PROFESSIONAL WIT. 129 then held in readiness for a fitting occasion. Only by this habit of perfecting the expression of a happy idea can be acquired the habit of expressing such ideas with precision and pungency when they are struck out in the friction of conversation. When the idea is thus conceived there ai-e few even of those noted for their wit who do not pause to turn it over once or twice in their minds before giving it utterance. The condition of putting forth ideas in order to be witty oper- ates much in the same salutary manner as the condition of finding rhymes in poetry ; it reduces the number of performers to those who have vigor enough to overcome incipient difficulties, and makes a sort of pro\'ision that that which need not be done at all should be done well whenever it is done. For we may ob- serve that mankind are always more fastidious about that which is pleasing than they are about that which is useful. — Sydney SMirH. On the other hand, to delve for sparkling sayings, to wrench and distort ideas and words for the sake of being funny, is as futile as it is contemptible. Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad jmrt of conversation. It is done to support a character ; it generally fails ; it is a sort of in- sult to the company and a restraint on the speaker. — Swift. The source of bad writing is the desire to be something more than a man of sense — the straining to be thouglit a genius, and it is just the same in speech-making. If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms how much more eloquent they would be. — CSoLHRiDaB. Hence to be recognized and invited as a witty man in- volves a responsibility and a condition of service few would care to assume. One might as well be asked as a news- pai)er reporter, or to play the violin for dancing. Soon after the war " Petroleum V. Xasby " attempted to lecture, and people went to hear iiim expecting to be amused. The lee- 130 WIT AND HUll^R DISTlNQtJiSHED. [Part It ture was well enough in its way, but it was a serious dis- cussion of the situation and people felt themselves ag- grieved. People do not look for instruction to those hy whom they ai*e accustomed to be amused. " Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they aflFord, are seldom respected for the qualities they pos- A witty man is a dramatic performer ; in process of time he can no more exist without applause than he can exist without air ; if his audience be small, or if they are inattentive, or if a new wit defrauds him of anj portion of his admiration, it is all over with him — he sickens and is extinguishei>ointed ho insisted uiwn bo- ginning the meal. Presently the belated guest was heard entering the hall. Sothem instantly pro]>osod that the whole comimny should get under the table. Without an objection, tnisting to the actor's vni for some comical climax, the unsuspecting guests hurriedly crawled upon the floor and awaited results, quite unaware that their host had kept his seat and was finishing his soup. The tardy guest was full of apologies. " Don't mention it,** 139 PRACTICAL JOKES. [Part II. said Sothern, "we are only at soup; sit down and be helped." The gentleman did so with a puzzled look at the empty chairs around the table. "0," said Sothem, "you miss the other gen- tlemen. They are all here, but for some inexplicable reason the moment you were announced they all crept under the table. "What they are doing there is more than I know." It is easier to imagine than to describe tlie various expressions upon the faces of the \dctini8, as, one by one, they crawled out and resumed their chairs. But it is safe to say they were all cured of participating in practical jokes proposed by Mr. Sothem. An ingenious writer has propounded what he calls " The Gelatic System,*' a theory of the history of laughter. a. PrehumortMc Age.— It in a psjchological fact that brntes are deroid of humor, and that savages have a minimnm. So evenly did mind and humor keep pace that prior to the time men laughed they did not know enough to keep a record of events. This age, then, exactly covered what are known a* pre-historic times. b. Baeckanalian Age.— The innate germ of mirth d mbtless sprang np under the en- livening inflneaoe of wine. The type of this age was drunken silliness, humor of tho lowest order. The character of Thersitcs, in Sbakspere^s '* Troilus and Cressida," is an anachronism, for Thendtes could not hare been the representative humorist of his time. Though Bacchanalian orgies have always flourished, the epoch of history characterized by them came to an end B.C. 650. c. Burlesque Age, B.C. 550-.4.Z). 476.— Becoming more refined, the people were loath to laugh at themselves, and sought how they might laugh at each other. Hence the rise of comedy, for in comedy the laugh is not at the actor himself, but at the person he rep- resents. The Burlesque Age embraces the three well known forms of comedy, namely : the Old Comedy (caricature), the Middle Comedy (criticismX and the New Comedy (man- ners). Though Greece and Rome were the proprietors of comedy, the spirit of burlesque was rife everywhere, even among the Jews. In accordance with the principle of the parallel growth of mind and humor, it will be noticed that the decline of humor at the time of the Empire was exactly proportional to the decline of mental activity. d. Hunchback Age, A.D. 47H-750.— The barbarians, of course, had verj' shallow con- ceptions of the ludicrous. The discrepancy in height between a tall and a short man, or any personal deformity, was enough to capsize the gravity of a king. A dwarf or a hunchback was an indispensable member of a prince's retinue, and a hunchback was a luxury fit for an emperor. e. Idiot Age, A.D. 750-950.— Mental deformity was discovered to be more comical than physical, and diligent search was made for idiots to add the crowning grace to noble households. First-class idiots were of course reserved for the king. An extra-stupid idiot of superior imbecility and profound obtuseness is said to have lived in the days of Charles the Fat. It is not an interesting period to linger over. f. Clorcn Age, A.D. 950-1350.— The reign of the natural idiot was followed by that of the artificial idiot, who, though called like his predecessor a f<»ol, was really a keen witted buffoon. Touchstone, in " As You Like It,'' and Wamba, son of Witless, in " Ivanhoc," are representative " fools" of this period, when wit began to sparkle as not before since Terence. Traces of the Clown Age are still to be seen in the circus and the pantomime. Chap. VIL] THE GELATIC SYSTEM. 133 g, Maaqutradtng Age, A. D. 1360-1500.— People now became eager for more fun, and ■lildied how to develop their own creative humor. Humor took a fanUstic turn : every- body w«» Boiied with an Imitative spirit, and straightway sprang up the idea of a show, in which everybody might select a jmrt and play it to suit himself, the fun being propor- tional to the incongmonsness of the action with the character. h. Dinner-Table Age, AD. 1600-1625.— The next type of humor was personal ban- tering. Every Falstaff received standing invttatiouH to dinner, and was welcome at all hoars. Clubs were formed who«e object was the evolution of jocularity through the me- dium of the flowing bowl, the prototypes of some modern organizations. Royalty itself tried to be witty, as witness the jokes of King Jami^ at the expense of Steenie. L Boot Age, A.D. 1635-1850.— Humor was next boiled down and bottled up ready for use in a book. Three varieties are noticeable : atrial, 8uch as the shy, delicate, sen- sitive airiness of Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Hawthorne — often so deliciously coy as to elude laughter ; grotesque, the characteristic variety of a motley crowd, led first by Don Quixote, and afterward by Tom and Jerry; satiric, which is subdivided into (i) satires on man, like Swift's Gulliver and B>Ton's Don Juan, and (^ii) ratires on men, i.e., not on the way God has seen fit to make man, but on men's errors and foibles. k. Newepoper Age, A.D. 1850.— Though the homorouH book is still written, and al- ways will be written, it no longer typifies a historic era. Indeed, remnants of all former •gM are seen to-day. Carousals are common ; the comedian mill pries open the mouth ; Cide-shows exhibit among other wonderful curiosities dwarfs and idiots ; harlequin still tickles the rib? : masquerades and carnivals are still popular, especially in romance coun- tries ; jests pass from lip to lip, and riang, an oflf shoot of the Dinner-Table Age, is a weed of luxurious growth : you can sit in solitude and smile at the vagaries of your favorite author; but the funny newspaper man is supreme. He is the Jupiter of the humorous heavens and earth, and every day yon can see his lightnings and bear his thunder. DANGERS OF WIT AND HUMOR. " See what a coiiimand of langiiasce those Irish orators have," remarked some one to Archbisliop Whately. " See rather what command language has of them," was the reply. Wit, of all powers the most envied and dreaded, be- comes a curse when it forgets its legitimate service as one of man's agencies of usefulness. Humor, which lightens every load, illumines every darkness, cheers ever}' heart, diverts every sorrow, which has well been called the great lubricator of life, mast yet remain subordinate to judgment and duty, or it will prey like a fungus, rotting to the core what it seems only to adoni. For humor is, after all, a \iv\v of liic that, distorts. It may be diverting from its novelty to have a Mark Tapley 134 DANGERS OF WIT AND HUMOR. [Part It exult in his master's wretched plights because it makes it creditable to be jolly ; but after all it is better to be wise enough to avoid wretched plights. A view of life that makes our wretchedness less by dwelling on the disadvan- tages of those who are happy will, if carried too far, lead us to underestimate the distance between wretchedness and happiness, and thus remove the spur to ambition. Humor is one of the elements of genins ; but if it predomi- nate it becomes a makeshift. Humor accompanies the decadence of art, which it destroys and annihilates. — Ogethb. Especially is it tlie tendency of humor to break down the distinctions of right and wrong. Is there some one humorific point common to all that can be called humorous ? I am not prepared to answer this fully, even if my time i>ermitted ; but I think there is, and that it consists in a certain reference to the general and the universal, by which the finite great is brought into identity with the little, or the little with the finite great, so as to make both nothing in comparison with the infinite. The little is made great, and the great little, in order to destroy both ; because all is equal in contrast with the in- finite. . . . My de\al was to be, like Goethe's, the universal humorist, who should make all things vain and nothing worth by a perpetual collation of the gi-eat with the little in the presence of the infinite. — Coleridge. If we wish to find a passage from irony to humor we should have to look for it in cases where good-nature assumes the positive attribute of impartiality, because humor is a kind of disposition to adopt the whole of human nature, fuse all its distinctions, tol- erate all its infirmities, and assemble vice and misery to receive rations of good cheer. — Weiss. All this is wrong and harmful. So far as humor helps us to bear the evils we cannot help it is a blessing ; but let us beware lest it make us content with imperfections that we might remove, faults that we might cure, apathy Chap. Vll] PURPOSE vs. ACCOMPLISHMENT. 136 that unnerves us. In comparison with the infinite, human accomplishment is indeed at highest but insignificant. But human pwjtoae has all the possibilities of infinitude itself, and man will approach the infinite only as he cleaves fast to moral distinctions. South MotJHTAiN, Catskuxs, September 8, 1867. How broad and beautiful a belt Of landscape doth the eye attain ; The hills and vales tO}^ther melt Into a low and level plain. Tkiu mtn are great ana men are email In human eires ; So puny all, that none look tall Seen from the tkiee. Tet gleam the colors fresh and bright, The fields art i^reen ; the Hudson bine; The harvests bathe in golden light ; Diamonds sparkle in the dew. So have the acts of humankind Diettncttve hue ; Noble from baae ie clear d^ned In higheet view. Sydney Smith concludes: " I wish, after all I have said about wit and humor, that I could satisfy myself of their good effects upon the character and disposition ; but I am convinced the probable tendency of both is to corrupt the understanding and the heart." " In cheerful souls," says Novalis, " there is no wit Wit is a disturbance of the equipoise." But this is true only where wit and humor have undue predominance. Says Hazlitt, "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." When the perception of this difference causes laughter alone, humor is indeed corrod- ing, lie who can make sport of sins has defective notions 136 WIT AND HUMOR. [Pabt IL as to their enormity, and leads others to think too lightly of committing them. What more plain nonsense can there be than to be earnest in jest, to be continual in divertisement, or constant in pastime, to make extravagance all our play, and sauce all our diet? Is not this plainly the life of a child that is ever busy yet never hath anything to do ? or the life of that mimical brute which is always active in playing uncouth and unlucky tricks, which, could it speak, might surely pass well for a professed wit ? — Barbow. We see in neeilleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground ; judge, there- fore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. — Baoon. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Need of relaxation, p. 92. Theories of the ludicrous, p. 93. Hobbes, p. 93 ; Haven, p. 93 ; Hazlitt, p. 94 ; Quintilian, p. 94 ; Sidney, p. 94 Laughter not necessarily scornful, pp. 94-97. Herbert Spencer's theory, pp. 97-99. Does not account for the pleasure, pp. 99, 100. Aristotle's theory, p. 101. The incongruous and the inconvenient, p. 101. The ludicrous not an absolute relation, p. 102. Sacred subjects not to be trifled with, p. 103. Why the ludicrous gives pleasure, p. 104. The theory of pleasure, 104. Perception of the ludicrous, 105. Not universal, p. 105. Not to be acquired, p. 106. Value not factitious, p. 107. Not to be obtruded, p. 108. Enjoyed in proportion to the difficulty, p. 109, Conventional jokes, p. 110. American humor, pp. 111-113. Chap. VIL] TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 137 Wit and humor distinguished, p. 113. 1. Humor expected, wit unexpected, p. 114. 2. Humor continuous, wit instantaneous, p. 115. 8. Humor may appear in action, wit only in word, p. -116. 4. Wit may be imaginative, humor involves character, p. 116. Puns, p. 117. 5. Humor lies in sentiment, wit in understanding, p. 122. 6. Humor is based on sympathy, wit may be without it, p. 122. Irony, p. 123. 7. Humor may be cultivated, wit is spontaneous, p. 128. Disadvantages of being considered witty, p. 129. Practical jokes, p 131. The Gelatic system, p. 132. Dangers of wit and humor, p. 133. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. What do you think of Sothern's joke (page 131) ? Are the stories on pages 71, 88, 229, and 253, witty or humorous ? CHAPTER Vm. EGOTISM. Thb pelt ci todety is epitlitB. Thoe are dnil and bright, mend and nrofane, ooarw and fine egotista. ^Tis a diaeaae that, like inflnenxa, falls on all oonstituUnp.s. In the diaeaae known to physicians as chorea the patient sometimes tiims round and continues to spin slowlj on one spot. Is egottsm a metaphysical variety of this malady ? The man mns round a ring formed by his own talenl, falls into an admiration of it, nnd loses rela- tion to the world. It is a tendency in all minds. One of ite annoying forms is a craving for sympathy. The sofTerers parade their miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that yon may pity them. They like sickness, I>ecau8e physical pain will extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as we have seen children who, finding themselves of no acooont when grown people come in, will cough till they shake to draw attention.— EiCBBSON. In considering the relation to conversation of one's in- dividuality, egotism, which is properly simply the tendency to allude to one's self, should be distinguished from self- conceit and vanity. Self-Conceit denotes a narrow mind and a selfish disposition. It is independent of the opinion of others, at- tributing censure to envy and indifference to lack of per- ception. Hence it is not prompted to do kindly offices in order to win good opinion. It feels no gratitude toward those who bestow favors, receiving such attention as a right- ful perquisite. It is incapable of sympathy, of love, of any real fellowship. Nothing so haughty and assuming as ignorance where self- conceit bids it set up for infallible. — South. Vanity is a weakness, but is less selfish. It is depend- ent upon the opinion of others, and is helpless when neg- lected. Hence it will cheerfully make sacrifice for othei's Chap, villi VANITY. 139 which is likely to secure their good-will. It abounds in gratitude for favors, is quick to sympathize, as eager to lov(» as to be loved, and steadfast in fellowship so long as it fet'l > itself apj)reciated. Infuse vanity into such a man as Goklsmitli and it adds a child- like charm to his character ; it gives a tinge of delightful humor to his writings, and enables his friends to love him the more heart- ily because they have the right to pay themselves by a little kindly contempt. Make a Byron vain and half hi;4 magnificent force of mind will be was:ed by silly efforts to attract the notice of his con- temporaries by attacking their best feelings and affecting (a su- perfluous task) vices which he does not possess. The vanity of a Wordsworth enables him to treat with a profound disdain tho sneers of Edinburgh reviewei's and the dull indifference of tho mass of his readers; but it encourages him also to become a liter- ary sloven, to spoil noble thought by grovelling language, and to subside into supino ob^tructiveness.* Conversely tho vanity of a Poi>e makes him suffer unspeakable tortures from tho stings of critics comimred to whom Jeffrey was a giant, condescend to tho meanest artifices to catch the applause of his contemiwraries, and hunger and thirst for the food wliich "Wordsworth roj(^cted with contempt. But it also enables liim to become within his own lim- its the most exquisite of artists in words, to increase in skill as he increased in years, and to coin phrases for a distant posterity even out of the most trifling ebullition of passing spite. Tho vanity of a Milton excites something approaching to awe. Tho vanity of a Congreve excites our rightful contempt Vanity seems to be at once the source of the greatest weaknesses and of the greatest achievements. To write a history of vanity would be to write the history of the greatest men of our race, for soldiers and states- men have been as vain as poets and artists. Chatham was vaiii ; Wolfe was vain ; Nelson was childishly vain, and tho groat Nai)ol- oon was as vain as the vainest. — Com hill Mtifjuzlne, There are some men who need praise as much as flowers need snnshine. Yon cannot get the best work out of them without it. It is vain to preach to them self-reliance ; they need to be propped •ThitttaoaldbeattritmtadtmtlMrtoKlf-coDoeitthun t<> vanity. 140 EGOTISM. [Pabt II. and biittres-sed by others* opinions — to bo biuced by encourage- ment and sympathy. •* Praise me, Mr. rojw," said Sir Gtodfrey Kneller to Ihe i>oet of Twickenham as the latter sat for his por- trait ; "you know I can*t do as well as I should unless you praise me.'* Bidiculous as the i-cquest may seem, who doubts that the crooked little poet got a better portrait by complying with it? And when was praise more efficacious, when did it yield a richer harvest, tlian when bestowed on the sickly iK>et himself ? Bulwer, in his essay on **The Efficacy of Praise" in "Caxton- iana," observes that every actor knows how a cold house chills him, and how necessary to the full suitainment of a great part is the thunder of applause. He states that the elder Eean, when he was performing at some theatre in this country, came to the manager when the play was half over and said : " I can't go on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such an audience wotdil extinguish JSttia.** Upon this the manager told the audience that Mr. Kean, not being accustomed to the severe intel- ligence of American citizens, mistook their silent attention for courteous disappointment, and that if they did not applaud Mr. Eean as he was accustomed to he applauded they could not see Mr. Kean act as he was accustomed to act. Of course the audience took the hint, and as their fervor rose so rose the genius of the actor, and their applause contributed to the triumj^hs it rewarded. — Mathews. Reference to One's Self. — So serious a fault is egotism that it is a common precept to avoid all allusion to one's self. " Don't speak of yourself at all/' luns the old proverb, "for if you speak ill of yourself people will be- lieve you and despise you for the fact ; and if you speak well they will disbelieve you and despise jou for the He.'' But it is possible to speak of one's self without such boasting as induces disbelief or such detraction as belittles. No subject of conversation is more natural or more inter- esting. Egotism is to be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or an epic poem. To censure it in a Chap. VIII. J EGOTISM SELDOM FRANKNESS. 141 monody or a sounet ia almost as absurd as to complain of a circle for being round. ... If I could judge others by myself I should not hesitate to affirm that the most interesting passages in all writings are those in which a writer develops his own feelings. — CoiiEBIDOE. Talk About an Imaginary Self. — Th« fact is, the egotism which society so justly condemns is not talk about one's real self, but talk about a desirable self — not about what we really are, but about what we want our friends to think we are. The egotist" more or less con- sciously conceals the real John, and patches up by hints as to his antecedents, his history, his courage, his probity, liis tenderness, his regard from others, an ideal John that shall compel admiration. We feel the contrast when in a moment of delight or discouragement he blunders upon a genuine revelation. So close-locked does every man try to keep the secret of his life that few can resist the tempta- tion to peer in when he opens the lid ; as few have the grace to listen patiently while he describes without open- ing it the wonderful things he would like to have us believe it contains. It is in this opening the lid that the charm of frankness consists. To speak without reserve of what most persons conceal indicates a consciousness of general purity of life and integiity of purpose that inspires confidence and prompts to similar avowal. Dr. Johnson, paying court to Mrs. Porter, told her plainly that he was of mean extraction, that he had no money, and that one of his uncles had been hanged. She as frankly replied that she had no more money than he, and that though none of her relatives ever had been hanged she haon the other to be admired, and the talk dwindles into platitudinous piping. — Cam- hill Magaziyte. Frank Self-revealment Interesting. — It is sel- dom that we are indifferent to genuine confession, but it is very seldom that we hear it. The egotist does not always eulogize himself directly. He may make you father-confessor and acknowledge to you a fault or habit that is exceedingly dishonorable to him — " he cannot help it ; it is his way." Perha2>s he has resolved at all hazards to take a promi- nent part in conversation, even though it be at the expense of his character and the comfort of the comimny. Else he talks of his faults in order to demonstrate his sincerity or some other \-irtue. " He is none of your dissemblers ; he must tell you all." Another confesses his crimes on purpose to show us his shrewdness, tact, or courage in committing them, in escaping detection or punish- ment ; or the generosity or high-mindedness with which he made amends for them ; thus does he glory in his shame. — Hervey. Egotism not Eradicated by Silence. — Egotism cannot be overcome or concealed by abstaining from men- tion of self. The writers of Port Royal were so disgusted with the predominance of the pronoun / in contemporary writings that they uniformly shunned it as savoring of self-conceit. But it is not the use of this pronoun that betrays the egotist — it is the feeling that prompts its ut- terance, as betrayed by the connection and the tone. A false humility, or, in the world's parlance, a false modesty, is as criminal and offensive as pride, for it is that pride in disguise. Pride may not prompt the frequent use of the pronoun ; on the other hand, egotism in the first degree is often perpetrated when there is a careful avoidance of it ; and in general lie who makes a show of great pains to keep aloof from a fault does thereby declare that he knows himself to be addicted to it. Some of the vainest of moi-tals are often heard to say, ** without boasting," •' I do not Chap. VIII. J SELF-ASSERTION. 148 like to pfraiso myself," "Pardon me for Bpeaking of myself.** Again there are verj' humble characters who may use this kind of apologetical phrases. Let us bewai-o of words ; nothing is more common than to bo misled by them. — Hervey. All groat men not only know their business, but they usually know tluit they know it, and are not only right in their main opin- ions, but they usually know that they are light in them ; only they don't think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo known that he can build a good dome at Florence ; Albert Diirer wTitea calmly to one who had found fault with his work, ** It cannot be ])etter done." Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else ; only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them. They have a curious undersense of jxywerlessness, feeling t hat the greatness is not in them but through them ; tliat they could not 1)6 any other thing than God made them. And they see something divine and God-made in every other man they moot, and they are endlessly, foolishly, and incredibly merciful. — Ritskin. The diflSculty is to be certain that this i)ositiveness of slatement has the warrant of genius behind it. Mr. Ruskin himself has used much language tlmt only very great assumnco in his own judgment could waiTant. Thus in reply to some one who objected to the contempt with which ho had 8ix)ken of such men as John Stuart Mill and Goldwin Smith, complaining that the disciples of each men are ** hurt and made angry when words they do not like are used of their leadere," he answered : " Well, my «lwir lir, I ■olcmnly believe that the leas they like it the better my work haa bwn dune, fur yua will find if you think deeply uf it that the chief of all the cone* of this unhappy asro i>« the nnivenal babble of its fooU and of the flock* that follow them, rrndering the quiet voiooi of the wine men of all paxt time inaudible. This ix, ftrat, the mtiilt of the invention of printing, and of the ea«y power ai;d extreme plea«ure to vain |ter8»n« of HL-eing themaelves in print. When it took a twelve-mcnith'a hanl work to make a iiinglo volume legible men oonaldercd a little th« difference Iwtween one bt^k and an- other : btit now when not «»nly anybody enn Rct thom«elve« made legible thromrh any quantity of volume* in a week, but the doing m> be(»meR a means of living to them, and they can (111 their stomach* with the foolUn foam of th^lr Up*, the univenwl peotilenoe of falM>hooii fl Is the mind of the world as cicadaM do olive leavex. and the flrat neoandty ct oar moral guvemment is to extricate from among the inscotile noiHO the few books and word* that are divine. And this haa tMon my main work from my youth u|>— not oaring to sp«ak my own wordK, but to discern, whether in iviititini; or M-ripture, what is eternally good and vital, ami to strike awsy from it pitilcwsly what ix worthless and that now, being old and thoroogbly pracUaetl in thla trade, I know aitlMr ol m | 144 EGOTISM. fPAKT It brxdc, or a speech qoite Mcnreljr, whether it is good or not, m * cheeeemonger knows cheese^ and I have not the least mind to try to make wise men oat of fools, ot silk purses oat of HOWS* earn ; bat mj one swift husiness is to brand them of base quality and get them out of the way, and I do not car* a oobweb's weight wh^her I hurt the followers of these men or not — totally ignoring them and caring only to get the facts oonoeming the men themselves fairly rounded and stated for the people whom I have real power to teach. And for qualiflcati*-ith each other, gaining in a short time a clear insight into each other's characters and pur- suits.— /$bae/y Small Talk. It is often assumed that reticence commands respect. It is in vain to point out that the silent fool often passes for a man of wit, because the fool who has wit enough to know this and act accordingly is not properly a fool. Were he a fool he would not keep silence. The negroes attribute this wi-sdom to the chim- panzee, who, they say, is a man, but will not speak lest he should be made to work. Silent people get through the world as well as their talkative neighbors ; every one talks for them ; their no> me that certain penoiM of a fiank and impalaive temper are quite aa apt to be miainterpretfed. The oommon error of giving raaerred persons in- sufficient credit fur feeling, beoaoae of their lack of demonatration, ii an error into which only tlie duller iwrt of obwenrers fall ; bnt keener -sighted onea often make the oppo- site mistake, and cherish the belief that the less the display the fuller and deeper iu sources must be. This is far from being inTariaUy the truth. It appears to me that if reserved folk arc misoonocived it is in a manner favorable to their character and intel- lect, and whatever opinions may be expreesed abont them are commonly accompanied with the acknowledgment that they are opinions only, for when a man is nut outspoken abont himadf we may hold what notion we choom about him ; but we cannot help knowing that the notion irt something of our own construction, baaed on no real knowl- edge. On the other hand« when a person is in the habit of talking freely, is not chary of his opinion and even reveals something of his personsl tastes, habits, anerament who are the real unfortunates ; they go throngh a good deal of experience before they learn the wisdom of keeping themselves to themselves, and after learning it are sometimes unlucky enough to forget it at the wrong moment,— Atlantic JfotUhljf. SUGGESTIONS. Applying to this subject the general principle of con- versation that our first object should be to entertain our companion, not to exalt ourselves, we observe : 1. Reference to One's Self Should Never he Obtruded. — To boast of one's position, connections, achievements. Chap. VII I. J SUGGESTIONS. 147 sentiments is to lower by comparison the corresponding possessions of our comrade, and thus to render him un- comfortable. It is for this reason that a vaunting tale so often elicits from the hearer a story yet more marvellous, so that boasting leads to lying. The discomfort is heightened as the thing exnlted in is beyond the reach of one's companion. To boast of health in presence of an invahd, of strength to a cripple, of wealth to a i)aui)er, of edu- cation to the illiterate, of social distinction to those who get no in- vitations, is as stupid as it is unkind, for whatever grudging ac- knowledgment may be granted the fact, is lost in resentment at the lack of consideration. A man witli more money than manners paused to talk with a laborer hoeing in his garden. " Well, Pat," ho began, ** it's good to be rich, isn't it ? ** *'Yis, sorr." *' I am rich, very rich, Pat." " Yis, sorr." " I own lands, and houses, and bonds, and stocks, and — and — and—" ♦' Yis, sorr." " And what is there, Pat, that I haven't got ? " " Not a spick o' since, sorr ; " and shouldering hia hoe Pat marched off in search of a less conceited employer. On the other hand, no reluctance should be shown in coming forward when we can add to the pleasure of others. One nnist trust to his judgment to determine when he can contribute most to the general enjoyment by remaining in the back-ground and when by taking the lead. A moderate musician, in whom it would be intolerable conceit to play before a cultured audience, may add intensely to the en- joyment of a country farm-house, and would show as much egot- ism in dechning to play in tlie latter case as he would in offer- ing to play in the fonnor. There may l>e times when ho kno\*-8 himself unfitted to ap{)car and yet where the demand that he shall 148 EGOTISM. [Pabt n. do so is so persistent that it is less egotistical for him to accept and do the best he can, knowing he must fail, than to delay the entertainment of the company while his hostess, injudiciously kind, refuses to yield to his protests. This is one of the instances where one is called upon deliberately to sacrifice one's self and to accept the unjust verdict of pretension, because to inflict poor music upon a company for five minutes will annoy them less than to listen for lialf an hour to one's reason for not trying. In all such cases the man who systematically regards not his own pleasure or reputation, but the gratification of the company, will seldom go astray. If oc- casionally misunderstood, eventually his unselfishness will be rec- ognized. 2. Staieirvents of Fcujt Should he Rigorously Accurate. — In the popular mind exaggeration is so associated with boasting that in referring to ourselves we should be care- ful rather to diminish than to enlarge the statements of fact. So alert is the listener to detect exaggeration that he is quite likely some time to compare the fact with our statement of it. To find that we have claimed less than was really true will gratify him the more because this so seldom happens, while to discover that even in imessential particulars we have rounded out the narrative will inspire mistrust of all we have said. Many persons acquire a gay habit of merry boasting, or of hu- morous gasconading — so called from the Gascons, a brave and tal- ented people, who, however, utterly destroy all respect for their real merit by their habits of vaunting. He who would avoid vanity should have absolutely nothing to do with it — not even to bur- lesque it. Self is our most insidious foe, and he who boasts in fun will soon find earnest thoughts gliding into the current of his jests. In short, avoid everything trhich may suggest, however re- motely, to those icith whom you converse the suspicion that you think of the effect you produce. — Art of (Conversation. 3. Reference to One's Self Should Cease the Moment It Becomes Wearisome. — There are persons so ill-bred as to Chap. Vni.] CONFroENTIAL SELF-RBVEALMENT. 149 persist in asking questions about one's private affairs and who yet, when one in sheer good nature begins to answer, relapse into dreamy indifference. There are others who by any reference to one's self are instantly stimulated to in- terrupt by corresponding reminiscences and confessions. There are frequent occasions when one has been led, wisely or weakly, into self -reveal ment, and suddenly discovers that what he says is heard reluctantly. Ko rule is more imperative than that such reference to one's self should in- stantly cease, not only out of regard to the wishes of one's companion, but out of respect for one's own dignity. There are no moments in life more precious than when one talks with a tried friend of his life within. But such talk should be only between tried friends, and only in mo- ments of confidence and sympathy. It is not to Harry Foker that Guy "Warrington tells his story, but to Arthur Pendennis, and to Arthur Pendennis only when a crisis in his life makes the story solemn to him. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Distinguished from self-conceit and vanity, p. 138. Reference to one's self natural and interesting, p. 140. Bat disagreeable when to an imaginary self, p. 141« Egotism not eradicated by silence, p. 142. Talk of one's self an easy introduction to conversation, p. 145. SUGOESTIONa Reference to one's self should never be obtruded, p. 146. Statements of fact should be rigidly accurate, p. 148. Reference to one's self should cease as soon as wearisome, p. 148. 1*0 TOPICAL ANALYSIS. [Part II SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. Do you agree with Coleridge (page 131) ? Do you think the writer in the Atlantic Monthly (page 146) right or wrong in thinking thoee of frank and impulsive temper as apt to be misunderstood as those of reserved disposition 1 What do you think of the following paragraph ? * ' Moralists are fond of vaguely advising people to * be themselves ' and of assuring them that all is well so long as a man dares to be his own true self. The value of this counsel, of course, entirely de|)ends on the sort of self with which each person happens to be endowed. Socrates, who knew a good deal about his own character, asserted that if he had been true to himself he would have been one of the greatest scoundrels in an age peculiarly fertile in unredeemed blackguards." CHAPTER IX. ARTICULATION AND PRONUNCIATION. On wiutterer rabject and for whateTer jmrpone a man speakR to hi« fellow-tncn, they will never listen to him "with intcreat unlem they can hear what he says; and that without effort. If hi« uttcmnce is rapid ami indistinct, no weight of his sentiments, no strength or amoothneas of voice, no rxcoUence of modulation, emphasis, or cadence, will enable him to speak no as to be heard with pleasure.— Pobteb. A sensible man has one mode of articulation, and one only, namely : always to pro- noonoe his words in such a manner as to be readily understood, but never in snob a man- ner as to excitt- remark. — Leoouve. Definitions. — AHlculatuyti is proper utterance of vo- cal elements. Pronunciation signifies utterance of words, that is, of combinations of vocal elements. Distinctness is a general habit of the voice, belonging to all its sounds, articulate or inarticulate, being not mere correctness, but a sort of compactness of utterance. A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due projwrtion of sound, according to the most approved cus- tom of pronouncing it ; and in making such a distinction between the syllables of which words are composed, that the ear shall, with- out difficulty, acknowledge their number, and perceive at once to whicli syllable each letter belongs. — Sheridan. In just articulation, the words are not to he hurrietl over ; nor precipitated syllable over syllable ; nor, as it were, melted together into a maos of confusion. They should be neither abridged nor prolonged nor swallowed nor forced ; they should not be trailed nor drawled nor let slip out carelessly, so a-s to drop unfinished. They are to be delivered out from the lips iis Ixniutiful coins, newly issaed from the mint, deeply and at'cumt^dy impressed, i>er- fectly finished, neatly struck out by the proper orgiins, distinct, in due Bucceasion, and of due weight. — Austin's Chiranomica, 152 ARTICULATION. [Part It It had an odd, promificnons tone. As if he had talked three parta in one ; Which iDAde aome think, when he did gabble, They heard three laborera of Babel, Or Oerbema himaelf pronoonce A iMtA of languages at onoe. — Butlsb. Conversational speech is, in general, very slovenly. Conld it hh written down exactly as we hear it, the speaker would not recog- nize the unintelligible jargon. Thus : Convsashnlspeech zngenlveslovnly. This is not an exaggeration of the kind of utterance that passes current in social life. The chief element of distant audibility — throat-sound, or voice — is so curtailed and slurred out, that little more than mouth-actions remain. The very reverse must be the relation of thioat to mouth in or- atorical speech. Consonants may be softened to any degree, but vowels must be given fully and with swelling clearness. Thus : cONvER&AsHlJNAii bpEEch Is In oEnErAij vEbY slO- vEnlY. — BEiiii. A speaker may possess a very intelligent apprehension of the pronunciation of words, and he may very perspicuously show this to his hearers by marking in some degree the proper points for accentuation which occur in the words which he utters. But if there be any natural or acquired defect in the organs of speech ; for instance, if the voice be exceedingly unmanageable, or if the palat« should be gone, a j^erson in this condition, although he may indicate by a very feeble and imperfect accentuation of words that he possesses a due apprehension of the necessity of that qual ity in speaking, yet he cannot, owing to his poverty in the blessing of sound, give out the different syllables in the words which he ut- ters with a distinct intonation ; he cannot yield to each syllable and letter in the composition of a word that due degree of weight which will mark with distinctness and precision the divisions which exist in them, just as the transient jmuses which occur be- tween the notes delivered from a bell of a glassy intonation repeat the distincter existence of each sound which falls from it upon the ear. It may be said of a person whose voice does not come to the Chap. DC] IMPORTANCE, AND DIFFICULTIES. 153 aid of his understanding in the pronunciation of words, that he is a correct pronouncer, but not a perfect or just articulator, just as it may be said of a performer on the violin, who is a perfect mas- ter of the science but not of the soimds of music, that he is a cor- rect but not a distinct musician. — McQueen. Importance of Articulation. — A good articula- tion is to the ear what a fair hand-writing or a fair type is to the eye. Who has not felt the perplexity of supplying a word torn away by the seal of a letter ; or a dozen syl- lables of a book in as many lines, cut ofF by the careless- ness of a binder ? The same inconvenience is felt from a similar omission in spoken language ; with this additional disadvantage, that wo are not at liberty to stop and spell out the meaning by construction. ... A man of indis- tinct utterance reads this sentence: "The magistrates ought to prove a declaration so publicly made." When I perceive that his habit is to strike only the accented sylla- ble clearly, sliding over others, I do. not know whether it is meant that they ought to prove the declaration, or to ap- prove it, or reprove it, — for in either case he would speak only the syllable prove. Kor do I know whether the mag- istrates ought to do it, or the magistrate sought to do it. — Porter. Difficulties of Articulation.— I. The first and chief dithculty lies in the fact that articulation consists es- sentially in the consonant sounds, and that many of these are difficult of utterance. . . . It is evident to the slightest observation that the oi>en vowels are uttered with ease and strength. On these public criers swell their notes to so great a compass. II. A second difficulty arises fioni the immediate suc- cession of the same or similar sounds. 154 ARTICULATION. [Pakt IL Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone. Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire. The hosts still stood. The battle lasts still. Wastes and deserts — Waste sand deserts. To obtain either — To obtain neither. BUs cry moved me — His crime moved me. Ho could pay nobody — He could pain nobody. In tlie last example, grammar forbids a pause between pain and nobody, while orthoepy demands one. But change tlie structure so as to render a pause proper after j)ain, and the difficulty vanishes : — thus. Though he en- dured great pain, nobody pitied him. A serious man was never before guilty of such a series of fol- lies ; in which every species of absurdity was accomimnied by a specious gravity. The duke i)aid the money due to the Jew before the dew was off the ground ; and the Jew, having duly acknowledged it, said adieu to the duke foreves. III. A third difficulty arises from the influence of ac- cent. The importance which this stress attaches to sylla- bles on which it falls compels them to be spoken in a more full and deliberate manner than others. Hence if the re- currence of this stress is too close, it occasions heaviness in utterance ; if too remote, indistinctness. And ten low words oft creep in one dull line. Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone. Communicatively, authoritatively, ten-estrial, reasonableness, disinterestedness. lY. A fourth difficulty arises from a tendency of the organs to slide over unaccented vowels. — Porter. See the quotation from Bell, on page 152. Chap. JX.] SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES. 155 Cautions in Articulation. — I. In aiming to form a distinct articnlation, take care not to form one that is measnred and mechanical. Somethhig of preciseness is very apt to appear at lirst, . . . but practice and perse- verance will enable us to combine ease and fluency with clearness of utterance. The child, in passing from his spelling manner is ambitious to become a swift reader, and thus falis into a confusion of organs that is to be cured only by retracing the steps which produced it. The rem- edy, however, is no better than the fault, if it runs into a scan-ning, pe-dan-tic for-mal-i-ty, giving undue stress to particles and unaccented syllables ; thus, " lie is the man of all the world whom I rejoice to meet." II. Let the close of sentences be spoken clearly, with suf- ficient strength and on the proper pitch to bring out the meaning completely. Ko part of a sentence is so impor- tant as the close, both in respect to sense and harmony. III. Ascertain your own defects of articulation by the aid of some friend, and then devote a short time, statedly and daily, to correct them. — Porter. Special Difficulties. — I. Consonants. "WTieu a child says "turn" for •'come," and "tin" for "king," the correct articulation will bo induced almost at the firat trial by the sirnph* exi)edient of hohling down the forepart of tlie tongue with the ftnger. Tlio etTort to imitate tlie general etfect will then force the back part of the tongue into action ; and in a few days at most, the child will, without any assistance, form Ar, //, where before it could only utter /, rtainly not thow of the ear, after haring devoted a lifetime to the study of English orthoepy and etymology, informs the student that "the letters cj; answering to tl, are pronounced as if written tl; c/ear, clean, are prouounoed Ueax, Itean. Gl is pronounced di ; glory is pronounced djory." — ViTWH. II. Ilmo to roll one* 8 7'V. The two letters d and t, formed at the end of the tongue, are easily and naturally i)ronounced by everybody. Talma's idea was to pronounce these two letters rapidly and alternately ; as, du tu du tu, etc. Then by degrees joining r to them, he pronounced the new combination also rapidly and alternately, dm tru dru tru, etc. By this contrivance it struck him that he could fish up the letter r from the de^jths of the thi'oat, where it seemed to prefer keeping itself ; that he could compel it, as it were, to answer the call of its companions inviting it out to the dance. Imagine a young girl — excuse the oddness of the comparison — a timid, shrinking young girl, hiding herself in a comer of the ball-room, but called out by her companions, who drag her forcibly and mer- rily into the middle of the circling throng. Soon, however, one friend slips away, then another, and another, so that at last our modest, timid, shy last-comer finds herself unconsciously dancing, and dancing well, without the protection of any participating com- panions. That is exactly what Talma did. He first dropped the d and then the t ; instead of saying dm tru dm tru, he said ru m m m, and kept on doing this so persistently that at last the r, hav- ing been well-accustomed to vibrate with the others, had no diffi- culty in vibrating all alone. — Legoitse. Chap. IX. ] SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES. 157 in. The Italian A, It may here be pertinently remarked that the pronunciation of a in such words as ghiss^ lasty father ^ and pastor, is a test of high culture. The tendency among uncultivated ^jersons is to give a either the thick, throaty sound of uu which I have endeavored to describe, or, of tenest, to give it the thin, flat sound which it has in an, at, and anatomy. Next to that tone of voice which, it would seem, is not to be acquired by any striving in adult years, aneople possess from nature perfect powers of articulation. With some it is too strong, with othei-s too weak, with many in- distinct. These defects can be remetliod by systematic labor, and by tliat alone. How ? you naturally ask. Well, here is one way, very ingenious and effective, and yet extremely simple and emi- nently practicable. You wish, let us suppose, to confide a secret to a friend ; but you are afraid of being overheard, the door being open, and some- botly listening in the next room. What would you do ? Walk up to your friend and whisper the secret into his ear ? Not at all. 160 ARTICULATION. [Part II. You might be caught in the act, and so excite suspicion. "What should you do ? I will tell you, and in doing so I will quote the exact words of that master of masters, Begnier : "You face your friend exactly, and pronouncing your words distinctly, but in an underbreath, you commission your articula- tions to convey them to your friend's eyes rather than his ears, for he is as carefully watching how you speak as he is intently listen- ing to what you say. Articulation here, having a double duty to perform, that of sound as well as its own peculiar function, is com- pelled as it were to dwell strongly on each syllable so as to land it safely within the intelligence of your hearer." This is an infallible means of correcting all the defects and (aults of your articulation. It is at once an exercise and a test ; if you do not articulate well, your friend will not understand you. After a very few months* steady practice at this exercise for a few hours a day, you will find that your most obdurate articulatory muscles become flexible as well as strong, that they rise elastically and respond harmoniously to every movement of the thought and to every difficulty of the pronunciation. — LEOOUvf. Practice in Articulation. — Begin at the end of a line, sentence, or paragraph, so as to prevent the possibil- ity of reading negligently ; then (1) articulate every ele- ment in every word, separately and very distinctly, throughout the line or sentence ; (2) enunciate every sylla- ble of every word throughout the line or sentence clearly and exactly ; (3) pronounce every word in the same style ; (4) read the line or sentence from the beginning forward, with strict attention to the manner of pronouncing every word ; (5) read the whole line or sentence with an easy, fluent enunciation, paying strict attention to the expres- sion of the meaning, but without losing correctness in the style of pronunciation. — Murdoch. Exercises. — Beef-broth, three-sixths, literally literary, knitting-needle, quit quickly, such a sash, puff up the fop, a velvet weaver, a cut of Chap. IX] EXERCISES. 161 pumpkin, a knapsack strap, coop up the cook, a school coal-scut- tle, veal and white wine vinegar, geese cackle and cattle low, cocks crow and crows caw, a shocking sottish set, she sells sea-shells, cloud-capped, laurel-wreath, linen lining, a comic mimic, rural railroad, Scotch thatch, statistics of sects, portly poultry, a wet white wafer, pick pepper peacock, I snuff shop snuff. — BEiiU Amidst the mista and coldest froita. With barest wrists and stoutest boasts. He thmsts his fists against the posts, And still insists be sees the ghoats. Crazy Crajcrof t caught a crate of crickled crabs ; A crate of crickled crabs Crazy Craycroft caught. If Crazy Craycroft cnugbt a crate of crickled crabs, Whereas the crate of crickled crabs Crazy Craycroft caught f Thou wreathed'st and muzzled'st the far-fetched ox, and im* prisoned'st him in the volcanic Mexican mountain of Pop-o-cat-e- pet-1, in CJo-to-pax-i. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers ; a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked ? Thou waft'd'st the rickety staff over the mountain-height cliffs, and clearly saVst the full-orb'd moon. When a twister twisting, would twist him a twist, For twisting a twist three twists be wUl twist, But if one of the twisto untwists from the twist, The twist untwisting untwists the twist. Robert Rowley rolled a round roll round ; a round roll Robert Rowley rolled round. Where rolled the round roll Robert Row- ley rolled round ? Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle-sifter, in sifting a sieveful of thistlos, thnist thr<»«« tlxmsand thLstles tljronj^h thf» thick of his thumb. Peter Prangle, the prickly-p<'ar picker, picked three pecks of prickly prangly pears from the prangly pear-treea on the pleM> ant ])rairies. SShoes and socks shock Uusau. 162 ARTICULATION AND PRONUNCIATION. [Part IL PRONUNCIATION. Pronunciation is made up of articulation and ac- centuation ; when both are perfect, the individual has a correct and elegant pronunciation. — Vandenhoff. Lord Chatham kept a dictionary constantly within his reach (1) to insure to every word he uttered in debate a pronunciation of incontestable accuracy, and (2) to enable him to select those words which would best express the idea he wished to convey. Standards of Pronunciation. — Walker recom- mends that the analogies and tendencies of the language should be studied, as the best guides in orthoepy. He has justly censured Dr. Johnson's general rule, that " those are to be considered as the most elegant speakers who de- viate least from the written words." If the learned lexi- cographer's principle were adopted, what strange changes in pronunciation would be required in reading the follow- ing sentences, in which none of the words printed in ital- ics are sounded according to the spelling : The common usage of English people in talking their native tongue proves that they do not trouble themselves as to the spelling of the words. It surely is an evil custom, and savors of affectation to talk otherwise than their fathers, viothers, brothers, and relations have talked. If the professors of colleges and other places of educa- tion would give their attejition to the principles of English pronun- elation^ they woidd see reason not to sanction the fashion of pro- nouncing many common words in uyi usual ways — sounding the final syllables exactly as they are spelled in evil, devil, heaven, leaven, heathen, even, reason^ season, beacon, deacon, often, softly, etc., etc. — Plumptre. Dictionary Authority. — When two or more pro- nunciations of a given word have equal authority, choice may be made between them on the grounds of analogy, derivation, perspicuity, and euphony ; but as a general Chap. IX] THE STANDARD TO FOLLOW. 163 rule the pronunciation of words should be determined by the dictionaries in commonest use, the compilers of which are quite as capable as the young student of weighing the various considerations which should lead to the preference of one pronunciation over another. How impossible it is to adopt any other standard than recog- nized authority is 8ho\sii by the foUo^sing instances of the changes in the pronunciation of words produced by adding a single letter. B makes u road broad, turns the ear into a bear, and Tom into a tomb. C makes limb iliiub, hanged changed, a lever clever, and trans- ports a lover to clover. D turns a bear to beard, a crow to a crowd, and makes anger danger. F turns lower regions to flower regions. G changes a son to song, and makes one gone. H changes eight into height. K makes now know, and eyed keyed. L transforms a pear into a pearl. N turns a line into linen, a crow to a crown, and makes one none. P metamori)ho8es lumber into plumber. S turns even into seven, makes have shave, and word a sword, a pear a sjioar, makes slaughter of laughter, and curiously changes having a hoe into shaWng a shoe. T makes a bough bought, turns here into there, alters one to tone, changes ether to tether, and transforms the phrase " allow his own" into •• tallow this town." W does well : e.g. , hose are whoso ? are becomes ware, on won, omen women, so sow, vie view, an arm becomes warm, and a hat is turned into — what ? Y turns fur to fury, a man to many, to to toy, a rub to a ruby, ours to yonrs, and a lad to a lady.— PAiTKieoN. The Unpardonable Error in pronunciation is ob- trusively to pronounce differently a word which has just been uttered. 16^ EEONUNCIATION. [Pabt 11 Among intimate friends discussion of each other's verbal errors may by agreement become pleasant and profitable. But one should not venture to take this liberty with a stranger or with older people ; for, I. There is no subject upon which persons are generally more sensitive than upon their use of language. Even scholars become acrimonious when their opinions on this subject are disputed, as witness the books of Richard Grant White, Fitzedward Hall, Dean Alford, G. Washington Moon, and others. The explanation of this peculiar bitterness seems to be that one's use of language depends upon his early associations, his ''bringing up,'* so to speak ; and hence to insinuate that one is unacquainted with pre- vailing usage in sjieeeh, is to imply that one is also unacquainted with prevailing usage in manners — in other words, that he is no gentleman. n. So widely do authorities differ, that one must be a profound student of orthoepy to feel secure in asserting that the pronuncia- tion he hears is wrong. Take the Mord pi'onuncicUion itself. Webster gives "pronun- shiashun," without hint of other usage, and one who had con- sulted only this dictionary might feel that any other pronuncia- tion was erroneous. But Perry, Knowles, Smart, Craig, Cooley, Cull, and Wright all prefer " pronunseashun," while Sheridan makes it " pronunshashun." Plumptre, in his King's College Lectures on Elocution, says : " The word pronunciation is smoother when the c is pronounced as s, not as sh, and the word pronounced as if written pro7i unsea- shouy not pronunsheashon. The repetition of the hissing sound of the sh is unpleasant." In face of this authority, while one has the right to prefer the sh sound, he would simply obtrude his ignorance if he called the s pronunciation wrong. The general rule should be, whenever one hears a word pronounced in an unaccustomed way, by a per- son likely to know about it, immediately to look it up in the best authorities at hand, so as to assure one's self about it. But if, as often happens, the pei*son seems to be wrong, one need not cor- rect him. The object of observing the pronunciation of others is \.o correct, not their usage but our own. That labor is well Chap. IX.] THE ITNPARDONABLE ERROR. 165 bestowed which makes us sure that we can pronounce correctly the words we use. But correct pronunciation is a means, not an end. To be able to report of an eloquent sermon only that the preacher said na-tional instead of nash-onal, betrays the most in- 8uflferal)le pedantrj'. A man asked whether he would have his fish briled, replied that he didn't care whether it was briled or biled, providing it was not spiled. "Mr. Kemble," said George III., " will you obleege me with a pinch of your snuflf?" "With pleasure, your Majesty; but it would become your royal lips better to say oblige." — Graham. Here it may be doubted whether the actor was following the usage of the day more acciu-ately than the king. Marsh says : '• Oblige, for instance, in its complimentar}' sense, is a word recently introduced from France ; for this is a meaning unknown to Shakspere, and as a word of ceremonial phraseology it was first pronounced obleege, but it is now almost uniformly ar- ticulated with the English sound of i long." Proper Names. — Xames of persons and places de- pend for tlioir pronunciation wholly upon local usage. The only caution to be observed is that where well-known geographical names have a recognized English as well as a local pronunciation, the former should be employed. One would make himself ridiculous by talking of Paree and Baerleen. Indeed, a strict conformity to the native pronunciation of names belonging to languages whose orthographical system differa much from our own, is considered an offensive affectation, and a great British orator, who was as familiar with French as with EngUsh, is said to have been so scrupulous on this i>oint tliat in his parlia- mentary speeches he hnli^'v^llv M|>oke of an important French port as BordeaiLT.— Mab8H. Exercises. ( )t late vcars unusual attention has been given to words usually mispronounced. Among the col- locations of such words strung together into a sort of con- 166 ARTICULATION AND PRONUNCIATION. [Part II. nection, the following will be found useful, few persons being able to read them through without a blunder. A sacrilegious son of Belial, who suffered from bronchitis, hav- ing exhausted his finances, in order to make good the deficit re- solved to ally himself to a comely, lenient, and docile young lady of the Malay or Caucasian race. He accordingly purchased a cal- liope and coral necklace of a chameleon hue, and, securing a suite of rooms at a principal hotel, he engaged the head waiter as his coadjutor. He then dispatched a letter of the most unexceptiona- ble calligraphy extant, inviting the young lady to a matinee. She revolted at the idea, refused to consider herself sacrificeable to his desires, and sent a }M)lite note of refusal, on receiving which he l)rocured a carbine and a bo\*'ie-knife, said that he would not now forge fetters hymeneal with the queen, went to an isolated spot, severed his jugular vein, and discharged the contents of his car- bine into his abdomen. The dCbris was removed by the coroner. An Indian, attracted by the aroma of the coffee and the broth arising from the bivouac, moving down the jmth met a bombastic bravo who was troubled with the bronchitis. The Indian being in desliabille, was treated with disdain by this blackguard, who called him a dog, and bade him with much vehemence and contumely to leave his domain, or he would demonstrate by his carbine the use of a coffin and cemetery. The Indian calmly surveyed the dimen- sions of his Euroi>ean opponent, and being sagacious and robust, and ha^•ing all the combativeness of a combatant, shot this mfSan in the abdomen with an arrow. A young patriot with a black moustache, coming from the mu- seum, laughingly said, • ' Bravo ! you should be nationally re- warded by receiving the right of franchise, for I witnessed the al- tercation, and the evidence is in'efragable and indisputable that you have removed a nauseous reptile. I now make this inquiry — will not the matrons in this country, and the patrons of our schools, inaugurate some system that -s^dll give an impetus to the interesting study of our language ? If half the leisure moments were thus spent in lieu of reading some despicable romance, we should be wiser than we are." TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Definitions, p. 151. Articulation, p. 153. Imjwrtance of articulation, p. 153. Difficulties of articulation. I. Difficulty of uttering consonant sounds, p. 153. n. Succession of similar sounds, p. 153. in. Influence of accent, p. 154. IV. Tendency to slide over unaccented rowels, p. 154. Cautions in articulation. I. Do not form a measured and mechanical articulation, p. 155. n. Importance of the close of sentences, p. 155. ni. Ascertain defects, p. 156. Special difficulties, p. 155. I. Consonants, p. 155. n. How to roll one's r's, p. 156. m. The Itelian A, p. 157. IV. The letter H, p. 157. V. Nasal tones, p. 158. Iiegoav6'8 infallible rule, p. 159. Practice in articulation, p. 160. Exercises, p. 160. Pronunciation, p. 162. Standards of pronunciation, p. 162. Dictionary authority, p. 162. The unpardonable error, p. 168. Proper names, p. 165. BzMdaes, p. 165. PART III. LETTER-WRITING PART III. LETTER-WRITIJ^G. CHAPTER X. KINDS OF LETTERS. The post h the grand connecting link of all transactions, of all negotiations. Thow who are absent by Its means become present ; it is the consolation of life.— Voltaire. A Letter is a written communication from one person to another. An early settler had occasion to send an Indian to a neighbor upon an errand, and scribbled his communication upon a chip. Observing that the neighbor ui)on looking at tlie chip knew the errand upon which the Inilian was sent, the Indian regarded the chip with reverence, and thereafter wore it as an amulet, calling it " the talking chip." A Circular Letter, under guise of a personal communication, is yet written avowedly for jmblication. Criticisms, editxirial arti- clen, even entire novels are sometimes written in the form of let- ters ; but the letter proper is a communication intended only for the person or persons addressed. Kinds of Letters. — r..etter8 are usually (1) of Fritmls/itpy (2) of Vourtevy^ (3) of Budiiessy (4) to Newih jxipers. 172 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Part III. i. Letters of Friendship. — Few duties are more ini|X3rative tliaii to send frequent letters to near kindred from whom we are separated. The ties of family are ab- solute ; the son, tlie daughter, the sister, the brother, who are insensible to these ties, who do not recognize and ac- cept them as binding, start in life with a serious defect in their natures, and with an almost insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of true manhood and womanhood. These relations are not only the first into which one enters, but they involve all that is fundamental in character. The circumstances are very rare that will excuse the yoimg man or woman for any neglect of love and loyalty to par- ents and to brothers and sistere. Yet as the members of a family separate to enter each his indi- vidual path in life, it too often hap])ens that they grow away from one another. Each forms new associations, has new friends, new thoughts, new ideas. On special occasions the members of the family meet, are glad to see each other, enjoy one another so long as they feel interested in recalling old times or in satisfying their curiosity as to the mateiial facts of each other's new siuroimdings. But when it comes to real conversation, to the interchange of pre- dominant thoughts, to the real problems of the daily life of each, every meeting finds the jjlay-fellows of boyhood more and more strangers in maturity. Tliere remain respect, confidence, love which every year seems* more and more traditional ; l)ut of the communion, the mutual help of those early days, less and less is left ; the relation is rather of a tribe than of a family. To some extent this mental separation is inevitable, \ ut it may be partly escajjed by frequent and familiar conespondence. The boy at college who writes every week to his nio'lier of all Hat has most interested him, will avoid some things that otherwise might make him reluctant to meet that mother's glance. The young man who has just come from a farai to the city, will seem less a stranger to his little brothers and sistei-s when he returns for vaca- tion, and will find his interest in the familiar scenes of bovliood far less diminished, if his letters home have been regular and full- Chap. X.] LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 178 beai'ted. The members of an affectionate family, all of whom are good letter-writers, will never grow veiy far apart. It is therefore important that the habit of interchanging lettera when separated should be an early and an accepted one. The boy's first visit away from home should inspire his fii*st letter home. The girl at school should look'upon every incident as an " item " for her next letter. "When, one by one, the elder children leave their home altogether, it should bo no slight element of their pur- poses for the future, that there shall be a weekly letter to the old folks at home. This practice will naturally be extended to Bchool-mates and other intimate friends. In youth the heart is exuber- ant, the senses are keen, the mind is active, and the hands are comparatively unoccupied. There are hours of mus- ing, of contemplation, of reflection, of recalling events just past, when the enjoyment and the profit are doubled if one can share one's thoughts with an absent friend. If such a correspondence be frank, unassuming, and free from gush- ing sentimentality, it is an unsurpassed means of literary culture. What to Write. — But what shall these letters con- tain ? Verdant Green's friend Bouncer wrote regularly to his mother, and he wrote long letters, that contained a great deal of information. But his plan was to l)egiQ : " My dear mother, I hope you are well, as I am at this writing, and I should like a little money, as my expenses are very heavy. I will now resume my description of Ox- ford from the point where we last left ofF." "Whereupon he proceeded to copy from the local guide-book as much as would fill the prescribed number of pages. This style of composition was not fitted to promote a verj confidential intimacy with his mother, or to h»ad on his part to any pronounced mental development ; but after all it was a fair type of 174 KJKDi OP LETTERS. [Part HI. much family correspondence. A letter which is half occupied with remarking that "I now take my pen in hand to write you a few words," and half with regretting that "I haven't any news to tell, but close, assuring you that I am well and hoi)e this epistle will find you in the enjoyment of the same blessing," is not adapted to do much more than discharge a* disagreeable duty in a disagree- able way. But surely members of the same family need never pad out four pages of commercial note with common-places. The Great Mistake in writing friendly letters is to suppose that only the marvellous is worth writing about. It is the incidents of every-day life, the characteristic little acts and speeches of the members of the household, that one longs to hear about when away. Tlie great events are told in the newspapers, but only the letter can so depict the minutiae of home-life as to put the reader back for the moment among the friends he has left behind. '* I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you," writes Mary Lamb to her tliat was afterward Mrs. Hazlitt, " that I -Will write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do matters.^' SPECIMENS OF FAMILY LETTERS. Samuel Johnton to hit Younger SMert. Jnne, 1843. ICt Dkar Gisu : 1 am ready to cry at not hearing from you. What are you doing ? Are you not going to let me into any of your little pleasures or plans? My heart bounds with yours in your pleasant hopes,, and my eye will see all beautiful things as though it were your«. Do let the words you would speak in your happiest moments, in all their freshness and liveliness, take the form of letters, and pass into my heart as though I were with you. And so I am with you w^here you call me. What shall I tell you of ? Flowers, birds, woods, walks, true, loving, sincere books — what ? Thoy are all around me here, and they are so deep in my love, and you seem so present to me, that I cannot describe them : for it seems as though you knew how they looked as well as I. Tell me how you imagine things look about me. Little Susan R comes to my room every now and then early in the morning, to get me to go to ride with her mother. But I mutt see j/ou in a letter soon, or I shall be ml'^erable. Your own, & Chap. X.J LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. 176 Margartt Fuller OasolC$ Last Letter. Florsmci, May U, 1860. DiAB Motbkb: I will believe I shall be welcome with my treasures— my husband and child. For me, I long BO much to see yon ! Should anything hinder our meeting on earth, think of yonr daughter as une who always wishetl, at leant, to do her duty, and who always cherished yoo, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. Give dear love, too, to my brothers ; and first, to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen ; love to all my kind, good aunts, and to my dear cousin E . 0kii)g *-traight down on my Ijitin Or.tmninr, and didn't notice that 'most all the boys hail gone out. Only about half a dozen left, and one of 'em wa« Dorry, nnd ho sat to the rinht of me, aboutayanl off, studying hln lewon. Then another boy went out, and then another, and by-and-by every one of them was gone, and left us two sitting therft, O. we sat just a-istiUI I kept my heam Tom Pn-h, nnd he'n got home, bnt Is going away again, for he meMW to bo a re/nlar sailor and get to Im> capuin of a great ship. He's ooming here next w ee k . I lM|>e you won't forget that thirty-three. Fd jost 176 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Part HI. M lives hjive fifty, and th»t would oome better in the letter, don't yoo believe it wonld ? That photograph aaloon haa ja«t gone by, and the boys are ranning down the road to chase it. When I)onry and I aat there by the stove, it made me remember what uncle Jacob aaid about our piotare. Your affectionate grandson, William Hxhbt. ii. Letters of Courtesy. — The line between letters of friendship and of courtesy cannot be drawn arbitrarily, since intimacy may clothe a note required by courtesy in a garb wholly unconventional. But, in general, it may be said that while letters of friendship originate in the im- pulse or habit of the writer, and depend for their form and nature upon his mood, letters of courtesy are demand- ed by the customs of society, not only at a particular time, but also of a particular character. a. Invitation. — Formal notes of invitation should be simple, direct, and definite. Among the accepted forms are the following : QSu, Q^l^i (£^e(^um^, ^(^e^c/ay Si^ntny, June 20^ /8gS, al eianl o cu>cH'. OSt. anJ QSu. (ManA (^. (Mncl4, inmle voti lo ^meel meci niece, Q4u(^ ^a^Uec Q/oumsena, on (3^Ulait—''Iiep\yy please.") The following forms will be a sufficient guide : ^ment hhU^ cC^iive ^ei o/ Ine huasdie o/ acce/ihna Of a. ana Q'flu. Q/fnim s inmlaHc^n io meel Qm46^ Q/ou^nsena on Q/ueA€uiu &i^entna. c. Congratulation and Condolence.— Tidings of joy or bereavement require, from intimate friends at least, brief notes of sympathy. No form of correspondence affords a Iiappier opportunity for revealing true friendship. He who can so put himself in the other's place as to know just what will most gratefully touch that other's heart, will win a place in that other's affection not easily at- tained. To NoveUo, who had just lost a favorite child, Leigh Hunt wrote : July — 1820. This comes from Leigh Hunt, merely to say that he thinks of his friend Vincent Novello, and to hope that, when he has vented his first natural feelings on the death of one so dear to him, he will think of others to whom he himself is dear, and let them see him as soon again and as cheei-ful again as possible. Chap. X] LETTERS OF COURTESY. 179 d. Introduction and Recommendation. — Persons of intiiience are overwhelmed with requests for letters of introduction and recommendation. So to phrase these letters as to satisfy the one applying, without exceed- ing the truth, or guaranteeing that of which one has no certainty, is no easy task. Caution in Owing References. — Sanguine or unscrupu- lous persons sometimes give references to prominent per- sons whose permission they have not asked, in the hope either that the one they hope to influence will be satisfied by tlie name, without applying for information ; or that if information is asked, a good-humored report will be given. This is neither honorable nor wise. The following letter was received by a Western board of educa- tion, from a gentleman to whom a candidate for the office of Super- intendent had * * referred : " " Dear Sir : Your letter of the 8th places me in a dehcate posi- tion. I cannot say anything good of Mr. , and I do not wish to say anything bad of him which will prevent his leaving the State. I must therefore decline to express any opinion. Yours truly, ." Letter introducing Mr. Audtibon to Lewie Caee. Philaoblphi^ September 81), 1833. Mr DlAB OOTSEMOB : I do not know when I have done a more aooepteble aanrioe to my feelinge^ nor when I h»Te been joat in a aitaaUon to afford aa mndi gratiflcation to joara, as in preaenting to yoor Dotloa, and private and oOMal friendship, the bearer, Mr. Andubon. It were ■operflMNH to tell yon who be is; the whole world knows him and respects him, and no man in it has the heart to oheriA or the head to appreciate hlm« and soch a man, be- yond the capacity of yourself. Mr. Aodnboa makes no mot* of tradcing it in all tfrsctions OT«r this, and I may add, oUmt oeontrlsa, than a sboi-aiBr does In oro«iBg the heavs—. He goes after winged things, bot sometimes needs the aid of at least a few fBathetm. to assist him the bettsr to fly. He means to ooaid it ««r«ln round Florida— make a track throagh Arkansan— go np the Missoori— pass on to the Rocky Mountains, and thenoe to the Padfla He will 180 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Pakt IIL reqaire tOBM of joor offlciftl aid. I took an nninerited liberty with your name and readi« nesR of purpose, and told him yon were the verj/ man, and I need not say how happy I ■hall be to team that yoa have endoraed my promiM and ratified it. Ood bleat you. In haste, To the Hon. LBwn Oass, Thy uUe 0/ Mesa^ne you can tuc me awHit it. Q/f yoa ca/n jMi/niiin it, ama uhu wute me wAai tAeAUce u, QfuH^un(/ /oi it at o£ i^nl auHiy ofie^. CRITICISMS. (1.) In the first place, her letter containing the silver half-dollar comes with **Duk Two Cents" on it. A half-dollar weighs 192.9 grains, while a half -ounce contains only 218.75 grains, leav- ing twenty-five grains for the writing-paper, envelope, and the sheet of bro^sTi paper in which the half-dollar is wrapped. Please don't send silver in letters : but if yon do, be sure to prepay all the postage. Yet there in % worse fault thao to send fdlrer not folly prepaid, ur even postage-stamps, which many firms refuse. That is, to send a check for a small amount on a local bank. Some iiersons affect this way of sending money, partly because it saves them from the risk of loss in the mails, ptutly because il saves trouble, and partly because it shoMrs that they keep a bank account. But it costs the firm receiving it from ten to twenty-five cents to collect it, and though a firm may submit to the imposition, it will not feel kindly toward the person who attempts it A check before us, sent from Syracuse to Dawn, Ohio, bears upon the back the following endorsements : (1) " Pay to order of Shelley Sa MertJ», A. P. Southwick '' ; (2) ♦' Pay to order of Frames, Kiimich & Co., Shelley & Merts" ; C3) Pay to the order of G. B. Harraan, Cash, Frames, Kumich L Co." ; (4) " Pay D. Clarke or order, for collection, account of City National Bank, Dayton, Ohio, G. B. Harman, Cashier"; (5) "For collection, account American Exchange Bk, New York, D. Clarke. Cashier" ; (0) "The R .bert Gere Bank, Syracuse, N. Y., July 21, 1883, Paid - : (7) " State Bank, Syracuse, July 24, 1883, C23." All these endorsements preceded the collection of the check. Of course, the money was returncense still less, so that small sums may be sent safely, even for a fee of three cents. (3.) But if the fii-m has received the money, and if it credit it as fifty cents (though it really brings in only forty-eight), what is it to send ? *' The book ! " If Miss Jones were an only corre82)ond- ent, or if the firm i)ublished but one book, this might be easy. But most firms publish many books, and such letters of inquiry as Miss Jones's, come in by scores. On receipt of such a letter as that, a clerk would go back over the correspondence of the i^ast few days and hunt up Miss Jonos's first letter. Probably he would send her the book she wanted, V)ut only after wasting a half-hour to atone for her negligence. JKi^ Every business letter sliould he complete in itseff. Having ast^ertained the name and price of the book she wanted, Miss Jones should liavo ordered it as though there had been no previous correspondence. In fact the letter would usually go to a wholly difier^nt clerk, who would liave no occasion to know that any other letter had l)een received. (4.) To say, " Send the book right away" is absolute tautology. Of coarse a business house fills orders promptly as a matter of routine, and regards a request like that as simple evidence of inex- perience. 188 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Part III Tet it may be of special importance that Miss Jones get the book by return mail. In that case she should state why. It sometimes hapx)ens that a firm is out of a particular book, and waiting for a new edition. Under ordinary circumstances an order would be delayed till the new edition came in. But if Miss Jones explained that a matter in which she was interested was to be brought before the trustees on Tuesday night, and she must have the book beforehand, the firm would search every library in the city before it would let her miss receiving the book in time. "Please send right away," is a phrase so common as to be mean- ingless, but a real necessity for haste will lead any respectable firm to put itself to inconvenience to accommodate a customer. Corrected, then, Miss Jones's letter would read something as follows : Q^. J/, /§§^. (3/Mr, (2/ encw&e in Imd- i^ai^Uiea ultel jMi^ cenls, /oi umicn /i/ease ^ena 'me ,^a^l^uii, Ai U ai^ea nwTi^oiaei /(A one €U>^U, {o A€iy me ^^/oi me !2aeaenl & ^^ia^nmai OTta c^ey €imu>n Q/ ieceivea ye^teiclau. (3/nanAina you jk>i ^efuuny il tin'moul tt^tina M me money, (2/ wm, ^oaU ie^^lA^, Qrnna ^. Jon€S. How simple all these details are ! Yet not a day passes that business firms do not receive lettei-s with all the faults we have pointed out. There is no hint here which has not come from a long experience in tiying to find out the wants of teachers who have never learned to express themselves. Let ever}' one who reads this long but not needlessly lengthened aiiicle be sure that none of the blunders here mentioned are found in his letters. — The School Bulletin. Definite Purpose. — It is not necessary in a general discussion of the subject, to give the various formulas into which custom lias moulded the letters most used in busi- ness, such as announcements, solicitations, letters of credit, notices of draft, and the like. But it is to be kept in mind that a business letter is pre-eminentlv a letter with a purpose : that enough is to be said to express that purpose clearly, in courteous language, but that not one Chap. X.] NEWSPAPER LETTERS. 101 unnecessary word should be added. Many firms receive two thousand letters a day ; and no business men have time to wade through four pages of superliuous informa- tion to get at the one significant sentence. Iv. Newspaper Letters. — First ventures in author- ship are usually in the line of letters to local newspapers. Jnyenis Jones goes to a celebration in a neighboring city, and feels like ** writing it up" for bis neighbors. So he sidles into the editor's office, remai-king, with a fuiiive glance, that he has been at Rochester attending the firemen's parade, and that maybe he • coukl give the editor a point or two, if it was worth while to say anything abont it in the Palladium. He is gratified to see how readily the editor accepts his services, and goes home filled with zeal to prepare a stunning report. He sits \i\) all night, elaborates his recollections into ornate para- graplLs, coi)ies a dozen foolscap pages because of a blot on one of them, and goes to sleep with inky fingers and dreams of fame. Next moniing he walks ^\'ith an important air into the sanctnm, and hands the manuscript to the editor, remarking that he just sat down and scribbled it off, but hoi)es it will answer for a hasty sketch. The editor looks at it critically, sees that as it stands it would fill three columns, but tliat with the introduction and con- clusion and moralizing omitted, the description itstUf will come into a dozen inches, thanks the aspiring author, bows him out, and mns a blue lead pencil through just the part which had cost nearly all the labor. Mr. Jones loiters abont the office with ill-concealed impatience, and in his joy to find something of his own actually in type, forgets to mourn over the elaborate })aragraphs that have vaniHhtHl. He now considera himself attached to the staff of the newspai>er, and boldly offers to rejjort every affair of consequence in the neighbor- hood. The editor, himself no Washington Irving, gladly accepts the enthusiastic labor thus offered without charge, and, carefully eliminating all expressions of opinion or thought, prints week after week accounts of weddings and picnics, which tlie young man pMtesawaj in a scrap-book, labelled on the outside, '* The Complete 192 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Part III "Works of Ju vends Jones. Vol. I." Perhaps he becomes local cor- respondent of a city daily, paid by a free copy of the weekly edi- tion, and by a stock of envelopes to enclose his contributions, bearing outside the printed address of the newspaper. If so, he need be rather more than human not to grow haughty and super- cilious. He may try to be kind to those about him ; but as he de- posits a communication which he knows will be printed next morning in an influential newspaper, he can but feel the sui^erior- ity which accompanies the reflection that the safety and happiness of his neighbors are largely in his own hands. It is indeed a fearful responsibility, but if he is conscientious, he resolves to be just and fear not. Far-reaching as is his power, he will not clog the wheels of the universe ; vice shall still be thwarted, and mod- est virtue shall be rewarded. Suggestions. — While the letters printed by local newspapers do not command mnch literary talent, they offer a useful field to young persons ambitious to become writers. Practice is of all things most essential, and one is often stimulated to effort by feeling that what one writes will certainly be printed. This assurance may be pretty confidently relied upon by those who follow these directions. a. Have Something to Tell. — Newspaper letters should be above all things gossipi/. The public cares nothing for your general re- flections on manners, science, and political economy, but will be glad to read vivacious descriptions of what you have seen and heard. To excel as a correspondent one must have sharp eyes, quick ears, and an ever-ready note-book. Whether it is something to tell depends not upon whether it interests you, but upon whether it is likely to interest the readers of the newspaper you are writing to. That Deacon Smith is re- pairing his stone fence, or that Mrs. Jackson's baby has the measles, are facts momentous to the households concerned, with- out being of the least import to the multitude who read the paper. b. Begin Telling it at Once. — Newspaj^er readers have no time to waste on introductions. Your excuse for occupying space is Chap. X.J NEWSPAPER LETTERS. 193 that you have Homething to tell, and you must prove that you have by telling it from the start. The more abrupt its opening, the more likely the letter is to be read. If you can think of any inci- dent typical of the whole affair, or any vditj remark that summar- izes it, use something of that sort. If not, you can at least be frank and straightfon^ard, telling your story simply, and begin- ning where the story began. As we correct this proof we find the following in the morning newspaper : " PoMPXT, Aogiut 8.— Again are we reminded that life is but the gate to eternity. The Angel of Death, tometimea called the ' King of Terrors,' has this time snmmoned I old residents of Pompey to that bourne whence no traveller retm^s. The first was," Contrast with this introduction the following from the Atlanta Constitution : WABHiMOTOif, Jan. 8.—** You will now witness," said Emory Speer, as with Mr. Eburington, of Columbus, we filed into the Federal court-room in this city, " the most famoQs, and, in many respects, the mo«t interesting trial on record." The court-room was packed. As we entered the voice of the sheriff was heard order- ing the doors cloeed, as there was standing room for no more people in the court-room. The crowd was of a better class than I had expected to find. The most elegant women and men of potdtion and character made up the staple, with here and there a strip of roogh people, admitted by the connivance of some doorkeeper or stibordihate '* If ever I saw a hanging jury," said Speer, " that is one. I have studied it carefully, and in the light of considerable experience, I think it is the moet determined jury I ever saw. Along either line there is not a face that promises the least sort of sentiment or qnalmisbneaa. Even the third juror in the front row, who goes to dozing in the first half boar, and sleeps peacsfnlly until the bailiff rouses him at the close of the session, wakss with a rigor that ill-betides the prisoner. It is rumored that some of the jurors have hereditary insanity in their families, and that this may cause a mistrial. This is hardlj proliable, though. Onitesa Is before a hanging jury, if ever any man was." Etc. c TeQ it Compactfy.— This is done, not by vaguely mentioning a dozen things, but by minutely describing the one of the dozen whicli, fairly grasped, \*'ill suggest all the rest. A single incident in detail, a bit of conversation word for word, each typical of the time and place, will make the scene more real than any amount of generalizing. Don't talk about ** A portly gentleman from an in- terior village," but give his name. Be direct, definite, epigram- matic, and let your reader draw his own conclusions. d. Stop trhen you are Through Telling It. — If you have a spe- cially characteriatio incident, save it for the last, and let your reader 194 KINDS OF LETTERS. [Pakt III dose with a smack of his lips. But if you can't be witty or start- ling, you can at least be simple, and stop when the story stops. e. Hecul over your Mcmuscript. — In the zeal of accomplishment, young writers are apt to feel an impulse, as they reach the last page, to do up the manuscript at once and send it off without looking it OTsr. This is an unpardonable mistake. The re-reading and re- writing are the most valuable part of this practice. The first draft should be composed rapidly, Ti-ithout too much search for each expression, but with the main purpose to reproduce the scene as vividly as possible. But in revision, each sentence should be weighed and turned. Does it express my meaning unmistakably ? Is it forcible ? Is this just the right word ? Would that be re- garded as a low or slang expression ? If one hopes some time to write better than local letters, one must write these local letters with all possible care. Especially is it important to cJiop up the paragraphs. The read- er's attention is attracted by open spaces. One of the charms of rapid dialogue in print is that the eye can grasp a sentence or two at a glance, without boring into a solid paragraph. For this as well as other reasons, preference should be given to dialogue over description. In general, seek to be crisp, as well as compact. /. Don't forget to write (1) with thoroughly black ink, (2) on one side (3) of small images, commercial note j^referred, (4) carefully numbered, and (5) never rolled. The Possibilities of newspaper correspondence are daily widening. Already some of the best and the best- paid literary work in the world appears as letters in the great dailies. No kind of writing is more eagerly sought for or more liberally rewarded than the gathering of news. He who has learned what is news, how to get it, and how to tell it, may achieve less literary fame than Homer, but he will not need to beg in seven cities for bread. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Kinds of letters, p. 171. I. Friendship, p. 172. What to write, p. 173. * The great mistaie, p. 174. n. Courtesy, p. 174. a. Invitations, p. 176. b. Acceptance and regrets, p. 177. c. Congratulation and condolence, p. 178. d. Introduction and recommendation, p. 179. in. Business. a. Letters of inquiry, p. 180. 1. The envelope, p. 181. 2. The post-office address, p. 183. 3. The signature, p. 183. 4. Description of article wanted, p. 184. b. Orders. 1. Sending money, p. 186. 2. Registering letters, p. 187. 8. Should be complete, p. 187. 4. If needed at once, say why, p. 187. f. Remittances, p. 189. SUte for what, p. 189. Definite purpose, p. 190. IV. Newspaper, p. 191. Suggestions. a. Have something to tell, p. 102. b. Begin telling it at once, p. 192. e. Tell it compactly, p. 193. d. Stop when you are through telling it, p. 193. e. Read over your MS., p 194. /. Don't forget: (I) black ink, (2) one side, (3) small pages, (4) numbered, (5) not rolled, p. 194. CHAPTER XL GENERAL RULES FOR LETTER-WRITING. a. Answer Promptly. — Letters worthy to be an- swered at all deserve to * be answered promptly ; not necessarily at once, bat at the first suitable opportunity. This is important to both correspondents. The original writer will take more interest in a reply that is received before the sub- jects of which he wrote have passed out of his mind ; and the other will write a better reply while the stimulus of the original letter is still fresh. Many a young person has times when he ** feels just like " writing a certain letter, and would have written an excellent one. But he is out of pai)er, or cannot find his ink, and delays writing till, weeks afterward, he is shamed into padding out four pages with a formal and utterly characterless answer. In business, a prompt reply is imi>erative. To let lie unan- swered, day after day, letters of proper inquiry, is an unpardon- able breach of business etiquette. Letters asking for information should always enclose a stamp for reply. Letters enclosing a stamp must be answered at once, even if one declines to give the information demanded, and if one merely encloses in the envelope the statement that one so declines to do. b. Write Frankly but Discreetly. — The charm of a letter is its easy frankness, but one should never for- get that it may constitute a permanent record. Many persons keep all letters received, and these documents Chap. XI.] HOW TO WRITE. 197 sometimes reappear unexpectedly and disastrously, years after it was supposed they were buried in oblivion. So one should be sure that expressions of affection are kept inside the boundary of gush, and that sentiment stops this side of sentimentality. Especially in matters of gossip should one be sure that only truth is told, and that it is so told as to do no injustice or unkindness, even though a third eye some time read the pages. You ask for some of yoiir late father's letters. I am sorry to say I have none to send you. Upon principle, I keep no letters except those on business. I have not a single letter from him, nor from any human being, in my possession. — Sydney Smpfh to R. Mackintosh. c. Write Naturally and Directly. — Don't say, " In the opinion of the undersigned," or " If your humble servant may be believed," when you mean "I think." Avoid all circumlocutory phrases. To struggle at a genu- ine idea which it seems difficult or even impossible ade- quately to express, is entirely allowable ; but it is unpar- donable to smother a common-place reflection under a mountain of laborious words. • Never try to write a long letter — never allow yourself, indeed, to write one, unless you have so much to say that you cannot help it. A long-winded letter is only more endurable than a long-winded talker, l)ecau8e you skip the letter, but the talker won't let you skip him. Say what you have to say as briefly as is consistent with saying it clearly, and avoid alike long words and long sen- tences. It is better to ** say '* than to *' ob8er\e," to " talk " than to "converse," to "state" than to " formulate,"— in fine, short words and short sentences belong to letter-writing, which is nothing if not easy and crisp. First have something to say. If there is any occasion for a letter at all, that occasion is its subject Say what you have to say, and be contented to stop when it is 19S GENERAL RULES FOR LETTER-WRITING. [Part ni said. If yon have the good foitnne to be witty or brilliant, or original in your way of looking at things, your lett«r will be clever ; but if you are none of these you can be prompt, brief, and court- eous, and then you wiU have written the letter of a lady or a gen- tleman, if not of a Madame de S(ivign6 or a Horace Walpole. — LouiSB Chandler Moulton. Depend upon it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly uses the first person singular, and says, " I think thus and thus," " I have seen so and so," is thinking of himself and his own personality a mighty deal less than the man who is always employing awkward and roundabout forms of ex- pression to avoid the use of the obnoxious /. Every such peri- phrasis testifies unmistakably that the man was thinking of him- self ; but the simple, natural writer, warm with his subject, eager to press his views upon his readers, uses the / without a thought of self, just because it is the shortest, most direct, and most natural way of expressing himself. The recollection of his own personality probably never crossed his mind during the composi- tion of the paragraph from which an ill-set critic might pick out a score of /'s. To say, " It is submitted," instead of "I think," " It has been observed," instead of " I have seen," " the present writer," instead of *' I," is much the more really egotistical. You use the readiest and most unaffected mode of speech to set out your thougiits of it. You have written /a dozen times, but you have not thought of yourself once. — Fraser's Magazine. d. Be sure your Penmanship is Distinct. — " To write a letter with negligence, without stops, with crooked lines and great flonrislies, is inelegant. It argues either great ignorance of wliat is proper, or great impu- dence toward the person to whom it is addressed. It makes no amends to add an apology for having scrawled a sheet of paper, for Lad pens, because you should have had good ones; or want of time, for nothing is more im- portant to you, or to which your time can more properly be devoted." — Lord Collingwood. Chap. XI. ] ILLEGIBLE PENMANSHIP. 1^0 In May, 1869, Horace Greeley wrote as follows, in reply to an invitation to lecture : DXAB 8ta :— I am overworked and Rowing old. I shall be sixty next February 3d. On the whole, it seems that I mnst decline to lecture henceforth, except in thiH imme- diate vicinity, if I do at all. I cannot promise to visit Illinois on that errand — certainly not now. Yours, HOBACB ObKKIXT. M. B. Cabtlx, Sandwich, IlL He was surprised to receive by return mail the following letter : SlHDWlCB, May 12th. HOKAOB GUCKUET, New York Tribune. Dkak Sib:— Your acceptance to lecture before our aRsociation next winter, came to hand this morning. Your penmanship not being the plainest, it took some time to translate it, but we succeeded, and would say, your time—" Febniary 3d," and terms— *' 9^ " are entirely satisfiMstory.— As you suggest, we may be able to get you other en- I in this immediate vicinity ; if so, we will advise you. Yours respectfully, M. B. Castlk. But this is Mr. Greeley's signature. It is said that the late Deem Richmond, when president of the Hudson River Railroad, stopped one day at a station where the agent, not recognizing him, treated liim with great rudeness. On returning to his office, Mr. Richmond wrote the agent a severe letter, discharging him. The agent departed, but Mr. Richmond's letter, of which the signature alone was easily legible, he used for several years as a free jjass over Mr. Richmond's own railroad. An importing merchant wrote to his agent in Africa to send him by next cargo ** 1 or 2 monkovs." He was astonished to got aenmanship is distinct, p. 198. e. Be careful where you put your signature, p. 200. /. Fold neatly, p. 201. g. Direct carefully, p. 203. (1) Stamp, p'20;i. (2) Name and titles, p. 203. (3) Official position, p. 204. (4) Slant, p. 204. (5) Write distinctly, p. 205. (6) Seal and stamp, p. 206. EXAMPLES OF LETTERS. Dear Sir: On the evo of my departure to visit all parts of the island, and after- ward the principal cities of the continent, 1 feel an ardent desire to l)e honored by being the bearer of a few lines from your own hand to whomever you may please to introduce me. I beg this of you with the hop<' that my efforts to advance ornithological studies, by the publica- tion of my collections and manu.scripts may be thovight worthy of your kind attention.s, and an excuse lor tlius intruding on your pret^ious mo- ments Should you fe«'l the lejtst scruple. j)lease frankly deeline it, and l>elieve me, dear sir, that I value so highly my first reception, when presented to you by my good friend Captain liasil Hall, and your sub- 8e-.ii to give you a passiK)rt to foreign countries, since circumsUmces have pre- vented our oltener meeting, and my ignorance do«»s not jHTmit me to say anything on the branclies of natural history of which you are so well pfwwssed. But I cjiu ejwily and truly say, that what 1 liave had the pleasure of seeing, touching your talents anassing in liis presence. — Kames. The Unnatural atut the Iinprobabie.—Then'. is a distinction to be made between the unnatnral and the merely improbable. A fiction is unnatarsl when there is some assign- able reason against the events taking place as describeil, when men are represented as acting contrary to the character ai«igncd them, or to human natnre in general ; as when a young lady of seventeen, brought up in ease, luxury, and retirement, with no com- panions but the narrow- mindcil and illiterate, displays (as a heroine unually docs), under the most trying circumstances, such wisdom, fortitude, and knowletlge of the world, as the best instructors and the best examples can rarely produce without the aid of more mature age and longer experience. On the other hand a fiction is still improbable, though not unnatural, when there is no reason to be assigned why things should not take place as represented, except that the overbalance of chances is against it. The hero meets, in his utmost distress, most opportunely with the very person to whom he had formerly done a signal service, and who happens to communicate to hini a piece of intel- ligence which sets all to rights. Why should he not meet hira as well as any one else? All that can be said is that there is no reason why he phonld. The infant wJm is saved froui a wreck, and who afterward becomes such a constellation of virtues and accomplish- ments, turns out to be no other than the nephew of the very gentleman on whose estat« the waves had cast him, and whose lovely daughter he h.-xd so long sighed for in vain. There is no reason to be given, except from the c ilculation of chances, why he sliould not have been thrown on one part of the coast as well as another. Nay, it would l>e nothing nnnatural, though the most determined novel-reader would be shocked at its im- probability, if all the hero's enemies, while they were conspiring his ruin, were tn be etrock dead together by a hicky flaah of lightning ; yet many denouements which are de- CHAP. XII.] THREE KINDS OF NARRATION. 211 ddedlr unnatural are bettor tolerated than this would bo. We shall, perhape, b«t explain oar meaning by example*, taken from a novel of great merit in many respects. When Lord Glenthorn, in whom a meet unfavorable education has acted on a most unfavorable dtaftodtion. after a life of torpor, broken only by short sallies of forced exertion, on a sadden reverse of fortune, displays at once the most persevering diligence in the most repulsive stud- ies ; and in middle life, without any previous habitM of exertion, any hope of early biud- nflMUOr tlie example of friends, or the stimulus of actual want to urge him, outstrips every competitor, though every oompeUtor has every advantage against him ; this is unnaturtil. When Lonl Glenthorn, the instant he is stripped of his estates, meets, fails in lave with, and is oonditionally accepted by the very lady who is remotely entitled to those estates; when the insUnt he has fulflUed the conditions of their marriage, the family of the per- son posocancul of the estates becomes extinct, and by the concurrence of circumstances, •gainst erery one of which the chances were enormous, the hero is reinstated in all his old domains ; this is merely improbable. The distinction which we have been pointing out may be plainly perceived in the events of real life ; when anything takes place of such a nature as wc should call, in a fiction, merely improbable, because there are many chances against it, wc call it a lucky or unlucky accident, a singular coincidence, something very cxtraordinnry, odd, cnrious, etc., whereas anything which, in a Action, would be called unnatural, when it actually oc- ean (and such things do occur), is still called unnntural, inexplicable, unaccountable, in- ooaoeivable, etc., epithets which are not applied to e\cntA that have merely the balance of chances against them.— Qunrtarlv BevUw. Narration of Character deals less with incidents themselves than with incidents as they manifest and develop the clmracters of the persons in the story. The leader's critical fiiciilties are called npon. Did the hero take the right conrse throngh the complicated circnm- stances that surrounded him ? Was the lieroine a true woman ? Have I met such people ? Would I like to ? These are the questions suggested, and the reader's inter- est depends upon the naturalness of the incidents, and of their effect u|>on the characters of the story. In fiction this is the peculiar field of the Novel, and is the basis of Fables, Parables, Allegories, and tlie usual Illustrations in argument. In history it deals not more with battles and pestilences than with industries and social liabits ; not more with crises than with the silent influences ceaselessly at work in moulding and transforming a j)eople. In biography it appears in Memoirs, Journals, Letters, 212 NARRATION. [Pabt III. all that reveals the inner man as well as his public rela- tions. Narration of Impressions depends for its interest on the light the story throws, not upon the incidents nar- rated, but upon the person narrating them. In all narra- tion this element is more or less present, but in some kinds, particularly in that which is consciously or unconsciously humorous, this element is predominant. (See page 108, last sentence.) WHAT TO TELL. Accuracy is the prime requisite in narration. Whether our interest be upon incident, or character, or impression, the story must be real, and it is real only in proportion as it is accurate in detail. This requires : a. Close Observation. — It is the little things, the " side touches," that give a story its reality. Tell me that you saw a horse run away and my attention is hardly ar- rested. But describe the cool evening, the mother and daughter leisurely returning from a pleasant visit, the spirited but gentle horse trotting quietly down the hill, the approaching bicycle, the sudden leap of the horse, the frightened pulling upon one rein by the mother, the over- turn, the breaking of the wagon and the frantic plunging of the horse till he frees himself and disappears, the ap- proach of the bicycler to the confused heap of wagon and women, the groans and reproaches that greet him, the as- sistance he renders, and so on, and you make me see the occurrence as you saw it, and feel the same interest in it that 3'ou felt. The force of language consists in raising complete images ; which have the effect to transport the reader as by magic into the very place of the important action, and convert him, as it were, CiiAr. XII. J WHAT ACCURACY REQUIRES. 213 into a spectator, beholding everything that jmsses. The narmtive in an epic poem ought to rival a picture in the liveliness and ac- curacy of its representations ; no circumstance must be omitted that tends to make a complete image ; because an imj^erfect image, as well as any other imperfect conception, is cold and uninterest- ing. — Kames. A lively and aocnimte description of an important event, raises In me ideas no loss dirtinct than if I had been originally an eye-witness ; I am insensibly transformed into a spectator, iind have an impression that every incident is passing in my presence. On the other hand, a slight or superficial narrative produces but a faint and incomplete idea, of which ideal presence makes no part. Past time is a circumstance that enters into this idea, as it does into an incomplete idea of memory ; I believe that Scipio existed about two thousand years ago, and that he overcame Hannibal in the famous battle of Znma. When I rc(teportonity for these different periods it is necessary that the cause of every emo- tion be present to the mind a due time ; for an emotion is not carried to its height by rc- ttefmted imprsarioos only. We know that to be the caae of emotions arising from objects of sight ; » qolidt soc cession, even of th« most beaatifol objects, scarcely making any im- prewion ; and if this hold in the succesaioo of original perceptions, how mach more in the sacoeesion of Ideas.— Kames. b. A Memory for Details. — This is largely a mat- ter of cultivation. Tlie story is familiar liow Ilondin^s father taught liim to walk by a shop window, and report, from a single glance, first, two or tliree things that he saw. 214 NARRATION. [Part III. presently, a dozen, and eventually scores. It should be a principle with young people so closely to observe and so accurately to remember whatever they see of interest, that they can reproduce all that is characteristic in the scene and the occurrence. c. Selection of what is Typical. — This recog- nizing what is characteristic of the particular occasion is merely a further and more careful observation. A girl seems to me ill-dressed ; and I observe that she wears a broad-brimmed white straw hat, trimmed with blue rib- bon ; a white nmslin gown, with short sleeves, and belted with blue; long buif mits, low-heeled shoes, white lace about the neck, etc. Now, if I am to describe her as an ill-dressed girl, I want to know in which of all these par- ticulars she is ill-dressed ; so, instead of simply enumerat- ing details, I observe further, to see which of them it is that produces the unpleasant impression. I find that it is the lace she wears. Her neck is short, and the lace makes her look choked, as if she were wearing it as a protection against sore-throat. So far as I desire to reproduce the impression she makes upon me, I must then direct my at- tention to her neck and her lace, remembering just how it looks, and comparing her neck with others to fix in my own mind why it is that what would look well upon an- other girl is so unbecoming to her. To select from the sentiment, scene, or event described, those typical elements which carry many others along with them ; and so, by saying a few things but suggesting many, to abridge the description, is the secret of producing a %'ivid impression. An ex- tract from Tennyson's " Mariana " will well illustrate this : All day within the dreamy house. The door upon the hinges creaked. The blue fly sung i' the pane ; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked. Or from the crevice peered about. Chap. XIL] WHAT ACCURACY REQUIRES. 215 The several circumstances here specified bring with them many Appropriate associations. Our attention is rarely drawn by the buzzing of a fly in the window, save when everything is stilL While the inmates are moving about the house, mice usually keep silence ; and it is only when extreme quietness reigns that they peep from their retreats. Hence each of the facts mentioned pre- supposes numerous others, calls up these with more or less dis- tinctness, and revives the feeling of dull solitude with which they are connected in our experience. Were all these facts detailed in- stead of suggested, the attention would be so frittered away that little impression of dreariness would be produced. Similarly in other cases. Wliatever the nature of the thought to be conveyed, this skilful selection of a few particulars which imply the rest, is the key to success. In the choice of competent ideas, as in the choice of expressions, the aim must be to convey the greatest quan- tity of thoughts with the smallest quantity of words.— Herbekt d. Rejection of what is Low or Trivial. — This is the newspaper age, and the most characteristic feature of the modern newspaper is the interview. Our curiosity as to the private life of noted people is stimu- lated by information as to how much the President pays for his coats, where Jay Gould gets his liair cut, and whether Nilsson is fond of clams. Where shall we draw the line as to the private lives of prominent people, be- tween legitimate interest and the curiosity of a Paul Pry? Historical Value of Revealment.— The very fact that the things told are of a kind commonly con- cealed gives to minute personal gossip a certain factitious interest ; but there is also a real value as well as genuine entertainment in the picture thus drawn of a man as a type of his class, or of his age, or of mankind. Few books arc more certain of immortality than Pepys's Diary, con- temptible as it makes Pepys himself appear; and Bos- well's " Life of Johnson " will always be a classic, tliough 216 NARRATION. [Part TIL it insures to Boswell a curl of the lip at every mention of his name. Macaulay's Description of Boswell. The *• Life of Johnson " is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspere is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of bi- ographers. He has no second. He has distanced all competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all. He ^-as, if we are to give any credit to his own account, or to the imited testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and fee- blest intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality by not having been alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerck used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of some emi- nent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then "binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at the Shakspere jubilee, to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his hat bear- ing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his torn- he proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known by the appella- tion of Paoli Boswell. Servile and imj)ertinent, shallow and pe- dantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a bom gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London, so curious to know everybody who was talked about, that, Tory and High-churchman as he was, he manoeu^Ted, we have been told, for an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most child- ish distinctions, that when he had been to court he drove to the Chap. XIL] HOW MACAULAY DESCRIBES BOSWELL. 217 office where hia book was printing without changing his clothes, and snmmoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and sword ; such was this man, and such was he contented and proud to be. Everything which another man would have hidden, every- thing the publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked, how at one place ho was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the Prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how ho added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much liis merriment annoyed the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle, and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries ; all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his tem- per, all the illusions of his vanity, all his lni>ochondriac whim- sies, all his castles in the air, ho displayed with a cool self-com- placency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill ; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as himself. That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world is strange enongh. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly describeroud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curi- ooity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe comijanion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest viola- tion of confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, with- out sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others, or when he was exposing himself to derision ; and l>ecause of all this he has, in an important dcimrtmont of literature, im- measurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Al fieri, and his own Johnson. Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writ- ers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his ovm on literature, politics, religion, or so- cioty, which is not either commonplace or absurd. His disserta- tions on hereditaiy gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the entail- ing of landed estates, may sen-e as examples. To say that these passages are sophistical would be to jmy them an extravagant com- pliment. They have no pi-etence to argument, or even to meaning. He has rejwrted innumerable observations made by himself in the course of conversation. Of these observations we do not re- member one which is above the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has j^rinted many of his owti letters, and in these let- tei-s he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and ^-il•tue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. Those parts of his book which, considered abstractly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good Chap. XII.) HOW MACATTLAY DESCRIBES BOSWELL. 219 dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the most candid. Other men have pretended to lay open their own hearts : Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron have evidently written with a constant view to effect, and are to be then most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. There is scarcely any man who would not rather accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and temi>estnous pas- sions than proclaim Ids little vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to find a jjerson who would avow actions like those of Cedsar Borgia, or Danton, than one who would jmblish a day-dream like those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. Tliose weaknesses wliich most men keep covered up in the most secret places of the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded before the world. He was perfectly frank, because the weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his si>irits prevented him from knowing when ho had made himself ridiculous. His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of the inmates of the Palace of Tnith. His fame is great ; and it will, wo have no doubt, be lasting ; but it is fame of a i^eculiar kind, and indeed mar\'ellously resem- bles infamy. We remember no other case in which the world has made so great a distinction between a book and its author. In general, the book and its author are considered as one. To ad- mire the book is to a^lmire the author. The case of Boswell is aq exception, we think the only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed to be interesting, instnictive, eminently orig- inal ; yet it has brought him nothing but contempt. All the world reads it ; all the world delights in it ; yet we do not remembet ever to have read or ever to have heard any expression of res{)ect or ailmiration for the man to whom we owe so much instruction and amusement. While edition after edition of liis book was coming foi-th, his son, as Mr. Crokcr tells us, was ashameil of it, and hated to hear it mentioned. The feeling was natural and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that, in pro|x)rtion to the celebrity of the work, was the degradation of the author. The very editors of this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten their alle- giance, and, like those Paritan casuista who took arms by the au- 220 NARRATION. fpART HI. thority of the king against his person, have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on the " Life of Johnson," and yet scarcely ever mentions the biographer whose performance he has taken such pains to illustrate without some expression of contempt. Details of Value, only when Character- istic. — In an essay on this subject, Coleridge has defined the lx)undary in narrating the lives of great men between liberty and license. He says ; "Yet Lord Bacon, by the expressions 'public faces* and * pro- pounding to themselves a person ' evidently confines the biographer to such facts as are either susceptible of some general inference, or tend to illustrate those qualities which distinguish the subject of them from ordinary men ; while the passage in general was meant to guard the historian against considering, as trifles, all that might appear so to those who recognize no greatness in the mind, and can conceive no dignity in any incident which does not act on their senses by its external accompaniments, or on their curiosity by its immediate consequences. Things apparently insignificant are recommended to our notice, not for their own sakes, but for their bearings or influences on things of importance ; in other words, when they are insignificant in aj^pearance only. " An inquisitiveness into the minutest circumstances and casual sayings of eminent contemporaries is indeed quite natural ; but so are all our follies, and the more natural they are, the more caution should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles even on the perishable glass of an inn-window, is the mark of an idler ; but to engrave them on the marble monument, sacred to the mem- ory of the departed great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine biogi-apliy is in nothing more conspicuous than in the fiimness with which it withstands the cravings of worthless curiosity, as distinguished from the thirst after useful knowledge. For, in the first place, such anecdotes as derive their whole and sole interest from the great name of the person by whom they are related, and neither illustrate his general character nor his particu- lar actions, would scarcely have been noticed or remembered except Chap. XIL] A SUITABLE TONR 221 by men of weak minds : it is not unlikely, therefore, that they were misapprehended at the time, and it is most probable that they have been related as incorrectly as they were noticed inju- diciously In the second place, these trifles are sub- versive of the great end of biography, which is to fix the attention, and to interest the feelings, of men on those qualities and actions which have made a particular life worthy to be recorded. It is, no doubt, the duty of an honest biographer to portray the prom- inent imperfections as well as excellences of his hero ; but I am at a loss to conceive how this can be deemed an excuse for heaping together a multitude of particulars, which can prove nothing of any man that might not have been safely taken for granted of all men." — The Friend. Nobody should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or to be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would never have come down to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on the ear. "We should have trembled for the .Slneid if any Tyrian nobleman had kicked the pious .tineas in the fourth rib. ^neas may have deserved it ; but he could not have founded the Boman Empire after so distressing an accident. — Sydney Smith. HOW TO TELL. A Suitable Tone. — Nothing is more important in narration than that the manner and the tone be adapted to the subject; — and not only to the subject absohitely, but to the subject in its relations to the speaker and to the hearers (see page 83). No art, no wit, can atone for in- sensibility to the proprieties of the occasion. Let us illustrate this point by some references to death— a sub- ject usually held sacretl. "Naught save good of the dead" is a maxim founded on a universal instinct The man is not to be en- vied that can pass a house where the funeral-services even of a stranger are in progress, without the impulse to lift his hat in silent sympathy. Often quoted as a type of all that is true and touching in such 222 NARRATION. [Part III. references is the following tribnte to his wife by the author of '* Day-Dreams of a School-master :" Once upon a time, reader, a lung, long while ago, I knew a school-nuuiter, and that Bchool-master bad a wife ; and xhe wilb young, and fair, and learned ; like thnt prinoesH- pnpll of old Aachaio. fair and learned aa Sidney s tdAer, Pembroke^n mother. And her vnloe WM ever toft, gentle, and low, reader— an excellent thing in woman. And her fin- gera vrere quick at nt^Hilf-wurk, and nimble in all a houiiewife'ii cunning. And Hhe could draw aweet muMic iruiu the ivory board; sweeter, stranger nuisic from the chill life of her Rchool-maater-hUHband. And she was slow of heart to undertrtand niiachief ; but her feet ran swift to do goud. And she wa.1 simple with the Bimplicity of girlhood, and wiae with the wisdom that coinoth only of the Lord-cometh only to the children of the Kingdom. And her sweet young life wan a morning hymn, sung by a child-voic-e to rich organ-muKic. Time shall throw hi« dart at death, ere death hath nlain xuch another. For she died, reader, a long, long while ago. And I stood once by her grave— her green grave — not far from dear Dunedin. Died, reader, for all she was so fair, and learnetl, and simple, and good. And, I am told, it made a great differenoe to that 8choul-ma8ter. Contrast with this the following c&nsecuHve jiaragraphs) from an Elmira new8|)aper : Eagan, the man killed at Chemung on Friday night, lived near the depot, and leaves a wife and family. He was walking on the track at the time, and waH struck by No. 12 going East He was a m>ber man. The accident occurred about nine o'clock. He was instantly killed — all cut to pieces — the head torn off and the body mangled. Mr. Harry Murphy's home, which was made the brighter by the unfolding a little time ago of a dainty, tiny rosebud, sweet and precious, is now in shadow, for t le tender little flower has withered. A few weeks only it lasted, yet sufficient to have its tendrils cling aroimd hearts that are very lonely now. The parents have the sympathy of many friends. Here is an attempt, evidently well-meaning, but very unhappy, to apply technical terms : Albert Seymour "Wright, the associate etlitor of the Ithaca Journal, has handed in bis last copy and read his last proof. A sudden and fatal illness emancipated him at the early age of 24 from the perplexities of ill^ble manuscript, the criticisms of insufferable egotists, and the exasperating blunders of the intelligent compositor. He did his duty in life, was honored by his friends, and, now that he is dead, his place will not be easily filled by his eqxuil.— Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. But the unpardonable offence in journalism is to look upon death as a fit subject for fantastic humor and execrable puns. (See pp. 101-104.) Thus, a reporter on the St. Paul Pioneer-Press tells the tale of a man who drank a bottle of whiskey at one sitting, and died in the act, as follows : Oeorge Dapp of Oshkosh made a bonded warehouse of his bay-window, and turned his toes up to the daisies. Chap. Xn.l BOMBAST. 223 Even more repulsive are the following : A b«d little boy hail some powder, And in trying to make it go louder He snoocoded so well That hiH folks couldn't tell Hia remains from a dish of clam chowder. A lady named Mary Magui-&h • Had trouble in lighting hor fiah. The wooicuity, but very much in vivacity. — Campbell. Aristotle has remarked " that uneducated men have more iwwer of persuasion among the ignorant than the educated have ; be- cause the latter are apt to speak of matters of common knowledge and of a general character, while the former speak from their own knowledge, and say the things that are close to their hearers." (Rhet. n. xxii., 3.) But the example of such men as Luther and Latimer shows that the learned can acquire the power of speaking of familiar things in the plain style. — Hekvey. The Use of Proper Names. — Hence dates, and the names of persons and places, give exactness and reality to the narration. Every one is sensible, for instance, that the most humorous or entertaining story loseth egregiously when the relator cannot or will not name the persons concerned in it. No doubt the naming of them has the greatest effect on those who are acquainted with them, either personally or by character, but it hath some effect even on those who never heard of them before. It must be an extraordinary tale indeed which we can bear for any time to hear if the narrator proceeds in this languid strain : A certain i^er- son who shall be nameless on a certain occasion said so and so, to which a certain other person in the company who shall likewise be nameless made answer. Nay, so dull doth a narrative commonly appear wherein anonymous individuals only are concerned, that we choose to give feigned names to the persons rather than none at all. — Campbell. Caution should be exercised, however, in naming per- sons whom a narrative reflects upon. Unless there is good reason to tell of another what that other would regret to have told, the narrative approaches libel, and the narrator appears at best as a gossip. Wendell Phillips was formerly severely censured for personal criticism and condemnation in his speeches. He replied : " If I Chap. XIL] AVOID SUPERLATIVES. 227 denounce what seems to be moral cowardice in the abstract, every- body yawns and agrees. If I say I mean Edward Everett, whom everybody respects, and whose political example seems to me per- nicious, everybody may be shocked, but they fall to thinking." The point of satire lies in its indiWduality. Its victims must have a local habitation and a name. Sly allusion, semi-equivocal expression, and pointed insinuation, too well defined to leave its personal application doubtful, therefore, foinu a large part of the diction of journalistic articles relating to social life, while in poli- tical warfare the boldest libels, the most undisguised grossness of abuse, alone suit the palate of heated partisanship. Hence the dialect of i)ersonal vituperation, the rhetoric of malice in all its modifications, the art of damning ^yith. faint praise, the sneer of contemptuous irony, the billingsgate of vulgar hate, all these have been sedulously cultivated, and, combined with a certain flippancy of expression and ready command of a tolerably extensive vocabu- lary, they are enough to make the fortune of any sharp, shallow, unprincipled journalist, who is content with the fame and the pelf which the unscrupulous use of such accomplishments can hardly fail to secure, — Mabsh. Avoid Superlatives. — "Writers of inferior rank are continually upon the stretch to enliven and enforce their subject by exaggeration and superlatives. This, un- luckily, has an effect contrai-y to what is intended ; the reader, disgusted with language that swells above the sub- ject, is led by contrast to think more meanly of the subject than it may ]>ossibly deserve. A man of prudence, besides, will be no less careful to husband his strength in writing than in walking: a writer too liberal of superlatives ex- hanstfi his whole stock upon ordinary incidents, and re- serves no share to express, with greater energy, matters of importance." — Kames. Vbrt. — ** This very small wonl is very often used in the English language when a sentence would be very much stronger and the meaning very much more forcible without it. If a man has not 228 NARRATION. [Part III. much hair on the top of his head, it is not enongh for people to say simply that he is bald, but he is very bald. A man is not stingy, but he is very stingy, when the one good strong word 'stingy' would put the whole point forcibly. A doctor of divinity is not learned, but very learned ; a doctor of medicine is not crotchety, he is very crotchety ; while a lawyer is not cunning, but veiy cun- ning. In the same way, a young lady is not handsome, but very handsome. The qualifier has become so common that it is weak- ening to the word it is joined to. In nine cases out of ten where very is used to intensify human speech, a single, bold word with- out the nery would hit the meaning like a hammer, and drive it home with a directness unknown to clogged and hampered expres- sion. •' * Very ' seems to be a word designed by providence for young ladies to express their feelings with. This portion of the com- munity probably could not get on without their adverb, but the English of the rest of the race would be strengthened if the little qualifier were relegated almost wholly to the fair class to whom it belongs. It creeps into our literature as insidiously as the measles into a family of fifteen, and, once there, it stays like an oflSce- seeker. It breaks out everywhere, even in the most high-toned and * cultivated ' writing. A newsj^aper, which is authority on the art of literary comjwsition, prints, for instance, a thrilling descrip- tion of a brilliant party. Every lady present was very much this or that. Mrs. Blank, who was a very intimate friend of Mrs. Gen- eral Dash, wore a very handsome green satin dress, and had a very handsome silver comb in her back hair. IVIrs. General Dash wore an exceedingly becoming dress, which was very elaborately made. Two young ladies, whose dresses were exceedingly becoming and very graceful, were accompanied by a yoimg man who had a very light moustache. Everybody was either 'very,' or 'exceedingly,' or ' most highly ' something. The air bristled with superlatives. "It combines instruction with amusement to count the 'veries* in a column of newspaper advertisements. A * general housework ' applicant is not content with being a respectable woman and a good cook. She is a very respectable woman and a very good cook. It is enough, in all conscience, to be said of a woman that she is a superior waitress. Superior itself means better than good, but Chap. XII.] AVOID SUPERLATIVES. 229 this uncommon waitress tacks on the word * very,' too, and thus becomes very better than good. •' The climax of veriness is reached, however, by a girl. She is * a very competent cook, understands waiting at table in a veiy efficient manner, and is in all respects very first-class.' * In all re- spects very first-class qualifications ' is good. It is only equalled by the young man who was a very perfect horseman and rode a very black horse. A fine example, too, of the redundant ' very ' is the reply of the old tar who was blown overboard at Trafalgar, and rescued with much difficulty, and who, long afterward, being asked by a symimthetic lady how he felt on th§^ occasion, an- swered : * Wet, ma'am, very wet.' " — Cincinnati Commercial. Nkwsfapeb EHOLlsn.— Now, in the days of Frankhatn the king, it was 80 that Prankfelps. tho klnjj's moswinger, went oat into the land of The Hawkej/e and made pro- cUunation unto tlie people, saying : ** What doext thou knowext, and if thou knowcRt naught, what ia it?'* Por be Raid within himself, "Verily, that which they know not in as the eand upon the Ma-«hore as oorapai-ed with that which they know, and it will go farther to All up.'' But the people held their peace, for the times were barren and there was a famine of Itcmx in the land. And the king'tt mesenger returned, nnd he quoted from the wise man, and said : ''Of a rerity. it is ao Solomon Miid when ho was local on the Jerumiem OverUxker, there is notbing.ncw under the sun." But the king comma luled him, saying, " Whoop her up ! " And it was ■«> that Fmnkfelps, the king's messenger, was wroth, and he said : " What is this that the king commandeth ? That I shall make bricks without straw ? " And he got him a notebook that was as big as an atlas, and girded up his loins and went forth. And he spake unto a man on South Hill, saying : " The smoke a* of a borning aa- orndcth from that back yard ; tell me, I pray thee, what is the cause thereof? " And the South Hill man said : ** Of a verity it is only the ash barrel, and is it not al- ready put out ? " But the king's mesacnger was glad, and he opened his notebook and wrote therein : "Dreadful Holocaust! The Devouring Element sweepa over Sonth Hill! The Dun Cicada of Murky Smoke blot out the Sunlight ! The Fiery Flames with Forked Tongues flj throagh the Lurid Atrooupbere ! " And his heart was glad. And it was so that he met a boy at the depot selling apples^ dx for a nickel, to the travellers on the train. And the lad was weeping. So the king's meseanger sayeth unto him : " Whence so much weepeth ? ** Bat the lad said : " VerQy. when I would nell my apples on the train, the train boy roae op againit dm, and entrpated me roughly, and toased my apple* nnder the baggago- tmck, and invaitod me «T«n with the order of the 0. B.** Which, by interpretatloii, la tlie Orand Bounoe. And the m ee wnger laughed and made merry with himself, and wrote in his note-book : '^AiwChvlMroaiilMIadnitqrFunlyaedt The Iron Beel of Monopoly apoo the Neck 230 NARRATION. [Part III of Hooeit EntcrpilM I A Prominent BusineM Hodm Boined bj Pitiless Competition and Corporate Privileges t ^ Then he saw a man who had tarried long at the wine, and was telling his aspirations and fears even unto the sUent Indian who Rtandeth in front of the cigar store and tle- ladeth mankind with wooden tobaooo. And while the man talked the officer commanded him that he ahouid huHh it up. And he would nut. but Rpake even yet more loudly. And the offloer clapped the "come alongs" onto him, and run him in, and took him even when be would not. . And the messenger wrote in hix book : '* Despotism TJnmaakBd 1 Liberty Assailed by the Iron Hand of Might I The Right of Free Speech Trampled Upon I Right of the People to Assemble and Discuss Ignored and Outraged.*" Then it was so that he met a boy who had trod upon a nail in the plank walk, and tlio lad was weeping and swearing. And the messenger smiled and entered upon his chronicles : '* Heart-rending Accident ! The Bleeding and sUngled Body of the Victim Conveyed to his Home ! " Then he pursued his journey and saw a West Hill man at work, and he said unto him : " Friend, what doest thou ? ** And the man said: ''Lo, thou seeat; I am taking down this old front gate, which many years and a few daughters have rendered well-nigh nseleas.** And the king*H messenger sighed and wrote the head-lines in his book of chronicles : " The loonoclasm of Progress ! Another Old Landmark Gone ! " Then it was so that he Raw yet another man who was bupy, and when he saw that the man was patching a bati place in the roof of his born with new shingles, he wrote : " Hammer and Hatchet ! New Buildings Gk)ing up on North Hill ! New Roofs that Mock the Clouds, and Stately Domes that Kiss the Stars ! " And he closed the book of record and was merry, and he humped himself back into the office and commanded that they should place before him five bundles of new paper and a barrel of ink. And the king was astonished, and said unto the messenger : " How is the city ? " And the messenger made obeisance unto the king, and said : " Oh, king, live forever ! The land of The Ilawkeye is bully. Only out three hours, and six triple-headers, with four wards to hear from ! Order on twenty quires extra, and send word to the trains ! " And when the king was gone out, Frankiefelps, the king's messenper, looked at the youngest servitor of the king, who held his peace, for he was amazed and wot not how it come so, for he himself had been out all morning, and had returned again unto his place barren. But the king's messenger, while he looked upon the young man, let fall the lid of his eye, that it well-nigh closed, and he laid his finger upon his nose, and he said unto the young man : " Bonnie, t)e of good cheer ; thou hast much to learn ; nevertheless, this is the way the old thing works." And the next day the pai)er sold like smoke. And the people marvelled, and said one to another, " Is it not dreadful that daily such things should happen in our midst ? •' And they locked the doors ere they went to bed at night. And the king's messenger held hia peace and looked wise; and he said unto the people : " No man but myself knoweth what a day has to bring toxtXiJ'''— Burlington JFatokeye, Avoid Epithets. — Some adjectives have been so of- ten associated with certain nouns that they no longer pro- Chap. Xn.] AVOID EPITHETS. 231 duce a distinct impression, the two words together merely forming a sort of poetical circumlocution for the noun alone. Such epithets pad out the narrative without strengthening it, and are often ridiculous. Thus a New Hampshire editor speaks of a '* new bread wagon, ])aintcd in the highest style of decorative art, bearing upon its side in golden letters the talismanic word Biddle, and drawn by a coal- black steed, clad in a neat fitting and ornamental haiTiess, to which were added broad white reins, skilfully handled by a good- looking driver." Many writers of that kind abound so in epithets, as if poetry consisted entirely in high-sounding words. Take the following instance : When bisck-browed Night her dusky mantle spread, And wrapt in noleniQ gloom the sable sky : When soothing Sleep her opiate dews had shed. And sealed in silken slumbers every eye : ICy wakefnl thoaghts admit no Imlmy rest, Nor the sweet bliss of soft oblivion share : Bnt watchful woe distracts my aching breast. My heart the sabject of corroding care : Prom hannts of men with wandering steps and slow I solitary steal, and soothe my pensive woe. Here every substantive is faithfully attended by some tumid epithet ; like young master, who cannot walk abroad without hav- ing a laced livery-man at his heels. Thus in reading without taste, an emphasis is laid on every word ; and in singing vnth- out taste, every note is graced. Such redundancy of epithets, in- stead of pleasing, produce satiety and disgust. — Kames. A principal device in the fabrication of the mock-eloquent style is to multiply epithets— dry epithets, laid on the outside, and into which none of the vitality of the sentiment is found to circulate. You may take a c^'eat number of the words out of each })age, and find that the sense is neither more nor less for your having cleared the composition of these epithets of chalk of various colors, with wliich tlio tamo thoughts had submitted to be rubbed over in order to be made tino.— Foutsb. NARRATION. [Part IIL The unthinking use of epithets leads to ridiculous in- consistencies. Thus : I solemnlj declare that I hare not wi^uUy committed the least mistake. — S^tft. So tbepair* limpid itzeam, when foul with tUUna, Of nnhiag torrents and dtnowirting raina.— Aodisow. I mentioii, u in o o ttrt e ty bound, an aoooant of this oouNtmetion which has been nent me by a o o rre s poadent anxloas to rindioate Shakspen from baring oaed a modem tuI- gariam.— Au^omD. Shakspert^s having used a modem vulgarism is about eqnal to Jeffrey's remark in h\s Essays: *'It is well known that the an- cients have stolen most of our bright thoughts/* — Moon. Now it is undeniable that a great portion of the young ladies and gentlemen who write poetry and stories never Faw an aspen leaf or heard the noten of a nightingale, to reoognlae either of them. Yet it is quite safe to challenge any one to find anywhere in their poetry or prose that whra their heroine was frightened she did not tremble like an aspen leaf ; or when she lifted up her Toioe in song that she did not sing as sweetly as a nightingale. It is also an undeniable fact that no human corpse that is properly buried is •rer eaten by vrorms, and yet with what ill-oonoealed delight they always remind us that we shall be food for those detestable snimals, and how pleased they are to speak more oocrectly, of man hinutelf being bui a worm of the dust. Yon will also notice in the writ- ings of these persons that though they are always climbing the mount of Parnassus or at- tempting to scale its heights, yet that they deem fame to be but an empty bubble or like the baseless fabric of a dream. They love to study the book of nature, and hope with them often soars exultant, and subsequently folds her wings. Their youth build many air- castles and poise Uie cup of happiness to their lips : a certain number of summers or springs always pass over their heads (which gave rise to a joke referring to the springs in ladles* hoops), after which time they fall a prey to Cupid's arrows, and are bound in the holy bonds of matrimony. Their children perish like blossoms, while their old men are cut down by time's scythe. They speak of those bom as being ushered into existence, and of those who die as being launched into eternity. Their travellers always wend their way instead of going. Their ships, before embarking on the raging main, invariably weiph anchor and then walk the waters like a thing of life. Their cannon are loud-mouthed. Their streams, when frozen, are bound by winter's icy chain. The twelve o'clock bell is the iron tongue of midnight. Their dancers are votaries of Terjisichore who trip the light fantastic toe. They frequently refer also to beetling crags, natal days, green-eyed jeal- ousy, bitter tears, the king of day, the silver moon, fcirlom hope*, adamantine souls, bowers of ease, the pangs of poverty, time's eCFacing fingers, laughing sunbeams, false caitiffs, the fleeting breath, and to skeletons in the closet. In descriptions of natural scenes yon will notice a prevalence of such things as blos- soming meadows, rippling streams, babbling brooks, blue skies, smiling sunlight, green Terdure, cool retreats, umbrageous shadows, feathered songsters and melodious warbler^. Tou will notice that pretty girls are as beautiful as houris, with the form of Hebe, with rosy cheeks, pearly teeth, laughing eyes, dimpled chins, alabaster brows, and cherry or ruby or coral lips. Certainly there is no womanly beauty that has not been described Chap. XII.] OMIT IRRESISTIBLE INFERENCES. 233 orer and orer •gain ; and I rappone the deacriptions of heroines from all the novelii and abort atotiea eiver written would oonform to aix or ei^ht modcU, that wonld inclnde ■evaral eooentric typea; for the great nuws would be inclndod under four nimlelK. In the papera an accident in a frightfol catantrophe, a Ktreet flKht a terrible affray, an •anolt la a diabolical outrage, euicide la a rash act, a bad laan is a fiend in human shape, a peraon who does anything bad Hucceeds in aoooniplishing his hellish design, fire is the devouring element, things are postponed on account of the inclemency of the weather (meaning rain), people are prevented from doing things by circumstances over which they have no cuntrol, and actors and actreaaea are deterred from playing by indispoaition (meaning that they are sick or indisposed to play).— Wakkmah. Omit Irresistible Inferences. — A story before 118, in telling of the call of the heroine at a Fifth Avenne mansion, states that when the carriage stopped she de- scended, shut the carriage-door behind her, mounted the steps, rang the bell, ^called tiU the door was opened, gave her card to the servant that appeared, and entered the hall. A few of these details might safely have been left to the imagination. "We have received a story entitled " A Dark Deed," which is re- spectfully declined. The first chapter opens with, "It is mid- night." This is all right. It is often midnight — at least seven times a week ; but the author forgot to add, " and silence brooded over the city." This is a fatal oversight. Silence always brootls over a city when it is midnight in works of fiction — although no- where else. We can't print a story in which silence doesn't brood at midnight. — NorriMown Herald. A reiwrter of the Herald was assigned last night to "write something al)out the weather — something about the heat — some- thing about the scarlet rash and the dog-days, and all that sort of thing." What he evolved from the inmost recesses of his heat- oppro.ssed brain is here presented in a revised form with due apolo- gies for its production. ** It was a timely topic '* I^STiat lmme«liately foUrtwod the abore utatement haa heen eliminated, for ft partook of rtlitorin! aiwrrtion ; and re p u r t eni arc not eniploycil to dictate the policy of newspapers, even on topics aa gmerai n* the weather.— The KiliU>r.] "All day long the hot sun i)oured down its 234 NARRATION. [Part III. [Nothing bat a pwnr e of txuiiieM it aoooaiitAble for the •ppcftranoc of this )vt ■entmce. Of oonne ** all day long^ the "hot** Ban had ''poored down" its Bcorch- log " rays ! *' The mm don't Bhine in the night time; there is no oold son ; if the suit was ''hot" it's only nataral to sappoee that ifai rays were "aoorching," and if the " Hoorching rays" had poured ap there woold have been no need of this article I The same old glittering generalities I— The Bditor.] "While it is hardly probable that the day was the hottest known to the memory of the oldest inhabitant " [Of coarse it is " hardly probable ; " the day of the Chicago fire was infinitely hotter. BesideH, the reporter was not here when the oldetit inhabitent arrived, or he wouldn't now be reporting for a daily paper; and the "oldest inhabitant ** as a general thing is only fit anyway to attend funerals, sit on coroner's jaries, and swap Uea with the next oldest inhabitant.— The Editor.] " Every one was ftilly comdnced that the dog days had at last arrived " [Of coarse they watre, when all know that dog days begin July 25th and last until September 8d, and someCimee a week longer. —The Editor.] " The scarlet rash, that dread scourge of the full-blooded per- son—" [The rest of that nentencc betrayed so great familiarity with the condition of the bodies of the sweltering public that it was manifestly abtmrd. The reporter himself may have the scarlet rash or the crimson lake eruption — that's nobody's business but his own, and of no interest to the readers of this journal.— The Editor.] ** The beer saloons and soda fountains were liberally patronized by the thirsty populace " [Populaces not thirsty are not expected to patronize any fluid-vending establishment. Moreover, the Herald is not a free advertising agent of any slop shop. — The Editor.] **And the exhausted toiler sank to restless sleep breathing a prayer that the morning would bring relief." [It will perhaps be surmised from the above that the exhausted toiler was the re- porter, and that he sank to restless sleep and sent down his " copy " afterward. But he didn't. He finished his writing before he went home and before the cooling rain fell on the parched earth. He had no ri^ht nor reason to say that the " exhausted toiler " sank to " restless sleep." An " exhausted " toiler will sleep a restless sleep for the simple rea- son that he can't do otherwise. And the statement that ho prayed for relief on the morrow is superfluous bt!caiise all the prayers in the nation wouldn't change the what-is-to-be, and praying against fate, even with Vennor on one's side, is foolish u?elessness. — The EerBonal experience has not oonvinoed him that it was very, very hot yesterday.— The EiUUtT.]— Chicago Uerald. Above All, Preserve Unity. — Let your story be not only about something, but about some one thing. It is one of the charms of ** Robinson Crusoe " that all the inci- dents are grouped about a single hero. In Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " half the interest that has been so imflaggingly main- tained through the first part evaporates when the adventures per- tain to a company instead of a single individual. The discovery of America is a familiar story so far as Columbus remains the cen- tral figure, but when the interest is diverted from one to another of a dozen explorers, it soon diminishes, and fixes nothing in the memory. A sketch in Harper^s Weekly begins thus : The body of Stephen Oirard lies in a saroophagns in the vestibole of the main college building, which is bnilt after the model of a Grecian temple ; its 34 Corinthian columns measure six feet in diameter, and are 66 feet high, and cost |16,000 each. The college with 96 pupils. Imagination in Narration. — The truth of fiction is as real as the truth of fact. Indeed, there is a sense in which fiction is truer than fact ; for while fact deals largely with marvels, with the unusual and the ahnoriiial, especially with the une.xpected, fiction is powerless except as it deals with such events and consequences as appear probable. The Dime Novel finds readers only among those too inexperienced and ignorant to detect the im- probabilities that abound (see page 210). The fictions that live, live because their trutli to nature is confirmed by the general experience of mankind. I can well sympathize with the contempt mingled with indigo NARRATION. [Part IIL nation expressed by Cicero against certain philosophers who found fault with riato for having in a case he projKJses alluded to the fabulous ring of Gyges, which had the virtue of making the wearer invisible. They had found out, it seems, that there never was any such ring. (De Of. III., 9.)— Whately. Facts Supplemented by the Imagination. — Wlieii the facts given are thorouglily a|)preheiided and made real in the mind, tliey clothe tlieinselves in the imagination with incidents not recorded, but correctly con ceived in proportion as the imagination is vivid. Such incidents may therefore be used to supplement absolute facts, and in much narration are essential to life-like pre- sentation. It is imagination that gives vivid comi>arisons like the following : The battle of Waterloo was fought on a piece of ground resem- bling a capital A. The English were at the annex, the French at the feet, and the battle was decided about the centre. —V. Hugo. The main question as to a novel is — Did it amuse ? Were you surjjrised at dinner coming so soon ? Did you mistake eleven for ten, and twelve for eleven ? Were you too late to dress ? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour ? If a novel produces these effects, it is good ; if it does not — stors-, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please ; and it must do that, or it does nothing. — Sydney Smith. - A Teacher's Experienoe. — Some ten years ago I became a teacher in a large boarding school. The boys were mostly from wealthy but uncultivated families, who sent their children away to school because they could not manage them at home. Of coui*se it was not easy to control them, but of all times it was hardest to keep them in order on Sunday afternoons. On week- days, we could so break up their hours by meals, and recitations, and drills, and study-hours, that they had no two consecutive houi-s to themselves, but when we had taken them to church in the morning and to church at half-past one, there remained the long period from three o'clock till eight, interrupted only by supper. Chap. XH.] NEED OF IMAGINATION. 237 It seemed necessaiy to put an honr's Bible lesson into that pe- riod, but the principal of the school said he had tried that once, and he could not make it work. The boys complained that three hours in a hot little country church, with two dry sermons, a melo- deon-led choir, cusluonless seats, and two marks if they whisi^ered, was religion enough for one day ; and he added with a chuckle that he thought the boys were about right. There arose, then, this problem : how to interest in a weekly Bible lesson boys of no previous religious ti-aining, and with a prejudice against anything of the kind. I resolved to select one Bible story for each Sunday, and to tell it in such a way that they would enjoy hearing it, and want to hear another. So I mapped out my work, and first made myself thoroughly acquainted with the story as told in the Bible. I made tables of chronology, pre- pared maps, and looked up all the marginal references. Then I got all the helps u\K>n which I could lay hands, two or three Bible dictionaries, Josephus, the best commentaries, anything ])ubli8hed which could give details. Then, when I had fairly in hand everything I could find which was authentic, I filled in from my imagination. I said to myself, this story is not for scholars, but for rough boys, and I must tell it so as to make ujwn them the same impression that the narrative makes upon me. So I filled in here, I enlargetl there, I dwelt upon details, I introduced local comi>arisons, I made use of the boys' own experience, and espe- cially of incidents which had happened at the school, where there was any opportimity to draw a parallel ; and, in short, I made the story real to every boy there. I don't believe it sounded ortho- dox ; but it held the boys, because it was in symjMitliy with their thought and experience. And I don't mind expressing my opinion that if we are to contend successfully with the flood of sensation- alism with which the news-counters and the heads of our boys are teeming, we must ofl*er in its i)lace something else besides the "Westminster Catechism and Bishop South's sermons. It has been well said that the only unpardonable fault in a book is to be unreadable, because if it is unreadable it is not a book. So I would say that the only uni)ardonabIe fault in teaching is to be uninteresting ; for tea(*hing which does not interest is not teaching. The condition of thought-quickening is sympathy. 238 NABRATION. [Pakt III HINTS ON HISTORICAL BSSAY-WRITINQ. I. Accumulation of Material. 1. Consult cyclopaedias for a general view of the subject, and for literature. 2. Bead the best histories for the subject in its relations to general history. 3. Bead monographs for details. 4. Make copious notes from works read, and seek by indepen- dent, patient thought to understand the facts in relation to : a. Their intrinsic value. b. Their relative importance. c. The relations of cause and effect 5. Jot down every significant fact and idea that occurs. II. Composition. 1. Make a preliminary sketch or outline of the essay, and sub- ject it to revision. 2. Make a complete analysis, and revise it. 3. Write rapidly and continuously, con amore. 4. Subject the essay to careful revision as to : a. Historical, logical, and rhetorical qualities, correctness of fact, and justness of philosophy. h. Unity, symmetry, and completeness of structure, com- prehensive and concise. c. Clearness, force, elegance, and adaptation of style. 5. Append list of authorities consulted, and give references and citations. III. General Considerations. 1. A thoroughly good essay will be a delight and encourage- ment to the teacher, a model and a stimulus to \ he class, an honor to the school, and in many ways a great help to the writer. A poor essay — but there should be none. 2. An essay should be a growth, but growth is facilitated by cultivation ; therefore take plenty of time, and — use it. Procras- tination is failure. Chap. XXL] THE HISTORICAL ESSAY. 3. A good essay is worthy of being well read. 4. A full synopsis spread ui)on the black-board, or, better still, famished to the teacher and to each member of the class, would be creditable to the writer and grateful to his listenera. 5. Two useful maxims are : a. "Breailtli without accuracy and accuracy without breadth are almost equal evils." b. " We underatand the diffuse, — we remember the con- cise." 6. Helpful questions : a. Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? b. (Of events). What then ? c. Why not? d. What of it? METHOD OF BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. I. Sources. 1. Autobiography, if extant. 2. Diary, journal, letters. 8. Accounts wntteu by contemporaries. 4. Published works. 5. Biographies. 6. General histories. II. Accessories. 1. Portraits. 2. Pictures of places. 3. Personal visit to scenes associated with the man. 4. Whatever gives vividness to our conceptions. PSELIMINABT AOOOUNT OP HIB AOB. 1. Ancestry. 2. Birth — a, time ; b. place. 3. Education — a. home ; h. schools ; c. books (aU fonnatiye in- fluences) ; (/. nature ; e. public events ; /. traveL 240 NARRATION. [Part III. III. Arrangement of Materials. 4. Orderly statement of the chief events in which he partici- pated, and the part he took in them. 6. Death — a. time ; h. place ; c. circumstances. 0. Estimate of cliaracter — a. personal appearance ; b. mental qualities ; c. moral qualities ; Canal Street. He clasped his father's hand with both his own, and togged manfully in the direction he wanted to go. saying : *'Come on, papa ; this is the way." •' What are ye doin' ? " The thiril speaker growled that question to the young man with broad shonlders. He was a stout, bow-legged person, dresxed in coarse clothess and he eyed the young man ■ospldoonly from under the brim of a slouched hat. The young man dropped the drunken man*8 han 1 and hurried away. Tiie little boy was not alarmed at the overtures of the man who had gone, nor did he show any sign of gratitude to the man who had interfered ; he was intent only on get- ting his father home They started up the Bowery, the father staggering from one side of the walk to the other, and the little fellow clinging to his hand and encouraging him with : *' Come on, papa ; I know the way/' While cro^wing the Bowery at Canal Street the man fell, and it seemed in the dark- ne« to those a sh irt distance behind as though he must have fallen on the child. They lay toffether in the street for a moment, but when a policeman arrived the little fellow was np and tugging at his father's hand. '* Is that your pr>p, sonny ? " the policeman asked. " Tes, sir ; he's my father." •♦ Where do you live ? " •* In Mott Street -only two blocki ovwr. Come on. papa : I know the way." The drunken man had got to lUs faat, and U>e little fellow led him away toward hoaa >jr. r. 6um. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. The subject defined, p. 206. Of all composition the easiest, p. 208. Three kinds : Narration of incident, p. 200. Narration of character, p. 211. Narration of imprewions, p. 212. 242 TOPICAL ANALYSia (Part lU. WHAT TO TELL, p. 213. ACCURACY, p. 212. Close obeervation, p. 212. Memory for details, p. 213. Selection of what is typical, p. 214. Rejection of what is low, or trivial, p. 215. Historical value of revealment, p. 215. Macaulay's description of Boswell, p. 216. Details of value, only when characteristic, p. 220. HOW TO TELL, p. 221. A SUITABLE TONE, p. 221. Illustrations from notices of death, p. 221. Bombast, p. 223. Easily burlesqued, p. 223. DESCRIPTIONS SHOULD BE SPECIFIC, p. 224. The use of proper names, p. 226. Caution in naming those reflected upon, p. 226. AVOID SUPERLATIVES, p. 227. Very, p. 228. Newspaper English, p. 229. AVOID EPITHETS, p. 230. Epithets often lead to inconsistency, p. 232. OMIT IRRESISTIBLE INFERENCES, p. 233. ABOVE ALL, PRESERVE UNITY, p. 235. IMAGINATION IN NARRATION, p. 235. Facts supplemented by the imagination, p. 236, HINTS ON HISTORICAL ESSAY-WRITING, p. 238. TWO WELL-TOLD SKETCHES, p. 240. CHAPTER Xm. DESCRIPTION. Pure art is that which, whether it describes a scene, a character, or a sentiment, lays hold of its inner meaning, not its surface ; the type which the thing embodies, not the accidents ; the core or heart of it, not the accetworics. As Mr. Bagehot expresses it, the perfection of pure art is " to embody typical conceptions in the choic-est, the fewest aod- denta, to embody ihem so that each of these accidents may produce its full effect, and M> embody them without effort." Descriptions of this kind, while they convey typical yet retain perfect individuality. They are done by a few strokes, in the poasible words ; but each stroke tells, each word goes home. — Shaibp. Allied to Narration. — Nearly every suggestion that Las been made as to Narration applies also to Description. Indeed the two are so closely allied that each is constantly trespassing on the other, so that it is seldom easy to draw a distinct line between them. The basis of narration is action, progress ; that of description is rest, abiding char- acteristics. But action comes from rest, and ends in it ; progress depends upon characteristics, and is interesting in proportion as it develops them. Throe Eiements enter into a complete description. a. Cla88\ficatioti. : the class to which the object belongs, and the points of agreement and difference between it and other objects of the same class. b. Particular Features: Its appearance, form, size, color, etc.; its locality or situation, with the time and circumstance under which you see it ; its history and changes ; its structure, with a description of its parts ; its characteristic features, or points of special interest ; its habits (if it be an animal) ; its kinds or varieties, etc 244 DESCRIPTION. [Part III. c. Reflections: Its qualities, uses, influence, etc. ; if some- thing you have seen, its effect upon your feelings or imag- ination. Not all these particulars will be mentioned in connection with every object, nor will they often be mentioned in the order here given. Reflections, especially, will be introduced as suggested by the various elements of the description. But it i^ill be well to have in mind some such general frame upon which to stretch the more typical features of the object to be described. A few analyses from Dalgleish will suggest the use of this synopsis. 1. A Olook. a. An instmrnent for meMuring and iodicating time — oompare with nin-dial ; iwnd- glMNetc. b. The dial, divided into houni and rainntes — nnaller circles divided into Kconds — handK— works ; wheels moved by spring or weightfr— pendulum, its nse — fnsee cylinder, its use— kinds ; hoose clock, public clock, watch, etc. e. Begnlarity— ezaotnees of indication— use in regolatinff onr occapations— importance of ponctoality. S. Thx Horak. a. Hoofed quadruped : contrast with lion — non-ruminating : contrast with cow. h. Found in a wild state in Tartary and America — long body — long and slender legs, adapted for running — durable hoofs — silken mane and tail — skin covered with short hair, smooth and glossy — cutting teeth in front — grinders behind — space between those in which the bit is placed — gregarious in a wild state — feeds on grass, oats, etc.— draught horse — riding horse — racer— hunter, etc. c. To man, the most useful of the animalo, in peace or 'n war — leather — horse-hair, etc. — qnalitiea, easily domesticated, docile and affectionate, patient, persevering, cour- ageons. 3. Thb Falls of Niaoaba. a. The most gigantic known waterfalls in the world. h. Situated on the River Niagara, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario, separatinp the United States from Canada— twenty-two miles from Erie, fourteen from Ontario— strength of the rapids for a mile above the falls — narrowing of the channel— great declivity, sixty feet in the mile— divided by Groat Island (seventy-five acres) into the Canadian or Horse- shoe fall (18U0 feet broad, 154 feet high) and the American fall (600 feet broad, 160 feet high) — on Canadian side, water thrown ont to fifty feet from the base of the cliff, leaving a passage— finest view of the whole cataract from Table Rock on Canadian side. c. Vastness — {wwer — grandeur — sense of danger. Describe what you have Seen. — Interest in description of natural o])jects depends largely upon the assurance'that the writer is giving his own views and im- Chap. Xin.J DESCRIBE WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN. 245 pressions, instead of summarizing those of others : we re- member listening once to an admirable lecture on the Great Pyramid, all our delight in which was suddenly dampened when the lecturer confessed that he had never been in Egypt. Hence preference should always be given to what one has not only seen, but seen with such vivid impression that one's own feelings will enter naturally and prominently into the description. Better describe a mud- puddle which one has looked at and been interested in, than the Falls of Niagara at second-hand. For exercise, to be sure, it is often well to write about imaginary journeys. The pupil may describe the ride he would take in going from his home to Boston, New Orleans, London, Pekin. So he may describe an imaginary animal or race of beings ; the appearance and circumstances of the membei*s of his class twenty years hence ; a prospective balloon-line between New York and the Cape of Oood Hope. But let him use such material only for prac- tice exercises. When it becomes important that the description should have value of its own, as a description, i)erhaps the first re- quisite is that it be of what the writer has actually seen and been impressed by. The Personal Element. — In fact, the personal element in description is often its greatest charm. (See page 108.) The reader should have his sympathy roused by a warm individuality breathing through the accumu- lated details. Mueh description derives its greatest charm not merely from the fact that it receives us into the heart of the writer, but that it opens to us that heart in some especial mood, as of sadness, joy, perplexity. Even the sea and the mountiiins take an additional meaning when they are invested with human interest. The proper study of mankind is man ; and the writer will have few i-eaders if he descril)e8 with such analytical precision as to elimi- nate his own pei-sonality. 246 DESCRIPTION. [Part III. It is observed bj opticians and astronomers that a side-view of a faint star or especially of a comet presents it in much greater brilliancy tlian a direct view. To see a comet in full splendor, you should not look straight at it, but at some star a little beside it. Something analogous to this often takes place in mental per- ceptions. It will often, therefore, have a better effect to describe obliquely (if I may so speak), by introducing circumstances con- nected with the main object or event, and affected by it, but not absolutely forming a part of it. — Whately. And what in ao rare as a day in Jon* f Then, if ever, oome perfect days ; Then Heaven tries the earth If it be in tone. And orer it softly her warm ear lays. Whether we iouk, or whether we listen. We hear life murmur, we see it glisten ; BTflry clod feels a stir of might. An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light. Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life ma}' well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green. The butteroapoatchea the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace ; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, A-tilt on a blossom among the leaves. And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives ; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings. And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — In the nice ear of Nature, which soug is the beet ? Now is the high- tide of the year, And whatever in life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; Now the heart is so full that a drop o'erfills it, We are happy now l>ecause God wills it ; No matter how b.irren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green ; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well, How the sap ci-eeps up and the blossoms swell ; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowiag That skies are clear and grass is growing ; Chap. XIU.] THE PERSONAL ELEMENT. 247 The breeia oomes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near. That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowimg, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his honse, close by ; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack : We could gnees it by yon heifer's lowing,— And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing 1 Joy oomea, grief goes, we know not how ; BTerything is happy now. Everything is upward striving ; *ris as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — *Ti8 the natural way of living. Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? In the unscarred heavens they leave no wake ; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed. The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; The soul partakes of the season's youth. And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pore and smooth, Like bumtrout craters healed with snow.— Lowxix. Candor Essential.— The personal element in nar- ration is not, liowever, a result of direct effort. The writer wlio should attempt to arouse and maintain interest in himself would be insufferable. His end must be to re- produce upon others, as nearly as possible, the impressions which the object made upon him, not because it is himself they were made upon, but because his own impressions are the only criteria by which he can judge what would be the impression made upon others. Hence it is an un- pardonable fault in description to describe, not the im- pression made upon you, but the impression you think ought to have been made u|x>n you. (See page 49.) This produces the flattest of commonplace, as stupid as it is insincere. (Compare page 141.) Mark Twain's " Innocents Abroad '* was popular, not because it 248 DESCRIPTION. [Part XXL burlesqued the impressions of travellers, bnt becanse it described them. Giving a party of ordinary people of rather low tastes, and they will be as unappreciative as the persons here told about. There are men who really might remember nothing of one of the most interesting cities of Europe, except that the billiard-table they played on there was not level. Usually they don't tell of it. But Mark Twain does tell of it for his party, and thousands who have felt exactly the same, but have never dared to own it, read this book with a chuckling satisfaction that after all their own stu- pidity was not abnormal. It is not a thing to be proud of that these are one's impressions. But to describe them with brutal frankness gives them at least the value of genuineness, which would be wholly wanting if in their place the book were padded out with the impressions suggested as the proper thing by the guide-book. Note Feelings, as well as Facts. — To describe impressions requires more than candor. Only a habit of observing and defining one's feelings, and of remembering just what they were, will enable one to reproduce them for others. But in proportion to the difficulty of this is the value of it. The majority of beholders probably have more or less consciously somewhat the same feelings which they are unable to put into words, but which will be recalled by a vivid description. To idealize these feel- ings, so that they shall be recognizable by the reader as his own, and yet as broader and deeper and nobler, is the highest attainment of description : it is poetry itself. Description of Familar Objects most Enjoy- able. — There is this marked difference between narration and description, that while the former pleases us in pro- portion as the incidents are novel and unexpected, the latter interests us in proportion as we are familiar with the features described. The criticisms we prefer are of the books we have read, of the plays we have seen, of the art- galleries we have visited. The newspaper articles we select Chap. XHI.] FAMILIAR OBJECTS PREFERRED. 249 are those that tell about the places we are familiar with, the celebration we attended, tlie accident we saw, the meet- ing we took part in. A prominent feature of the modern newspaper is its minute description of the life of people we see everj' day, — the omnibus-driver, the peanut- vendor, the organ-grinder, the workmen at all kinds of humble employments. In the mind as in the eye, the nearest ob- jects are the largest. Of course there are things better worth describing than the Ufa of an organ-grinder ; nor can the patronizing curiosity with which such an account is read be compared with the feelings inspii-ed by Byron's "Thunder-Storm in the Alps," or Coleridge's "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni." But such descriptions require a Byron or a Coleridge, and it is the great mistake in descriptive composition to imitate the productions of such minds without realizing any of the conditions under which such minds wrote. Byron and Cole- ridge put their feelings into words, but they first had to have the feelings. "We cannot command such feelings, but we can at least follow such authors in candor, giving expression to our own genuine sensations, whatever they may be, and attempting nothing beyond our exi>erience. Better get an organ-grinder's confidence and jot down what he tells us, under inspiration of no higher feeling than curiosity, than puflf up and swell and burst in ridiculous attempt while being a frog to look like an ox. Our aim should be, not to be gresif but to be genuine. The limitations of the former are not self-imposed, and put no obligation uix)n us. If we fail in the lat- ter, we are at once silly and culpable. Be Specific. — As in narration (see page 225), gen- eral termri sliould be avoided, and every object presented in its clearly defined individual aspect. Everything, as I before said, in description, should be as marked and particular as possible, in order to imprint on the mind a dis- tinct and complete image. A hill, a river, or a lake rise up more conspicuous to the fancy when some particular lake or river or hill is specified, than when the terms are left geueraL — BiiAJB. 250 DESCRIPTION. [Part IIL Individuals alone having a real existence, the terms denoting them (called by logicians '* singular terms") will of course make the most vivid impression on the mind, and exercise most the |)ower of conception ; and the less remote any term is from these, I.e., the more specific or individual, the more energy it will possess in comparison with such as are more general. The impression pro- duced on the mind by a " singular term *' may be compared to the tlistinct view taken in by the eye of any object (suppose some par- ticular man) near at hand, in a clear light, which enables us to dis- tinguish the features of the individual ; in a fainter light or rather farther off we 'perceive that the object is a man ; this corresponds i^-ith the idea conveyed by the name of the species ; yet farther off or in a still feebler light we can distinguish merely some living object, and at length merely some object : these terms denoting respectively the genera, more or less remote. And as each of these views conveys as far as it goes an equally correct impression to the mind, .... so in language a generic term may be as cleaily imderstood. — Whately. Fill in the Picture. — " In a description, on the other hand, of anything tliat is likely to act on the feelings, this effect will by no means be produced as soon as the un- derstanding is sufficiently informed ; detail and expansion are here not only admissible but indispensable, in order that the mind may have leisure and opportunity to form vivid and distinct ideas. For, as Quintilian observes, he who tells us that a city was sacked, although that one word implies all that occurred, will produce little if any impres- sion on the feelings, in comparison of one who sets before us a lively description of the various lamentable circum- stances. To tell the whole, he adds, is by no means to tell every tiling. Accordingly it may- be observed that though every one understands what is meant by a wound, there are some who cannot hear a ininiite description of one without fainting. The death of Patroclus is minutely related by Homer for the interest of the reader, though CJhap. XIII. ] HEED THE PERSPECTIVR 251 to Achilles, whose feelings would be sufficiently excited by the bare fact, it is told in two words, UdrpoKXo^i kcI- To*." — Whatkly. Heed the Perspective. — It is the fundamental principle of picture-making that some one point shall be assumed as that upon which the eye is directed, and that the size and prominence of every object drawn shall de- pend upon its relation to this one point. So in word- painting, there must be an aspect of the scene clearly in mind as predominant, and other details must be selected and dwelt upon just in proportion as they contribute to- ward making this aspect vivid. As I look from the window, my eye rests on innumerable objects — on thousands that I can name. It is manifest that simply to enumerate these objects would produce no picture whatever. My first thought must be, How does this scene impress me ? In what aspect do I want another to view it ? Then I must select such features as produce this impression, giWng them prominence in proportion as they produce it ; and must ignore not only such features as are common to all landscapes and have here no sjjecial significance, but such as are peculiar to this landscape, but belong to another aspect of it, so that if introduced in this description they would distract the attention. Build up the Picture Steadily and Systemat- ically. — " You will find this a good gauge or criterion of genius — whether it progresses and evolves, or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri, — Shaftesbury and Buckingham ; every line adds to or mod- ifies the character, which is as it were a building up to the very last verse ; whereas in Pope's Timon, etc., the first two or three couplets contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines that follow are so much evide!ifo or proof of overt acts of jealousy or pride, or 352 DESCRIPTION. [Part III. whatever it may be that is satirized. Jii like iiiiiiiner compare Charles Lamb's exquisite criticisms of Shakspere with Hazlitt's roimd and round imitation of them." — Cole- RIDOE. An admirable illustration of this building up is afforded by Bfacaulay's description of Boswell (see j)age 216). He first makes impressive the importance of his subject. In a prominent line of literature, Boswell is not only the first, but incomparably the first. From the start, therefore, the reader is assured that the subject is worthy of his attention ; and that this thought may be forcible, no other idea is admitted into the para- graph. Now comes the first of a series of paradoxes : this greatest of books was written by the smallest of men. Boswell was thor- oughly contemptible. He had a mean and feeble intellect. He was a bore, a laugliing-stock, a lick-spittle. He was so stupid as to exult in the ridicule heaped upon him. He was sendle, imper- tinent, shallow, pedantic, snobbish, childishly vain. His weak and diseased mind made him conceitedly ostentatious of what every other man that ever lived would have liidden. Two pages having thus been devoted to Boswell's character as a man, and that impression haring been distinctly fixed, Macaulay considers him as an author. Men silly in private life have written valuable works, but they did so in spite of their weaknesses. Bos- well's book is valuable because of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool he would never have been a great writer. It is because he had no ^elicacy or shame or common-sense, that he has surpassed Tacitus, and even Johnson himself. This second paradox ha\dng been stated and impressed, Macau- lay specifies. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all that most widters rely upon for fame, he had nothing of. His positive qualifications were only two, obsen^ation and memoi*y. Had he been a man of sense and virtue these would have left him a commonplace man ; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. This thii'd paradox having been illustrated, we come to a fourth, that the most worthless parts of his book are the most delightful. Then comes a fifth, that in proportion to the Chap. XIII.] SOCIABILITY UNAPPRECIATED. 253 celebrity of the book is the degradation of the anthor. In fine, we have a man whose weakness made him great, and whose great- ness made him contemptible. DBSCBIBma THE WEATHEB. Fftirly In the nwd, a man oame and aat down in front of me, and turned aroond and faced me: " Cold, this momin\*' he Mid. I fcdded my Enquirer wherein I had been enjoying Criswill, and fanned myself with it Tigorooaly a moment or two before I replied. Then I unbuttoned my coat (" private to editors : " it was originally a three-buttoned coivt, but the exigencies of the season, the long absence from home, and the neceiwity of dropping something into the contribution basket every time I go to church has reduced it to the minimum of one), wiped my frigid brow with my handkerchief, and said in panting tones : " I don't find it so." The man looked astonished. But presently said : *' Maybe you've been a runner ? ^ '* No," I replied. " I have been asleep for the past two hours in a sleigh.** " And ye didn't feel odd ? " the man inquired. " Man ! " I said, in tones of amaxement, " cold, on the 9th of June? " "June ? " he echoed, straightening up, " are you crazy ? It's the 9th of January 1 ** " Well," I said, " it felt like the 9th of June to me." "It's mighty fine sleighin', all the same,'* he said. I told him, without a blush, that I had never seen the mud worse on Ohio roads sine* I oould rememlier. '■ Wbere on earth," he asked, in utter astonishment, " did you come from ? '* " Dayton," I said. Bis eyes began to creep out and look at each other over the top of his noaa. ** When?** he asked. " This morning.'* I sMtd calmly, " since eight o'clock.'* " How r " be fairly shouted. *' In a one-horse sleigh," I said. "Sakas alive I" he shrieked *' It is impossible. It's only eleven o'clock now, and Dayton is flfty-flve miles away ! " "Oooldnt help it,** I inslstad. " I left there a littie over two hours ago in a sleigh, had a poor horse, drove slowly, and the mud was up to the hubs of the wheels all the way. It was as warm as May, and I hadn't seen snow enough to maM a one-boy slide in 6,000 The man's hair stood on end, and he got up to start off for the other end of the car. " If you ain't crasy, and I bdieva yon be," he said, with grave earnestness, '*yon are an awful liar." " Good man," I said, " I expect I am, but I am not a fool. I may tell startling Ilea, bot I do not talk like an ass, and I would be thought a liar or a manuuj nubsr than an ImbaoUa. I do not come into a car where the thermometer marks three degrees bdow Mco, and tall a living, breathing, intelligent, sensitlva man that it is cold, just as though I was imparting some informatioo to him. I do not watch him drive up to the train in a risigh. spinning over the dry, erlsp snow, on the smooth, perfect pUcss of Ohio, and then attempt to instruct, amuse, or startle him by telling him tha riaighlag is good. I would nthar sstnnisli a man than bora him. If I have nothing better to tall him than some- 264 DESCRIPTION. [Part III. thing he knows alreedy, far lieticr tlian I da, my moath is HeAled, aiid I nill never speak. In order to astonish him or startle him I may have to lie to him, but that is better than boring him. You might as well dt down and tell me that twice two is four, as to tell me that it is cold. You might as wdl tell me that Qeotge Washington is ule this morning. 0«, get thee to a nunnery, and when you can model ynur ctiiivcrKation un Homething besides the United States signal service reports, oome and wake mc np and hold me in the matchless charm of your instructive talk. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, perish the man who talks to me aboat the weather." And straightway the man ariz and got him unto the after wood-box, for he was sore Mtooished. And as I fell into a slumber the forgotten dreams of which contain mon ImI, Talnable informatiun than that man overdid or ever will know, I heard him opening a conv e rsation with the taciturn brakeman by remarking : ** Oold, this momin* I ^—Burlington Hawkty, TOPICAL ANALYSIS. ALLIED TO NARRATION, p. 243, THREE ELEMENTS, p. 243. Classification, p. 243, Particular features, p. 243. Reflections, p. 244. Analyses from Dalgleish, p. 244. DESCRIBE WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN, p. 244. The personal element, p. 245. Candor essential, p. 247. Note feelings as well as facts, p. 248. Description of familiar objects most enjoyable, p. 248. HOW TO DESCRIBE. Be specific, p. 249. Fill in the picture, p. 250. Heed the perspective, p. 251. Build up the picture steadily and systematically, p. 251. CHAPTER XIV. PUNCTUATION. The UM of oomnuM, aemiooloas and braofcato aappUec the place of inflection^ and en- •iblea oa to introdnoe, without dangwr of eqahrooatioii, qaalifloation«, illuetratious, and IMurenthetical limitationa, whk^ with ao EngUah ayntax, would render a long period al- VDOrt unintelligible unleee ita member* were divided bjr marks of ponctuatlon.— Mabsh. I. ABSOLUTE RULES. Some Rules Arbitrary. — There is among authors uf repute so luueli diversity of usage that it is sometiiries asserted there are no absolute rales for punctuation. This is a mistake. While many of the minor uses of the points, particularly of the comma, are left to the judg- ment and tlie taste of the writer, there are certain rules of punctuation that are fixed. To violate these shows, not peculiarity of taste, but ignorance. One might as well write, Phlow sophtly phlow, bi lorn and lee, as to omit the interrogation point at the end of a question. It is a matter, not of judgment, but of education. The most important of these rules are the following : I. Every Sentence must have at the End one of these three marks : a. If the sentence asks a question, an interrogation point (?). b. If the sentence is exclamatory, an exclamation point (!). Ohap. XIV.] USES OP THE PERIOD. 257 c. Otherwise, a period (.). a. Rosalind, — What did he when thou saw'st him ? Wliat said he ? How looked he ? Wherein went he ? What makes he here ? Did he ask for me ? Where remains he ? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again ? — -4s You Like It. Art thou a pen, whose task shall be To druwu in ink What writers think ? Oh, wisely write, That pages white Be not the worse for ink and thee. — E. L. Bebbs. Cast the following sentences into the interrogative form : — This in not the character of British justice. These are not her features. This is not her ooontenanoe. This Is not her gait or mien. No !— We wait till to-morrow to be haiipy ; there is no reason for not being so to-day. We shall not be younger. We are not sore we shall be healthier. Our passions will not become feebler, and our love of the world lena.— It was not chance that produced the diurnal and annual revolution of the globe. 1. When a sentence contains several interrogative clauses that have a common relation or dependence, the interrogation point is put only at the end ; By sensational pr(>aching do yon mean nn incoherent raving about things in general and nothing in particular ; a perveraiun of every text ; an insult of common sense ; a re- cital of anecdotes which are nntnie, and a use of illustrations which are unmeaning f I am a Jew : hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew liands, organs, ilimen-uions, senses, aABCtioBS, paaslofMit fed with the same food, hnrt with the same weapons, subject to Um saoM aisiasis, healed I7 the same means, warmed and oodetl by the name winter and sonuner, as a Ohrlatlan is ?— JVereAoiU «(f Yemkse. 2. An assertion stating a question, does not take an interroga- tion ]>oint ; as, "I asked the question, What weapons were in poSHcssiou of the prisoner." Sometimes, however, as in the second paragraph on page 74, an interrogation mark indicates a deferent, suppliant air on the part of the Hjx^aker. b. Convocation without intrigue ! Parliament without debate I What a lesson dost thou read to council and consistory !— Lamb. O many a shaft, at rand«n sent, Finds mark the ardter nerer meant ! And many a word, at random spoke, Maj wotha or woond a iiMrt thaTi took*.— 80OTT. 258 PUNCTUATION. [Part III. Gast the following sentences into the exclamatory form : — I look round with jojf ul amotion and see the be> at iM of craatkm. The tints aire lovely. Their oorobinAtitm ia pleating. The divenity of ahadee ia admirable. In one ■pot there is delicacy of color ; in another brilliancy. 3. The exclamation point is used also after interjections, ex- clamatory words, and phrases. Also in invocations ; as — Father of all 1 in ererj age adored. O GrmTe I where is thy Tictory f O Death ! where is thy sting? Perhaps the greatest lesson which the Utos of literary men teach ns is told in a single WOTd: Wait !— LoKarxLLOw. See illustrations on pages 88, 89, 103, 141, 175, 223, 229, 240. 4. Two or more exclamation points are sometimes used to ex- press ridicule, or to intensify surprise ; as — Malherbe obaenred, that a good poet was of no more senrioe to the Chorch or the State than a good player cU ninepins ! ! It is, however, usually considered in better taste to leave the reader to discover for himself that the author considers the idea preposterous. (See pages 112, 124^ II. A Period must also be used : a. After every abbreviation ; as, A. Lincoln ; Aug. 6 ; 4:30 P.M. 5. If two letters are used, or two separate words, a period is put after each ; as, A.M., i.e., e.g., etc. 6. The period thus used indicates only the abbreviation, and does not dispense with other punctuation marks required except at the end of a sentence, where a period is not repeated. Thus, Groton, Mass., Aug. 28, 1847. Did he travel incog. ? Before his name he wrote with a flourish, " Prof." b. After every Roman numeral, except in paging ; as, The reign of George III. was ended. Find illustrations on page 238. Chap. XIV.] THE APOSTROPHE. 259 c. To denote omission in a quotation ; as, He writes : " Unless 1 hear from you ... I shall start on Mon- day." Find examples on pages 46, 85, 122, 124, 153. 7. When part of a sentence is omitted, it is customary to use three periods ; if a whole sentence or more is omitted, to use four or more. d. Before decimals; as, 3.14159; $36.83; .0087. 8. Where the number is less than a unit, the accompanying word should be in the singular. Thus, 2.467 miles; but .896 mife. III. An Apostrophe (') must be used : a. To indicate the possessive case ; as, John's, men's, horses' feet. Find illustrations on pages 78, 140, 183. Note. — When the possessive is modified, the apostrophe is given to only one word ; which is, (a) When the possessive phrase precedes the object, the Ui^ word. (&) When the possessive phrase follows the object, the prin- cipal word. Thus : (a) William the emperor's jmlace ; the empress Carlotta's brace- let. (b) The palace was William's, the emperor ; He said the brace- let was Carlotta's, the empress ; I got the book at Tonson's ; an old established bookseller, and the publisher of many valuable works. In the first two examples, some would regard the possessive phrase as a compound name, and write, " The palace was William the emperor's," "the bracelet was Carlotta the empress's." On the other hand, some would give the ajxistrophe to the prin- cipal word, even when the possessive phrase precedes ; —"W. n. M," Santuciei, begn leave to diannt from oar optnioii, czpranetl in Um March number of this paper, that Um phraM, " H«r amda'n, Swvaant Oolton, bebarior,*' ia grammatioallj oorrtot, thooffh not alagani. He does ** not onderatand why it is qoita nnieeii— fj to pat Ooltoo in Um poMHilTe fonn,** and prooceda to laj : 2^)0 PUNCTUATION. [Part IIL " At the wordf * SeiBeaiit Oolton * are exidanatory, they are in apposition with ' her uncle's,' and must be parsed as in the aame case. Indeed, does not the leading word, in all such sentences, determine the case of the other t Such ex p re s s ions as thi ^ do not often occur in print, as we all agree that it is better to torn the phiase and insert the prep- osition : but here is a form which is common enough : ' Smith aslit^ Brown to hand him his (Brown'R) hat.' Here the word ' Brown's,* iM parenthetical, or r>xplnnatory. It takes ttie pow>ciii>ivc form because in apposition with the posMMnive pronoun ' his.* Surolj you would not URe It thus,— * His (Brown) hat.' " Our oorroNpondvnt'a tUnatxation of Smith and Brown is not qnite apposite. The word " Brown'** '* in not deerriptive merely, but dintinctiTe ; it in alMolutely neoessary to uoe it to indicate the owner of the hat. Colton, on the contrary, is merely deiicriptive, show- ing who " her uncle ** is ; and the seBtanoe is eqaivalent to " her uncle's— Sergeant Cul- ton, I mean— behavior." We moat adhere to oar original opinion that the phrase is cor- rect ; but we w^onld not a>Wiae any one to imitite it. Take thin Hcntenco, fur example : *' The oflloer*8— Captain Deane— bearing was gallant and easy ; the magiRtntc'E — Justice Coke — timid and emtwrraswd." Now, we ask oar oorremxmdent if this fientence is not strictly grammatii»l ? The dashes are in effect parcnthesea; and the addition of « with an aportropbe to each of the two proper names woold make it sound very nnpleasanthf^— 2^ Ob$erv€r. {^ For suggestions as to aToiding these cumbrous fonns, see Part I. 9. Plural nouns ending in s take only the apostrophe ; all other nouns take the apostrophe and 8. Thus, calves' heads ; Agnes's hat ; oxen's hoofs. Note.— In proper names ending with «, this rule is so often violated that the custom has developed Into a certain authority, until it may be oonsidered a matter of taste whether we shall write " Barnes' Arithmetics *' or *' Barnes's Arithmetics." But the for- mer practice will always be questionable. Bigelow says : — " The possessive case, like the plural number, always makes an additional syllable where the nominative ends with the sound of 8, and the plural syllable might as well be elided as that of the possessive. We should not think of saying ' In the t«me of the Charles,' and there is no more reason for saying 'The Charles* times.' The proper way to avoid a harsh or hissing sound is to reform the sentence." It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a possessive should be singular or plural. The superintendent of a home for boys in San Francisco, having named it the Youths' Directory, was overwhelmed by local grammarians with protestations ajrainst the location of the apostrophe in the word " youths." He thereupon wrote to twenty learned authori- ties, in various parts of the United States, to settle the question beyond dispute ; but they differed not less than the Pacific coast sages. President Barnard of Columbia CoUege, Pre.^ident Eliot of Harvard, George P. Quackenbos, the author of books on rhetoric, etc., Prof. Scheie de Vere of the University of Virginia, Chancellor Crosby of the New York University, Benj. W. Dwight and Prof. W. D. Whitnej', pronounced " Youths' Directory" correct and " Yoiith's Directory" wrong; Noah Porter, President of Yale, declared " Youth's Directory " correct and the other wrong, and Richard Grant White and Dr. Mc- Cosh of Princeton, pronounced both correct, while President Gilman of the Johns Hop- kins University sent a reply from which it was impossible to determine on which side h« was.— JV. r. Sun. Chap. XIV.] THE APOSTROPHE. 261 10. Certain Scriptural phrase.s, like "for conscience' sake," have become established idioms, and are thus allowed to violate the rule. 11. The apostrophe is not used before s in ours, yours, hers, theirs, its. b. To denote the plural of figures and letters ; as p's and q's ; casting out the 9*8. The following is less usual : In T«r«e 18 of chapter xiii. of Judges. v« and me are both printed with a sinplp e, but in Tcne 15 of the same chapter, each with two e«.— Mabah. 12. This u.sage is sometimes extended to words, where there is danger of ambiguity; as, The children on the shore are always talking about their pa's and their ma*8. See example, page 292. c. To denote elision : (I.) Of letters in a word when the abbreviation is to save space or time or rhythm (compare VI. c, page 266) ; as, confd for continued. That opportunity Which then they hnd to tnko from '8, to resume Wo have again.— CorUtltinus. 13. Such elisions should be carefully distinguished from abbre* viations proper, and should not be followed by a period. Find illustration on jiage 241. (II.) Of syllables, or even of words; as, 'midst for amidst ; IVe for I have ; 'twas for it was ; 'faith for in faith; etc. 'Faith, there have been many great men that have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them ; and there be many that they have loved, they knew not wherefore : so that if they love they know not why ; they hate upon no better ground.— rorto^mM5. Find illustrations on pages 81, 126, 167, 175, 240. 14. It is a usual rule, though not universal, that where two words are thus made into one, a space should be left between the 2563 PUNCTUATION. [Part UI. words, as though they were not abbreviated. But don't, can't, won't, and shan't are commonly printed as single words. Note,— Be careful not to uae don't in the third person idngnlar, for doe* n't (III.) Of the century in dates; as, The spirit of '76; for the years 1883, '84. First of November, 'Pifty-flre I This mominff tb« pamon takes a drive.— Holmxs. IV. A Hyphen (-) must be used : a. Between the parts of a compound word that has not by usage become a single word. A witness was on the stand in an illegal liquor sale case. The counsel was trying to find out in what kind of a glass the Uquor was handed to the witness, and at last exclaimed : " Wliat kind of a looking glass was it ? " " Why, sor, it war not a looking-glass at all, it war a tumbler." Correct, '• For sale, one large sick chair." " James Boyle, Gas- holder and Boiler-maker." 15. This rule is absolute and acknowledged, but in practice it is imperfectly canded out because of uncertainty as to which are still compound words, and which have become single. In general the dictionaries should be consulted as final authority, but even they do not agree. Woroesterhas "brickwork," "braaswork," without hyphens; " wood- work," "iron- work." with them. "Greenhouse is closed up, while " school -house " is not : "wood- house" has a hyphen, "almshouse" has none. (Wilson writes ".schoolhouse.") Web- ster has "brickwork" with, "woodwork" without the hyphen, — jnst reversinff Worcester. Again, Worcester writes, " bumblebee " and " bumblebee " : Webster, under B, has "bumble-bee, .... sometimes called humble-bee;" and, under H, writes "bumblebee, .... often called bumblebee," apparently forgetful of his previous hyphens. To search for authority, then, in the matter of compoundinsr words, will avail next to nothing. In a volume containing " School Committees'' Reports,"— and certainly school committees ought to know many things, — we find " blackboanl " and " black-board ;" and, on a single page, " sohool books," " school-keeping," " schoolmaster," " school-houses," " school checks." '• Semi-annual " is frequently jmiited with the hyphen, px^cording to Webster ; but Worcester has "semiannual." Thus it appears, that, in regard to compounding (by which we mean inserting the hyphen between the parts of a compound word) the proof-reader is left to his own dis- cretion, and can do very much as he pleases. He should, however, adopt some method Chap. XIV.] HYPHEN.— QUOTATION MARKS. 263 by which he can approximate to nnifonnity in hix own work ; for at to agreeing with anybody eUe, that is out of the question. Perhaps as good a rale as can be la.J down on this Rubject is to close up the word when compounding changes the accentuation; otherwise, insert the hyphen. Thus, " Quartermaster " has a different accentuation from the two words " quarter master ; " therefwe make one word of it, without the hypht^n : " Head-aKsistant " is accented like the two words " head assistant,"— therefore insert the hyphen. By this rule "t-chool- honse" and "blackboard'' should be severally closed up: "saltmine'' takes the hy- phen,—" saltaea " (adjectiTe) does not. The word "tree,** with a prefix indicating the kind, should be compounded ; ats "oak-tree,'* "forest-tree,'* "pine-tree," etc. (Webster has " whlffle-tree," Worcester "whiffletrae.") ** Caat-iroD " and " wroaght-iron '' arc u.«nially compounded, and should alwi^rs be so when nsed asadjectires ; as, " cast-iron pillars," " wrought-iron boilers." " Temide-atreet place" (or "Place," according to style), "Suffolk-street District," '• Pembnton-sqaare School," are quite correct. The hyphen is too frequently omitted in -Drkw. Explain the uses of the hyphen on i)ages 22, 142, 146, 174, 175, 224. b. At the end of a line, when one or more syllables of the last word are written upon the following line. 16. Care must be taken to divide a word only by syllables. Thus, chil-dren, not child-ren or chi-ldren. c. To unite a prefix ending with a vowel to a word be- ginning with a vowel ; as, co-operate, re-adniit. 17. Instead of the hyphen, a diaeresis (*) is sometimes placed over the second vowel ; as, cooperate, readmit. Here the hyphen is preferable ; but the diaeresis must be used where, in words not compound, the o is repeated and forms a separate syl- lable ; as, Laoco^n, zoology. V. Quotation Marks (<' ") must be used : a. To enclose a quotation from another, when given in his exact words ; as, John said, " I yrill come soon. ^ Portia began thus : " The quality of mcroy is not strained.** Some said, " John, print it,** others said, " Not so.** I said, " It might do good,** otlMts said, " No.**— Btnnuii. 264 PUNCTUATION. [Part HI. 18. When the quotation is not exact, but only in substance, no marks are needed ; as, John said that he would come soon ; Portia began by saying that the quality of mercy is not strained. 19. When the quotation ends the sentence, the marks are often omitted, the beginning capital showing where the quotation be- gins. Thus : I knew once • very ooraCooi, Kwdid fellow, who used to say. Take oare of the pence ; for the ponndi will take oare of themaelrea.— Chkbtssfixu). 20. If the quotation consists of two or more paragraphs, double marks are placed at the beginning of each paragraph, but at the end only of the last. Thus : In his addreu to the yonng ladiea, Dr. Peabody nid : *' The frame of mind in wliich a yonng lady says in reply to a question, ' Mercy ! nn,^ is Tcry different from that which prompts the Rimple, modest * no.^ Were there any room for doubt, I ahould have some doubt of the truth of the former answer ; for the un- natural, excited, flattering state of mind implied in the use of the oath might indicate either an unfltneee to weigh the truth, or an ucnillingncss to acknowledge it. ** In fine, transparenoy ia an eaacnlial attribute of all graceful and becoming speech. Langnage ought to ezpreea the apeaker's ideas, and neither more nor less. Exclamations, needleea ezpietives. unmeaning extravagances, are as untasteful as the streamers of tat- tered finery which you somatimee see fluttering about the person of a dilapidated belle. Let your thoughts be as strong, as witty, as brilliant as yon can make them ; bnt never seek to atone for feeble thought by large words, or to rig out foolish conceits in the qMuigled robe of genuine wit." See illustrations on pages 88, 89, 98. 21. At the close of a quotation, the quotation marks should en- close the final punctuation mark unless it is either an interroga- tion or an exclamation point, in wliich case it should come inside the quotation marks if it belongs to the quotation, but outside if it belongs to the whole sentence and not to the quotation. Thus : Asked to make an extempore pun, Purcell inquired, "On what subject?" "The king "^ was suggesteil. " O bnt the king is no subject I " was the quick reply. The boy who told his teacher that Wa^hingtun was the first man replied, when the teacher corrected him by saying that the first man was Adam, " O well, if you are talk- ing of foreigners, I suppose he was " I 22. A quotation within a quotation has single instead of double quotation marks. Should a quotation occur within this quotation, it has double marks. Thus : "Just then the minister interrupted. ' You remind me,' he said, of the famous ' " You have done good, my lord, by stealth ; The rest is upon record. " ' " — JErrREY. Chap. XIV.] QUOTATION MARKS.— THE DASH. 265 Find iUustrations on pages 89, 121, 220, 228, 240. 23. Where quotations are frequent, and in complete paragraphs, the quotation marks are often omitted, and the name of the author is put at the end, as frequently in this volume. In such cases the fact of quotation is usually indicated by printing the part quoted in smaller type. 24. Quotations from foreign languages are usually printed in italics, without quotation marks. To indicate this in writing we tt^ncCei^oie the words of the quotation. Not ft little mUchlef has been wroaght by the famotui aentiment, Honi soU qui tnal yptnte. Find illustrations on pages 51, 52, 58, 66, 76, 83, 98, 117, 127, 178. b. Usually to enclose titles of books ; but names of magazines or papers are more commonly printed in italics. In examining The AtlantiCy Nation, Scrihner's Monthly, Har- per*8, AppletorCs Magazine, LippincotCs, Popular Science Monthly, Galaxy, Eclectic, N". A. Review, Netc Englander, London Quarterly » British Quarterly, Westminster RemetP, Edinburgh Revieit, Con- temporary Review, TTie Fortnightly Review, we find that thirteen o^ these use quotation marks, and four use italics, in referring to the titles of books ; eleven use italics, and six use quotation marks, in referring to magazines and papers. — Cocker. Explain the uses of quotation marks on pages 140, 196, 197, 228,234. VI. The Dash ( — ) must be used : a. When a sentence is broken off abruptly, by inter- niption or otherwise. Thus : A oolond WM ono« oomptoloing that from tho ifrnoranoe and inattantlon of hit ofl- eeni be was obUgwl to do the whote doty of hi* roKiment Said he, " I am my own cap- tain, my own Uvatenant— " **Aiid yoor own triim|x>t«r," broke in a lady who was llateninir. Find illustrations on pages 83. 87. 147. 266 PUNCTUATION. [Pabt IIL b. Where the sentence is concluded in an emphatic or unexpected manner, especially by an epigrammatic turn. Thus: Never try to tell what you don't know ; — life is too short. No one minds wliat Jeffrey says, — it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disreepectfidly of the ^uator. — Syd- ney Smtth. Animals are sach agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.— Gboboe Eijot. A moml, aensible, and well-bred nuui Will not affront me,— «nd no other on.— Cowpkb. Every one is as God has made him — and oftentimes a great deal worse. — Don Quixote. The pith of my system is to make the senses out of the mind, — not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did. — Colebidob. Find illustrations on pages 72, 75, 85, 108, 238. C. To show the omission of part of a word or name which one hesitates to write in full. Thus : A newly elected Assemblyman signed the hotel register with a flourish. "I am Hon. , of ," he pompously an- nounced to the clerk. — *' That doesn't make any difference," was the reply ; *' we'll treat you just as well as if you were anybody else." Entering a lawyer's office next day, the legislator was invited to take a chair till the man of law was at leisure. '* But, I am Hon. , of ," he remonstrated." — ** Oh, indeed! Then take two chairs." Find illustrations on pages 60, 69, 74, 77. d. To show faltering, or hesitation, or stammering. Thus : Wordsworth had boasted to Coleridge that he could write just like Shaksi>ere if he had the mind to. " B-b-but you see that's just the tr-trouble," suggested Charles Lamb; "he hasn't the m-m-mind," Find illustrations on pages 125, 273, 274. Chap. XIV.] THE DASH— THE COMMA. 267 e. To separate the speeches in a dialogue, wlieii written in the same paragraph. Thus : A cobbler at Leydeu who used to attend the public disputa tions was asked if he understood Latin. " No," replied the fellow, "but I know wliich is wrong in the argument." — "How?" — '• Why, by seeing which gets angry first." f. To separate the title from the subject matter, and the subject-matter from the authority for it, when both are in the same paragraph. Thus : Notice in a Hoboken ferry-boat : — ** The seats in this cabin are reserved for ladies. Gentlemen are requested not to occupy them until the ladies are seated." Few are qualified to sliine in company ; but it is in most men's power to be agreeable. The reason, therefore, why conversation runs so low at prasent, is not the defect of understanding, but pride, vanity, ill-nature, afiectation, singularity, positiveness or some other vice, the efiect of a \^Tong education. — Swift. g;. Between two numbers, to show that they are the ex- tremes of a series including the numbers given and all the intervening ones ; as, pages 245-249 (not pages 245-49, or 245-9), 1776-1876, 1883-84 (not 1883-4). For other uses of the dash, see Note 30, page 271. Explain the uses of the dash on })ages 14, 15, 24, 32, 3G, 52, 68, 77, 98, 111, 113, 131, 174, 199, 209, 225, 234, 244. NoTB.— An anforttmste habit preraiU among some writrre. oipecuilly public speak- era, of tuing only the dash for paootoation, and of dividing their sentunoes in uianu- •eript aomewhat according to the paokm they malcA in n>tiding it. To the compositor or to other reader* this ia oraally more perplexing than no pfinctnation whaterer. The dash sboold be used only where it is preferable to other points. VII. The Comma (,) must be used : a. To separate from the rest of the sentence vocative expressions — the names of persons or things addressed : Thus : I remain, sir, your obedient servant. 268 THE COMMA REQUIRED. [Pabt III. Flow gently, sweet Aftoo, among thy green braes. Devise, wit ; write, pen : for I am for whole Toluines in folio. — Love's Labor Lost. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk ; and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. — Romeo and Juliet. Fletcher, bishop of Nismes, was the son of a tallow-chandler. A great duke endeavored to mortify the prelate by saying to him at the king's levee that he smelt of tallow. To which the bisho]) replied, " My lord, it is true I am the son of a chandler ; and if your lordship had been the same you would have remained a chandler all the days of your life." 25. "When strong emotion is expressed, an exclamation point is sometimes required. Thus : O Hamlet ! thoa tuMt deft my heart in twain.— Shakspxsk. Go, wondrous creatore ! moont where ncience guides ; Oo, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tidee.— Pops. Dear authors ! suit ycur topics to your strength. And ponder well your subject, and itA length ; Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.— Btbom. Find illustration on page 78. b. To separate from each other words of tlie same part of speech and in the same construction : (i.) When not connected by conjunctions, always ; as, A still, small voice. 26. When two adjectives come together, the second qiialifWug the noun, and the first qualifying the noun as thus qualified by the second, the two adjectives are not in the same construction, and take no comma between them; as, A spirited gray horse ; He was a brave, honest, and good old man. Note. — When the first adjective modifies the second, a hyphen should connect them ; as, a red-hot stove. 27. The second and succeeding words take commas after as well as before them : o. When the same word is repeated for emphasis ; as, Verily, verily, I say unto you. (HAP. XIV.] WORDS IN THE SAME CONSTRUCTION. 269 Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.— COLKRIDOK. Alone, alone, all, all alone. Alone on a wide, wide sea.— CoLKBiDaK. Fll give my jewels for a net of beads ; My gorgeoat palace for a hermitage ; My gay apparel, for an almsman's gown ; My figured goblets, for a dish of wood ; My noeptre, for a palmer's walking-staff ; My Bobjectft, for a pair of carved saints ; And my large kingdom, for a little grave, A little, little grave,— an obscure grave.— /UcAord //. The living man who does not learn, is dark, dark, like one walking in the night. — Ming Sum Paou ELeen. Find illustrations on pages 74, 106. NoTB.— A word repeated, even with a conjunction, sometimes requires ■eparatlon, that it may be more dwelt upon. Thus : One may smile, and »mile, and be a villain.— ifam/et. /?. When the words are nouns used as the subjects of a verb ; M, Expostulation, indignation, were powerless. Misuke, error, is the discipline through which we advance. — Chamnino. (11.) When connected by conjunctions only: «. When the words are more than two in number ; as, The deed was done nobly, bravely, and modestly. To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and eru- dition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. — Boveb. 28. The comma is often, but erroneously, omitted before the conjunction connecting the last two words of the series. This leads to ambiguity. For example : Tb« following boata have arrived : Sylph, Mary and Agnei, Swan, Star and Oreaocnt. Now, have four boats come in, or five? If the rule is fol- lowed, the name of the last boat is " Star and Crescent ; " but if the writer's punctuation is not to be dei)ended ui)on, we cannot tell from the sentence as written whether this is the case, or whether be is speaking of two boats, the '♦ Star " and the •* Orescent." Mary, Uatai mod JtUia have oona. 270 THE COMMA REQUIRED. [Part IIL Does the writer mean that three girls have come, or is he tell- ing Mary that two girls have come ? 29. When the conjunction is re]3eated l>efore each word of the series, the commas may be omitted when the words rather expand a common idea than introduce new ones. The more emphasis there is upon the individual words of the series, the more need there is for commas. Hill gives an excellent illustration of this point : And feeling all along the garden wall. Lest he ahoold swoon and tumble and be foond, Orept to the gate, and opened it, and dosed. p. When one of the words has qualifiers that do not apply also to the others ; as, lie is entitled to take the an- nual crops, and wood for fuel. Correct, Furs and [the] gold-dust which the natives collect from the sands of the river. — Hue. There is a tendency to confound concepts and no unanimity as to what rhetoric and its province may be. — P. A. Halpin. 7. When the words are contrasted, or emphatically dis- tinguished. Thus, Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull ; Strong, without rage ; without overflowing, f ulL Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. — Hazmtt. c. To separate pairs of words joined by conjunctions ; as, Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. Find illustration on page 216. d. To separate from the rest of the sentence words and phrases used in apposition, except general titles and appel- lations ; as. He left one son, Thomas. Time, the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only en- larges the patrimony of litei-ature to its possessor. — I. Disraeli. My ci\'ic and poetical compliments to Sou they if at Bristol ; — Chap. XIV.] PARENTHETICAL REMARKS. 271 why, he is the very Leviathan of bards — the small minnow, I. — Chables Lamb. 30. Sometimes a dash shows more unmistakably that the con- struction is appositive ; as, This point represents a second thought — an emendation. See another illustration in VII. a., above, page 268. Find otheni on pages 128, 141, lU. Honor to the men who bring honor to ub, glory to the country, dignity to character, release from vacuity, wings to thought, knowledge of things, precision to principles, to feeling, happiness to the fireside— authors.— Bovei. 31. Where the appositive expression is restrictive, no comma is used; as, "Enoch Arden" was written by the poet Tennyson; Ir\'ing lived on the river Hudson. 32. Although a general title, if the appositive is modified it is preceded by a comma. Thus, Cicero the orator ; but, Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators. e. To separate from the rest of the sentence parentheti- cal remarks. The word "parenthesis" {napd iv rifStvat) means side-insertion^ and is used of a word or phra.se inserted by way of comment or ex- planation in a sentence complete without it. This disconnection is more definitely shown by the use of parentheses [ ( ) ] or of brackets { [ ] )• But the modem tendency is to make punctuation as littlo obtrusive as jmssible, and in many cases the relation is shown with sufficient dofiniteness by commas, or by da.shes. In- deed, it is not always ea.sy to decide whether a phra-se is parenthet- ical, or simply explanator). The following illustrations will indi- cate which of the four ]>oints should bo used in given cases. (Is) The cuijiiua iintil. It w•^ u Henry said, a shame to impose upon him. The taaefol Nine, so mered legends tell, Flrrt waked their benvenly lyre these scenes to tell.— OAirrBnx.. 33. Some other point should be preferred when the parenthet- ical phrase is itself divided by commas, llius : For all of na,-- that U, Julm, atiJ Miria. nn.l I— arc agreed that it is best to 272 THE COMMA REQUIRED. [Part III. 34. Nor can commas be used when the parenthetical phrase re- quires a mai'k of exclamation or interrogation. Thus : SpiU not the moming (the qnlnicMenoe of the day !) in recreations.— Fullsb. (II.) The dash used. Word* are wise men's oonnters— they do not reckon by them— bat they are the money of fools.— HOBBBS. Our country— whether bounded by the St. J<^n*s and the Sabine, or however other- wise boimded and described, and be the measnrements monor leas; — still our country, to be cherished in aU oar hearts, to be defended by all oar hands.— Robebt C. Wintbbop. It contained a warrant for condaotinf me and my retinae to Traldragdubb or Tril- drogdrib, for it is inronoanoed both ways, as near as I can remember, by a party of ten horse.— Swnr. Here dashes after " Trildrogdrib " and " remember" would re- move the ambiguity of the last clause. When soft!— the dusky trees between. And down the path through the open green, T\liere ia no living thing to be seen ; And through yon gateway where is found. Beneath the arch with ivy bound. Free entrance to the churchyard groimd. And right across the verdant sod. Towards the very house of QoA ; — Comes gliding in with lovely gleam. Comes gliding in. serene and slow, Soft and silent as a dream, A solitary doe !— Wobdswobth. Bat words are things, and a small drop of ink. Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think ; 'T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages ; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper— even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that 's his. — Btbor. Here it would be more common to repeat the dash after " this.** Find illustrations on pages 66, 78, 86, 89. (Hi.) Parentheses used. A man's body and himself (with the utmost reverence to both I speak it) are exactly like a jacket and a jacket's lining : rumple the one. you rumple the other.— Sterne. All knowledge, and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.— Bacon. Know then this truth, (enough for man to know,) Virtue alone is happiness below.— Popb. The motto is, E pluribus unuin (from many, one). Chap. XIV. ] PARENTHETICAL REMARKS. 273 35. a. If a parenthesis is inserted at a place in the sentence where no point in reiiuired, no point should be put before or after the marks of parenthesis. See first two illustrations above. fi. If the parenthesis is inserted at a place where a point is re- quired, i. If the parenthesis relates to the entire sentence, the required mark precedes the parenthesis, and the parenthetical expression is punctuated as though it stood alone. Thus : He had two Lalin words almost constantly in his month, (how odd bounds Latin from •n oilman's lips t) which my t)etter knowledge has since enable«l me to correct. — C. Lamb. "Ay ! here now I (exclaimed the Critic,) here come Coleridge's metaphysics I " — Bio- graphkt Uterarla. Bee also the third illustration above. ii. If it relates to a single word or a short clause, no mark pre- cedes it, and the required mark follows it. Thus : By the intercession of his friends (who had interest at court), he obtained bia releaae. See examples on pages 8, 9, 83, 89, 93, 108, 121, 158, 181. (Iv.) Brackets used. 36. Brackets are preferred to parentheses for the following pur- poses: a. To indicate that a verbal mistake is copied from an original document; as, *'He complained that he was superceded" fso in the original]. So of any remark or explanation interpolated by one in quoting from another; thus, on page 51, the words "the Duke of Marlborough," inserted by way of explanation, not by Thackeray but by the author of this volume, should have been printed between brackets instead of parentheses, while eight lines below the parentheses are correct, having been inserted by Thack- eray himself. /?. To enclose statements of things done which would not ap- pear in a report of the verbal proceedings alone; as, **I8 this [handing a pistol to the witness] the weapon he had in his hand ? " " The gentlenuin sajrt Pm dr-drnnk [UtOKhter.] W-well, I am drank: M know Vm drunk ; t>-but I shall get over that. But tbtt gentlemaa himaelt is a born idiut [ritung on tiptoe, and pointing at him nnstaadily, and twiagtog hit Mrms], and he'll n never got ovar that i "^ [Loud appUoM Mid Uuaghter.] 274 THE COMMA REQUIRED. [Part UI. Find illustrations on pages 89, 234. y. When a parenthesis occurs within a parenthesis, brackets should be substituted for the outside pair. Thus : As for the person aggrieved [I mean (do not mbUke me) the original owner], he waa tjaaely defrauded. f. Usually, to indicate ellipsis. Thus : Homer, Cortland Co., N. Y., Aug. 16, 1883. Alpheus Harkins, Esq., 27 Liberty St., Boston, Mass. He started, July 10, for Washington. The ellipsis most frequently indicated by the comma is that of a verb that has been once expressed. Thus : Histories make men wise ; poets, witty ; the mathematics, sub- tile ; natural philosophy, deep ; moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. — Bacx>n. But the comma need be inserted only when the mean- ing would otherwise be obscure. Thus : Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed aud digested. — Bacon. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writ- ing an exact man. — Ba(X)N. Since brevity ia the soul of wit. And tedioasnesa the limbs and ontward flonrishea, I will be brief. — Hamlet. g. To introduce quotations too short or informal to need the colon. (I.) The comma used. To Lamb, habitually unpunctual, the head of the office ob- served, '• Really, Mr. Lamb, you come very late." ** Y-yes," stam- mered Lamb, " b-but consider how early I go." (il.) The colon used. Remember the epigram of Disi-aeli : ** Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remembered, and remembered more than I have seen." TOPICAL ANALYSIS. ABSOLUTE RULES. I. Every wntenoe mtwt hare at the end— a. An Interrogmtion Point, p. SSO. I. Only at the end of HkecbuueR, p. 357. S. Nut after indirect questions, p. Jt57. b. An Excliiiiiatioit Point, p. 980. 8. Uaod after interjectionii, etc., p. 25S. 4. Two or more express ridicule, p. 258. c. Or a period, 257. II. A Period most also be nsed— a. After every abbreviation, p. 268. 5. After each letter, p. 258. 6. Doc8 not exclude other points, p. 258. b. After Uoinan n iiuerals, p. 25tj. c. To denote oiniiwiun in a quotation, p. 259. 7. Three pcriodn fur part of sentenoe; for more, four or more, p. 259. d. Before decimals, p. 259. 8. If the number be le8H than a unit, the word should be s n^lar, p. 259. III. An Apostrophe must be used — a. To indicaU.' (loescsHive ca— u> In oom|H>tii)il wonlH, p. 262. 15. Which lirr oompound words? p. 262. b. At end of a line, when a word is divided, p. 269. 16. Division only by syUablws P- M8. c. To unite pcvflxes, p. 20. 17. TlMdiareMssoaMtlni«iiiMd,p.268. V. QootattanlUrkaintwtboBaad- a. To enoioM an exact qnotatioii, p. 269. 18. Not for indirect qaocatioD, p. 264. 19. Sometimes omitted, when qnotetlon ends sentence, p. 264. 20. Repeated before each of 21. Oebo- paootnatioa ma p. 264. 121 QooCaUon within qnotatlMi. p. 204. IS. Omttt il in paragrapha, p. 2(0. 24. KonHgn qootaUoaa In Italics, with- out qnotatlM mariw, p. 26S. b. Usnally. toeBelo»««ltleeofbooka,p.28B, VI. The Dash mtu* be oaed— a. At breakfag-offol ee l e a e e. |>. 260. b. To c. To show omission of letters, p. 266, d. To show hesitation, etc., p. 266. e. To sepfu^te speeches in a dialogue, p^ 267. f. To separate title from matter, p. 267. K* Between extremeH of a scries, p. 267. VII. The Comma must be iihc-d — a. To set off vo<«tive exprewions, p. 267. 25. Exclamation l'ointrc(iuiru«l, p. 268. b. To separate Himilnr words, p. 2H.S. i. When not connecleil I ly conjunctions, ALWATS. p. 268. 26. Adjoining adjo<-tivcs not always in same c-on^^truct-on, p. 268. 27. Commas rtiiiiire. 29. When necHleor when phrase is divided by (x>niinaA. p. 271. 84. Also when phrase ends with ex- clamation or intcrrogalion mark, p. 272. ii. The dash used, p. 272. iii. Parenthei«s used, p. 272. 85. With other points, p. tn. It. Brackets usc«l. 80. Brackets preferred, p. 978. a. To state that verbal mistake in a ' • ' — • ^. Toil. y. Por outer parenthesis when another Uencloeed. p. 274. r. Usnally. to indicate ellipsis, p. 274. «. To introdooe quotations, p. 274. i. The comma used, p. 274. il. The ookm need, p. 974. CHAPTER XV. PUNCTUATION— ConUnusd. The prindplM of pnnctaation are rabtle, and an exact logical training i» requisite for the just application of them. Naturally, then, mistaken in the une of pointy as of all the elements of langnage, written and spoken, are frequent ; so much ko, in fact, that in the oonstniction of private contracts, and even of statnte^ judicial tribanals do not much regard punctuation ; and some eminent jurists have thought that legislative enactments and public documents should be without it.— Mabsh. n. RULES DEPENDENT UPON JUDGMENT. A Marked Distinction. — While some of the rules al- ready given allow latitude to differences of interpretation, and even of taste, most of them are rigid. One violates them at the peril of being misunderstood, and with the certainty of being looked upon as defective in education. Though his sentences be constructed with the utmost sim- plicity, a writer can hardly fail to need every direction that has been given. We come now to more uncertain grouncj. The difficulty of jpunctxiMion as an art, and the diversity in icsage, are mostly confined to the division of sentences hy commas. It is a general rule that these divisions are to aid the eye in comprehending the construction of the sentence. As to what is the construction of a sentence, what are the rela- tions of the parts to each other, and how these relations may best be indicated by punctuation, judgment and taste differ so widely that no absolute rules can be laid down. Chap. XV. 1 DIVBBSITT OP USAGE. 277 Adverbial phrases, for instance, are to be separated only when they break the connection. But when do they break the connection ? To one man, grasping easily the sentence as a whole, no ordinary phrase is an interruption. To another, who works out the meaning little by little, each group of words requires individual study. The latter may be obliged to insert with a lead-pencil a dozen points which the author has thought unnecessary. On the other hand, a rapid reader may feel clogged by a succession of commas that are to him unnecessary and annoying. Take, for instance, this sentence from " Green's History of the English People " (Harper's edition, iii. 227) : In spite of this Charles had throoghont the year been intrigning with the Confeder- ates throoffh Lord Olamorgan ; and though his efforts to secnre their direct aid were for ■ome time fraiUess he saooeeded In September in bringing about an armistice between tiMir forces and the army under the Earl of Ormond which had as yet held them in check Here is a sentence without a comma that many writers would have divided by commas after tJiis, had, year, Confedei-ates, tcere^ timet fruUlesit, succeeded, September, Ormond, had, yet — no less than twelve commas for which rules can be found in most treatises on punctuation, and no one of which, if all were inserted, could be called an error. On the other hand, the sentence as it stands must be pro' nounced faultless. It is perspicuous, easily read, easily under- stood. The only possible misconception would be as to the last relAtive olauBe. It is an accepted rule that a relative clause not separated by a comma is restrictive. Applying that rule here, it. might be inferred that there was some other army under the Earl of Ormond that had not held them in check. But as it happens, Mr. Oreen follows the rule to use that to introduce restrictive clauses, and which to introduce those that modify without restrict- ing ; hence he makes tho distinction doar without itnnctuation. There is therefore in this sontonce tht» liberty under rules to use any number of commas from none to twelve. Surely there ia nothing absolute in niles so variously construed. It should be remarked, however, thnt only care in tlie atrauge* 278 PUNCTUATION. [Pabt in. ment of olanses makes it possible to dispense with punctuation. Ck>nstnict the sentence as follows, and no one of the twelve commas can be spared : Oharlm had b«en intriguing, in spite of this, through Lord OUunorgan. thronghont the jour, with the Confederates ; and he miooeeded, though his efforte were fmitleM to secure their direot aid, for bobm time, in bringing about an armistioe, in September, be- tween their foroes and the army which, as yet, under the Bari of Ormond, had held them in check. He Punctuates Best who Needs to Punctuate Least. — A comparison of the two sentences just given will impress upon the reader a principle of composition than which no other is more important: — The less punc- t nation a sentence needs, the more dear and effective it is. This does not mean that all sentences are to be short, with one subject and one predicate. Delicate shades of meaning often require complicated sentences. Our state- ment is, not that an unpunctuated sentence is better than another sentence which requires considerable punctuation, but that a given sentence is improved when, by a re- arrangement of its clauses, fewer punctuation marks are required. These marks ai*e often, and rightly, called " stops." To a certain extent they are interruptions of the flow of the sentence. The notion that they indicate where one reading aloud is to pause, either for breath or for emphasis, was long ago given up. They are simply aids to unravel a tancrled sentence. What can be clearer than that a sentence should be as little tangled as pos- sible ? For the peace of mind of thousands of women who are wretched cooks, the writer of the following paragraph should so have ar- ranged his clauses as to escape being at the mercy of a careless printer who drops a comma : An unfortunate wife was killed at Troj', N. Y., while cooking her husband's breakfast in a fearful manner. Punctuation may remove an ambiguity, but will never produce Ohap. XV.] THE COMMA PERMITTED. 279 that peculiar beanty which is perceived when the sense comes out clearly and distinctly by means of a happy arrangement. — Kames. The introduction of marki of punctuation into Latin manuBcript was upecially favored by the inflexible character of the Latin language, which inexorably demands a periodic ■tructuro, and, like a true pedagogue, pedantically insistK that the reader shall parse ereiy word in order to master the sentence. Once employed they become indispenrable. Beginning with air-bladders we never learn to swim without them. Every parenthesis mtiat have it« land niMrkH. every torn of phrase its flnger-po^t. We think by commas, Kemi- oolons and period^ and the free movementn of a Dcmusthcnes or a Thucydidcs are as anlHw the measured, balanced tread of a modern or.itor or hintorical narrator, as the flight of an eagle to the lock-step of a prison convict, or to the march of a well-drilled sol- dier, who can plant hiM foot only at the tap of the drum. We are not content with a punctuation which marks tie beginning and end of a period, separates its members, and distinguishes parenthetical qualifications. We require that it shall indicate the rhetorical character of the sentence. If it is vocative, ejaculatory. optative, intcrjcctional, it must boist an explanation point as as a signaL If it is hypothetical or interrogative, it must announce itaell by a mark of interrogation ; and the Spaniards carry the point so far, that, in their typography, these signs precede as well as follow the sentence.— Mabih. VIII. The Comma may be used : a. 7c> separate from the rest of the. sentence^ adverbs, adverbial conjunctions, and short adverbial clauses only when they break the connection. ( i . ) Commas required : There is, therefore, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. — Burke. In strict justice, perhaps, he should be punished. Wit, like money, boai-s an extra value when rung down imme- diately it is wanted. Men pay severely who require credit. — Jeb- BOLD. You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin. — Sheridan. (ii.) ComiYuu not required : Therefore there is a limit at which forbearance oeases to be a virtue. Perhaps in strict justice he should be punished. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.— Pops. A Uttl* nooMnae now and then la rriklMd by the bwl of men. 280 THE COM^IA PERMITTED. [Part III. Silence when nothing need be said is the eloquence of dis- cretion. — BOTEB. The systematic stndj of the mother tongue, like that of all branches of knowledge which we acquire, to a suflficient extent for ordinary purposes, without study, is naturally very generally ne- glected. — Mabhh. Here the ooaimM after ** aoqttire ** end " pnrpoeee ** merely dog the flow of thought, making the idee lev dietlnet. Special changea of vocabulary can frequently be explained, after Vbej have once hap- pened, but very aeldom foretold. — Mabsh. Here the "after they have [once] hapi)ened" is closely con- nected with the "explained," the whole expression "explained after they have happened " corresponding with the single word "foretold." Hence the comma after "explained" obscures the sense. Find other illustrations on page 220. See ' ' therefore,*' page 327. (III.) Commas tcaed or not, according to j/reference : Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent — Comx)N. Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword. — Bulwkb. The thoughts that come unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore they should be secured, because they seldom return again. — Locke. When I read niles of criticism, I inquire immediately after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means dis- cover what it is he likes in a composition. — Addison. (Iv.) Commas used or not, accoj'ding to weaning : Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth. — Marmion. Here to insert a comma after age, would mean that the age when thought is speech covers the entire period from boy to youth, Chap. XV. ] ADVERBIAL PHRASES. 281 while to omit it wonld mean that this age is restricted to a period somewhere between boy and jonth, but not covering the entire time. He endaarored in erery poosible way to andermine his riTal. As unponctnated, or with commas after "endeavored'* and "way," the "every possible way" would signify that his endea- vors were of every kind. A comma after "endeavored" would indicate that the undermining was to be of every possible kind. In other words, the first punctuation would throw the emphasis upon the methods employed ; the latter, upon the results ob- tained. Tfu Tocut as Given.—" Woman : without her, man is a mvage.** The Toa*t cu Head,—" Woman, withoat her man, is a sarage." A barber's sign read as follows : What do yon think ril sbaTo yon for nothing, and give yon a drink. Strangers would mentally punctuate it as follows : What do yon think I ril Khave yoa for nothing, and give yoa a drink. But after being attended to, they were assured that the mean- ing was as follows : What I do yon think ru shave yon for nothing, and give yoa a drink T 87. Adverbs distinguished from Conjunctions. — Many words ranked as adverbs are sometimes employed conjunctively, and re- quire a different treatment in their punctuation. When used as conjunctions, hofcever, now^ then, too, indeed, are divided by commas from the context ; but when as adverbs, qualifying the words with which they are associated, the separation should not be made. This distinction will be seen from the following examples : 1. HowBTBB.— W* mxkMt, kowevtr, pay knim defennoe to the opinlona ci the wise, ko wm e r mooh they are oontrary tpjMr own. t. Mow.— I have now ehown the onud e fncty of my itrindplea; and, ntno, what is the tair and obvioiw ooodnakm ? 8. THn.— On tiieee ItttHm, tJUm, I Mm raitwl my aqroment, and atterwarda made m few gaoanl o b eerr atlo o e on the aobjeok, 282 THE COBiMA PERMITTED. [Part IIL 4. Too.— I fonnd, too^ m theatre «t Alexandria, and another at Cairo ; but he who would enjoy the repreeentationa must not be too particular. 5. INDKKD.— The TOttng man was IndMif oolpable in that act, though, indeed, he con- ducted himself rery well in other ; When placed at the end of a sentence or a clause, the conjnnc- tion too must not be separated from the context by a comma ; as, •* I would that they had changed voices too." — Wimon. b. To separate the subject from Uie predicate, only when : (I.) The subject ends with a verb ; as, Whatever is, is right. (II.) The subject is so long and involved that it is diffi- cult to see where it ends and the predicate begins. Thus : The voice of praise, too, coming from those to whom we had thought ourselves unknown, has a magic about it that must be felt to be understood. — ^Lkveb. He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind. — HAZLrrr. He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain. — Fuller. To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it. — Lewes. He that cometh in print because he would be knowen, is like the foole that cometh into the Market because he woulde be seen. — Lyly. There are few delights in any life so high and rare as the subtle and strong delight of sovereign art and poetry ; there are none more pure and sublime. To have read the greatest work of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or mu&ician, is a possession added to the best things of life. — SXSTNBURNE. Discretion of speech is more than eloquence ; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words, or in good order. — Bacon. My tongue within my lips I rein. For who talks much, must talk in vaiu. — Gay. Chap. XV.] SUBJECT AND PREDICATE SEPARATED. 2S3 88. Whether it is difficult to see where the predicate begina is nsnally a matter of judgment. Find examples on pages 49, 147, 187. Usually the comma should be omitted unless its need is manifest. Thus : A wiM man in the company of the ignorant has been compared by the ngm to a oeantifol girl in the company of blind men.— Saadi. Sometimes, however, ambiguity is manifest, and unless the sen- tence is reconstructed the comma must be used. 89. Sometimes, especially in contrasted expressions, a comma may be inserted to compel attention to each member of the sen- tence ; as, Mind unemployed, is mind unenjoyed. — Bovee. 40. When the subject consists of several clauses, especially when each ends with a semicolon, the last commonly ends either with a comma followed by a dash, or with a colon, and all the clauses are snmmed up in some one word or expression. There U Maroe a village in Earope, and not one nniveniity, that in not furnished with Itfl little great men. The head of a iietty c<>r|K)ration, who op|K>8ei* the designK of a prince who woold tyrannically force his subjecUi to itavc thi-ir best clothes for Siutdayx . the puny pedant, who finds one undiHcovered quality in the polypus, or describes an nnheoded pro- otm in the slceleton of a mole, and whose mind, liku hin mlcroecopc, (leroeivee nature only In detail ; the rhymer, who makes smooth verxos and painta to our imagination, when he ahould only speak to our heart*,— all equally fancy thcmnclves walking forward to immor- tality, and daaire the crowd behind them to look on. A pidcpocket in every car; a cheat at every sUtion ; every third switch on the road i ; the danger of being hurled rroin the track, and then bumc«l alive : the«e con- prevent my travelling on the r.iilroatl of which you speak. When yon know a thing, to hold that you know it ; and when you do not know a things to allow that you do not know it : this U knowle<)gc.— Conftcios. Style I ■tyle t why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can leaat of all be changed. A mun'a style is neitrly as much a i>art of him as his physiognomy, bis Icnrv, the throbbing of his poise,— in short, as any part of his being which is least sub- jected to the action of the will.— Pkhblom. It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm what/>ver he pleaaes ; bat to be able to disct-ni that what is true is troe. and that what is false is false : this is the nuu-k and character of inUOIigimoe. - KicXBaoil. There arc three friendships that are advantageoos, and three that are injoriooa Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere : ami friMidship with the man of obM^rvation : these are advantagwms. Friendship with the man of specious airs ; friend- ship with the Inslnnatintly soft ; and Moktehip with the gUb-toncned : thsM are tnjul- ooa.— CuMrociDS. Find examples on p«get 60, 84, 85, 96, 217. 284 THE COMMA PERMITTED. [Part III. C. To separate the object from the predicate only when without it there would be manifest ambiguity. Thus: Friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.— Wtoheblet. With- out the comma, it might be the friends who were hated, or the debt. d. Before the first ''Hhai " in clauses introduced by " It is said that," " I answer that," etc., when there are several propositions in the same construction. Thus : It was a cutting remark of Sheridan's, that a certain speaker was indebted to his imagination for his facts, and that he relied upon his memory for his wit. Philosophers assert, that Nature is unlimited in her operations, that she has inexhaustible treasures in reserve, that knowledge will be always progressive, and that all future generations will continue to make discoveries of which we have not the slightest idea. 41. After nouns like maxim, rule^fact, law, principle, etc., a sin- gle proposition may take a comma before the that ; as. It is an old maxim, that fast bound is fast found. 42. Where such a proposition is introduced by the verb to he, a comma is usually inserted before the that. Thus : Let oar object be, our conntiy, oar whole coantry, and nothing bat oar ooantry. — Webstkb. There Ik, first, the litentnre of knowledge ; and, secondly, the literatare of power. The function of the first is, to teach : the function of the second is, to move : the first is a rudder ; the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere dlwursive under- standing ; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.— De Qcincet. 43. When the introductory clause is long, it makes the proposi- tion more definite and emphatic to insert the comma ; as, It is the ruin of all the young talent of the day, that reading and writing are simultaneous. — Mrs. Fletcher. e. To separate co-ordinate clauses^ where each thought demands distinct, but not emphatically distinct, considera- tion ; as, Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. — Bacon. Chap. XV.] CO-ORDINATE CLAUSES. 285 It is only in the separation of co-orcliuate clauses that there is any reason in the old rule of counting one for a comma, two for a semicolon, three for a colon, and four for a period. In this use of the marks, the author indicates the time he wishes each individ- ual thought of a series to receive by the importance of the points by which he separates them. Thus, to quote a familiar line from Tennyson, Knowledge oomes, but wisdom lingers, the use of the comma distinguishes the two ideas, but does not emphatically contrast them. If the line were written, Knowledge comes ; but wisdom lingers, the mind would be compelled to dwell a moment longer on the contrast. If it were written, Knowledge comes : bat wisdom lingers, the contrast would be still more marked. If it were written, Knowledge comes. But wisdom lingers, or, Knowledge oomM.— Bat wisdom lingers, the reader would feel that the author meant to give this thought all possible emphasis. Or if, again, it were written. Knowledge oomes bnt wisdom lingers, the effect would be somewhat that of repeating a familiar proverb, remembered as a whole, without care to distinguish its connection of thought. Where so much depends upon a shade of meaning, more can be learned from example than from precept ; so in place of arbitrary roles we g^ve a number of ty|)ical sentences. (i.) No point used. ▲ stodent of panctofttkm shoold sHk himself tchy in • giren case to put in % stop rather than why to \mn on* cot; for tho iuMTtinn ..f unneceMarj st<^M is, on the whole, mora Ulnlj U> mtolead • reader than is the omisKion of neocasary ones.— ▲. S. Hill. Here the contrast requiriss a comma between stop and rather. It is in Ksoflral moc* profltabia to rsekoo op oar defteta than to boast of oar attain- ments.— CabltIiB. 286 THE COMMA PERMITTED [Par: III. The tme nae of qwedi U not to moch to exprsM our want* as to oonoeal them.— GOLOSMITB. (11.) The comma used, WlMre n»iara*B end of langnaga to dodhied. And men talk only to oonoeal their mind.— Tou»o. Pen copious Dryden wanted, or forgot. The last and greatest art, the art to blot.— Pors. For rhetoric he could not ope Hto month, bat ont there flew a trope.— HiMdAraw. Conceit may pnfT a man up. but nerer prop him np.— Rutcnr. The fool doih think he is wise, but the wiae man knows himaelf to be a fool.— ^« You La4 It. Ocoaaions do not make a man frail, but they show that he is.— TnoMAf k Kevpii . Uto face was without form and dark, the stars dim twinkled through his form.— Master booka, bat do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.- BvLWKm. ffis heart was as great as the world, but than wm no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. — Emuuoh. It is not always the depth or the novdty of a thonght which constttutes its value to ooradvea, but the fitnees of its application to our circumstances. — Skwiix. No great genius was ever without some mixture of madne<«, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except by the a^tated soul.— AmiBTOTLB. The mind never unbends itself so tLgneabij as in the conreniition of a well-choaen friend. There is indeed no blessing in life that is any way comparable to the enjoymcot of a discreet and virtuous friend. It e&ses and unloads the mind, clears and improves the nndorstandinR, engenders thought* and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life.— Adduom. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my humble dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Para- dise, and Shakspere, to open to me the worlds of imatpnation and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society, in the place where I live. — Channinq. Find other illustrations on pages 45, 128. (Hi.) The semicolon used. Some must watch, while some must sleep ; So runs the world away. — FTamlet. Men's evil maimers live in brass : their virtues we write in water.— Shakspehj. Learning without thought is labor lost ; thought without learning is perilous. — Con- ruoius. Chap. XV.] CO-ORDINATE CLAUSES. 287 Wb»t the great man seeks is in himself ; what the small man seeks ia in others.— Con- rnciim. Qoarip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pi|x» of tlu«e who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.— George Kliot. The sublime and the ridicnlous are often so nearly related, that It is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sablUne makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculons makes the sublime again. — Paink. 44. Qauses that are themselves divuled hy commas should be divided from each other by semicolons. Thus : Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse. But talking ih not always to converse ; Not more diKtinct from harmony divine The constant croaking of a country sign. — Cowpbb. We think our fathers fooU, ho wise we grow ; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. — Pope. Knglish is an exprfiisive langnafre. but not difficult to master. Its range is limited ; it ronsistit, as fur as I can observe, of four words, *' nice,*' " jolly," " charming," and some granmiarians aiid * fond." — Dikrakli. The orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how ; the rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him. — Carltlb. Equality is the life of conversation ; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who oonaideni himsdf below the rest of the society. — Btkelb. Whatever be the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few ; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many. — BULWER. There is no harm in being stupid, so long as a man does not think himself clever; no good in being clover, it a man thinks himself so, for that is a short way to the worst stapidity.— Macdonald. A slender acqaaintance with the world must convince every mnn that actions, not words, arr the true criierion of the attachment of friends ; and that the most 1il>eral pro- feasions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it Washinotok. In literatnre quotation is good only when the writer whom I follow goes my way, and, being better mounted than I, gives me a cast as we say ; but if I like the gay c<|ui|)age ao well as to go out of my road, I bad better have gone afoot Emeki>o!(. When self -esteem ezpresMS itself in contempt of another, be it the meanest, it must be repellaat. A fliiipant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, soorn them ; but he who hM any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.— Oobthx. I*oetry, above all, we sboold have known long ago, ia one of thotte mysterious things whose origin and devetopmenta never can be what we call explaintnl ; often It seems to us like the wind, biosHng where It lists, oomlag and departing with little or no regard to any the most cunning theory that has yet been devised of it— Cabltlb. Find illnHtrations on pages 107, 157, 223, 235, 246. Notice neglect of this rale on pages 216-219, 227. (iv.) Tht* coUm used, Orrat things aaioalali m. Mad mhOI dMMMtm : outoa makw liotti tamaiar.— Da '^ BBtnriBB. ^S8 THE COMMA PERMITTED. [Part III 45. Clauses that are tkemaehes divided by semicolons may he di" vided/rom each other by colons. Thus : Think an yoa tpmk ; bat qwak not all you think : Thooghta are your own ; your words are ao no more ; Where Wiadom etoen, wind oannot make yoa sink : Lips never err, when she doea keep the door.— DczacHX. In friendshipa some are worthy, and soma are neoeasary ; some dwell hard by. and are fitted tar cooTene; nature joins acme to na, and religion oomUnes us with others ; so- ciety and aocldents, parity of fortane, and equal diqxwitloii, do actuate all our friend- ships : which of themselves and in their prime diqiwaitions art prepared for all mankind according as any one can reoeiTe them.— Jbbkict Tatu>k. Find illustrations on pages 68, 97, 121, 234, 250. Notice neg- lect of this rule on pages 216-219. 46. Hence the colon is especially adapted to separate from other clauses a clause that summarizes them. There are bat two ways of paying debt : increase of indnatry in raising income, in- crease of thrift in laying out.— Casltul It is with books as with men : a yoj small number play a great part ; the rest are confbonded with the multitude.— Vox.TAiax. Find illustrations on pages 14, 210, 213. 47. But when clau^s that expand a thought are introduced by namely, to wit, as, thus, etc., a semicolon precedes and a comma follows these introductory words. Thus : As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be privileged from it ; namely, re- ligion, matters of state, great persons, any man's presoat busineas of importance, any case that deaerveth pity.— Bacon. Even when namely or the like word is omitted, the semicolon is retained if the stmcture remains the same. Thus : Incivility is not a vice of the soul, but the effect of several vices ; of vanity, ignorance of duty, laziness, stupidity, distraction, contempt of others, and jealousy. — Dz la Bbu- TKRE. Correct the sentence from Legouve, page 151. (v.) The sentence divided into two or more setitetices. There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an ar- tist is that he should be articulate.— Swinburne. Just as it may cost a strong man less effort to carry a hundred-weight from place to place at once, than by a stone at a time ; so, to an active mind it may be easier to bear along all the qualiflcations of an idea and at once rightly form it when named, than to first imperfectly c(»iceiTe such idea and then carry back to it, one by one, the details Chap. XV.] RELATIVE CLAUSES. 289 and liraiUtionH afterward mentioned. While conversely, as for a boy, the only possible rootle of transferring a hundredweight, is that of taking it in portions ; bo, for a weak miud, the only poMiUe mode of furmiiig a compound conception may be that of build- ing It up by carrying leparately its several parts.— Hkrbbbt Spbmcss. f. To Bet off Dependent Clauses^ when the connection is not close. (I.) RdaiiAie Clauses^ when iwt restrictive. Introduced by the ZHvi&ible lielative. (See Part I., Adjective Sen- tences.) Usage on this point is so uniform that the comma should be omitted only by those who so construct their sentences as to use very few commas. (See page 277.) It is commonly understood that he who writes, The scholar, who loves his books, is to be envied, uses the word scholar in a general sense, implying that all scholars love their books and are to be envied ; while to say The scholar who loves his books is to be envied, is to restrict the predicate to that kind of scholar who does love his books, implying that there are scholars (in this case using the word in the sense of pupil) who do not love their books. In the first case, the relative clause is descriptive, mentioning one of the char- acteristics of a scholar, in a clause that might be omitted without changing the essential statement. In the second case, the relative clause is restrictive, not to be omitted without changing the mean- ing. Hence the observance of this distinction is of great impor- tance. There are laws on many statute books, the eflfect of which has been either lost or j)erverted, because they were drawn by legislators unfamiliar with this principle. (See page 297.) Restrictive clauses. Introduced by the Lidivisible Rda- live. Then Is no tme orator who to aofe a iMro.— Ekxmoh. Wit oonsUU in knowing the rMMBbtaaoe of things that differ, and the difference of things that are alike. — Db Sriii.. Idooation alone can conduct us to that enjojmant Which to at once best in qoality and inflalta ia qoaatUj.— Mam. 290 THE COMMA PERMITTED. [Part IIL Brery school-boy and ■choot-iriri who hu arrired at the ag« of rdteotton ooght to know gometbing aboat the hUtory of the art of printing. — If Ainf. Only the reftned and delicate pleasnre* that spring from research and edacation can buiUl up barriers between different raaka.— Dx STAiL. They are never alone that are aooompanied with noUe thooghta. — 8io«iT. Those who liTe on vanity moat not nnwsonaMy expaot to die of mortiflcatlon. — Maa. Sllis. But far more nomeroas was the herd of such Who think too little, and who talk too much.— DsTOSir. But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot.— TlVHTaov. The art •( qoofeatioo rsqoires naore delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can seo nothing more in a quotation than an extract.— I. Diskaku. There is a great deal of unmapped co untry within nn which would have to be taken lalo aoeomt in explanation of oor gnsts and storms.— Qsobox Euot. Find illustrations on page 73. • 48. Even before restrictive clauses a comma is necessary, when the relative is separated from its antecedent and likely to be con- nected \^'itli some other word. Thus : He U a fool. Who only sees the mischiefs that are past— Bbtakt*8 flkUL Clauses not restrictive. Than were very few pa ss e ng er s , who escaped without serious injury. This means that all the passengers were saved. Omit the comma, and the meaning is that nearly all the passengers were injured. Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a Bort of lively sophis- try and exaggeration, which deoeiveft, for the moment, both themselves and their audi- tors. — Macaulat. The things which are seen are temporal. The man who laughed loudly was the thief. The above restrictive clauses may be thus converted into non- restrictive : Things, which are seen, appeal more directly to the cTiild than words, which are only heard. He handed it to the man, who laughed loudly and tossed it in the air. Clauses restrictive and non-restrictive in the same sen- tence. Chaf. XV.] RELATIVE CLAUSES. 291 It wma th« Deoe«lty which made me a quarrier, that taught me to be a geologist.— HOOH MiLLKB. When it Ih the head of the family, who Ih tuaatly the bread-winner, that ia laid proK- trate. It ia this excloaively national spirit, and the undisguised contempt fur other people, tbat the English are so a(x:ustomed tu cxpresn in their manner and cunduct, which have made as so generally unpopular on the Continent. — H. Matthews. Fleah is bat the glass which holdn the dust that measures all our time, which also •hall be crumbled in dust.— Ucobqb Hebbebt. 49. The same distinction in relative clauses should be observed in the choice of the relative pronoun. In restrictive clauses, that should be used instead of ichichy or who. In Worcester's Dictionary, some specifications are made un- der this rule, as follows : •* There are casc^ in which that in properly used when applied to pornonB, instead of who: InL When it follows the interrogative who, or an adjective in the 8ii|ierlativc de- gree : as, ' Who that han any sense of right would reason thus ? ' ' He was the oldest per- son that I saw.* 2d. When it follows the pronominal adjective mme ; as, ' He was the Mune man that I saw before.* 8d. When persons make but a part of the antecedent ; as, ' The man and things that he mentioned.' 4th. Alter an antecedent introdooed by the ezpledTe you wonld ntep over and nee how old MrM. Jones la thU morning." In a few minntm Biddy roturnod with the information that Ml*. Jone* was wventy-two yearn, ncven months, and tweuty eight dayn old. |3i^ Errrj School and Coilag* in the Unitetl Stotei shoald have a copy of " Com* ■took*8 Ootored Chart" haadng on iu walla, for Um ioitniotUm of lU pvpUfl, which will be mppUed at lU par oaot. off of retail price, or $4.00 each. The rUbag tomb a lofty ocrinmn bore.— Pofb. And thou the eon the fervent «ire addre«ed.— Pon. He takse yonng children in hit arma, And In hie boeom beara. 204 THE COMMA PERMITTED. [Part III. In other sentences nnnsual pnnctnation may be required to make perspicuous a sentence ambiguously worded. Thus : Not only Jenlts oan equirocate.— Drtdkx. Here a comma after " only ** will make the meaning that there are other facts besides the fact that Jesuits can equivocate. But a comma after Jesuits "will make the meaning that others besides Jesuits can equivocate. Again Tooag Itylna, hk parents' djurling joy. Whom chance misled the mother to destroy— Pops. Here a comma after "misled*' will indicate that Itylus de- stroyed his mother ; a comma after ** mother," that the mother destroyed Itylus. Again : 8olomerfonned his promise he said he had but said cromwell who was it that put out the candles when you spoke to charles stuart this unexi)ected question startled him and cromwell proceeding asked him what he said to him to which the gentleman answered he said nothing at all but did he not send a letter by you replied the pro- tector the gentleman denying this also cromwell took his hat from him drew out the letter and had the unfortunate messenger com- mitted to the tower. Illustrations of the Importance of Correct Punctuation : In itiuLiN.— An thgvnifPoii expedient wm deriaed to «Te * priaooer diarged with roblirrj, in the Criminal Ooort at Dnbttn. The prtociiMU thing thitt appeared in eri- denrc iigninKt him waa a ooofearion, alleged to have been made bj him at the Police Office, and ukcn down in wriUng 1^ • poUoe olBcer. The dooament poiporting to con- tain thin Mcif criminating acknowlertgwwBl was pradoood bj Um oflkwr, and the foUoving w«a mid f 1 um it : 298 PUNCTUATION. [Pabt IU. ** liMigaa nid he never robbed bat twice " Said it WM Crawford." Thi«, it will l)e obwrved, ban no mark of the writef having any notion of pnnctua- tioB, but the meaning be attached to it was that ** Mangan wid he never robbed bat twice ; " Said it wa« Crawford.'* Mr. O'Gorinan, the ouanael for the prisoner, begged to look at the paper. He perused it, and rather aKtoni^hed the peace offloer by asserting that ao far from its proving the manV guilt, it clearly establliiht'd his Innocence. This, said the learned gentleman, is the fair and obvious reading of the sentence : " Mangan said he never robbed. " Bat twice said it was Crawford.*" This Interpretation had its effect on the jury, and the man was acquitted. In Bai^timorb.— a monthly magazine, in the midst of a very valuable and elaborate article, makes the following serioas bnt very stupid criticism : " It is possible that the following, taken from the edicts of the Association of Baperintendentft on the organization of asylnmn, may throw some light on the means taken to secure appointments. At a meeting held in BalUmore, May, 1853, the following resolution was adopted : ' The Board of Trustees should be compoecfl of individuals dis- tinguished for liberality, intelligence, and active benevolence : above all, political influ- *nc4.^ It is not singular that the American i^Rtem should become a reproach to us, when such a proposition is to bo found among the articles of,** etc., etc. The four words in italics having a comma in tlicir midst, are mode to say just what the bosrd did not say, and did not intend to say ; and the critic, unless intensely preju- diced, must have seen it. The meaning was that the iKiard should be composed of men '' above all political influence,'' in order that appointments may be made impartially and on merit only. The little comma makes the mischief.— ^Veu» Vork Obiterver. In Vermont.— The Constitution of the State of Vermont, as printed in the general statutes and other official publicaticuK for over eighty years, decljirei»that " the Governor, and in his absence, the Lieutenant-Governor ** (in the original Cunstitution it was the Governor and Council)^ *' shall have power to grant pardons and remit fines, in all cases whatsoever, except in treason and murder, in which they shall have power to grant re- prieves, but not to pardon until after the end of the next session of the Assembly." This seems to say. distinctly, that the Governor shall not have power to pardon traitors and murderers until after the end of the next sension of Assembly ; and by implication it would seem to follow that he tTMi/ pardon murderers after a session has intervened. The question as to what the Constitution really means in this matter came up in conversation between several gentlemen in the State Library at Montpelier the other day. Mr. Abell, of West Haven, was of the opinion that the Constitution did not intend to give the power of pardon to the Governor at any time in cases of treason and murder, and he fonnd in a volume of Vermont reports an opinion of Judge Williams to that effect. The point was speedily settled by the production by the State Librarian of the first printed copy of the Constitution (printeti at Hartford, Conn., in 1779) in which a comma plainly appejirs after the word " pardon,*' in the sentence quoted. This makes all clear. The words " bnt not to j-ardon *' are plainly parenthetical, and the meaning is as plain as if it read : he shall have power to grant reprieves (but not to pardon) until after the end of the next session ; or he shall have power to grant reprieves nntil Jifter the end of the next session, but not to pardon. When the Constitution was next printetl, a year or two later, the comma was omitted, doubtless by a careless proof-reader, and from then till now our Constitution has never been correctly printed. Chap. XV.] IMPORTANCE ILLUSTRATED. 2^ This is not the first case in which a carelan omission or tnbstitation of a comma has made an important difference with the meaning and conBtruction of a law. The act of 1870, providing for the aboliiihing of school districts, as drawn, required each town in the State to take action in the next March meeting on the cjtiestion whether it would substi- tute the town system for the dii^trict system. The Legislature intended that each town should have the subject up in town meeting and teke definite action upon it ; but a blundering engrossing clerk put in a comma where none belonged, and the act as passed left it optional with the selectmen to put an article in the warnings in reference to the school systems or not. And in point of fact not a dozen towns in the State acted on the qixMtion.— Burlington Free Pre9$. Ik N«w York.— WTien the general corporation tax act was under consideration In the Senate an amendment was inserted which exempted from taxation under it "all manulactarinj; and mining corporations." .\fterward, while the bill was in the hand:) of a conference committee, it was decided to except from this exemption mining companies doing business in other States, but organized in this State, and the exemption proviso was changed to read bo as to exempt " manufacturing com- panies, and mining companies carrying on business in this State." The amendment appears with a distinct comma after the words " manufacturing companies," hut in engrosiiDg the reference committee's amendments into the bill the Assembly clerk left out the comma, and the bill as signed by the Oovcmor and filed in the ofllce of the Secretary of State reads so as to exempt " manufacturing companies and mining companies carrying on business in this State." Tho»je manufacturing companies, therefore, which have organized in this State to carry on business elsewhere are liable under the law to a tax of $100 on every $100,000 capital. In the case of one company alone, a glucose manufacturing concern, this tax will be $15,000 a year.— JVetr Tork Tribune. [The error in this illustration is perhaps the most commonly dangerous in the use of conunas. In the first illuntration given the meaning attached by the peace oflScer required the suppression of the subjiH:t of the second verb ; and though the sentence as a whole reads Intelligibly when the pause is made after " twice," it reads more naturally when the pause is made after " robbed." In the second illustration, the comma after "aboreall" requires the insertion of " for " before "political influ- ence" (see page Ivi) ; so that if the illustration a^s printed was drawn by a person carefkil in his use of English, one might be sure it was erroneously reported. In the third illustration , the omission of the comma after " pardon " makes at best an obaeore tentaBoe. Bat in this illnstration there is absolutely nothing except the preaaace or tiM abMiice of the comma to indicate tbe meaning of the law-makers. In either form, tbe aea t eac o is correct and perapicaoiu. Sse page 870, B.] Ox 'CaAMui.— Into Uie action, the ociidnal question of the guilt or innocence of Mr. Bewdl does not enter. It is the regularity or irregnlarity of the actkm of tbe Ooreming Oomnittee and tbe officers of the Exchange thereupon which is at issue, and practically may be called a qoastioa of a comma. It all hinges on the reading of Article XX of the Oonstitatlon ct tbe New York Stock Exchange, which is : Rhoakl any member be Ruiity of nbvioas fnnH -f .. »....k .».. n^..^-„:.... o .T,n,jtteo shall be tbe Juidge, be shall, open oonvictiaii tb«r> tneni- ben of the said ooeunittee present, be ezpellfd, <> i t,, the ■xobange; sobjeot, however, to tbe provisk>as ui ........ ..... ion as regards tbe cUiffls of members of the Bzcbange, who ara crwUtora u( 300 PUNCTUATION. [Part III. John L. Logan, Mr. Seweir* lawyer, discassing the cane, mid : . , . " It l« a plain question of law only. We claim that the plain meaning of Ar- doleZX. is that it nxjuiresa vote of two-thirds of the Governing Committee present to oonriot a member of obvious fraud, and that no Huch vote was had in Mr. Sewell's case. There was simply a majority vote on his conviction. The two-thirds vote obtained was on his expulsion. In their answer the defendants admit every material point claimed by us except the legal one which we make an to the construction of that article. From our point of view no person oonvorsant with the English language can doubt that our reading Is the correct one." . . . Robert 8ewelU who repre^ntt the Stock Exchange, said : *' We contend that to a |>roper understanding of Article XX. the words upon conviction thereqfmre entirely superflnons, and upon well-grounded rules of grammatical ronstruc- tion, the vvb tkall gorenu b* txpelUd, to that It might read, thaU by a vou of two-thirds i^fthe tatd committee pruent, be expelled,"— Ne^g X^f^i^ ^^ TOPICAL ANALYSIS. RULES DEPENDENT ON JUDGMENT. VIII. The Comma may be used — a. To separate adverbial phrases tliat break connection, p. 279. i. Commas required, p. 279. ii. Commas not required, p. 279. iii. Commas used or not according to taste, p. 280. iv. Commas used or not according to meaning, p. 280. 37. Adverbs distinguished from conjunctions, p. 281. b. To separate the subject from the predicate, only wlien — i. The subject ends with a verb, p. 282. ii. The subject is long and involved, p. 282. 38. Use of the comma sometimes imperative, p. 283. 39. Comma sometimes compels attention, p. 281 40. Punctuation of a subject of several clauses, p 283. c. To separate the object from the predicate, only to relieve from manifest ambiguity, p. 284. d. Before *' that," introducing several propositions, p. 284. 41. Before "that" after "maxim," "rule," "fact," etc., p. 284. 42. Before "that" after the verb "to be," p. 284. 43. Before "that" when the introductory clause is long, p. 284. e. To separate co-ordinate clauses, where each thought is distinct, p. 284. Chap. XV.] TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 301 i. No point nsed, p. 285. ii. The comma used, p. 2S6. • iii. The semicolon used, p. 286. 44. Clauses divided by commas are separated by semi* colons, p. 287. It. The colon used, p. 287. 45. Clauses divided by semicolons are separated by colons, p. 288. 46. The colon often separates a summarizing clause, p. 288. 47. Namdy^ as, etc. , preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma, p. 288. y. The sentence divided into two or more sentences, p. 288. f. To set off dependent clauses when the connection is not close, p. 289. i. Relative clauses when not restrictive, p. 289, 48. Rarely, to separate restrictive clauses, p. 290. 49. Distinction in the use of the relative pronouns, p. 291. Ii Other dependent clauses, unless the meaning is unmis- takable, p. 293. i. The comma used, p. 295. 60. Clauses denoting cause or result often require the colon, p. 296. IL The comma OMitted, p. 296. PART IV. THE ESSAY PART IV. THE ESSAY. CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATION. Speak not at all in anywiae until yon have tomewhat to speak ; care not so mnch for the reward of yoor apeaking, bat simply and with undivided mind for the trath of your •peaking. —€ A RLTLK. Reproduction vs. Creation. — Thus far the stu- dent has been diiected toward the expression of ideas al- ready conceived. In Conversation one gets new thoughts ; he develops and defines his own : but the material he uses is the accumulation of his previous life, the sum-total of his culture to the moment of speaking ; instruction can do little more than lielp him to make this material available. In Letter-Writing, and in Narration and Description car- ried beyond correspondence into more formal literature, the material is still experience — what one has seen and heard and felt. The most one can hope is perfectly to re- produce. But in the Essay one creates. The first task is not to express ideas, but to get them. The essay is at basis a judgment. To describe intelligently an occurrence or a ^^^ PREPARATION. [Part IV. scene, one needs principally to have observed keenly, and to have remembered discriminatingly. But to write an essay, one should be thoroughly acquainted with the sub- ject itself and with what others have said of it, should have pondered it, should have reached a definite opinion, and should be able to maintain that opinion. This involves another and a higher set of faculties, a different and a more difficult labor. SELECTING A SUBJECT. Proper Subjects for Composition. — Hence the early composi- tions of pupils should be based on narration and description. Ab- stract general topics are meaningless to them. Few first efforts of the kind have the vigor of one recalled at an Oberlin commence- ment : About nrngth is gentleness, her ruumge is confidence, and she walks — On the broad ocean of liTe wp launch oiir bark fearlessly ; we face the storms as we welcome the sunlighr, and serene and confident amid the changing currents and baffling winds, we spr ad our sails nnd Imldly hold onr — Knows be, who knot cth himself, the first principles of human knowledge ? The man who— Blows the wind never no ill that it blows no good to some one. Across the broad ocean of life, into our very faces the tempests may howl, but the fearless sailor meeto the stonn and calmly trims his — Corn is king. To^sy more than ever before, the agrlcaltural interests of thecoontry are overshadowing all others, until as we contemplate them in their immenslly— We say farewell. To yon, whose patience and wisdom has led as with gentle hands •long the diisy steepa o< loMmlng's hill, and to yon, dear classmates, whose cheerful— Familiar Subjects.— 'Moreover the narration and description should Imj abont wimt immediately concerns or has impressed the pnpil. SymiMithy witli childhood will keep ever in mind tliat the youthful ima^nation is tu^'tr, active, but limited. This last fact is iniiH)rtAnt, but it is often forgotten. Some verses which have been the rounds of the newspaijers illustrate it : 308 SELECTING A SUBJECT. [Part IV. I WK sittinf? In the twilight, With my Chariey on mj knee (Little two-year-old, fbrerer TeMing, " Talk a ^toty, peaae, to me^y^ *♦ Now," I nid, " talk me a 'tory," " Well." reflectlvaly, *' VM *meno«. Mamma, I did ace a kiUy, Oreat— big— kitty, on the fence.** unilee. Five little flngen Cover up her laughing lipc. '^iBoolaughbig?" '• Yea," I teU him. Bat I kisH the finger tipa, And I aay, "Now, tell another/' " Well," all emilee, " now I will 'menoa. Mamma, I did aee a doggie, Great— hig— doggie, on the fence." " Rather idmilar, yoor storiea, Aren't they, dear ? " A sober look Swept acrom the pretty forehead. Then he sudden oonrage took, '* But I know a nice, new tory, splendid, mamma ! Hear me 'menoe. Mnmma, I — did — see — a — elfunt. Great— big— clfunt, on the fence I " Active and bold as is little Charley's imagination, it is limited Cat, dog, and elephant are all sitting on the fence. Moreover, children's ideas of the relations of things are of the vaguest, as their interminable questions are continually showing. One day I Rat in a car sent on the SauguR branch of the Eastern road behind a pale, care worn lady who was taking a little boy from Boston to Maiden. As the little boy was of a very inquiring mind, and everything seemed to attract his atteution, I could not help listening to some of his questions. *' What is that, auntie f " the little boy commenced, pointing to a atack of hay on the marsh. *' Oh, that's hay, dear," answered the care-worn woman. " What is hay, auntie ? " *' Why, hay is hay, dear." '• But what iR hay made of ? " *' Why, hay is made of dirt and water and air." *• Who makes it ? " *' God makes it, dear." " Does he make it in the day-time or in the night f" *' In both, dear.*' "And Sundays?" " Yes, all the time." " Ain*t it wicked to make hay on Sunday, auntie?" Chap. XVI.] CHILDREN'S IDEAS. 309 " Oh, I don't know. Td ke*p rtlll, Willie, that's a dear. Auntie is tired," After remaining qaiet a raument, little Willie broke out : " Where do stars come from, auntie ? " " I don't know ; nobody knows." •' Did the moon lay 'em t " *' Yes, I Kuess so," replied the wicked lady. " Can the moon lay egg^ too ? " »* I Ruppoee so. Don't bother me ! " A short silence, when Willie broke out again : " Bonny says oxins is an owl, auntie : is they ? " "Oh, |H>rhap8 so ! '' " I think a whale could lay eggs— don't you, auntie ? '* " Oh, yes ; I guess so," said the shameless woman. " Did you ever see a whale on his nest ? " ** Oh, I guess so." "Where?" •' I mean no. Willie, you must be quiet ; I'm getting crazy 1 " " What makes yon crazy, auntie ? " " Oh, dear, you ask so many questions." " Did you ever see a little fly eat sugar 1 " " Yea, dear." "Where?" " Willie, sit down on the seat and be still or I'll shake you. Now, not another word I ** And the laer>4sion, pupils will even write on authors of whose works they have read nothing, drawing solely from en- cyclopaedia articles and similar sources. Pupils ought to learn the ethics of authorship. There is no rule requiring an essay to be brilliant : but it must be honest. A pupil writes, e.g., on Goldsmith's '* Traveller." She remarks that ** the Traveller is the most ambitious of all Gold.smith'8 poems," and yet she has not read another one. This affectation of general- izing taints many a juvenile production. The exercise becomes morally injurious unless the teacher reproves and prohibits such transgressions, calling them by their right names. — S. Thurbeb. The obvions and the only preventive of the evils which I have been speaking of is a moRt scrupulous care in the selection of such Hul>jocts for exercises as are likely to be in- teresting to the Btudcnt, and on which he has (or may with pleasure, and without much toil, acquire) sufficient information. Such subjects will of coar;^ vary, according to the leamerVs age and intellectual advancement ; but they had better be rather below, than much above him ; that is, they sliould never be such as to induce him to string together vague general expressions, conveying no distinct idea? to hip own mind, and second-hand sentiments which he does not feel. He may freely transplant indeed from other writers such thoughts as will take root in the soil of his own mind ; but he must never be tempted to collect dried specimens. — Whatei^t. How to Subdivide a Subject. — One of the first habits to be acquired is that of examining a subject in different aspects, and selecting some feature limited enough in scope to be treated intelligently within a given limit. Claude's ** Topics. "—The following "Topics to Open Sources of Observation " are often quoted from the " Essay on the Compo- sition of a Sermon," by the Rev. John Claude; Chap. XVI.] SUBDIVISION. 313 I. " Biae from ipeetos to gennB,"^ or from partioolors to generaU. %. " Deaoend from genus to species," or from generals to particalars. 8. '* Bemark the divers characters of a vice which is forbidden, or a virtue which is oommended,*' <.«., the qualities, characteristics, and concomitants of vices and virtues. 4. " Observe the relation of one subject to another." 6. " Observe whether some things are not supposed which are not czprened," e.g., when wc speak of a change, the terminus from which neoeasarily soppoaes the terminus to which, and so the reverse. 6. '* Reflect on the persons speaking or acting," on their office, country, education, name, character, etc. 7. ** ileflcct on the state of the persons speaking or acting," i.e., the condition, or cir- oumstanccH, or moogical method, which is based on external relations of objects in ttmu and Deflnition, In pure loi;i<--, rolstoN to the cotitt-nUi uf a cuntvpiion ; diviitiun to its To divide logically is to represent the objects which a conception comprehends, both in their relation to eaoliotliei^ and in tbeir relation to the ooBoept itself. The office 314 SELECTING A SUBJECT. [Part IV. of logical diTMon ia to refard a ooooepHon as a RentM, and to resoWe it Into iU several Hpaoiea, or to rabOTdinate the particular to the general, a cnne to ita rule, and an inference to a uniTerMl propoaition ; oonaeqaently thiH kind of divi^um involvefl the following ele- mentR: 1, A given conception, or the diviidble whole ; 2, a principle of division ; that ia, some general attribnto of the divisible whole, which determines the character of the di- vision. As we reflect npon a given conception from various point* of view, we disoover in it diflTerent prindplea of divWoiu Tbna we get collateral diviakma. If am, for exam- ple, may be variooslj divided. We may take as the principal of division, either his na- tionality or religion, or morality, or mental qualittes, or occupations. In each division the given conception, man, is the same ; but for each new principle we adopt we get a different set of members of division, or q;iecillo difference*, or various particulars. Kach member of a division may it«elf be regarded as a divisible whole from which a sub* ordinate division may be derived. Thn* we get subdivisions which may be subjects! to the same dividing prooe** to almost any extent. That divinion to which a subdiviHion is immediately mbordinatai, i* called a superior division. The division which comprehends all the different series of subdivisions is called the fundamental or primary division. As to the order of diviidon, Dr. Beck's precept is : In the first place elucidate the given oonoe|ttion by a complete definition ; secondly, settle the principle of division, which must be an essential attribute of the given conception : next determine by this })rinciple the several spede* of the divisible whole ; then take each species in turn as a diviKible whole ; again settle a principle of division, and determine the several subordi- nate species and thus advance till the process is complete. Hence, as Ziegler teaches, it is an offence against logical method when a preacher, e.g., upon the proposition, '' Why is it necessary to bridle the tongue ? *" builds this as a subdivision, " What is it to bridle the tongne ? ** • The laws of logical metho*! are worth remembering, as they oon&titnte the ground- works of rhetorical method. " It is the fundamental tendency of the mind," as Dr. Beck observes. " to refer its manifold conceptions each to its own category, and thus reduce them to unity in order to comprehend them. Hence it is the logical method only which can satisfy the deepest wants of the human understanding." — Hebvkt. Specimen Subdivision. —The advantage of sub- division will be apparent on examination of the following scheme for the study of the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, prepared for the Unity Club, Chicago. The stu- dent that had for a subject nothing more specific than the name of the poet would write a vague and valueless essay ; but from the fifty limited topics suggested, he can select at least one or two that he can discuss with hope of say- ing something. The page- references are to the " Household Edition," unless the letters I. 6. are added to indicate the recent collection called " The Iron Gate and other Poems," Chap. XVLJ SPECIMEN SUBDIVISION. 315 HOLMES AT HOME. ** What if a hundred years ago, Thote cloeesAut Up* had armoered, No I ^ PAGE PAOE DOBOTRT Q., . . . . 343 CONTKNTICKNT, . . 170 Familt Recokd, . 815 RhTMKD LE880K, . 67-60 Old CAMBaiDoi, . . au4 Thi Study, . 100 LUCT, 298 Old Man Dreams, . 210 Opikiko Piano, . . 181 Mexttno or Friends, . 293 MooRK Ckntkmmiai>, I. 0., . 63 Nbarino Snow-Lihr, . 248 LENDIJIO l»UIfCH-BOWI., . ao Iron Gate, I. O., 6 Thb 8chooi«-Boy, I.Q., . 66 EpiLootnc, A.D. 1972, 206 OnckMork. . 2S3 Conversation. — For your picture of the man watch him at the Breakfast Table (♦• Autocrat "—" Professor"— "Poet") and in others' sketches, as well as in the poems above. In ** Poetic Lo- calities of Cambridge " he describes his old home. Your impres- sion of the man — his face, manner, character — from his writings ? WTiioh jmrt of his advice in the * ' Rhymed Lesson " hits your best friend ? — Notice liow often the olil-arfe thought comes over Holmes. How came a boy to write " The Last Leaf ? " Is fifty old ? CJom- l>are with his "Snow-Line" otlier old-age i>oom8, — Emei-son's "Terminus," Whittier's "St. Martin's Summer," Longfellow's "Morituri Salutamus," and his "Personal Poems" in "In the Harbor." IL THE FRIFJJD. " Whtn you teen BiU and I wu Joe."* PAOE Dill AND Joe. . J07 ADAMirrs, Indian Sumicer, 211 Lamt Sukvivor, I. 0.. Two Bot», F. W. C. . 118 TH« 8HADOWS, I. O., OLDtrr FmHM'. . . tiU Jas. F. Clabee, I. O., All Herr. 222 A Oooo TniB Oonio, Old Crcisrr, . 226 88 39 46 57 160 Cotirergation. — Which is the best of the Class-Poems? Is it a sad or a merry series to read ?— Identify his friends and cUss- mates, if possible (the Triennial Catalogue of Harvard College may help) ; and such allasionB, all through, 316 SELECTING A SUBJECT. [Part IV. time-dedcar bimin, the Umghcr, ate, the lin^aist, etc., Joe, Bill, F. W. 0., etc not 913 rni— PT, Magnolia, 41 the MaraaiUidaa, gray chief, PAOB 103 181 90 145 ni. THE DOCTOR. y/f .» I ti:>:i thf Squfrf—He'U km the Deacon, too.'" •* 7/<.'v, ,j,.i ,.( v,„ ,jica yature gave Were never potted by toeiglUe attd ecalet.*'* PAOB COMST, 9 8TBTHO0OOPB SOXO, 43 MlMD'S DiBT 106 MTBTBRIOnS IlXKBM, 116 LiviMo Templx, .143 IllOHTS, 19S Nat. Sam't Aaaoo., Two Abmibs, R. V. WiMBUt, M.D. Mbdicai. Pobm, Gbat Cbibt, The Wabbb, . Db. S. 0. UowE, PAOB 146 162 45 146 271 Conversation. — Compare his " Mechanism in Thought and Mor- als," and essays in •* Currents and Counter-CuiTents ; " and for heredity his "Elsie Venner" and "Guardian Angel." — Should you like him for a doctor ? What sort of doctor's-talk and medi- cine would you expect from him? — Does the " Two Annies" refer to soldier and physician ? — Are there any worthy poems by any one on the Human Body, — its mai^el ? — What other doctor-poeta or doctors famous in literature are there ? IV. THE PATRIOT. " Ay, tear her tattered ensign doton ! " page PAGE DOBCHESTKR GlANT, . 7 BnoTHBB J. TO SistebC, . 153 Robinson of Lktdkh, . 180 Under Wash'n Elm, . IM AONES, .... 39 Akmy Hymn. . 155 Boston Tea-Pabtt, 247 Sweet Little Man, . 157 BUNKEK HlIX. . 300 Union and Libertt, . 158 Amer. Acad. Cent'l., I. G., 62 Good Ship Union. . 216 Oij> Ironsides, . 1 Charles Scmneb, . 275 Boston Bells, 53 Governor Andrew, 298 Boston Common, . 151 How Not to Settle It, . . 237 Vbbtioia Quinque, I. G., 10 Japanese Banquet, 258 Chap. XVI.] SPECIMEN SUBDIVISION. 31 Conversation.— la our early history rich or poor in romance ?— Why no Abolition poems? — Do his war-jwems stir you? Com- jiare with Lowell, Whittier, and Longfellow on similar themes. The two boy-poets of *' Old Ironsides " (see p. 20) and '* Thana- topsis." V. THE POET. '* Ai the seasons slid along. Every year a notch of song. '^^ To Ht Rkapkm, SnCPATHIKfl, . MCSA eviv somo, Openiho thk Wikdow, Pboorammk, . Old Teab Somq, . SlLBHT MXLODT, I. O., VOICII.BM, . PAOK PAGK xi. PoemtoGrdbb, ... 288 191 SBfiLiNO Listen EB, . . 289 163 Familiar Lettkb, . . .806 227 Atlaktic Dinner, . 296 241 WOBDSWOBTH, . . . .127 241 BuBHS 160 243 Brtant 269 80 LOMOFELLOW, ... 283 141 WBimEB'8 BiBTHDAT, I. O., . 27 Conversation. — What poems of Nature do you find? Has he the poet's eye for Nature ? What think you of his Spring and Autumn pictures (99, llJo, 2-43) ? — Compare Holmes's ideal of the Poet and liis Mission with that of other poets. Is poetry an ear- nest business or a pastime to him? VI. THE WIT. ** I never dare to writ* Am funny at I can.'" PAOB PAOS HnoBT or RxoiovLOtra, . 12 Pbolooite 166 DiLKXHA 4 Deacon's Srat, ... 179 McBic Qbixdbrs, ... 9 How Old Hob«b Woh, . . 909 OBOAX BLOWBB, V4!i i>AB80M T.'s Lboact, . . 178 COMTSmtKNT. ... 170 Fakbwell. Aoamxz, . S94 Hot Season. ... 84 AdntTabitha. ... 187 Destination 171 What Aix Think, . . 165 CilAKSOV, SM LattbbDat WABNixoa, 168 Conversation. — 1.- .i „a or humor? Does it ever sting? Wh*t geniality or self-oontrol— which is it?— 4hat shows in Holmes? But do you wish he had used his power to sting some things ? 318 SELECTING A SUBJECT. [Part IV. Compare his fun with Lowell's and Bret Hai'te's and Hood's. — The imagination of the poet and that of the humorist compared. Does humor steal the sense of beauty away ? Does it imply shallow sympathies? Has Holmes much of the humorist's pathos? In what iK>ems do you find it ? — Are ** metrical essays " to be borne? Are *• occasional " verses — *' poems sen'ed to order " — often ][X)ems ? Has Holmes's good-iiatiu*e (see " Programme," 242) cost him dear, or not, as poet ? Ls he an artist as to words, phi'ases, and music of verse ? Among our five elder poets, what word or two character- izes him and our debt to him ? Is he a great ix)et ? By what poems will he be known in 1972 ? Which shows him at his best, his prose or poetry ? Is not his best poetry in his prose ? What three poems seem his noblest to you ? What three his funniest ? His three best compliments to friends ? Ten familiar quotations ? Better the mottoes chosen above for our half-dozen glimpses of the poet. The Subject Stated. — A question definitely stated is half settled. So a subject clearly conceived and cir- cumscribed is half treated. One should determine not only the point on which he will write, but the radins of treatment, and hence the circumference of exclusion. The circle may have any degree of extension, for in the world of ideas every object is connected with every other, and may suggest any other. If these suggestions are followed without system or limit, the discourse leads the mind, not the mind the discourse ; and the writer, like the pilot of a helmless vessel, abandons himself to an uncertain voyage, not knowing where he shall land. Therefore, in order to lead and sustain the progress of a dis- coui-se, one must clearly know whence one starts, and whither one goes, and never lose sight of either the point of dei)arture or the destination. But, to effect this, the road must be measured be- forehand, and the principal distance marks must have been placed. There is a risk else of losing one's way, and then, either one ar- rives at no end, even after much fatigue, productive of intermina- Chap. XVI.] GATHERING MATERIAL. 319 ble discourses leading to nothing,— or if one at la.st leaehes the destination, it is after an infinity of turns and circuits, which have wearied the hearer as well as the sj^eaker, without profit or pleas- ure for anybody. — Bautain. Many sj^eakers resemble the men of an exploring party in a newly settled country, who have no particular object in view ; as long as they do but get over a certain amouut of ground, they are careless as to the direction they may have taken, and are not much surprised if they find at last that they have been walking in a circle, and have an'ived at the vei-y spot from which they origin- ally started : on the other hand, a good speaker may be compared to a native of the same country, who, striking unhesitatingly into the right path, never once pauses or turns aside until he attains the object of his journey. — Halcombe. GATHERING MATERIAL. It has been said that if the task of describing the hip- popotamus were given to an Englislinian, a Frenchman, and a German, the Englishman would take down his gun, sail for Africa, shoot one, examine it, and tell what he had seen ; the Frenchman would ransack the National Library, read all that had ever been written of the animal, and compile a description ; while the German would light his pipe, lean back in his chair, and evolve the hippopotamus out of his inner consciousness. Help That must be Looked For.— To define and state the subject will require original reflection ; it will indeed call into use nearly all the previous general prepar- ation of the pupil that can be made available. After he has clearly detennined the point to be discussed, the pupil is not advised to evolve out of liis inner consciousness any ideas that he can get elsewhere. With all the suggestions that he can derive from books and conversation, he will still have quite enough to do to make his presentation of the subject worthy of attention, liis aim is the truth of 320 PREPARATION. [Part IV. the matter ; and he would be as foolish to neglect the landmarks laid down in the books of wise men, as he would to neglect the paths up a mountain or through a forest, trodden by men who had been there before, and who knew the way. If the paths do not lead him where he wants to go, he can strike out for himself ; but he will do well to try the paths first. The boy that is too con- ceited to follow a track is likely to be lost in the woods. A speaker at a teachers' association sj^ent half the time allotted to him in apologizing for the revolutionary chai-acter of the ideas he was about to be the first to announce. He knew the audience would be startled and shocked ; perhaps it would be indignant. He could only say that his views were reached after the consider- ation of many years. The essay he was about to read was the result of six months' direct preparation. He begged his hearers to be patient with him, and to remember that, however heretical, he was at least sincere. What the consequences of his discoveiy would be, he could not foresee. That they would be momentous he could not doubt, but he could not shrink from the responsi- bility. The tmth must stand, though the skies tumbled. After all this introduction, he proceeded to read a vague and timorous exposition of the theory that mind is a manifestation of physical force : a theoiy that it was an undoubted achievement for him to have reached unaided, but which had for years been fami- liar to all well-read men in the works of Comte and Bain. Here was a pitiable waste of mental effort. When the idea fii*st suggested itself to him, he should have reflected that the chance of its being a new hypothesis in the world of thought was infinitesimal ; so he should have searched to find where it had been propounded, whether it had been refuted, or what was the present state of the discussion. This investigation might have led him to give up the idea as unworthy of further consideration, or to apply his thinking intelligently. In either case it would have saved him from throwing away his time, and from making himself ridiculous. Chemistry advances because its students make themselves fam- iliar with what others have discovered and fixed, before they Chap. XV L] HELP THAT MUST BE SOUGHT. 321 choose their own narrow fields for further investigation. There may be among them one or two that conld in the course of a life- time discover oxygen for themselves. But why should they waste labor in doing over again what Priestley has done as well as it can be done ? It is for each generation to begin where the last left ofif, and thus to advance in geometrical ratio. So in composition, the subject having been chosen and limited, the first step is to discover what great minds have thought about it. There will be found enough variance of opinion and difference of treatment to leave exercise for judgment and taste ; nor will it lessen the possibility of an original contribution to the subject, that the student knows and is inspired by the best thoughts of others. Po mett Um tn the Ftnder't Nanu.—Thout who hare to treat a mbject which has not been treated before, are obligetl to draw tiom a consideration of the subject, and from thefar own reaoarcea, all they have to say. Then, according to their gunius and their penetration, and in proportion to the manner in which they put themselves in prenence of the things, will their th poestble and incnmt>ent to have that other sijecics of originality, which consists in pat- ting forth no ideas except snch as one has made one's own by a conception of one's own, and thus quickened b) the life of one's own mind. This is calleil taking po9»e*»ion in the Jl niter* a natne : and Mulidre, when be imitated Plautus and Ter«'nce; La Fontaine, when be borrowed from ^nop and Phiedras, were not ashamed of the practice. This oondition is indispensable if life is to be imparted to the discourse ; and it is this which distingnlshes the orator, who draws on his own interior reaonroes even when he borrows, fhmi the actor who impersonates, or the reader who recites the productions of another. Fdmion or TBB loCAt OT OTHBBa — In such a case the problem stantls therefore thns : When voo have to speak on a snbjeot already treated by several authors, yuu must care- fully cull their jnstest and moat NtriMng thoughts, analyse and sift theae with critical discernment and penetration, then fnse them in your own alembic by a powerful synthetio <^ ration, which, rejeottng whataver la hetemireneoai, collects and kneads whatever is homiigeneoua or amalgamable. and fashions forth a complex idea that shall assume con- ditency, tniHy, and odor In the imderstanding by the very heat of the mind^ Inlwr. If we may ojiapare thingi ipbltaal with things msterial,— and we always may, since tbry are governed bj the same laws, and hence their analogy,— we wonld aay that, in the formation of an idea by this method, something oocnrs aimilar to what is observed in the production of the csramio or modeller's art, composed of varloaa olsmsnts, oArttta, salta, msiaki, aUuOiflS rnOda, and th* rest, which, when sokably sspMmfesd, siflod, pvrited, ars 322 PREPARATION. [Part IV, flrat nnited into one eompoond, then knca<1«d, shaped, monlded, pr tarned, and finally mibjected to the action of the fire, which oombines them in unity, and gives to the wholft Holidity and splendor.— Bautain. Nbcjessity op Wide Reading. — "The orator who sjieaks after many others, and mnst treat the same topic, ought first to en- deavor to make liimself acquainted with all that has been written on the subject, in order to extract from the mass the thoughts which best sen-e his end ; he ought then to collect and fuse within his own thought the lights emitted by other minds, gather and converge ui>on a single point the rays of those various luminaries. " He cannot shirk this labor, if he would treat his subject with fulness and profundity ; in a word, if he is in earnest with his business, which is to seek tmth, and to make it known. Like every tnie artist, he has an intuition of the ideal, and to that ideal he is impelled by the divine instinct of his intelligence to lift his conceptions and his thoughts, in order to produce, first in himself, and then upon others, by si>eakiug or by whatever is his vehicle of expression, something which shall forever tend toward it, with- out ever attaining it. For ideas, properly so called, being the very conceptions of the Supreme Mind, the eternal archetyi>es after which all created things have been modelled with all their powers, the human mind, made after the image of the Creator, yet always finite, whatever its force or its light, can catch but glimpses of them here below, and will always be incapable of conceiving and of reproducing: them in their immensity and infinitude." Not too Much Reading. However, care must be taken here not to allow one's self to be carried away by too soaring a train of considerations, or into too vast a field ; all is linked with all, and in things of a higher world this is more especially the case, for there you are in the realm of sovereign unity and universality. A philosopher, meditating and writing, may give wings to his contemplation, and his flight will never be too vigorous, pro\'ided his intelligence be illumined with the true light, and guided in the right path ; but the speaker gen- erally stands before an audience who are not on his own level, and whom he must take at theirs. Again, he speaks in a given state of things, with a view to some immediate effect, some defin- ite end. His topic is restricted by these conditions, and his man- Chap. XVI.] HOW AND WHAT TO READ. 323 ner of treating it must be subordinated to them, his discourse adapted to them. It is no business of his to say all that might be said, but merely what is necessary or useful in the actual case, in order to enlighten his hearers and to persuade them. He must, therefore, circumscribe his matter within the limits of his pur- pose ; and his discourse must have just that extent, that elevation, and discretion which the special circumstances demand. (See page 318.) Becul, Ckyinpare, Assimikue. — It is with this aim that the orator ought to prepare his mateiials, and lay in, as it were, the provi- sions for his discourse. First, as we liave said, he must collect the ingredients of his comix)st. Then he \^-ill do what the bee does, which rifles the flowers — exactly what the bee does ; for, by an admimble instinct which never misleads it, it extracts from the cup of the flowers only what serves to form the wax and the honey, the aromatic and the oleaginous particles. But, be it well observed, the bee first nourishes itself with these extracts, digests them, transmutes them, and turns them into wax and honey solely by an operation of ab- sorption and assimilation. Just so should the speaker do. Before him lie the fields of science and of literature, rich in each description of flower and fruit — every hue, every flavor. In these fields he will seek his booty, but Mith discernment ; and choosing only what suits liis work, he will extract from it, by Oiotight/ul reatling, and by the pro- cess of mental tasting (his thoughts all absorbed in his topic, and darting at once upon whatever relates to it), everything which can minister nutriment to his intelligence, or fill it, or even perfume it ; in a word, the substantial or aromatic elements of his honey, or idea, but ever so as to take in and to digest, like the bee, in order that there may be real transformation and appropriation, and consequently a production fraught with life, and to live. — Bautain. Where to Look. — To know what books to consnlt uj>on a given subject is in itself a liberal education. No* school or college can do much more for a man than to show him liow much there is to be learned, and how to learn 324 PREPARATION. [Part IV. whatever little part of that much it may be worth his im- mediate while to master. As the stranger in town does not attempt to become acquainted witli every street, but by consulting a map fixes in mind the main thoroughfares, so as to keep in mind in what part of the city he is, and how he may get to any other part, so one gets from the best education a bird's-eye view of the whole field of knowledge ; he does not know everything, but he knows what steps to take to become acquainted with any- thing. Some General Hints. — In general it may be said that one would naturally consult first a cyclopaedia, two or three cyclopaedias, if so many are at hand. Here will be found not only direct information, but references to the lead in i^ books on the subject. These books, if accessible, will re- fer to others, and these in turn to others yet, so that with plenty of time and a large enough library one may hope to hit upon most that is valuable in the literature of the subject. •* What, read books ! " said one of the great lights of European physiological science to a not less eminent American scholar, •• I never read a book in my life, except the Bible." He had time only to glance over the thousands of volumes which lay around him, to consult them occasionally, to accept the particular facts or illustrations which he needed to aid him in his own researches. — Marsh. The best way of reading books with rapidity, is to acquire that habit of severe attention to what they contain that perpetually con- fines the mind to the single object it has in view. When you have read enough to have acquired the habit of reading without suffering your mind to wander, and when you can bring to bear upon your subject a great share of previous knowledge, you may then read with rapidity ; before that, as you have taken the wrong road, the faster you proceed the more you will be sure to err, — Sydney Smith. Chap. XVI.] HELP FROM CONVERSATION. 325 Periodicals, especially the monthlies and quarterlies, are becoming more and more essential to thorough inves- tigation, and more and more accessible, through careful in- dexes. LitteWs Living Aye will give one glimpses of the latest thought, and will suggest much not easily found in books. Finally, Conversation is a most important resource. Be- fore one has begun to investigate, while one is investi- gating, and after one has reached and begun to formulate ideas, one will greatly profit by talking the subject over with an intelligent companion. Older persons are often glad to be approached by the young enthusiast, and will not unfrequently suggest more in a minute than might be happened upon in a month. Thackeray illustrates this when he makes Addison say in a con- versation with Henry Esmond : ** One of the grcfttoat of a grcttt man's qualitien is Roooem : 'tis the resnlt of all the others ; 'tii* a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune. Of all bis ^MfUt I admire that one in the great Marlborough. Tu be brave ? every man is brave, but in l>eing victorious, as he is, I fancy there is something divine. In pres e nce of the occasion, the great soul of the leader shines out, and the god is con- fessed. Death itwlf respects him, and paKses by him to lay others low. War and car nage rice before him to ravage other |iart«« of the field, as Hector from before the divine Achilles. Wo Mty he hath no pity ; no more have the gods, who are above it, and super- human. The fainting battle gathers strength at his aspect, and wberaTcr he rides vic- tory ohnrgcM with him." •• A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond revisited his poetio friend ho found this thought, struck out in the /error of conversa- tion, improved and shaped into those famous lines which are in tnith the noblest in the poem of the * Campaign.' " 'Twas then great MarlbrA's mighty soal was proved. That, in the shock uf charging boats nnmov'd Amidat ooofntion. horror, and despair, BxmminM all the dreadful aoenes of war ; la peaoeful thought th« field of death nrvey'd. To fkinting equA^lrons sent the timely aid, Insplr'd repuls'd bnttalions to engage, And tMif^ht tiM doohKtU biiMa wbwa to ne«b 326 PREPARATION. [Part IV. 60 when an angel bj divine command WiUi riRing tempests Bhakes a ^ilty land. Bach UN of late o'er pale Britannia past. Calm nnd Kerene he drives the furious blast ; Anrl. ploaK'd tti* AlmiKhty's orders to perform, Uidw in tho whirlwind, and directs the storm. Ideas Everywhere.— If the writer takes the proper hold of his subject, his subject will soon take hold of him, and illustrate itself at every turn, lie will be astonished to notice how every incident of his daily life, the morning newspaper, the book he picks up while waiting for lunch, the conversation he overhears on the horse-car, all have a bearing on the topic that absorbs him. This is from the principle already named, that all ideas are connected. When one has a firm grasp of any one of the multitude he feels the pull upon it of all the rest. Taking Notes. Always read pen or pencil in hand. Mark the parts which most strike you, those in which you perceive the germ of an idea or of anything new to you ; then, when you have finished your reading, make a note, — let it be a substantial note, not a mere transcription or extract — a note embodying the veiy thought which you have apprehended, and which you have already made your own by digestion and assimilation. Above all, let these notes be short and lucid ; put them down one under the other, so that you may afterward be able to run over them at a single view. Mistrust long readings from which you can-y nothing away. Our mind is naturally so lazy, the labor of thought is so irksome to it, that it gladly yields to the pleasure of reading other people's thoughts, in order to avoid the trouble of foiTaing any itself; and then time passes in endless readings, the pretext of which is some hunt after materials, and which come to nothing. The mind ruins its own sap, and gets burdened with trash : it is as though overladen with undigested food, which gives it neither force nor light. (See page 322.) Quit not a book until you have wrested from it whatever relates Chap. XVI.] NEW IDEAS DEVELOPED. 327 the most closely to yonr subject. Not till then go on to another, and get the cream off, if I may so express myself, in the same man- ner. Repeat this labor with several, until you find that the same things are beginning to return, or nearly so, and that there is noth- ing to gain in the plunder ; or suppose that you feel your under- standing to be suflBciently furnished, and that your mind now re- quires to digest the nutriment it has taken. — Baittain. Development of the Subject.— Important as it was clearly to define the subject before the investigation began, under this treatment it is almost sure to take on an altered aspect, if not a wholly different meaning. It is customary to tell good little boys and girls that genius is only capacity for work ; and that such men as Bacon and Shak- spere and Bonaparte acliieved great results only because they formed habits of intense and continued concentration of energy. The moral is, that good little boys and girls must study hard, but, like many other excellent morals, it is enforced at the expense of truth. In the men that have accomplished most, and whom we therefore naturally cite for illustration, genius lias usually been accompanied by habits of industry. Such men, with a sort of modest self-glorification, have sometimes attributed their achieve- ments to their labor, instead of to the insight that prompted and directed that labor. But there are men in this country that have devoted more intense and continued labor to the tliscovery of per- ])etual motion than Bacon gave to the ** Novum Organon." A half -hour's study in boyhoml of an elementary text-book of physics would have proved to them beyond the shadow of a doubt that l>erpetual motion is simply imj^ossible. That half-hour's study they never had, and so they have wasted their lives in batting their heads against one of nature's stoue-waUs. Now it is the peculiarity of genius that without this half-hour's study it oBoapes the impracticable and the irrelevant.' It (leers beneath the accidents to the essence, and takes the shortest path to the truth sought. Here is an exi)erience common to all of us who have tried to in- Testigate a subject. We first think it over, gathering and cluiisifyiug ail that we 328 PREPARATION. [Part IV. know abont it. Then we begin to read, probably in the direction of supplementing such of our ideas as seem most essential. Under this treatment the subject broadens. "We are surprised to find how its roots extend through every field of knowledge. One au- thority compels us to consult another, until we long to live in the British Museum, and to lay under tribute all books, of all times, in all languages. Presently we reach a point where our new information is of de- tails, and we feel sure that our general analysis is sound and fun- damental. Then we begin to write. And in the very flush of our wisdom, while we are seeking perchance for an illustration or a happy expression, we encounter a hint, a suggestion, a chance re- mark, which flashes over us the discovery that we are not yet even approaching the kernel of truth we supposed ourselves to have gi*asped ; that we are groping aimlessly about the circumference, and have not found even the path to the centre. Now the man of genius escapes this waste of effort. It is not the quantity of work he does : it is the quality. His eveiy stroke tells, because the eye that directs it is unerring. Hence too much time shonld not be given to the title and introduction of an essay. The preface of a book is always the last part written, and the wording of the title is often a happy inspiration tliat comes in the midst of the labor of composition. Not seldom the young writer finds himself in his final revision obhged to omit as extraneous the passages which he has poUshed the most carefully. His loss is still gi*c:iter if he does not omit them. Arrangement of Notes. — As notes accumulate, divisions of the subject will suggest themselves, and classi- fication will naturally follow. This is the more necessary, that difFering views on the same point may be closely com- pared, which might easily be neglected in a mass of undi- gested material. But as the principle of classification is almost sure to vary as the investigation proceeds, all the Chap. XVL] EMEBSOITS LITERARY METHOD. 329 notes should be read over from time to time, and redistri- buted wherever n^essary. It haa been Bmenoo** habit to spend the forenoon in his fitndy, with constant regn- lari^. He haa not waited for moods, but caught them as they came, and nscd their re- •olto In each day's work. He has been a diligent though a slow and painstaking worker. It has been his wont to jot down his thoughts at all hours and places. The suggcptions whi<^ reHult from his readings, conversations, and meditations arc transferred to the note-book he carries with him. In his walks many a gem of thought is thus preserved ; and hla mind is alwayrt alert, quick to see, his powers of observation being perpetually awake. The results of his thinking are thus stored up, to be made use of when required. The story is told that his wife suddenly awakened in the night, before she knew his habitis and heard him moving about the room. She anxiously inquired if he were ill. ** Only an idi'a." wits hl« reply, and proceeded to jot it down. Curtis humorously says the Tillagers " relate that he has a h«ge manuscript book, in which he incessantly records the ends of thoughts bits of observation and experience, tlie facts of all kinds— a kind of intellecta*l and scientific scrap-bag, into .. hich oil shreds and remnants of conversa- tion and reminiaoenoes of wayside reveries are incontinently thrust." After his note-bonks are filled, he transcribes their contents to a larger commonplace book. He then writes at the bottom, or in the margin, the subject of each paragraph. When he desires to write an easay. he turns to his note-books, transcribes all his para- graphs on that snbject, drawing a perpendicular line through whatever he has thus copied. These aepanite jottings, perhaps written years apart, and in widely different cir- cumstancea and moods, arc brought together, arranged in such order as is possible, and are welded together by such matter as is suggested at the time. Alcott relates going once to hla stady. to find him with many sheets of manuscript scattered about on the floor, which he was anxiously endeavoring to arrange in something like a systematic treatment of the subject in hand at the time. The essay thus prepare tenoea. His lectorea which are rapidly composed, for s]iecial occasions, have a continuity and flow of thooght quite different from the essays in his books. The atldreaa on Lincoln, written in one evening, shows this. The published essays are often the results of many lectorea, the most pregnant sentences and (wragraphs alone being retained. His apples are sorted over and over again, until only the very rarest, the most perfect are left It do«a not matter that thoae thrown away are very good, and help to make clear the poaai- bllitioa of the orotaard : they are unmercifully oaat aside. His easays are, oonaeqnently, vi>ry slowly dabar»tad, wrought out through days and months, and even years, of pa- tient thought. Hla easajs are all ouefollj reriaed again and again, conected, wrought over, portions dropped, and new matter added. He is nnspariag in his oorreotiona, striking out sen- tence after sentence ; and paragraphs disappear from time to time. His manuscript is evsrywhsre crowded with araMues and corrections ; scarcely a page appear* that is not covered with tiMM evld«w« of hi> diUcwt rrrlrioo.— G. W. CoosB. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Reproduction vs. Creation, p. 305. SELECTING A SUIUECT, p. 306. Bombastic commonplaces, p. 306. Familiar subjects, p. 307. The topic to be discussed, p. 311. Literary and historical subjects, p. 311. How to subdivide a subject, p. 312. Specimen subdivision, p. 314. The subject stated, p. 318. GATHERING MATERIAL, p. 319. Possession in the finder's name, p. 321. Fusion of the ideas of others, p. 321. Necessity of wide reading, p. 322. Not too much reading, p. 322. Where to look, p. 323. Some general hints, p. 324. Ideas everywhere, p. 326. Taking notes, p. 326. Development of the subject, p. 327. Arrangement of notes, p. 328. CHAPTER XYII. INVENTION. Invention, \ti tho rhetorical sonise, is that energy of the mind by which we disoem ide«8 and their re'.ationH. Vinet likens it to a divininK-roil, which enables some minds to diwover riches of thought and beauties uf langaoge to which other minds arc insensible. John Quincy Adams says : *' It selects from the whole mass of ideas conceived or stored In the mind those which can most effectually pn^mote the object of discourse ; it gath- ers from the whole domain of real or apparent truth their inexhaustible subsidies to se- cure the triumph of persuasiun." Thus it is seen to be not only an originating, but a ooostructive faculty. It not only seeks out that which was before unknown ; it also seizes upon old truths and blends them together in new comb nations. It finds new pathways throngh old regions of thought. It never contcnU ittself with what others have done, but insists upon fashioning what Is new to itself, whatever uses other minds have made of the fame material. — Kiodeb. The Essay Half Done.— The work tlins far laid out has demanded nothing of what is commonly looked npon as authorship. It has required judgment, but not more than is needed in a topical geography lesson. With- out considering native talent, its accomplishment depends upon the will-power of any student. Yet it is in amount and in kind the hardest part of es- say-writing. Inertia has been overcome, the student is roused and interested, liis mind is full of his subject, he really wants to know what the truth of the matter is, and how to reach it ; if he has had practice enougli to over- come his timidity, he is even anxious to begin the active part of composition. The Moment of Action.— "It is with the mind as with the body, after nourishment and repose it re- quires to act and to tranPfnit. When it has repaired its 332 INVENTION. [Part IV. strength it must exert it ; when it lias received, it must give; after having concentrated itself, it needs dilation; it must yield back what it has absorbed ; fulness unre- lieved is as painful as inanition. These are the two vital movements— attraction and expansion." Hoic to Begin. — The moment this fulness is felt, the moment of acting or thinking for yourself has arrived. You take up your notes and you carefully re-read them face to face with the topic to be treated. Yon blot out such as di- verge from it too much, or are not suflBciently substantial, and by this elimination you gnuiually eonecntmte and compress the thoughts which have the greatest reciprocal bearing. You work these a longer or a shorter time in your understanding, as in a crucible, by the inner fire of reflection, and, in nine cases out of ten, they end by amalgamating and fusing into one another, until they fomi a homogeneous mass, which is reduced, like the metallio pai-ticles in incandescence, by the persistent hammering of thought, into a dense and solid oneness. As soon as you become conscious of this unity, you obtain a glimi)se of the essential idea of the comjwsitiou, and in that essen- tial idea, the lea<^ling ideas which will distribute your topic, and which already api>ear like the fii-st organic lineaments of the dis- coiu*se. Repress Impatience. Sometimes the idea thus conceived, is developed and formed rapidly, and then the plan of the discoui-se an-anges itself on a sudden, and you throw it upon paper warm with the fei-vor of the conception which has just taken place, as the metal in a state of fusion is poured into the mould, and tills at a single turn all its lineaments. It is the case most favorable to eloquence, — that is, if the idea has been well conceived, and if it be fraught with light. But in general, one must not be in a hurry to form one's plan. In nature, life always needs a definite time for self-organization, — and it is only ephemeral beings which are quickly formed, for they quickly pass away. Eveiything destined to be durable is of slow growth, and beth the solidity and the strength of existing things Chap, XVII. ] FIRST STEPS. 333 bear a direct ratio to the length of their increase and the mature- ness of th»Mr production. Development of the Idea. Tlie thouglits ai)i)ly themselves to a frequent consideration of the idea conceived ; they turn it and return it in every direction, look at it in all its a«i>ects, place it in all manner of relations ; then they jxinetrate it with their light, scnitinize its foundation, and examine its principal parts in succession ; these begin to come out, separate themselves from each other, to assume shaip out- lines, just as in the bud the fii"st rudimentary ti-aces of the flower are discernible ; then the other organic lines, appearing oue after the other, instinct with life, or like the confused, first animate form, which, little by little, declares itself in all the finish of its proportions. In like manner, the idea, in the successive stages of its formation, shows itself each day in fuller development to the mind which bears it, and which acquires assurance of its progress by persevering meditation. Reflection upon the Idea. There are frequently good ideas which jjerish in a man's under- standing, abortively, whether for want of nourishment, or from the debility of the mind which, through levity, indolence, or giddiness, fails to devote a sufficient amount of reflection to what it has conceived. It is even observable that those who conceive with the greatest quickness and facility, bring forth, generally, both in thoughts and in language, the weakest and the least dura- ble productions ; whether it be that they do not take time enough to mature what they have conceived, — hurried into precocious dis- play by tlie vivacity of their feelings and imagination,— or on ac- count of the impres-sionability and acti\'ity of their mimls, which, ever yielding to fresh emotions, exhausting themselves in too rapid an alternation of revulsions, have not the strength for patient meditations, and allow the half-fomied idea or the ciiide thought, bom M-ithout life, to escape from the understanding. Much, then, is in our own power toward the rii)ening and perfecting of our ideas. Organization of the Idea. The pri'piinition of the plan of a ilis((»nrso implies, before any- thing else, u kuowletlgo of the things about which you have to 334 INVENTION. [ParxIV. Rpeak ; but a general knowledge is not enongh ; yon may have a great quantity of materials, of documonts, and of information in your memory, and not be aware how to bring them to bear. It sometimes even hap})ens tliat those who know most, or have most matter in their heads, are incajMible of rightly conveying it. The over-abundance of acquisition and words crushes the mind, and stifles it, just as the head is paralyzed by a too great deter- mination of blood, or a lamp is extinguished by an excess of oU. You must begin, therefore, by methodizing what you know about the subject you wish to treat, and thus, in each discourse, you must adopt as your centre or chief idea, the point to be ex- plained, but subordinate to this idea all the rest, in such a way as to constitute a sort of organism, ha\'ing its head, its organs, its main limbs, and all the means of connection and of circulation by which the light of the paramount idea, emanating from the focus, may be communicated to the furthest imrts, even to the last thought, and last word ; as in the human body the blood emerges from the heart, and is spread throughout all the tissues, animating and coloring the surface of the skin. Thus only will there be life in the discoui'se, because a true unity will reign in it, — that is, a natural unity resulting from an interior development, an unfolding from within, and not from an artificial gathering of heterogeneous members and their arbitrary juxtaposition. — Bautain. Practical Rules. I. Address your mind to the invention of thoughts, not words. Words may be employed, but only as auxiliaries. II. Note down, or otherwise make sure of whatever relevant thoughts your mind can call to its aid, irrespective of order or mainly so. m. At first be not too scrupulous on the subject of relevancy. Entertain whatever seemingly good thoughts come to your aid at your call. Try them, push them out to conclusions. Perhaps if not available themselves they will lead to others that are. rV. Pursue invention in every variety of circumstance, in the study and out of it. Make it the subject of special and protracted occupation, and also of occasional attention, when walking or rid- Chap. XVII.] ORGANIC GROWTH OF THE IDEA. 335 ing, when taking exercise or rest. One's very dreams at night may sometimes be made seniceable for this object. V. Make use of former studies and preparations as helps to in- vention rather than as substitutes for it. Invention as thus practised will always strengthen but never exhaust itself. It will become a most delightful exercise, causing the mind to glow with rapture at its new creations and combina- tions. While one thus muses (inventively meditatas), the tire of inspiration bums within him, and he becomes prepared to speak with his tongue. — KmDER. The Plan of a Discourse ''is the order of the things which hoAse to he unfolded. You must therefoi-e begin by gathering these togetlier, whetlier facts or ideas, and examining eacli separately, in their relation to the subject or purport of the discourse, and in their mutual bearings witli respect to it. Next, after liaving selected those wliich befit the subject, and rejecting tbo.^e which do not, yon mast marshal them around the main idea, in such a wavas to arranj^e them accordinjx to their rank and importance, with respect to the result which you have in view. But, what is worth still more than even this com- position or synthesis, you should try, when possible, to draw forth, by analysis or deduction, the complete devel- opment of one single idea, which becomes not merely the centre, but the very principle of the rest. This is tlie l)est manner of explaining or developing, because exist- ences are tlius produced in nature, and a discourse, to have its full value and full efficiency, should imitate her in her vital process, and j^erfect it by idealizing that process." In fact, reason, when thinking and expressing its thought, per- forms a natural function, like the plant which germioAtes, flowers, and bears fruit. It oi>erate8, indeed, according to a more exalted power, but it follows in the ()]>omtion the same laws as all beings onduoil with hfo ; f\!ie used at the risk of destroying their tender shoots. This sluggishness, or ra- ther incapabihty of producing when the time is come, is a sign of mental feebleness, of a species of impotency. It invariably be- tokens some signal defect in the intellectual constitution, and those who are afflicted with it vsill write little, will write that little with difficulty, and will never be able to speak extemporaneously in public, — they will never bo orators. Nevertheless, even in him who is ca])abIo of becoming one, there is sometimes a certain inertness and laziness. We have nat- urally a horror of labor, and of all kinds the labor of thought is the hardest and the most troublesome ; so that fretjuently, for no other reason than to avoid the pain which must be undergone, a person long keeps in his own head an idea, already jierfectly ripe, and requiring only to be put forth. He cannot bring himself to take up the pen and put Iiis plan into shape ; he procrastinates, day after day, under the futile pretext of not having read enough, not ha>ing reflected enough, and that the moment is not yet come, wid that the work will gain by more prolonged studies. Then, by 538 INVENTIOK. [Part IV. this nnseasonable delay, the fruit langnishes in the underfitautling from want of nourishment ; falls l)y degrees into atrophy, loses its vital forc«, and dies before it is yet l)om. !Many an excellent idea thus perishes in the germ, or is stifled in its development by the laziness or the debility of the minds which have conceived them, and which liave been impotent to give them forth. The Aliniffhty> gift i» lost through man's fault. This happens to men otherwise ditt- ttngutehed and (rifted with rare qoalititrH, but who dread the reMponitibilitips of duty and the prewnre of the circuiuHtancctt in which they may become inv<»lver, would have effected in them what the love of truth or of glory was not able to acoompIiKh.— Bautaih. First, a Bold Outline.— "Beware of introducing style into tlie arrangement of your plan ; it ought to be like an artist's draught, the sketch, which, by a few lines unintelligi])le to everybody save him who has traced them, decides what is to enter into the composition of the pic- ture, and each object's place. Light and shadow, coloring and expression, will conie later." Or, to take another image, the j^lan is a skeleton, the diy bonc- frarae of the body, repulsive to all except the adept in anatomy, but full of interest, of meaning, and of significance for him who has studied it and who has pi*actised dissection; for there is not a cartilage, a i^rotubei-auce, or a hollow which does not mark what that structure ought to sustain — and therefore you have here tlio whole body in epitome, the entire organization in miniature. Hence, the moment you feel that your idea is mature, and that you are master of it in its centre and in its radiations, its main or tnink lines, take the pen and throw upon jjaper what you see, what you conceive in your mind. If you are young or a novice, allow the pen to have its way and the current of thought to flow on. There is always life in this first rush, and care should be taken Chap. XVII.] THE HEAVY STROKES FIRST. not to check its impetus or cool its ardor. Let the volcanic lava run ; it will become fixed and crystalline of itself. Make your plan at the first heat, if you be impelled to do so, and follow your inspiration to the end ; after which let things alone for a few days, or at least for several hours. Then re-read attentively what you have written, and give a new form to your plan ; that is, re-write it from one end to the other, leaving only what is necessaiy, what is essential. Eliminate inexorably what- ever is accessory or suj^erfluous, and trace, engrave with cai'e the leading characteristics which determine the configuration of the discourse, and contain within their demarcations the parts which are to compass it. Only take pains to have the principal features well marked, viN-idly brought out, and strongly connected to- gether, in order that the division of the discourse may be clear and the links firmly welded. The inexperienced orator ia to oonflne himself in conBtmcting his plan to the salient fpaturcK of hiR Kiibjcct, to lay down boldly the trunk lines of the diBcourse, omitting all flllin»i up ; to draw broadly, with hatchct-strokea, so to say, and not to set about punc- tuating, not to get lost in miniitia*, when the business is to mark out the main ways. Another ativico which niiiy be given i^ to leave nothing obncure, doubtful, or vague In tbeflc otitlineis and to lulin t tio fmture into his sketch which docs not indicate M>mc- thing of importance. Dy pmcticc and the directions of a skilful master, he will Icam to deal in thoM potent iteiiclllingK which expretw so much in so small a space ; and thi« it is which makes extomp«»rizati(in so easy and so copious, t>ecnu8c each i>oint of the plan be- comes in^inct with life, and by pri!i<6ing u|K)n it ns you pass iilong your discourM} makes it a spring gushing' with IiiniinoiiK idens and inexhaustible expressions. — Bautaim. Good Sense, Sagacity, Tact.— "The right dis- tribution of yonr plan depends also on your manner of conceiving your subject and the end you liave in view in your discourse; nor have general rules much practical range even here. What is required are, good sense, saga- city, and tact ; g(K)d sense to see things as they are, in their true light, or in their most favorable aspect, so as not to say what will not l)efit the occasion ; sagacity, to turn the subject over, j)enetrate it through, analyze it, anatomize it, and e.xliibit it, first on paper, then in speaking ; tact, to speak appropriately, leave in the shade whatever cannot appear without disadvantage, and bring out into strong 340 INVENTION. [Part IV. light whatever is most in your favor ; to put everything in its own place, and to do all this quickly, with neatness, clearness, simplicity, so that in the very knot of the state- ment of the case may be discerned all the folds and coils of the main idea about to be united and laid forth by the discourse." An ill-conceived, an ill-divided plan, which does not at once land the hearer right in the middle of the subject and in full pos- session of the matter, is rather an encumbrance than a help. It is a rickety scaffolding which will bear nothing. It but loads and disfigures the building instead of serving to raise it. Proportion and Harmony " in its parts contrib- ute to the beauty of a discourse. In all things beauty is the result of variety in unity and of unity in variety. It is the necessity of oneness which assigns to each part its rank, place, and dimensions." Frequently the exordium is too long, and the peroration inter- minable. There is little or nothing left for the middle ; and you get a monster with an enormous head, a measureless tail, and a diminutive body. At other times it is some limb of the discourse which is lengthened until the body of the work is out of sight, the result being a shocking deformity, as when a man has long arms or legs with a dwarfs body. The main idea ought to come out in each part ; the hearer ought to be always led bg,ck to it by the de- velopment of the accessory thoughts, however numerous, these having no regular vitality save by the sustained circulation through them of the former. Should they grow and dilate too much, it can only be at the cost of the jmrent idea ; and they must produce deformity and a sort of disease in the discourse, like those mon- sters when there is any irregular or excessive growth of one organ, through the abnormal congestion of the blood, thus withdrawn from the rest of the organization. — Bautain. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Invention. The ♦•ssay half done, p. 331. The moment of action, p. 331. How to begin, p. 332. Repress impatience, p. 332. Development of the idea, p. 333. Reflection upon the idea, p. 333. Organization of the idea, p. 333. Practical rules, p. 334. I. Invent thoughts, not words, p. 334. n. Note down thoughts, p. 334. in. Be not too scrupulous as to relevancy, p. 334. IV. Pursue invention, p. 334. V. Use former studies as helps to invention, p. 335. The plan of a discourse, p. 335. Analogy to the human body, p. 836. Not new but newly, p. 336. Too much delay, p. 337. First, a bold outline, p. 838. Good sense, sagacity, tact, p. 380. Proportion and harmony, p. 840. jQHAPTEU XV 111. STYLE. In all literature which is genuine, the substance or matter is not one thing and the stylo an(>ther; they are inseparable. The style is not something superadded from with- out, as WK may make a wooden house and then paint it ; but it is breathed from within, and is instinct with the personality of the writor. Genuine literature exptesscs uot ab- stract conceptions, pure and colorless, but thoughts and things, as these are seen by ■ome individual mind, colored with all the views, associations, memories, and emotions which belong to that mind.— Shairp. Matter vs. Manner. — Thus far the student's atten- tion has been concentrated upon the what of his thoughts, with very few hints as to how he should express them. Tliere are those that think this sufficient. ' • Style is nothing but the order and movement in which our thoughts run," says one writer. •* You have too much style," grumbled an old critic. " Style is only a frame to hold the thoughts, as a window-sash holds the panes of glass. Too much sash obscures the light." ' * If you think how you are to write, you will never write any- thing worth hearing. I write because I cannot help it," said Mozart. "When we meet with the natural style we are highly dehghted, because we expected to see an author, and we find a man," said Pascal. " Style, indeed !" said Goethe. "The style of a writer is almost always the faithful representative of his mind. Therefore if any one wishes to write a clear style, let him begin by making his thoughts clear ; and if any would write a noble style, let him fiist possess a noble soul." The aphorism popularly but perhaps erroneously attributed to Chap. XVIILl VARYING OPINIONS OF IT. 343 Bnffon, that "The style is the man," is a limited application of the general theory that there is such a relation between the mind of man and the si>eech he uses, that a perfect knowledge of either would enable an acute psychological philologist to deduce and construct the other from it. — Mai^sh. The secret of good style in writing is, that words be used purely in their representative character, and not at all for their own sake. . . . Tliis it is that so highly distinguishes Webster's style — the best yet written on this continent. His language is so ti-ans- parent, that in reading him one seldom thinks of it, and can hardly see it. In fact, the proper character of his style is perfect, con- summate manliness ; in which quality I make bold to affirm that he has no superior in the whole range of English authorship. — Hudson. ]>«m, so far an pomiblo, to be intclliKiblo and transpurcnt — lui notice taken of your •tyl«, but solely of what you exprciw by it: this in your clear rule, and if yon have any- thing which in not quite trivial to czprcm to yoiir contemirararies, you will And t^uch a mie a great deal more difHcolt to follow than many poetic think. — Cablyi.k. Excellent precept ; but, alas for performance ! none ever broke the rule more habitually than Carlyle himself. The idiom which he ultimately forged for himself was a new and strange form of English — rugged, disjointed, often uncouth ; in his own phrase, "vast, fitful, decidedly fuliginous," but yet bringing out with maivellous vividness the thoughts that possessed him, the few truths which he saw clearly and was sure of — while it suggested not less powerfully the dark background of ignorance against which these truths shone out. — Shairp. Modem KngtiAh literature ha« nowhere any langua^ to compare with the style of theae [Ncwman'H Parochial] St-nnonM, m simple and tnumparent, yet »o mibtle withal ; ■o atrong and yet to tender ; the graitp of a strong man's hand, combined with the tn^mbling toiulernoM of a woman's heart, expreesing in a few monosyllables truth which would have co*t other men a ]wge of philoxophlo verbiage, laying the moet gentle y«t penetrating finger on the very core of thinga, reading to men their own moat Morat tbooghtH better than they knew them themiielvM. CarlylvH style {m like the full untutored nring of the giant's arm ; Canlinal New- roan's is the luwurol »ielf-p«)-««>><«i«in. the qniet graoefulnoM of the flnishenni« to bo efT»Ttlve, Mcizex thr most vehement feeHngM and the strongest wonis within his n'a<-h, and hurls them im(K!tu»us|y at the object. The other, with ilia- ciplinetl mcMlcration and delicutc w^lf-reHtralnt, nhrinks iiistir.ctivcly from overstatement, but penetrates more directly to the core by words of sober truth and " virid exactueai.'*— 344 STYLE. [Part IV. At first siRht, Shakspere and his contemporary dramatisU seem to write in styles much alike ; nothing so ea^ as to fall into that of Massinger and the others ; while no one haa ever yet prodooed one scene conceived and expressed in the Shaksperian idiom. I snppose it is beoanse Shakspere is universal and in fact has no manner ; jost as you can BO mnch more readUy copy a picture than nature herself.— Coleridok. Style is of oonrse nothing ehw but the art of conveying the meaning appropriately and with perspicuity, whatever that meaning may be, and one criterion of style is that it shall not be translatable without injury to the meaning. ... In order to form a good style the primary mlo and OMidition is. cot to attempt to express onrselves i& lan- guage before we tiioroughly know our own meaning : when a man perfectly understands himwlf, appropriate diction will generally bo at his command, either in writing or speak- ing. In such cans the thoughts and the words an associated. In the next place, pre- dsenem in the use of terms is required, and the test is whether you can translate the phrase adequately into simple terms, reganl being had to the feeling of the whole pas- sage. Try this upon Shakspere or Hilton, and see if you can substitute other simple wordh in any given passage without a violation of the meaning or tone. The Rource of bad writing is the deaire to be something more than a man of sense — ^the straining; to be thought a genius ; and it is just the same in speech -making. If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be ! — CouERtDOK. On the other hand, there is a view of style that makes it somethiDg more than habitual, natural expression. Thus Matthew Arnold says : " Style, in my sense of the word, is a i>eciiliar recasting and heightening, under a certain spiritual excitement, a certain press- ure of emotion, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it. . . . Power of style, prop- erly so called, as manifested in masters of style, like Dante and Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bossuet, and Bolingbroke in prose, has for its characteristic effect this, to add dignity and distinction to it." The best definitions of style make it consist in the unconscious but unavoidable and indispensable smack of individuality in the writer. The best style is not that which puts the reader most easily and in the shortest time in possession of a writer's naked thoughts, but that which is the tmest image of a great intellect — which conveys fully, and canies farthest into other souls, the concej^tions and feelings of a profound and lofty, spirit. — Changing. Science has to do with things, literature with thoughts ; science Chap. XVIIL] THE STAMP OP INDIVIDUALITY. 345 18 oniyersal, literatnre is personal ; science uses words merely as symbols, and by employing symbols can often dispense with words ; but literature uses language in its full compass, as including phraseology, idiom, style, composition, rhythm, eloquence, and whatever other qualities are included in it. — Newman. Literature being a fine art, as I understand it, a literary man can no more help having a style than a painter his ; it may be more or less strongly marked, finished or faulty, but it cannot be wholly bad, or even indifferent. There is an ideal of literary ex- pression which looks upon language as best employed when it be- comes the i^erfectly transparent medium of thought — like plate- glass, as advocates of this theory plirase it. It is of course always in good taste to be simple, and a plainness approaching to boldness is infinitely better than the ** fine " language, so called, indulged in by pseudo-cultivated writers. But I have never been able to accept the plate-glass theory, and cannot help fancying that it is the unconscious refuge of writers and readers without any keen apprehension of the charms of literaiy style. Ease and unaffected- ness are indeed prime requisites of a good style, but why should we forego the pleasure to be had from other and more positive qualities than these ? The imperishable charm belonging to cer- tain writers lies in their style ; it is their unique expression of their thought, more than the thought itself, we care for, as witness many of Lamb's most delightful sketches ; and in the most original writers this characteristic quality of expression is so much a jmrt of their genius that it is scarcely possible to separate between sub- stance and form, the ideas and their embodiment. In fact, one is sometimes tempted to call the thought the grosser particle in this combination, or interpenetration, so subtle and exquisite may be the charm of mere words, not only in iK>etry, but in imaginative proee.— Atlantic Monthly. Take an wnunpte, almoil at random, from De Qaluoey. Siieaking of tb« lUte of English hymnolonr at a certain poriod, he calls it " the howling wildcmeMi of pwlmody.** "Ah," says a pedantic critic, "ihnt is rhetoric." Very well : strip it of its '* rhetorio,'* and yet exproM the same idea in its picnitnde, if yon can. It is impomtlble. Von cannot drop that figure, and yet expnes the aune Und snil the same volume of thcHiRht If any «>ne thinks he can, we are very safe In reeponding, ** Try iu" A pit«co of Rtintia Iron is not the same thing whf n mrlttHl siul cumpactod and moulded into a slug. Analyse a fragment from RiiHkin. whoM! style is often thought personified. He wtabea to aipfe« vividly the Idea that foebleneai in art is antruthtQlnen In efleofc. He 346 STYLE. [Part IV. writes, therefore, of the " ttnujdMm mtkmtun of the nnnnwr mind, which henp« iu fure- Rroiind with ooloaMd coltimii% and heavea tmpoaiible mounUins into the encttmlx-red sky.*' Buskin here aneonaoioiiidj tmHarm his thought by hit vocsbolary and syntax. Strip it of that imitatiaii of aiiiM by MWid and aCructarc, and what have you left ? Say aomethlng else than " he«vM impoMJhle moiuitain« into the enoombered aky.*" Say this, at a renture, "A poor artist paints moantains which could never have exi(ito«i, in a sky which cannot conveniently h-/«.-•/....;./ f^'^^r. 348 STYLE. [Part IV. Cowper possessed above all other modem poets the power of bending the most stubborn and intractable wordH in the language around liis thinking, so as to fit its every indentation and irregu- larity of outline, as a ship-carpenter adjusts the planking, grown flexible in his hands, to the exact mould of his vessel. — Hugh MlLLEB. We prooeod to a more fwrtlciUar examinatioa of that particular quality of style which renders it intelligible. We denominate it plainneee. A thing is plain (planus), when it is laid out open and unooCh t^pou a lerel mrface. An object is in plain sight when the form and shape of it are distinetlj visible. Chaooer, in his " Canterbury Tales,'' makes the franklin, the English freeholder of his day, to say, when called upon fe rhetoric of the school of that day. For this plainness of style is the product of flied that ha had en joyed a lai«h over the tpaMhcv of tho« tiro men. He wUd that Lord Stormoat began Iqr deolaring In a ilow, ■olein, nawJ Maa»- ton* that, "when— he— ooiuua«red— theenormiqr— and the unoonaUtntional tendency 350 STYLE. [Part IV. —of the meMoreH— )iMt-|iropoMd, he vaa— hnrriod— iiway in a— torrent— of pawion— »nd a— whirlwind— of lin-pet-u-o»-l-ty." Mr. Pox he described an. risiiig with a Rpring to his feet, and beginning, with thv rapidity of liKhtninK, thn^ : " Mr. Speaker such is Uie maonUutte aarh the imporuinr tsuch the vital iiUereti uf the question that I cannot bat in^i)U»re I cannot but adjur* the Houne to oome to it with the utmost oatmnen the otmoat coolneM tbe ntaraik tf«tt'«rci/io»."— Pajcura. The False Idea that style is something superim- posed, like a cupola, upon a structure that would be com- plete without it, has led to false views of the province of rhetoric, and to false ideals on tlie part of young writere. " For esteeming any man purely on account of his rhetoric, I would as soon choose a pilot for a good head of hair," said Sen- eca. But rhetoric is to the statesman what skill is to the pilot. The statesman may be a traitor, in spite of great oratorical ability ; and the pilot may be in league with wreckers, however accurate his knowledge of the coast and of the vessel. But rhetoric will enable the statesman to say what he means, and to say it convinc- ingly, thus insuring him against blundering and weakness ; just as skill will secure the pilot against unwittingly mnning upon a hid- den rock. That rhetorical skill is not universal or undesirable in office-hold- ers may be inferred from the following official notices. (See also pages 297-300.) The Connecticut Legislature passed a bill for paying the town clerk of New Haven for ** time spent in deciphering those portions of the town records which are partly or wholly illegible.'" How much time was used by the clerk in deciphering wholly illegible reconls is not stated. A poet in Ansonia, Conn. , bore a card with the following inscription : *' There did a young Pig Stray away on the 18th of the present month from george thomas of West Ansonia or Wendy Hill any person or persons Seeing or giving informa- tion of the Pig would confer a great fever on the a Bove." The pig is supposed to have gone after a spelling-book. A Common Councilman who was on the Committee of Public Instruction in Fall River, Mass., drafted the following order : " Ordered that the super in tender of streets is heir By orthorized 2 erect and mantane 2 street lites on John street." Their list of unprotected and imprisoned animals noted one day last week such hith- erto unheard of creatures as " too nufoodlcn dogs "" and " four littel kreem collord doges.'' Divers companions In misery are described with equal fidelity as ' ' won yeller dog " and " aevun broun doge." If to a wretched animars death could be added a i>ang, it would be the knowledge that his obituary calletl him a littel kreem coll«ti doge.— iV. Y. Tribune. Chap. XVIH.] PRACTICAL VALUE OF RHETORIC. 351 The late Hon. Caleb Gushing of Massachusetts anient the larger part of his mature life as a member of legislative bodies. For years ho was the Mentor of the Massachusetts Legislature at a time when his politics put him always in a minority on any polit- ical measure. Yet he saved the State from much unconstitutional legislation by his power of command over the English language. It has been said that no suit at law is known lo have been brought into court by any lawyer, in which the success of the suit de- pended on proving to be unconstitutional or defective any statute of which Caleb Gushing had the control in the committee which framed it. He was able to say, and to assist legislators to say, so exactly what was meant, that no clear-headed advocate could mis- understand the statute, or find a flaw in it by which to sustain a lawsuit. The explanation of that mre power of his of precise ut- terance, as given by those who knew him best, is, that he read and conversed in half-a-dozen languages, and made language the study of his life.— Phelps. Th© Qualities of style may be considered under the heads of p UllITY, IIOI'HIKTY, UECISION, KIISPICUITY. OWER, ERFKCTION. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Style. Matter vs. Manner, p. 842. On the other hand, p. 344. The best definitions, p. 344. Naturahiess, p. 340. The end in view, p. 347. Affecting a particular style, p. 348. The false idea that style is superimposed, p. 850. The Qualities of stvln. n. :)51. CHAPTER XIX. PURITY. Bat bow can Parity, which it merely a negative quality, the abrnnce of grou blan- den, be considered an element of Style, which is the positiye manifestation of indi- Tidaality ? I reply, as cleanliness is an attribute of beauty of countenance, not entering into it, but essential to it. Besides, a scrupulous regard for correctness is in itself a mani- featatioQ of individuality, and a most pleasing one when not excessive. Purity requires tlie use of (i.) English Words, (ii.) in accordance with Authorized Definitions, (iii.) in Gram- matical Construction. In accordance with the usual classi- fication, subdivisions (ii.) and (iii.) will be considered un- der the head of Propriety. Purity, it was said, implies three things. Accordingly in three different ways it may be injured. First, the words may not be English. This fault liath received from grammarians the denomi- nation of barbarism. Secondly, the constniction of the sentence may not be in the English idiom. This liath got the name of solecism. Thirdly, tlie words and jihrases may not be employed to exi)re8s the precise meaning which custom hath affixed to them. This is termed impropriety. — Campbell. (I.) English Words are those accepted by (a) Pres- ent, (b) National, (c) Kepiitable Usage. (a) Present Usage excludes words that are (1) Ob- solete, or (2) Xovel. Tlio general rule has been thus expressed: B« not the flnt by whom the new is tried. Nor jet the iMt to hty tlM old 354 PURITY. [Part IV. (1) Obsolete Words are those once in good usage that have pjissed out of speech and writing. Thus, Thackeray, putting a novel into the fonn of an autobiog- raphy of the age of Queen Anne, has these expressions : ''And so the Sylvester night passed away ; " "Our troops were drawn up in battalia ; " ** Who resplended in purple and gold lace.*' Excnnples,— Spenser, pathetic, speaks of a lady's face "blub- bered with tears,** and Hooker in a grave sermon warns sinners of the grave danger of *• popping down into the pit" — Mabsh. As (« the waj I itenerated, A rarmll peraon I obTiated, iDtarogatinK timeB tnmriUtion, lly apprehendon did, ingenkma, aoan That he wu meerely • ■impIitUn. 80, when I nw he wa« extravagant. Unto the ohacnre vulgar oonaonant, I had him Taniah most promiacaoiuly, And not contaminate my company. — RowzamMi, 1000. ** Whereas, yf, in his true speech, he has asked him what was the clock, and which harofi n , eoRMwn, nMrogwn, emplojred in Bnglisb, do not 356 PURITY. [Part IV. recall their tiymoloar, and their meaning is gathered only from technical definition. They expreia the entire ecientific notion of the objectn they sUnd fur, and are abridged definitions, or rather tignn of definitions, of those objects. They are to the English stu- dent as purely intellectual symbols as the signs of addition, subtraction, and equality in algebra, or, to use a more appropriate simile, as their intials C for carbon, H for hydro- gen, O for oxygen, and the like, which, in conjunction with numerals, are used in ex- pressing quantitative proportions in primary oombinMtions. The corre s ponding Oemum compODnd^ Kohl SU>fr, Waaser-Stoff, Sauer-Stoff, and Stick-StolT, coat-$iuf, toater- ttMf, »OHr*tnff. and chnk«9tuf, express, each, only a single one of the characteristics of the body to which they are applied, to aay nothing of the unphilosophical tendency of thus grossly materializing and vulgarizing our ooooeption erpentarioid flex- uoeo-nodulouK htem, the liriij8. CoLUUDOB, in his woric '* On Ohnrdi and State,** makes use of the following extra- ordinary words : //^/tvencfoe, extroUiC4^ retroiUvt, and productivity. Bentley unes : CommentMout, alient^ ntogoce^ and exeribs. But no other writers adopted these words ; a dear proof that they ware not wanted. Charles Lamb used in his writings several words which have not succeeded in main- taining a place in the language. Among them may be named agnUe, burgeon, and arride. . . . In the writings of the late N. P. Willis we meet with such terms as the following: An wUeh^xtbte nature, totdeauxiteUif^ plumptitude, pocketually speaking, bettoetnity^ and go-enoayneu ! In the same gentleman's writings we occasionally come ■CRMB mudi elegant forms of expression as whipping creation^ /logging Europe, a heap of c^nions, tamatitm quick, etc. These and all such must be looked upon as abortions or deformities of our language; and no Engiish writer who has any respect for his own reputation should ever think of countenancing, far lees of adopting, such monstrosities.— Obabam. • It is not easy for me to write without a strong sense of loathing the uame of this acrid fantast and idoiizer of brute force— at best a bad copy of all that is most objectionable in Hobbes. The word intemattotutl, introduced by the immortal Bentham, and Mr. Car- lyle^s gigmanily — to coin which, by the way, it was necessary to invent facts — are signifi- cantly characteristic of the utilitarian philanthropist and of the f utilitarian misanthropist, respectively.— Haix. In The Doctor Southey gives himself free scope, as a verbarian, much after the way of Rabelais, Thomas Nash, Taylor the water-poet, or Feltham. These are a few of his ventures there : herbarism. hippogony. heplarchy. hnmorology. iatrachy. idolify. insomnolence. kittenship. magnisonant. minify. mottocrat. nepotions, obituarist. omni erudite. omnisigniflcance. oxmanphip. parenthesize. paulopostfnturatively. pentametrize. person ificator. philofclist. philotheist. agathokakological. alamodality. anywhereness. bibliogony. cacoderoonize. caliomisticate. circumam bagious. cornification. crab-grade (v. n.) crazyologist. critickin. dendrantheopolc^y. disrecommendation. domesticize. errabund. etcaeterarist. evefywherenesa. facsimilcBhip. felisophy. ferrivorous. gelastics. gignitive. heartsbead. But even in the pages of the Quarterly Review, he allowed himself such terms, some of them very good ones, as [here n list of sixty-six words is given, including anthropha- quasically. quintelement quizzify. quotationipotent. resemblant. semiramize. showee. shillishallier. stelliscript. stockinger. theologo-jurist. threno(iial. triniestral. typarchical. nglyogi-aphize, unepofy. unipsefy. unparallellable. unprosperity. iitopianizer. whiskerandoed. zoophilist. Ohap. XIX. 1 NEW WORDS. 861 gistio, batncepbagotu, flocclnaudpUlflcation, etc.] . . . And jet Southcy wrote to WilllAin T»ylor in 1874, " Do ■ometimes ask yourself the question whether the word you •re about to um be in the dictionary or not."— Robbirds' " Memoir of William Taylor," L 4M.-HAIX. Coleridge says : Unusual and new-coined words are doubtless an evil, but vague- ness, confusion, and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts are a far greater. And again : To convey his meaning precisely is a debt which an author owes to his readers. He therefore who, to escape the charge of pedan- try, will rather be misunderstood than startle a fa.stidious critic with an unusual term, may be comimred to the man who should pay his creditor in base or counterfeit coin, when he had gold or silver ingots in his possession to the precise amount of the debt ; and this, under the pretence of their unshai)eliness and want of the mint-impression. Tlie following quotation illustrates his meaning: This catholic spirit was opi)osed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit — the humor of fantastical iuterjiretation of the old Scrip- ture, into Christian meanings. It is this gnosis, or knowingness, which the apostle says pu£feth up — not knoxcledge as we translate it 3. Temporary Coina/je of a word for a peculiar effect, especially a humorous effect, is occasionally permissible. Professor James Russell Lowell, for example, is one of the most scholarly critics and authors in our language. A word coined by him would cany all the authority which any one man's name can give io a word. But when ho coins, as ho dt>es, such words as *• cloudbergs," and " othorworldliness," and "Dr. Wattsiness," he descends from stylo to slang. He does not exixjct to 8t>c them in the next edition of Worcester's Dictionary. He would bo ushiiiiu'd to 8<»e them there with his name as their authority. He knows, and the world of scholars knows, that his own .•x^iiuluily reputation will bear such oocaaioual departures from 362 PURITY. [Pabt IV. good English, somewhat as a very saintly man can bear to be seen carrying a flask of brandy in the street. That which is a literary peccadillo from Professor Lowell's pen may be unscholarly sloven- liness from one unknown to fame. — Phelps. Coleridge ! I devoutly wish that Fortune, who has made sport with you so long, may play one fresh move, throw you into Lon- don or some place near it, and there tnugify you for life. — C. Lamb. The roads are not paoiaMc, Not eren jacka— bla; And all who woold travel *em M oit torn oot and gravel "vuk.—liaauoUU AmairUxtn, 4. Fdct'Uiovs Notoriety given to a new word sometimes becomes converted into popularity. The manager of a theatre in Dublin once passed an evening with certain amateurs in literature ; and he staked a sum of money on the proposal that he would create a word which should belong to no language on the globe, and should be absolutely void of sense, yet it should become the subject of the common talk of the town in twenty-four hours. The wager was accepted. He then sent his sen^ants through the most densely j^eoiiled streets of the city, with directions to chalk in large capitals the letters QUIZ on each alter- nate door and shop-window. The next day was Sunday. Stores were closed, and the throng in the streets had leisure to read the enig- matical letters. Every one who saw it repeated it to his neighbor ; and his neighbor responded, "What does 'quiz' mean?" It had no meaning. No language o\sTied it. Scholarly tast€ scouted it. Yet everybody laughed at it, and that gave it a meaning. From that day to this, scholarship has been compelled to recognize the word, and to use it as good, sound English. — Phelps. An incident which excites the surprise or appeals to the sympathies of a whole people will often give a very general and permanent cnrrency to a new word, or an expression not before in familiar use. Take for example the word coincidence. The verb coincide and it^ derivative noun are of rather recent introduction into our language. They are not found in Minishen, and they occur neither in Shakspere nor in Milton, though they may perhaps have been employe*! by scientific writers at a^ early a date. They lielong to the langnage of mathematics, and were originally applied to points and lines. Thus, if one mathcma'ical point be su|>erimix>sod ujum another, or one straight line be superim- posed upon Hiiotlier straight line between the same two jxiints ; or if two lines follow the same course, whatever be its curve, between two points, then in the first case the two Cha?. XIX] NEW WORDS. 363 pointH, in the latter two the two Unes, are anid to coincide, and their conformity of po»i- tion i» called coincidence. In like manner, any two events hapi>euing at the same i>erio(l, or any two acta or states beginning at the Hanic nioisent, are said to cuincide in time, and the conjugate noon, coincidence, is employed to express the fact that they are so oonteni- puraneoaa TboMe «ord« soon paned into common uhu, in the same sense, uud were ai>- pliid alao figuratively to identity of opinion or character in different individuulH, us will an to many other coaett of close similarity or resemblance ; but they still belonged rather to the language of rules and of science than to the daily speech of common life. On thu Fourth of July, 18SG, the semi-centennial jubilee of the declaratiun uf American inde- pendence, Thomas Jeftersoo, the author, and John Adams, one of the signers of that re- markable manifesto, both also ex-Presidcnts. died, and this concurrence in the decease of distingiiiHhed men on the anniversary of so critical a |K>int in their lives and the history of their country, was noticed all over the world, but more especially in the United Statex. as an extraordinary coincidence. The death of Mr. Monroe, also an ex- President, on the Fourth of July, A year or two after, gave a new impulse to the circulation of the wonl co- incidence, and in this country at least it at once acquired and still retains a far more currency than it had ever possessed before.— Mabsr. 5. Pojnilar Need of a new word becomes recognized, now and tlien, and the word takes its place not througli scholars but in spite of them. In this introduction of new words, moreover, the incorrect ex- pression really has the better chance of acceptance, and for two reasons — firstly, the odds are vastly in favor of its being wanted, and consequently made by an unscientific person rather than by a philologist ; and secondly, it has not only a start, but a very long start, of the more accurate term. It almost invariably becomes general in conversational use before it ax)|)ears in literature; it regularly germinates, buds, blooms in conversation ; and it is mostly in the form of a fixed result, as a sort of gathered print, tliat it takes it« place in written speech ; while the better word which might supplant it must, to change my metaphor, raise but a baby hand, and utter a trembling cry against the strength of maturity and the shout of a man. — BLACKiiEY. Th^ Newetpwpers are not, liowever, to be regarded as exponents of the popular need, nor are words to be ac- cepted because employed by the moniing journals. Netpgpaper Engliith.—**Ti\e tramp Roderick, who burgled the two houses on West Hill last week and was jailed Sunday night, broke out last evening, but was policetl clear to the river, where, finding eeoape impossible, he wharf e<1 ])ii))>^«>if <>i<'l <-Miioided. The 304 PtmiTY. (Part IV. body piled itsolf at the bridge and will be coronered in the morn- ing. Tnily, in the midst of life, we aie deathed." Mr. Geo. H. McChesney, the extensive lumber dealer, of Syra- cnse, who 8Ui)i)lies most of the Anbum trade, and Cliarles F. Sanle, a retired banker of the saline city, with their wives, Sundied in Auburn. — Auburn Advertiser, Gekeral View. — Of new words we may enumerate at least five distinct sources : (1) Those which may be called inspired are due, almost wholly, to the common people ; (2) others are elaborated by the learned ; (3) others are imposeil by conquest, as the Norman element of the English, and the Semitic element of the Indian vernaculars ; (4) otliers, all the world over, are imported by com- merce ; (5) and others still are introduced from abroad by fashion, or borrowed thence for their usefulness. It is with the two fii*st classes and the last that we are concerned practically. Inspired neoterisms, as springing from the needs of the illiterate, often respond to a general need, and are easily enfi*anchised. Besides, being mostly monosyllables, they are easy of remembrance, and, when not abbreviations, being found in the most obvious analogies, they are rarely exceptionable as illegitimate formations. How- ever less immediately valuable for popular use, the coinages of scholars, in proportion as they supply recognized wants, likewise make good their value eventually by obtaining the rights of citi- zenship. Intercourse with foreign countries and their inhabitants contributes further to augment our lingual wealth. And thus our exchequer is constantly increasing ; and, at the s-ame time, its con- tents are constantly liable to mutation. Once it was not so, but nowatlays we may accept as an indubitable argument of a nation's healthy acti\'ity, both intellectual and material, the fact of the ex- pansiveness and mobility of its language.— HAiiL. (/S) Expansion and Contraction of old words is continually attempted. The former is usually the result of ambitious groping for impressiveness, like " preventa- tive " for " preventive." The latter comes from tlie ten- dency in speech, as in other exertion, to escape all avoid- able effort. CHAP. XIX. ] EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION. 365 The most common contractions are of the verb with the adverb twty like "isn't," "won't" (see page 2C2). In colloquial speech and in familiar lettera these may be indulged ; but nowhere should " ain't" be employed for any purpose, nor should " don't" be used instead of "doesn't" in the third person singular. (7) Combinations of old words are most common in the double epithets affected by inferior writers. Very few of these long-winded, long-waisted, long-tongued, long-tailed, and \ong-enred compounds are authorized English. The taste for them destroys the taste for monosyllabic words, on which the force of a spoken style so much dei)ends. A subtle symimthy exists between these compounds and long, involuted sentences. Be not deceived, if occasionally they seem to strengthen style. In the genei-al effect they dilute and flatten it ; they invite a drawl in deliveiy ; they are a drawl in expression. Few forms of mannerism run to such extremes as this, when once the scruples of good taste are broken down. Mrs. Henry Wood, in "Roland Yorke," speaks of the "not-attempted-to-be-concealed care." An- other female author remarks uix)n " the-sudden-at-the-moment- though-from-lingering-illness-often-previously-exi)ected death " of one of her heroines. It does not require scholarly erudition to decide that such a tape-worm as this has no proper place above ground. The tast^ wliich could tolerate it is hojjeless barbarism. The next phase of such culture is cannibalism. — Phelps. The oombining or comiwamiitif? power in of ilifferent tleK'reea in different langaagM, bat in the Mexican langnage it \n rarrietl to nn inrrediblc extent. Here combinatioiu •re MlmiU«l eoeiMily thU the simplest ideas arc buried under a load of aooeMoriea. For example, the word for a pricat coadsts of eleven syliablea, and is there called Hotku»- makti1alettpt3Katal9lH, which mi*ana literally, venerabU tninUter of Ood, tchom I lott 'ing evidence of aping after Germanic forms, and thus transgressing the proper limits of the language. The late Madame D'Arblay, in her "Memoirs of Dr. Bumey," speaks of the " very- handsome, - though - no - longer - in - her - bloom " Mrs. Stevens. — Blaokley. The authority of Milton and Shakspere may be oaefally pointed ont to yoong anthors. In the " Oomua" and other eariy poems of MilUm there is a superfluity of double epi- thets, while in "The Paradiw Lost" we And very few, in ''The Paradise BefoUned'' •oaroe any. The same remark holds almost equally true of the ''Love's IjbXmt Lost,** "Romeo and Juliet," "Venus and Adonis," and " Lucrece," compared with '' I-iear,** " Macbeth,'^ " Othello," and " Hamlet" of our great dramatist. The rule for the admis- sion of double epithets seems to be this: either that they should be already denizens of our language, such as blood-ttained, terror-»trick€ti, te'f-applaudtng ; or when a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that it at least be one word, not two words made one by mere virtue of the printer's hyphen. A language Which, like the English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius unfitted for oompoiinds. If a writer every time a compounded word suggests itself would seek for some other way of expressing himself, the chances are always greatly in favor of his finding a better word.— COLBRIDOK. Yet Charles Lamb writes to this very Coleridge : There is a capital line in your sixth number : This dark, frieze-coated, teeth-chattering month. They are exactly such epithets as Bums would have stumbled on, whose poem on *' The Ploughed-up Daisy " you seem to have had in mind. (b) National usage excludes the use of words and constructions that are (1) Foreign, or (2) Provincial. (I) Foreign usage may consist in (a) interpolation into Englisli construction, as " She looked tri-ste, poor thing ; " or (jS) adoption of foreign construction, with either foreign or Englisli words. {a) Interpolations of foreign words are advertise- ments of the writer's limited vocabulary. The late poet Chap. XIX.] FOREIGN WORDS. 367 and journalist Bryant nsed to say that he never felt the temptation to use a foreign word without being able to find in English a word that expressed his meaning w^itli more exactness and felicity. We n«o«l only glance into one of the periodical representatives of fa8hional>Ic litera- tnrt?. or Into a novel of the day, to sec how serious this assault upon the purity of the EnicliHh language has become. The chances are more than equal that we Khali fall in with a writer who considers it a point of honor to choose all his moKt emphatic words from a French vocabulary, and who would think it a lamentable falling off in his style, did he write half a dozen sentemx-s without employing at least half that number of foreign wonls. His heroes are always marked by an air distingue ; his vile men are hure to Ik; bUufa : his lady friends never merely dance or drera well, they dance or drewt d mtf- veiUe : and he himself, when lolling on the sofa under the spirit of laziness, does not simply enjoy his rest, he luxuriates in the dotce far nieiUe, and wonders when he will manage to begin his magnum opwt. And so he carries us through his story, mnning off into hHckocycd French, Italian, or Latin expressions, whenever he has anything to say which he thinks should be graphically or emphatically said. It really s<'enis as if he thought the English language too meagre or too commonplace a dress in which to clothe his thoughts. The tongne which gave a noble utterance to the thoughts of .ShakBi)ere and Milton is altogether insufficient to express the more cosmopolitan ideas of Smith, r Tomkins, or Jenkins t . . . We have before us an ariicio from the pen of a very clever writer, and, as it appears in a magasine which specially professes to represent the " bent society.'" it m:>y be taken u a good specimen of the style. It describes a dancing party, and we difcover for the first time how much leitniing i^ necessary to describe a "hop " properly. The reader is infonnctl that all the jieople at the dance belong to the beau moude, as may l>e seen at a coup fTtt^il : tho demi-monde is scrupulously exclude«l, and in fact everj'ihing nbt.ut it bespeaks tho /taut ton of the whole affair. A lady who has been happy in her hair- dresser fs raid to be coffee A ravir. Th< n there is the l)old man to dcscril>e. Having acquired the mtoif fmre, he is never afraid of making a faux ptm. but no matter what kind of conversation Is staniHl plnnpes at once in metUai* ren. Following him is the fair d^bulnnte, who is already on the look'out for un bon parti, but whow net retrouaitf is a decidetl olMtacle to her suc» e*s. She Is of course acoompanie«l by mamma en granOe toilette^ who, entre noua, looks rather ridfe even in the gaslipht. Then, text the writ, r should seem frivolous, he suddenly abandons the description of the «lanc«'s. r**-) r«i nnd dtm fi-iton, to tell us that Homer bcH>omc« tiresomo when he sings of Bomyk ■wArvta 'Hpij twice in a iwge. The mip|)cr calls forth a corresponding anionnt of leaitting, and the writer concludes his article after having aired his Orock, his Latin, his French, nnd, in a suliordinate way. his Rnglish. Of course thi« styin has admirers and imitators. It Is showy and pret' ntions, and everything that Is abowy and pretentioas has admirers. Tho admixture of foreign phrnsM with our plain Kngttsh pmdnosR a kind of Rnimmagetn s|>arklo which ptniple whoaa appreelatioB Is limited to the niperflcial imsirine to be brilliancy. Tho^ who are deficient In tastr and srt edncatSon not unfreqnently prefer a dashing picture by young Danb to a glorious cartoon by Raphael. The bright coloring of the one far more than ooontMrbalanoss the lovely but unot>tnisive grace of the oth(>r. In a similar way, young itadcnta •(• attraotrd by the tn\m glitter of the Fren<-h-t>aste school of composition, and lnrir«. The Ifome Journal telU a funny Btory about Dickens and Thackeray. Once they were in Paris, and Thackeray, on RoinK out, cautioiientcr of two houni. Brinff me in, name tinte, nuulame, if yon pleaae, of the pie to the eggs, and a cup of coffee, black, for the dciwert.** East Fbbmcu Lekhonb.— Docs the handsome C>o/i«) miss take leMons of the good music-teacher ? Oh, yea, the handsome miss takes lessons (Itfotu) of the good mosic- teaoher. The hours of the good masic-tcachcr are very short. Are the bills of the music- teacher also short f No, the billH of the music-teacher are very long. Do you know of other teachers besideH the teacher of your sister's friend? Oh, yes, I know that of the fion of the gardener. What is the matter (qu'a-i-U) with the modo-teaoher f Has he shame (at-U hotUe) t No, he is not ashamed, he is jealous. Has the sister of the baker Ulentf No, she has not talent, but nhe has the "Maid- en's Pniyer." Has the gnn-cr's brother the fine sonata ? He has not the fine sonata, but he httH " Tam 0'8honU'r.'* Cjin you hear the soft tone of the great violinist f No, I can- not hear the tone of the great violinist ; that is why I applaud. Has the lady in the blue silk pain ? No, she has no |iain, but she is singing (eUe ckcmU) ; her hearers have pain. —Mmical Herald. A Gknuins ClBCOiaB.— ISAAC WEINBERG Itatiker Hamburoh. Hambcbob, Date of the PostRtamp. LAUDABLE EXPEDITION I By this I am so free as to direct the humble question to Yon, if You accept for me in Your estimable journal advertiaement^i, for the Hamburgian-town and Brunswigian- couutry lottery ? In an affirmative case you will be so kind as to give me an answer on the following questions : 1) Ht»w often comes out Y«»ur journal ? 2) What is the price of insertion for a line, reap, eighth, fourth part, half and whole page of your journal ? 3) How broad (narrow) is a single column (how many n go in it) and how many slits oountti the i>age ? 4) After what sorte of writing (Nonpareille Petit. Garmond) do You account for the price of a line ? 5^ What a rebate do You consent me? I join still to my last question, that I am al- ready sinw many years in a Direct intercourse with more than 500 german newspaijcrs, and that nil they offered me at the same conditions, which they Krant the counter of an- nounces. With these I discount after agreement every 3 or 6 month ; but I left it entirely to Your estimai ion. w hat concession You will consent me in concern of this, how- ever I expect from Your side favorable conditions, because my orders being for the great- est part, considerable, and my advertisements of large extent. Expecting a defrayed favorable answer I am with consideration Isaac Weinberg. (2) Provincialisms often become good English, but must be avoided while their use is still confined to a lo- cality. Thus, a majority of those that frequent them, call the Adiron- dack mountains "The North Woods," because they lie to the Chap. XIX) PROVINCIALISMS. 371 north of the people of Southern and Central New York, whence most of the visitors come. But by the people of St. Lawrence county this same region is for a like reason known as " The South Woods." Hence to use either term in literature would produce ambiguity. Take another illustration from the same region. No one that has travelled there with guides would tliink of referring to the baggage that accompanies one in the trips from one point to an- other except as " duffle." This is the recognized word through- out that region, but would be imintelligible elsewhere. Again, a boy brought up on a Vermont farm would hear the word "clever" used only to indicate good-nature. A clever colt is one that can be readily handled ; a clever man is one who ac- cedes to most requests. But in literature the word is the adjec- tive that corresponds with tact, indicating felicity in execution. The question therefore arises. What is the standard of inirity ? Is it usage in my village, or in Boston, or in New York, or in Lon- don ? Probably Mr. Richard Grant White is justified in assum- ing that the purest spoken English is to be heard in the best society of London. To us who do not enter that circle, it is ade- quately jwrtrayed in the books of the standard English authors. The young writer will for a long time find in the dictionaries aU the help he can make use of. By diligent study of these, by care- ful and critical reatling, and by intelhgent listening and discus- sion, he will eventually acquire a sense of fitness that will rarely mislead him in his choice of words. By •oorptod nmgt in speech we nndentand that which it praotiaod or approved, ooiuiiiitentljr end advertently, by the beet writers and speakers of sny given time. These qualifications are neoemary, for Landor well obsenrea, ** Oood writers arc authorities for only what Is good, and by no means, and in no degresi, for what is bad, which may be found even In tham.**— Uaix. One writer, thanfore, in these days, shall not follow Piers the Plowman, nor Oower, nor Ljrdgate, nor yet Chauofr, for their languago ii« now not of unc with nn ; neither yet shsll he take the terms of the Northmen. Kuch lut they u«e in daily talk, whether they be noblemen or gentlemen or their best clc^k^ nor in effect any opeech used beyond the River Trent ; though no man can deny that theirs is the pnrest Bnglish Saxon at this day. Yes it is not m eoortly, nor so cnrtent as onr Sontbcm Bnglish is, no more is tha far Western man's speech. He shall, therefore, take the naoal speeoh of the Court, and that of London, and the shires lying about London, within Kizty miles, and not mndi above.— PiMTKMHAM, Art of SmgliMh PoetU, 1683. (c) Reputable usage excludes tiic u8o of slang. 372 PURITY. [Part IV. Slang may consist in words or expressions (1) that are unjustifiably created, or (2) that are misused. (1) Slang Words no careful speaker will employ in any signification. They are low in origin, low in usage. The very sound of them locates a speaker as unerringly as a gilt watch-chain would. Yet almost all the new words coined by the people in obedience to popular necessity have been regarded as slang when first em- ployed. " Mob ** is a contraction of mobile rubjuSy and was sneered at contemptuously by Deim S^^dft ; yet to-day it is indispensable. Which of the scores of words that assail our ears upon the street will be employed by the statesman of the next generation ? No one knows ; but the principle is that of the survival of the fittest. If the word is a necessity to the popular mind, it will hold its own in spite of those that are heedful of the words they use, and is in no need of their support. If it is not a necessity, it will disap- pear, no matter who uses it. The safe rule, for the young writer at least, is to wait till the word has been accepted by writers and speakers of unquestioned authority. No expression can become a ^^llgarism which has not a broad foundation. The language of the \Tilgar hath its source in phy- sics, in known, comprehended, and operative things. — Landor. These vulgarisms and corruptions of language do not come at once into general use ; they creep in stealthily ; they often spring from ignorance or caprice ; then they do some service in an hum- ble way, in the market or the courts, ministering to the wants of the poor and the ignorant ; then they attract the favor of the press in its least authoritative form, and finally, partly from assumption and partly from necessity, they come to be acknowledged as good citizens and freeholders in the realm. — Quoted by Schkle de Vere. (2) Slang Signification is a greater danger to the young writer. So many words, admirable in themselves, and found in the works of the best authors, have been de- based by unthinking misuse, that only vigilance and deli- cacy of apprehension can guard one against them. Chap. XDL] SLANG. 878 The adjective *' nice," for instance, has a definite and useful sig- nification. Yet because it has been made an omnibus for expres- sion of the most heterogeneous qualities (see page xxvi), it must be avoided, or used with an aiwlogy. The adjective " genteel " has a noble lineage, and in definitions of the dictionaries and books of synonyms is still unimpeachcd. Yet in refined circles and in the best contempomiy literature it is now used to express not what is refined, but what seeks to be so, and is characterized by uneasy consciousness of effort, far removed from the well-bred assurance of the lady and gentle- man. "Culture," again, is a w^ord so indispensable tliat only a circum- locution will approximately express the idea it conveys ; but it can no longer be freely used, since in newspaper columns every local politician is as ' * cultured " as he is " genial " and * * high- toned." The last expression is so completely relegated to the class of people who have usurped it, that one gets a little shock of surprise to meet the following sentence in an Oxford lecture of Professor Shairp : Again there arc high-toned spirits which regard the world as a scene made to give ■oope for moral heroism. The fact is, these words, especially those that denote social dis- tinction of any kind, follow the experience of the fashions. A new shape of l>onnet is introduced by some one to whom the commu- nity is accustomed to look for guidance in matters of taste. Hideous as it might have seemed if introduced under other aus- pices, it soon takes on by association of ideas the same air of fit- ness and beauty tliat the lady has always seemed to have about her, till presently any other shape seems out of date and unbecoming. But meantime it has been adopted and exaggerated by those looked upon as the worst-dressed persons in the community, and so gets associated with itself all the unpleasant ideas that their cos- tumes have been in the habit of suggesting. It is now full time for a change, and when tlie leader of society appears in a new shape we are the more ready to receive it cordially because we are so heartily tirc»d of the old. In like manner, when words that are meant to be titles of ad- mirable qualities are assumed by those who in the very assnmp- 374 PURITY. [Part IV. tion of the title show the lack of the qualities the title indicates, the man of sense does not dispute with them as to the possession of the title, but simply declines it himself. " You are no gentleman," screams an angry disputant. *'Do you consider yourself one ?" is the quiet rejoinder. *' Yes, I do.** " Then I am glad you don*t think me one." And that is about all there is of it. When the college instructor finds that the district-school teacher and the hair-dresser and the white- washer advertise themselves *' Professor So-and-so," he does not protest ; he simply prefers for the future to be called *' Mr." The Duke of Saxo- Weimar was, in Alabama, asked the question, "Are you the man that wants to go to Selma? " and upon assenting he was told, "Then I'm the gentleman that's going to drive you." Precisely the same thing occurred to Sir Charles Lyell : ** I asked the master of the inn at Coming, who was very attentive to his guests, to find my coachman. He immediately called out in his bar-room, ' Where is the gentleman that brought this man here ? ' A few days before, a farmer in New York had styled my wife wo- many though he called his own daughters ladies, and would, I be- lieve, have extended that term to the maid-sei-vant. I know of an orator who once said at a public meeting where bonnets pre- dominated, '* The ladies were the last at the Cross and the first at the Tomb ! " The vulgarity of entering a traveller's name on the register of the house as ** Mr. and lady'^ is only suri)assed by placing the same words on visiting-cards. — Schele de Vere. A clergyman reading in the Book of Daniel, and feeling un- certain of the pronunciation of Shadi-ach, Meshach, and Abednego, referred to them a second time &% the same three gentlemen. — Al- FOBD. In a railroad car the seats were all full except one, which was occupied by a pleasant-looking Irishman, and at one of the sta- tions a couple of evidently well-bred and intelligent young ladies came in to procure seats. Seeing none vacant, they were about to go into the next car, when Patrick arose hastily and offered them his seat ^vith evident pleasure. •' But you will have no seat for yourself," responded one of the Chap. XIX.] SLANG. 375 young ladies with a smile, hesitating, with true politeness, to ac- cept it. "Niver mind that," said the gallant Hibernian ; " I'd ride upon a cowcatcher to New York any time for a smile from such jinUe- manly ladies." And lie retired into the next car amid the cheers of his fellow- passengers. The two uses of slang are (1) to escape thought, and (2) to conceal it. (I) One escapes the mental exertion of selecting a fitting expression by using a stereotyped label that takes the place of all expressions. A few years ago the slang adjective was " red-hot." A pleasing entertain- ment, a becoming ribbon, delicious ice-cream, all were alike " red-hot." It was less wearisome to apply this epithet to all three than to select " pleasing," " becoming," and " delicious " as the suitable adjectives. Hence the use of slang, even more than the interpolation of foreign words (see page 366), indicates a limited vocabulary, and tends to limit it still further. As an illustration of the peculiarities of English slang the New Orleans Times recalls the anecdote of a young American lady in England who, while playing croquet, exclaimed at a surprisingly fortunate shot of an opposing player: "Oh! what a horrid scratch ! " whereupon a young Enghsh lady remarked : •* You shouldn't use such language ; it's slang." *• Well, what should I say ? " asked Miss America. •* Oh ! you should say. What a beastly fluke!" (2) But slang also panders to a moral laziness, that shirks the responsibility of having convictions. Take for example the tendency in what are fashionable and claim to l)o refined circles in this country, and perhaps even more especially in England, to the use of vague and indefinite phrases, not Ko much to hide a deficiency of ideas as to cover discreet reti- cencies of opinion, or prudent suppressions of natural and spont*- 376 PURITY. [Part IV. neous feeling. The practice of employing these empty sounds — they have no claim to bo called words— is founded partly in a cau- tious desire of avoiding embarrassing self-committals, and partly in that vulgar prejudice of polite society which proscribes the ex- pression of decided sentiments of admiration, approval, or dissatis- faction, or of precise and definite opinions uikju any subject, as con- trary to the laws of good taste, indicative of a want of knowledge of the world, and moreover arrogant and pedantic. —Marsh. He WM showing the man the new Imj mule that he waa working in a team with the
like a dog.^ *' Ea^j to shoe ? " asked the man. " Well, 1 fn>efw ku ; fact is, I never hnd him Hhod, I don't believe in it; he workK better without it," naid Far- mer John. " How docs he act when you put the crupper on ? " asked the man. Farmer John hesitated. ** Well, pretty good, I guess," ho said ; '* fact is, I never put it on." *' How does it get on ? " asked the man ; " who does put it on ? " " Well, I kind of don't know," said Farmer John ; " fact is, he had the hamem on when I got him, au' it fit him so well, an' he seemed to l>e so kine o' contented in it, like, that I sort of never took it ofTn him." " And how long have you had him ?" asked the man. Farmer John chewed airtwatstraw very meditatively. "Well," he mid, "not to exceed more'n two year, mebhe.*^ And the man backed a little further away, and said he would ' * sort of look round a little further before he bought, like." And Farmer John never saw him again, eren unto this day. — Burlington Hatokeye. Where is slang jpermissilhle f The answer is easy : lSonU in which these reasons are contained have any diatinot meaninR ; and if you find they have not, embrace your flrst-bom, forget America, unloose your packagcit, and remain where yoa are.— Stdmbt Smrb. A lecturer on natural history was caUed upon the other day to pay for a live rabbit whi(^ he had in a basket in a railway car, and which the conductor naid would be charged the same as a dog. The lecturer vainly explaincil that he was going to use the rabbit in illustration of a lecture he was about to give in another town, and, indignantly taking a small live tortoise from his pocket, said : " You'll be Lelllng me next that this is a dog, and that I murt pay for it also.** The conductor went for superior orders, and on his return delivered this lecture on natural hihtory : *' Cats is dogs, rabbits is dogs, but a tortus is a hinsect." The profemor hai>earanco she is convinced he doser\'es the character given of him. Few gentlemen, she sighs, know how to appreciate the ineffectual (pialities in a woman, and after pro* nouncing the captain the very pine-apple of politeness, drops into grammatical phrase as follows : I am snn I have done everything in my pow«r since I exploded the affair. Lonir ago I laid my podtive ooDJmiodoiM oa her amvm to think on the fMlow again. I have elnce 382 PROPRIETY. [Pabt IV. Udd Sir Anthony's preposition buforc her; but, I am anrry tony, she aeenu resolved Ut decline every particle that I cnjuin her. . . . Oh, ii givex me the hydrostatics to such a tlegree ! I thought lihe had persisted from corresiKindin^; with him ; but, behold, this very day I have interoeded another letter from the fellow. . . . There, sir, an attack u|N>n my language 1 What du you think of that ?— an aepersion upon my parts of speech ! Wait ever such a brute ! Sure, if 1 reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice deningumeni uf epitaphs ! . . . Then he'K ro well bred— so full of alacrity, and adulation, and has so much to say for himself— in micb good language, too. His physiognomy is so grammatloal. Then bis presence is so noble I X protoit, when I saw him, I thought of what Hamlet says tn the play : Hesperian curls — the front of Job himself I An eje, like March, to threaten at command i A station, like Harry Mercury, new- Something abont kissing— on a hill— however, the similitude stmck me directly. . . . Well, Sir Anthony, since you desire it, we will not anticipate the past ; so mind, young people, oor retrospection will be all to the future. . . . So? floT Here's fine work!— here's fine suicide, parricide, and simulation going on in the fields I And Sir Anthony not to be found to prevent the antixtrophe ! . . . That gentleman can tell you — twas he envelD|ied the affair to me . . . but he can tell you the |ierpendiculars. . . . We should only participate thin*^. . . . Nay, no delusions to the past. Etc Similar blunders are found where they could hardly be looked for. I do not know what character you have for accuracy. — Moobe. I thus obtained a character for natural powers of reasoning, which I could not refute, and yet which I felt were undesen'ed. — A. B. Edwards. [An almost incredible series of blunders, but found in her re- cent novel, '• Miss Carew."] The reciprocal ciN-ility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. — Dr. Johnson. There are two modes of estimating the relative amount of words derived from different sources in a given language. — Marsh. Macaulay speaks of the ohservatioyi of the Sabbath. "William Taylor wrote, in 1814: "A moral and political rather than a beautiful value." Addison speaks of apoplectic balsam. Cowper has ludicrous talent. I have read of a miscellaneous au- thor. Yet we have sick rooms and di/ing beds, insane asylums, mad houses. — Hall. See use oijpersonality, p. 47. Chap. XX. ] MALAPROPS. 383 Classical Words. — It will be noticed tliat Mrs. Malaprop's blunders are mostly in the use of woioeu putting it oflf all the afternoon) : " Well, Mra. A., the thing is, you know, I'm — I'm rather afmd of mon- keys ! " Gent to the waiter : " Bring me some grammatical and typo- graphical errors." Waiter (looking pu/zlod at fii-st, but recovering in a moment his usual serenity) : "We are ju.st out of them, sir." " Then what do you mean by keejnng them on your bill of fare?" "Are you the judge of reprobates?" said the Boston rast^s Mrs. Partington, as she walked into an oflice of a Judge of Pro- bate. " I am a Judge of Piobate," was the reply. "Well, that's it, I expect," quoth the old lady. "You see, my father died detested, and he left several little infidels, and I want to be their executioner I " A gentleman, wisliing to be undisturbed one day, instructed his Irish servant to admit no one, and, if any one should inquire for him, to give him an "equivocal answer." Night came, and tlie gentleman proceeded to interrogate Pat as to his callers. "Did any one call?" "Yis, sur, wan gentleman." " \Mjat did he Kjiy?" "He axed was yer lioTior in?" " Will, wlmt did ymi 384 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. tell him?** "Sure, I gave him a quivikle answer jist." "How was that ? " " I axed him was his grandmother a moukej ! " Further, it is a certain fact that when we are much accustomed to jmrtieular terms, we can scarcely avoid fancying that we under- stand them, whether they have a meaning or not.— Campbell. Mankind in general are so little in the habit of looking steadily at theii- own meaning, or of weighing the words by which they express it, that the writer who is careful to do both will some- times mislead his readers through the very excellence which qualifies him to be their instructor ; and this with no other fault on his part than the modest mistake of supposing in those to whom he aildresses himself an intellect as watchful as his own. — COLERIDOB. Short Words are Best. — While it should be the writer's iirst eflFort to express liis meaning as exactly as possible, and while this will often require all the re- sources of his vocabulary, alike of Anglo-Saxon and of classical origin, yet where there is a choice between the crisp, vigorous, unmistakable Saxon, and the ornate, sono- rous Latin, choice should fall upon the former, as not only in better taste, but as comparatively free from liability to misapprehension. You will often find that a sentence, every word of which may be authorized English, has a sickly haze hanging over it, as you im- agine your utterance of it to your hearers, which is entirely due to its Latin vocabulaiy. It becomes transparent the instant you strike out Norman words from the points of emphasis, and put Saxon words in their places. — Phelps. Valuable as the Latin adjuncts to our language are, in the ap- preciation of their value it should never be forgotten that they are adjuncts. The fi*ame, the sinews, the nerves, the heart's blood, in brief, the body and soul of our language is English ; Latin and Greek furnish only its limbs and outward flourishes. — R. G. WnrrE. Exercise. - Use simpler words in the following sen- tences : Ohap. XX.] "JOHNSONESK" 385 Their hearts are like that of the principle of evil himself —in- corporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegniated, defecated e\il. — Burke. We may well commend it to the chaplain of a neivine hospi- tal, in which patients congregate who are afflicted with insomnia. —Phelps. I would inculcate the importance of a careful study of genuine English, and a conscientious scrupulosity in its accurate use. — Marsh. There is very little affinity, either in sense or in sound, between precept and ihctrine ; and nothing but an oscitancy from which no writer whatever is uniformly excepted, can account for so odd a misapplication of a familiar term. — Campbell. They agreed to fioinologate the choice that had been made. Some writers confine their attention to minutue of style. His de- mission of office caused a great sensation. If we wish to improve our taste, we must become versant with the best classical writers. Ceteris paribus, when a Saxon and a Latin word offer tliomselves, we should choose the Saxon. The amende lionorable ha\-ing been made, a hostile meeting was prevented. The subject will be treated od longum in the next edition of the work. The produc- tion was a chef-d'ceuvre of ingenuity. They entered into the con- cern with great gusto. He was evidently laboring under some hcUlucination. My friend has a great knack at remarks. Our cice- rone first conducted us through the principal buildings of the city. The mania for French fashion still prevails. It was not considered quite comme il faut for us to appear. The animus that pervaded the address was manifest throughout. As the company retired, a ludicrous coutretemps took i)lace. "Johnsonese" is a term frequently applied to writing that abounds in words of Latin derivation, so called from Dr. Samuel Johnson, its great exponent. It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue woi-e simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for pub- lication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the '* Journey to the Hebrides" is the translation, and 386 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. it is amusing to compare the two versions. ** When we were taken up-stttii-s," says he in one of his letters, ** a dirty fellow bounced out of the l>ed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the "Journey" as follows : " Out of one of the beds on which we were to rei)Ose, started uj), at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge. *' Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. *' * The Rehearsal,' " he said, very unjustly, •• has not wit enough to keep it sweet ; ** then, after a pause, " it has not vitality enough to keep it from putrefaction." — Maoaulat. In a note on Slattery to wadh neat •xoeOeDoe oppn oome. He hear music ; he tell Kervant. '* What for they make mu- sic?" He say, •• Your brother oome back ; your father very gtad he no sick ; he kill fat oow." Number one son very angry ; he no go inside ; very angry. Father he come out ; he say, " No be ftngry." Number one son he say, " I stay all time by father ; never make him angry. My father never kill one fat cow for me. My brother he be very l)ad ; he use muney too much ; he have fat cow and music.'' Father 8ay, " You no sec ; he just dead, he now oome to life ; he lost, he now come back." They make music. (b) Inappropriate Words may convey the mean- ing unmistakably, but are not in accordance with the English idiom. A Frenchman, while looking at a number of vessels, exclaimed, " See what a flock of ships ! " He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet, but that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. To assist him in mastering the intricacies of the English language, he was told that a flock of giiis was called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, but that a pack of cards is never called a bevy, though a pack of thieves is called a gang, and a gang of an- gels is called a host, while a host of poii^oises is termed a shoal. He was told that a host of oxen is termed a herd, and a herd of Chap. XX.] SOLECISMS. 389 children is called a troop, and a troop of partridges is termed a covey, and a covey of beauty is called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, aud a horde of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of bullocks is called a drove, and a drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of wliales is called a school, and a school of worship is called a congregation, and a congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbei*s is called a band, and a band of locusts is called a crowd, and a crowd of gentlefolks is called the Hite. The last word being French, the scholar under- stood it and asked no more. (Compare page li.) iii. Grammatical Construction should have been learned in previous text-books, and we can allude here only to those errors so frequent that they need espe- cial avoidance. A violation of propriety of this kind is called a solecism. {a.) In Gender.— A common and deplorable affecta- tion in speech has been thus ridiculed : " So you have finished your studies at the seminary ? I was much pleased with the closing exercises. The author of that poem — Miss Wait, I think you called her — bids fair to become known as a poet." ** Wo think the authoress will become celebrated as a poetess," remarked the young lady pertly, with a marked emphasis on two wonls of the sentence. ♦'Oh!— ah!" replied the old gentleman, looking thoughtfully over his H{)cctacle8 at the young lady. " I hear her sister was quite an actress, and under Miss Hosmer's instructions will undoubtedly become quite a sculptress." The young lady appeared irritated. " The seminary," continued the old gentleman, with impertur- bable gravity, " is fortunate in having an efficient board of mana- gereesee. From the prcHidenteas down to the humblest teacheress, unusual talent is shown. There is Miss Harper, who, as a chemisi- resa, is unequalled, and Mrs. Knowles has already a reputation as an astronomeress. And in the department of mode few can equal Miss Kellogg as a singeress." 3i>0 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. The young lady did not appear to like the chair she was sitting on. She took the sofa at the other end of the room. " Yes," continued the old gentleman, as if talking to himself, ** those White Sisters are very talented. Mary, I undei-stand, has turned her attention to imnting and the drama, and will surely bo- come famous as a {lainteress and even as a lecturess." A loud slamming of the door caused the old gentleman to look up : the criticess and grammarianess was gone. Perhaps it was one of her fellow-studentesses who re- plied, when asked the gender of " academy," that she sup- posed that depended upon whether it was a mule or a female academy. The following, from tlie appendix to Mark Twain's " The Tramp Abroad," illustrates some of the difficulties of the German language which English students escape : It is a bleak day. Hear the rain, how he iK)urs, and the hail, how he rattles ; and see the snow, how he drifts along ; and oh, the mud, how deep he is ! Ah ! the poor fishwife, it is stuck fast in the mire ; it has dropped its basket of fishes ; and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seized some of the falling creatures, and one scale has even got into its eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens her mouth to cry for help ; but if any sound comes out of him, alas, he is drowned by the raging of the storm ! And now a tom-cat has got one of the fishes, and she will surely escape with him. No ; she bites ofi" a fin, she holds it in her mouth — she will swal- low her ? No ; the fishwife's brave mother-dog deserts his jrappies and rescues the fin, when he eats himself as his reward ! Oh, hor- ror, the lightning has stnick the fish-basket ! He sets him on fire. See the flame, how she licks the doomed utensil with her angry tongue ! Now she attacks the fishwife's foot — she bums him up, all but the big toe, and even she is partly consumed ; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery tongues ! She attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys it ; she attacks its poor worn gar- ment and destroys her also ; she attacks its body and consumes him ; she wreathes herself about its heart and it is consumed ; next about its breast, and in a moment she is a cinder ; now she Chap. XX.] SOLECISMS. 391 reaches its neck — he goes ; now its chin — it goes ; now its nose — she goes. In another moment, excei)t help come, the fishwife will be no more ! Time presses — is there none to succor or save ? Yes! Joy, joy! With flying feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But, alas, the generous she-female is too late ! Where now is the fated fishwife ? It has ceased from its suffering ; it has gone to a better land ; all that is left of it for its loved ones to lament over is this poor smouldering ash-heap. Ah, woful, woful ash-heap I Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again it will be in a realm where he will have one good square re- s(X)nsible sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over him in spots. {b) In Case the commonest errors are shown in the following instances : He was by nature less ready than her. — Tbollope. As mad as them. — Bolinobboke. I esteem you more than [I do] they. I esteem you more than them [do]. Do you believe your affirming they are not married will bring both him and I to give up the lady ? — Vanbruoh. Why should I be told to serve Him, if I do not know whom it is I serve ? — Flobence Niohtinoale. You can keep this letter and show it to whoever you like. — H. T. Buckle. These men, no matter trho spoke or whom was addressed. — DioKSira And now my clammatm ; ye remaining few That number not the half of thote we knew, Ye againat whose familiar name* not yet The fatal aaterink of death is Mt, Te I Mlnte.— LoNorsLLOw. Thackeray, having been requested to write in a Iady*8 album, found on scanning its contents the subjoined lines : Mont Blano la the monarch of moantaina— They crowned him long ago ; Bat wko they got to pat it on Nubudv itotMiui u> know. — AuutBT I 392 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. Under these Thackenj speedily wrote the following : I know thftt Albert wroCa in • htirry ; To criticiw I acHrce prmtune ; Bat 7«t meihinks that Lindley Murray of who had written w/nmi.—W. M. Tbackebat. An Amherst professor knocked at the door of a room whcrn Btiulents were carousing late at night. " Who in there ? " asked one of the students. '* It is me." " Well, who is * me ' ? *' " Pro- fessor .*' *• Oh, go away ! you can't fool us that way : Pro- leasor would say • It is I !' " And Professor went away. (c) In Number^ Rushton's rules cannot be bet- tered : 1. When the two or more nouns in the singular mean different things, or represent distinct ideas, put the verb in the plural. 2. But when the two nouns mean the same thing, or very nearly the same, strike out one of them, put the verb in the singular, and learn to avoid using two words where one is enough. Thus the following sentences should be corrected : The reference and construction of the concluding words in the next quotation is very indefinite. — Cimpbell. And it will in general be found that the use and signification of the interjections employed in any language furnishes a tolerable key to the character of the people who speak it. — Maksh. Nevertheless a clear objective conception und comprehension of the general principles of syntax is very desirable. — Mabsh. The zeal of the seraphim breaks forth in a becoming warmth of sentiments and expressions, as the character which is given us of him denotes that generous scorn and intrepidity which attends heroic virtue. — Spectator. Pei*sonal refinement, extending to finish, care, and precision, and a certain deliberation and thought in relation to the details of the manner of liWng, gives a personal dignity which is absent in the usual rush and tear of modern life. IVIr. Ruskin expatiates somewhere on the vulgarity of being in a huriy, and assuredly nothing that is worth doing is the better done for being unaccom- panied by the personal dignity which results from such refinement of habit.— Pa^ Mall Gazette. Chap. XX. 1 SOLECISMS : NUMBER. 393 A common blunder is to put a plural verb after a singu- lar subject, through the misleading influence of attributes of the subject intervening. Thus : A great part of tho diflferences with respect to the language of the educated classes in the United States and in England grow out of the different circumstances and employments of the people of the two countries. — IFwceste/*'* Dictionary. Find an illustration on page 79. As to expressions like " Five dollars was paid," or " Five dollars were paid," usage is divided. The general rule is of course that the verb is to be singular or to be plural according as the subject is in idea (not necessarily in form) singular or plural. But in the application of this mle some writers seem to have as indistinct ideas of what the plural miinber is as the young lady had who gave for the plural of " forget-me-not " — " forget-us-not," and who " mentioned six animals of the polar regions " by naming " three polar bears, and three seals." Thus, Worcester's Dictionaiy says on page 1 : A ooDitiderable number of these proTinciaiinins are to be found, eta While two pages later we find : There in a oonniderable number of words. The New York Tinbune lately has obstinately adhered to the opinion that sentences like the following should have their verbs in the singular number : •• The usual number of applicants for ad- mission to the freshman class was examined in June." And here is the London Academy sanctioning the same silly notion : '• An innumemblc multitude of small errors disfigures his pages." These editors will tell us that " number " and "multitude" being collec- tive nouns but singular as reganls form should be followed by sin- gular verbs. But any Second-Reatler scholar could toll them that the real subjects of the sentences are "applicants" and "errors," both plural notms. If we say a " number of applicants tros," etc., we must also say "a i>air of birds is singing to e&ch other," "a couple of deaths was reported," and " a score of persons is to take 394 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. part in the semces." It need not be diflScult to determine what is the apparent and what the real subject of a verb if one will trust common-sense.— 3^. C. Advocate. It is probable that not one in ten of the English plays written be- fore the time of Shakspere have escaped destruction. — R. G.Whtte. As any of these three qualifications are most conspicuous aud prevailing. —Addison. Ignorance or dulness have, indeed, no jxjwer of affording de- light ; but they never give disgust, except when they assume the dignity of knowledge, or ajie the sprightliness of wit. — Rambler. I doubt if more than one of these deserve acceptation. — Hall. To connect both a singular and a plural verb with the same subject is usually inexcusable. We must still dread that extraordinary facility to which human nature is so prone, as sometimes to laugh at what at another time they would shed tears. — Colkridoe. Pleasure, or pain, which seizes us unprepared and by surprise, have a double force, and are both more capable of subduing the mind, than when they come upon us looking for them, and pre- pared to receive them. — Fieldino. Constructions should be avoided that use^the same word first collectively and then distributively ; as, The Legisla- ture, who were incorruptible men, was above influence. You was is among the most ofiF^nsive of solecisms. In conversation you will x)erhaps ten times oftener hear i>eople say, "There's the books you wanted," than ** These are the books — ;" and "You was present," when a single person is ad- dressed, than "You were present." Yet good use is always con- sidered as declaring solely for the last mode of expression in both cases. — Campbell. In w^ritings of the last century, " you was " is occasion- ally met with. You was pushed to the utmost by your creditors. — Blair, ii. 108. When you was most in earnest. — Id., ii. 133. Sir, was you ever iu Muscovy ? — Vanbruqh. Chap. XX] SOLECISMS : MOOD. 395 Impersonal Verbs. — When a verb is used imper- sonally it ought undoubtedly to be in the singular number, whether the neuter pronoun be expressed or understood, aud when no nominative in the sentence can be regularly construed with the verb, it ought to be considered as im- personal. For this reason analogy as well as usage favor this mode of expression, "The conditions of the agreement were mfoUows^'' and not as follow. — Campbell. {d) \Ti Moody the principal danger is the neglect of the subjunctive. There are those who would do away with this distinction of thought, but it cannot be spared by those who would be masters of exact expression. You are speaking to me of a man of whom I am ix)i*sonally ig- norant, and I say : " If he is such a man as you represent him, he will do thus and so." As I do not know the man, there must be in my statement some degree of contingency — which is expressed by "if." But by coupling "if" with the declamtive [indicative], I imply my willingness to accept your testimony conceniing the man. My thought, fully expressed, is : "If (I, myself, know noth- ing about him), but if he is (as, on your testimony, I am willing to admit) such a man as you represent him, he will do thus aud so." To say : "If he be such a man as you represent him," would imply that I doubted either your veiucity or your judgment. My thought, expanded, would be, " If he be such a man as you represent him (and on that point, not^-ithstandiug your testimony, I have no opinion to express) he will do thus and so." The tendency to obliterate the distinction that has been indi- cated, is veiy strong at the present day ; but it ought to be pre- served, and must — in order to the intelligent study of Englisli literature— be understood.— Oilmore. The subjunctive form is, however, to be avoided except where the coudition is assumed to be doubtful. Thus : Surely it would be desirable that some i^erson who knew Sir Walter . . . should be cliarged with this article. — Macaulay. 396 PROPRIETY. [Part IV. It would he a good thing, but it u desirable. If ever man's humor were [was] useful to instruct as well as de- light, it was that of Michael Angelo Titmai-sh. — G. B. Smith. It would doubtless have exhibited itself quietly enough if it were [had been] absolutely meditated. — Justin McCarthy. {e) In Tense, a common fault is the use of the past for the perfect ; as, Of antiquated or obsolete words, none will be inserted but such as are to be found in authors who wrote since the accession of Elizabeth, from which we date the golden age of our language. — Johnson. Find the past used for the pluperfect on page 49. Or in the use of the perfect for the past ; as, In yesterday's paper we have shown. — Addison. Another, not nnfrequently an affectation on the part of young writers wlio esteem an expression elegant in piopor tion to the number of syllables it contains, is the use of the perfect infinitive for the present. The compound past infinitive also, formerly very frequent, is al- most disused. Lord Beruers says : should have aided to hara de- stroyed^ had made haste to have entered^ and the like, and this was common in colloquial usage until a very recent period. In cases of this sort, where the relations of time are clearly expressed T>y the first auxiliary, it is evident that nothing is gained by employ- ing a second auxiliary to fix more precisely the categoiy of tlie in- finitive, but where the simple inflected past tense preoodei the infinitive, there is sometimes ground for the employment of an aux- iliary with the latter. I intended to go, and I intended to Jiarer/ime, do not necessarily express the same thing, but the latter fonu is not likely long to resist the present inclination to make the infin- itive strictly aoristic, and such forms as I had intended to go will supersede the past tense of the latter mood. — Marsh. Campbell thus illustrates the distinction : Chap. XX.] SOLECISMS : TENSE. 397 " I commanded him not to do it, and he ought not to have done it.** So one may say, " I should have liked to read the story you had, but 1 should like to have read through every page of Webster's Dictionary." If the traveller is in haste, and wants rather to have seen the country and the people than to see them, let him take the dili- gence.— John Labouche. It was the elder Sheridan, was it not, who asked his son with disgust why he insisted uiK)n going down into a coal mine ? " To say I have been there," replied the junior. " Then why the dick- ens don't you say you have been there, and save the soot ? " There are many that would iike to have descended a ooal-shaft, who would not have liked to descend. Correct the following sentences : I intended to have insisted on this sympathy at greater length. — Buskin. I liad hoped never to have seen the statues again when I missed them on the bridge. — Mac aula Y. When I inserted the strijies and curves, her delight was such that I greatly feared she would have emhraced me. — C. W. Dilke. Universal truths, or permanent arrangements, are ex- pressed in the present tense ; as, lie testiiied that in that country the snow is red. The chief occasion of mistake on this point is when a universal truth is stated as maintained or denied by some one in the past, e.g.^ " He denied tliat electricity and magnetism were (are) the same agents." — Hodgson. The proprietor of a summer resort, wlio kept in the newspapers a standing advertisement, headed, " There ai-e no mosquitoes at this hotel ! " defended himself, when swanns of them were pointed out, by declaring that the cai-d was written in the spring, when there wasn't a mos- quito to be seen. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Propriety. II. Authorized definitions, p. 379. Forming detinitious, p. 880. ^ Propriety violated by using. a. Inaccurate words, p. 381. Classical words, p. 383. Short words are best. p. 384. Johnsonese, p. 385. Modern taste, p. 386. b. Inappropriate words, p. 388. in. Crammaticai construction, p 389. a. Errors in gender, p. 389. b. Errors in case, p. 391. c. Errors in number, p. 392. You was, p. 394. Impersonal verbs, p. 395. d. Errors in mood, p. 395. 3. Errors in tense, p. 396. CHAPTER XXL PRECISION. Tbe calling two or more different thingt by one and the same tiamt (aque voeare) |h«'nce tqiiivocation] is the sonrce of almost all error in human di8cour«o. He who u ixhcs to t'lrow dust in the eyes ot an opponent, to hinder his arrivinjf at the real facta .r H CH*o, will often have recourHC to this aitittce, and thus to equivomi-' mh.i pnuijeitca- tion have attainetl their preocnt sectwidnry meaning.— Tbbn oh. Precision requires the exact expression of the tliought to he conveyed. It demands attention (1) to tlie Words employed, and (2) to tlie Construction, tliat in stating the thought the sentence may tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing hut the truth. (I) Words may lack pi-ecision (a) through the eon- founding of synonyms, {h) through the use of Equivocal Words, or (r) of (icncral Words. (a) Synonyms are by etymology words that liavi- precisely the same signitication. The Englisli language lias very few such, hefjin and cmmnence being perhaps as near approximations as can be found. But the term is exten«led to include words that have very nearly the same meaning, but express shades of difference in signitication. To form an idea of the extent to which our language has been deqrnonymized, one has only to compare together our word-s de> rived mediately or immedintoly from the Latin, and those which they at fii-st roprpsonted. Of th^o paii-H there arc hundreds upon hundreds ; and yrl of not a sinj?l<» pair ait> the members strictly identical in impoi-t. Take for evample ncid and iour^ cordiul and 400 PRECISION. [Part IV. hearty^ crime and guilty diviur and 'jod/i/ce, juvenile and youthful, lucid and bright^ miserabh- and unhajnn/, ponderous and weighty, portion and share, quantity and tfea/, sKjficient and enou(/h. Where, moreover, two words, one of which is a material corruption of the other, are taken from a foreign source, we find them very far from being synonyms. Cure and care, engine and gin, paralysis and palsy, penitence axid penance^ phantasy and fancy, piety and pity, are instances in point. — Hall. I low important these fine distinctions are is shown on aliiiuit every page of standard authors. Take the follow- ing instances from Coleridge : 's face is almost the only exception I know to tlic observa- tion that something feminine — not effeminate, mind, is discovera- ble in the countenances of all men of genius. — Works, vi. 384. Dr. Ilennat;)' saitl to Luth.r, *' Sir, when you say tliat the Holy Spirit is the certainty in the word towards Go^l, that is, that a man is certain of hJK own mind and opinion ; then it must needs follow that all sects have the Holy Ghost, for they will needs be most certain of their doctrine and religion."— LuMer'* Table Talk. Luther might have answered, " Positive, you mean, not ct itaiu." —V. 278. I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word an arguer would not only not un- derstand me, but would understand the contraiy of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying anything merely as a fact — merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energio— I don't mean energetic ; I re- quire in every tiling what for lack of another word I may call^ro- priety — that is, a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then mther than elsewhere or at another time. — \'i. 503. While Purity demands that a word be in itself good English, and Propriety demands that it be used in one of the significations belonging to it, Precision still further demands that tliis signification exactly express the thought to be conveyed. Faults in Purity and in Propriety can be discerned and pronounced upon by the reader. Faults Chap. XXI.] ROGET'S THES.VURUS. 401 in Precision must often be left to the detection of the writer liiniself, who should know better than another ex- actly what he wants to express. An extensive vocabulary is one of the requisites to precision (see pages xxvi, 347). Only by letting all the words allied in meaning pass in review before the mind, can one be certain that the exact word has been selected. For this purpose there is one aid so far superior to all others tliat its use sliould be understood even by young writers. This is Roget's •* Thesaums of English Words." To illiLstrate its comprehensiveness and the manner of its use, suppose the thought in my mind is, " Miss Abbott's dress looks genteel," but that I have just learned this adjective is no longer used in a commendatoiy sense (see page 373), and that I wish to replace it by a synonym. Turning in the index to the word "genteel," I find the num- bers '• 852, 875,' indicating the paragraphs that include this word. Turning to 852, I find this list : Fashion, rtylt*, ino«lc, voioie. Manners, bn*enabk*. etc. A4f^eU9eM. — Fa«hional>lo, in fotthion, in vof^ie, modish, RtylJBh, courtly, genteel, well- tired, well-behaved, p>>li^hcoeraiun, turn out, gala, regatta. Ceremony, curemunial, niumnivry, Hoicmn mockery ; formality, form, etiquette, punc tillo, piiurtiliousneKs. frip|)ery, itnirl dresM, etc. VerlM.— To be OKtentationis etc.; to dlnplay, exhibit, show oft, come forwanl, put one's Hctf forward, flaunt, emblazon, glitter ; make or cut a figure, dash, to figure. To observe or stand on ceremony, etiquette, etc ^(Oe-'^tew.— OHtcnUtiou^ showy, gaudy, garish, dashing, flaunting, glittering, pomp- ons, snmptuouR, theatrical. Pompous, solemn, stately, high-bounding, formal, stiff, ceremonious, punctilious. Still I am unsatisfied, so I turn to 745. This I find to be, as I might have exi^ected, a list of titles, useless for this search. Under 852 the words priven remind me of " natty,*' a favorite with Thackeray. That will hardly answer my pnqwse, as it im- plies an attem])t at effect, like "spruce." I look in the index for " natty," but do not find it, so I turn to the allied adjective "spinice." This has in the index two references: "neat, 652; beautiful, 845." I find that the words under 652 have reference only to the condition of an article, without reference to its ma- terial or form ; so none of them will answer. Under 845 I find these adjectives : Bcautifii', handsonic, fine, pretty, lovely, graceful, eleizant, delicate, refined, fair, comely, w-emly, well-favonnl, proixir, shapely, well-maile, well-formed, well-propor- tionetl, fsymmetrical, Itccoming, goodly, neat, spruce, sleek, bright-eyed, attractive, curious. Blooming, brilliant, shining, beaming, resplendent, dazzling, gorgeous, superb, nr.ag- nificent, Bublime. Picturesque, arti>tical. I>as8able, not amiss, undeformed, undefacd, spotless, unspotted. Of these words *' elegant" is so much nearer my meaning than the others that I look for it in the index. I find that besides the list just quoted, it is found under " tasteful, 850 ; style, 578." Turning firat to the latter, I have : Elegance, grace, ease, nature, concinnity, readiness, e'lphony. Adjectives.— Wesant, jwlished, classical, Attic, Ci eroniau. graceful, easy, natural, unlabored, chaste, pure, flowing, mellifluous, enphoniou-^, rhyLhmical. These do not help me, so I turn to 850. The adjectives here are : In good taste, tasty (tasteful), unaffected, pure, chaste, cla-ssiail, lefir.eil, elegaut, aesthetic. Chap. XXI. ] SYNONYMS. 4^03 I am beginning to think I shall be obliged to use '* elegant," but first I look up the words allied to two or three others of the adjectives already found that seem nearest to what I want. Under " superb " I tiud in the index only 845, the list already quoted. Under "well-bred" I find a reference to "courteous, 804;" under "fashionable," to "customary, G13 ; " and I look up half a dozen others, only to find that all hopeful lists liave been alreatly quoted. Had the adjective been wanted to express a judgment less ])08itive, I might have been helped by the fact that besides each of the lists of words quoted was found on each page a list of the words of contrary meaning. Thus, adjoining the last list, 850, we have these adjectives : In iMd tnste, valgar, coatmo, nnreflned, groes, heavj, rade, unpolished, homespan, homcbml, umxMith, awkward, ungraceful, Hlovenly, idattcrnly, im|x>litc, ill-mannered, uncivil, ungentlcuinnly, unladylike, unfctnininc, unaecuily, unpresentable, unkunipt, un- cuntbed. Runtir. IxMifiRh. clowninh, barbarous, barbaric, Gothic, anclassical, heathenish, out- landish, untamed, 876. Obsolptc, out of fn-ohion. unfashionable, antiquated, old-fashioned, gone by. N'ewf.ingle«l. ed to Lubec, but soon found that the Danes were in quest at him, which obliged him to assume the habit and manners of a peasant. In this disguise he passed through all qnarters of their army, in a wagon loaded with hay, until he reached an old family castle at Sudermania. He despntclted letters hence to his friends, hoping to roi4se them to an attempt for the recovery of their liberty ; but meeting with little success among the great, he next tried the peasantry. He visited their villages Ijy night, harangued them at their festive assemblies, but without effect, as they uniformly told him it was in vain for them to attempt to better their condition, for " i)caKants thoy were, and ]>ea»'treat he gradmUly sitmmoned a few of his most /«///{/■/// retainers, ft/rtijied its only accessible approacht and began to make successful excursions upon straggling parties of the enemy. But the first ray of hope broke from another quarter. AlK)ut four months after the inrasion by Guthrum, another f/irmon of his countrymen, landing in Devonshire under the ferocious Ubba, laid siege to the castle of Kenwyth, into which the brave Ealdorman Odun and a few subordinate chiefs had hastily thrown themselves. In a desperate sally the garrison succeeded in surpris- ing thn camp of the invaders, and slaying Ubba himself ; an event which stnick such terror into his followers that they left their enchantfxl standanl, the Raven of Woden, in the hands of the victors. Hetretit of Sir John Moore. — The British tn)aj>s, under Sir John Moore, were now athancing from Portugal into Spain to co-operitt9 with the patriots. In the course of his mitrcJt, the British general soon disntrer*^! how fallacious and eaeaggerated were the imftrcssions cntertainiil in England respecting the condition of the Sjianianls, and their ability or inclination to offer an effective resistance to tlic enemy. He crnitinued his march, however, in onler to crtmply, as far as pos- sible, with the expectations of the ministrv, and the urgent representa- 408 PRECISION. [Pakt IV. tions made to him ; till at length, having learned that Madrid had fallen, and that Bonaparte had quitted that city at the head of a su- perior forcey with the view of taking up a position in the rear of the British, while another armt/ under Soult lay in front, he found it indispensable to make a prompt retreat. This he accomplished in the most masterly manner, though the weather was severe, provisions scanty, the inhibitants of the country ookl and unfriendly, and a vet- eran army, greatly superior in numbers, pressing on his rear. This famous retreat closed at Ck>runna on the 11th of January, 1809, hav- ing been attended with the loss of many men from disorder, and the sacrifice of many horses from want of forage ; but without a stand- ard being taken, or a single check sustained in action. The trans- ports, on board of which the troops were to embark, unfortunately did not reach Ck)runna till two days after the arrival of the army. In consequence of this delay it became necessary to risk an engage- ment on the 6th, in very disadvantageous circumstances, and against an enemy greatly superior in numbers. In spite of this disparity, however, the French were every tr here repulsed, and compelled to re- treat with the loss of two thousand men. But the gallant Sir John Moore was mortally wounded in the action by a cannon-ball. Gen- eral Baird being also disabled. Sir John Hope took the command, and succeeded in embarking the troops, and bringing them off safely without further Tnolestation, How much depends upon the choice of words is shown in the following poem of Coleridge's, printed as it appears in liis collected works, with interlineations in small type showing the changes of expression made in quoting it for " Dana's Household Book of Poetry." COMPLAINT. [The Grood, Great Man.] How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains ! [and] It sounds like story from the land of spint« [seems a] [world] If any man obtain that which he merits. [When] [obtains] Or any merits that which he obtains. COAP. XXI.) EQUIVOCAL WORDS. 4"'> Reproof. [Omitted.] For shame, my friend ! renounce this canting strain ! [idle] What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ? Place, titles, salary, a gilded chain, [Wealth] [title] [dignity] [golden] Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain ? [heap] Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends, [Goodness and greatnen] Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man ? these treasures, love and light, [great good] [three] And calm thoughts, equable as infant's breath ; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night — [fart] [or] Himself, his maker, and the angel death. [Maker] [Death] In tlie tliiid line of the " Reproof," for instance, all of Coleridge's words are more powerful than Dana's, because by e.xpressing less intrinsic value they show more strongly the worthlessness of the objects referred to ; and in the ne.xt line, the substitution of heap for throne eliminates the implied idea that the great man's elevation is not only accotnpanied by but based on the woes of others. For the uses of or and rt«//, see pages cxxi, cx.xii, where it will appear that both the substitutions made are erroneous. (b) Equivocal Words are those that may be taken in more stMiscs than one. " He (jverlooked the transac- tion," may ini*aii either that he supervised it, or that he forgave it. •• What I want,** shouted a stump-speaker, " is common sense.** '* Exactly so,*' replied his opponent (See a similar example on pi«e266.) 410 PRECISION. [Part IV. " The Queen did not want solicitation to consent to the meas- ure." The word •• want " may imply either that she did not desire soli- citation, or that she tr<« not without it. "Henry had been from his youth lUtitclieil to the Church of Rome." This may mean either that he had been fond of the church, or that he had been a member of it. •* Exactly at eight the mother came up, and discovered that sup- l^er was not far off." "Discovered" may be taken in either of two senses. It may imply /oMwai>ers, are fast giving place to less affected and more appropriate forms of expression. It is only the lowest class of dailies that still regard "woman "as not an honorable or re- sjxjctful designation of the sex, and it is in their columns alone that, in i)lace of "well-dressed or handsome women," we read of *' elegantly attired females" and of '* beautiful ladies." — Mabsh. Coleridge says of one of his old school masters : In onr own Kngliah compoaitions (at least for the last three years of onr Knglish edu- cation), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, uti8npport(>d by a sound senile, or where the rame acnsc might have been conveyol with equal force and dignity in plainer words. LuU, harp, and li/re. Muse, Muaen, and iiiMpiratiotm, Pegatun, l\tma*»u«, and Hippocrtne, were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now. exclaiming. " Harp* Har^)? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean ! Muse, boy. Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye ! the cloister pump, I BUppoHe." Coleridge adds that it is worthy of ranking as a maxim in criti- cism, that whatever is translatable in other and simpler words of the same language, x^-ithout loss of sense or dignity, is bad. By dignity, he means the absence of ludicrous or debasing associa- tions.— iii. 147. (2) Construction may lack precision through (a) Excessive Brevity, (b) Redundance, (c) Affectation, (d) I.ooseness of Tliought. (a) Brevity is the soul of wit ; but it must consist in the compactness and exactness of the thought, not in :i curtailed expression of it. It is excessive wlienever it leads to lack of precision, by (i) the Omission of Necessary Words ; or by (ii) the use of Ambiguous Pronouns. Baf Necessary Words is illus- trated in the following examples: I must now make to you a general assertion, which, if yuu will 412 PRECISION. [Part IV. note [it] down and examine [it] at your leisure, you will find both true and useful. — Buskin. Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the first lover is described as having by Milton. — Tuackebat. [The meaning probably is, **as the first lover is described by Milton as having eyed his mistress with.*'] How to nurse and take care of their children long before she had one [child] herself. — Id. There is never wanting a set of evil instruments who either out of mad zeal, private hatred, or [greed for] filthy lucre, are always ready.— Swift. He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been [making] so long in using silk-worms. — Swift. That the discoursing on politics shall be looked upon as dull as talking on the weather. — Freehohler. [Campbell suggests another as before the first as ; perhaps to he would be better.] I do not reckon we want a genius more than the rest of our neighbors [do]. — Swift. His diet was abstemious, his prayers [were] long and fervent. — Gibbon. I am anxious for the time when he will talk as much nonsense to me as I have [talked] to him. — Landob. He says, inter alia : The correspondence alone which I have to condnct is at once extensive and demand- ing thoughtful attention, but I never have, nor ever will, allow literary work to inter- fere with the performance of pastoral. You never have allow that, doctor, the magistrate means, Mr. Editor, and he hopes, too, that you never icill allowed it, never no more. " Literary work," indeed. — Moon. Friends and children who come after me, in which way will you bear your trials ? I know one that pi-ays God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eve all-seeing shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should judge proud spirits other- wise than charitably. 'Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambi- tion and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does [?]. She can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor Chap. XXI.] AMBIGUOUS PRONOUNS. 413 her omelty, not a single spot on her shining coat ; nor the con- quering spirit which impels her ; nor the shot which brings her down. — Thackeray, Esmond. DBTBSMiNATrv'ES. — In spite of the necessity of frequently intro- ducing determinatives in languages with few inflections, it will in general be found that a given period framed wholly in Anglo- Saxon will contain as few words, perhaps even fewer, than the same thought expressed in the Romance dialect of English. The reason of this is that the unpleasant effect of the frequent recur- rence of particles has obliged us to invent forms of expression in which such members, though grammatically required to complete the period, are dispensed with, and we use these forms with less repugnance in Saxon combinations, where they were first employed, than in Latin ones, which are of later introduction and less famil- iar structure. Thus we say, "The man I bought the house of," •'The man we were talking of;" and we may with equal gram- matical propriety say, •' The gentleman I purchased the house of,** •* The person we were conversing of ; " but we should be much toore likely to employ a more formal syntax, ** The gentleman of whom I purchased the house," " The person of whom we were conversing." Again, one would say, •* I told him I had called on General Taylor," omitting the conjunction that before the second member of the period ; but if we employed Romance words, we should more probably retain the conjunction, as, **I informed him t?iat I had paid my respects to the President." Although, then, the Anglo-Saxon so far controls all other elements that we may grammatically employ foreign words in the same way as native ones, yet a half-conscious sense of linguistic congruity usually suggests a more formal structure of the period, when it is composed chiefly of Romance radicals. — Mabsh. (ii) Ambiguous Pronouns are so great an evil in composition that Bain says the clearness of composition de- pends more upon the use of he^ she^ it, they, than upon any other single matter coming within the scope of grammar. The word it is the greatest troubler that I know of in the lan- guage. It is so small, and so convenient, that few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare this word. Whenever 414 PRECISION. (Part IV. they are at a loss for either a nominative or an adjective to tlieir sentence, they, without any kind of ceremony, clap in an it. — COBBETT. llewrite the following sentence so as to avoid the con- fusion of iU. It is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it ; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labors to seem to have it are lost. On the other hand, it is sometimes needlessly avoided. Thus: During our stay in town one young man had his cheek cut open; another his under-lip nearly taken off; a third his scalp cut in two ; and a fourth the tip of his nose so thoroughly excised that tfie end of his nasal organ [itj lay upon the ground. — Henry Mathew, German Li/e^ ii., 67. A Strikino Illusttration. — ^You say, "While treating of the pronunciation of those who minister in public, two other words occur to me which are very commonly mangled by our clergy. A One of these is * covetous,' and its substantive * covetousness.' I hope some who read tJiese lines will be induced to leave off pro- B c nouncing t?iem * covetious * and * covetiousness.' I can assure them D E F that when thei/ do thus call thejn, one at least of their hearers has G his appreciation of tJieir teaching disturbed." I fancy that many a one who reads these lines will have Jiis ap- preciation of your teaching disturbed, as far as it relates to the Queen's English. But now for the changes which may be mng on these bells, as I have called them. The first of them, A, may apply either to 7coi'ds or to our clei'gy. One of these is " cov- etous." I am sony to say that the general belief is that there are more than one ; but perhaps you know one in particular. How- ever, my remarks interrupt the bell-ringing, and we want to count the changes, so I will say no more, but will at once demonstrate Chap. XXI. AMBIGUOUS PRONOUNS. 415 that we can ring 10,240 changes on your peal of bells ! In other words, that your paiugraph, of loss than ten lines, is so anihiguonsly worded that, without any alteration of its gmmniar or syntax, it may be read in 10,240 different ways ! and only one of all that number shall be the right way t j express your meaning. The ProaotuuL Noaiw to which they may apply. S5» No. of Different Readings. A, tksm wortKoreleiKy words, cJerjry, readcrn, or lines. I. •• » tt words, clergy, readers, lines, or hearers 2 9 B. tketH.: C tkem.. D, «*«y . E, tkem.. F, tketr.. Q, ikeir.. 4.... 4.... 4... 4.... 4.. . 6.... these 4 X by the above 2 = 8 these4x " " 8= 82 these 4 X " •' 32= 128 the«i4x " " 128= 612 these 4 X •• " 612= 2,048 theaftS X " *' 2,048=10,240 -Moon. He [Maeanlay] has a perfect hatred of pronouns, and for fear of a iwssible entanglement between " him's " and " her's " and •* it's," he will rei)eat not merely a substantive but a whole group of sub- stantives. Sometimes, to make his sense unmistakable, ho will repeat a whole formula with only a change in the copula. — Leslie Stephen. Other Inotances op Ambiguous Pronouns.— They [those histo- rians] who have talents want industry or virtue ; they [those] who have industry want talents.— Southey. His servant Ijeing ill, fie had consented to allow his brother, a timid youth from the country, to take his place for a short time, and for that short time fie was a constant source of annoyance. — Life of C. J. Matfietts. Lisias promised to his father never to abandon his friends. — Quoted by Oami'Bell. My good lord often talked of visiting that land in Virginia which King Charles gave us— gave his ancestor. —Thackeray. The war then exciting attention to the American Colonies as one of the chief points in dispute, they came oat in two volumes octavo. — Prior, Life of Burfce. Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others, and think that tfieir reputation obscures them, and tlnit tlfir commend- 416 PRECISION. [Part IV. able qualities stand in their light ; and therefore tJiet/ do what /Acy can to cast a cloud over tJiem^ that the shining of their virtues may not obscure tfietn. — Tillotson. There are some men who allow the sex no virtues because they allow them no favors. — Fieldino. The exercise of reason appears as little in them as in the beasts thei/ sometimes hunt, and by whom thei/ are sometimes hunted. — BOLIKOBBOKE. There is no popular Life of Bossuet to be found in France — Cardinal de Bausset's is the only one [life], and that is bulky and dry. — Bossuet and his Contemporaries. In any testimony (whether oral or written) that is unwillingly borne, it will more frequently consist in something incidentally implied than in a distinct statement. — Whatblt. Mr. A. presents his compliments to Mrs. B. / have got a hat which is not his ; if he have got a hat which is not yours^ no doubt they are the missing one. — Hodgson. Even in this short sentence we may discern an inaccuracy — why our language is less refined than those of Italy , Prance^ and Spain ; putting the pronoun those in the plural, when the antecedent sub- stantive to which it refers is in the singular, our Language. — Blaib. [Here Blair is manifestly in error. The sentence should read, why our language is less refined than are the lan- guages of Italy ^ France., and Spain. (See page cxxv.) ] Find other instances of ambiguous pronouns on pages 45, TO, 240. A genderless personal noun is a marked want of the English language, as witness the following : When everybody [allj can ride as soon as they are bom. — Sydney Smith. It is true that when perapective was first discovered, everybody [all] amused themselves with it. — Ruskin. Each of the sexes should keep within its proper bounds, and con- tent themselves to exult within their respective districts. — Addison. Each prayed for the other rather than for themselves. — Mrs. Gaskell. Chap. XXI. J A GENDERLESS PRONOUN. 417 When it took a twelvemonth's hard work to make a single vol- nme legible, men considered a little the diflference between one book and another ; but now, when not only (inyb(Hhf can get them- selves made legible, through any quantity of volumes, in a week, but the doing so becomes a living to them, and they can fill their stomach with the foolish foam of their lips, the universal pesti- lence of falsehood fills the mind of the world as cicadas do olive- leaves, and the first necessity of our mental government is to ex- tricate from among the insectal noise the few notes and words that are divine. — Ruskin. It is probably through the habit of using a plural pro- noun when the antecedent is of both sexes that tlie plural is sometimes used for the singular when the antecedent Tn- cludes only one sex. Thus : Each of the girls went up into their [her] separate rooms [room] to rest and calm themselves [hei-selfj.— Mrs. Gaskkll. [Hodgson corrects the sentence as above, but the meaning is better pi*eserved by substituting aU for each of.\ The use of "one" as a personal pronoun, cor- responding with the French On dit and the German Man sagt, is growing in favor, and is beginning to be character- istic of the best- bred speech. OfM doth not know How maoh an ill word may empoison liking.— JTmcA Ado about Nothing. See examples on pages 4, 5, 9, 18, etc. Avoid awk- wardness by sn!)stitiiting o?ie for he or she on page 47. Reflexive Pronouns require care, as witness the following : If this trade be fostered, we shall gain from one nation ; and if another, from another. Which might help us to discover the conformity or disagreeable- ness of the one to the other. — Addison. The greatest masters of critical learning differ among one an- other.— Spectator, 4rl8 PRECISION. (Part IV. Hereafter, when tmioR moving in an opposite direction are ap- proaching each other on separate lines, conductoi-s and engineers will be required to bring their rosi^ective trains to a dead halt be- fore the i>oint of meeting, and be very careful not to proceed until each train has passed the other. A writer in the Atlantic of the death of Dabney Carr, the brother- in-law of Thomas Jefferson, says : Mindful of the ronuntlc agreement of their youth that whidiever died flnt, should bury the other under the giant oak on MontioeUo, etc, etc. This is rather hard on ** the other " — and on IMr. Jefferson — and on the corpse. — Danhury News. (b) Redundance is fatal to precision. Looseness from redundance is specially apt to occur in speaking on difficult themes to the popular mind. Under such conditions, one is apt to explain, to qualify, to rei^eat, to speak in circum- locutory phrase, to experiment with variation. These easily over- whelm the thought with words. One then loses precision in the effort to be perspicuous. Style moves askant and askew in the effort to move at all. Sometimes the very struggle to be precise — the mind, in the very act of composing, being intent on preci- sion — may defeat itself. Here, again, thought is overbonie by the machineiy employed to give it utterance. Writers who pride themselves on philosophical accuracy are apt to mnltij^ly qual- ifications, and circumstantial incidents, and secondaiy clauses, and parenthetical disclosures, so that no possible en-or shall be affirmed ; but that very strain after accuracy defeats its aim through the mere expansion of bulk and involution of connections. When a dozen words might have been underetood, a dozen dozen may fall dead on the ear. Edmund Burke sometimes illustrates this. In one of his elabo- rate sentences you will sometimes find words and clauses selected and multiplied and arranged and compacted and qualified and defined and repeated, for the veiy purpose of extending and limit- ing the truth to its exact and undoubted measure. He obviously labors to say just what he means — no more, no less, no other. Still, on the whole, he fails, because he is so elaborately precise in details. The thought is suffocated by the multitude of words Chap. XXL] llEDUNDANCE— AFFECTATION. 419 employed to give it life. It is bnried alive. To change the figure, yon can divide and snbdivide a field into so many, so small, so regular, and so exact patches, that the chief impression it shall leave on your eye is that of the fences. Similar is the impression of an excessively precise style. — Phelps. It is needful to insist the more on the energetic effect of con- ciseness, because so many, especially young writers and si^eakers, are apt to fall into a style of pompous verbosity, not from negli- gence, but from an idea that they are adding to the pei*spicuity and force of what is said, when they are only encumbering the sense with a needless load of words. And they are the more likely to commit this mistake because such a style will often apiKjar not only to the author but to the vulgar (i.e., vulgar in intellect) among his hearei*s to be very majestic and impressive. It is not uncommon to hear a sj^eaker or writer of this class mentioned as having a very fine command of language, when perhajjs it might be said with more correctness that his language had a command of him; i.e., that he follows a train of words ratlier than of thought, and strings together all the more striking expressions that occur to him on tlie subject, instead of first forming a clear notion of the sense he wishes to convey, and then seeking the most appropriate vehicle in which to convey it. He has but the same command of language that the rider has of a horse that runs away with him. — Whately. For illustration, on page 222 it is said that the printer's place will not be easily filled by his equal. It would l)e precise to say tliat his place would not be easily tilled, or that it would not be easy to find his equal. But tliere is no reason why bis equal sbould not fill bis place easily enough. (c) Affectation is a prevailing enemy to precision. Young writers are slow to learn that the simplest, most direct statement of a thought is tbe best ; and they strive ti) array ideas tbat they recognize as commonplace in dis- tinguished language. (See pages 193, 197, 349.) A two-foot rule was given to a laborer in a Clyde boat-yard to 420 PRECISION. [Part IV. measure an iron plate. The laborer, not being well up in the use of the rule, after spending a considerable time, returned. " Noo, Mick," asked the plater, •* what size is the plate ? ** " Well," re- plied Mick, with a grin of satisfaction, •• it's the length of your i-ule and two thumbs over, with this piece of brick, and the breadth of my hand and my arm from here to there, bar a finger.** — Punch. We laugh at the workman for employing thirty. two words and six kinds of measurement to express what would have been more exactly understood if he had said '* thirty-three inches." But his blunder was due to igno- rance of the use of the rule. Had he been accustomed to the rule, and had the circumlocution been an aflFectation of elegance, or an attempt to make the measurement seem more important, he would have been discharged for idiocy. Yet his fault would have been no greater than that of the reporter who writes that " the devouring ele- ment is devastating the capacious granary of one of our most influential citizens," when he means that a fire ha» broken out in John Smith's barn. A writer in the Westminster Review discourses after this^ fashion : Anothpr curioas observation upon philosophic activity is, that the co-ordination of all the functions which constitute the whole intellectual enenry of philosophic minds is pre- served in its plenitude for only a short period of their whole duration of life. There oc- curs, and generally at a period of middle life, an epoch when the assimilation of scientific material and its ulterior elaboration proceed with an energy more vigorous and more con- tinuous than is ever afterward attained by the same mind. This phase of philosophical superactivity is always succeeded by an intellectual phase characterized by less expendi- ture of simultaneous powers. I do not say that this has no meaning. But what is its mean- ing ? If I do not miss it in the volume of its long-tailed vocabu- lary, it is this, and this is the whole of it — that the mind of a met- aphysician is more \igorous for a time near middle life than it ever is afterward. Why could not the re^^ewer say that, if he must say a thing so obvious, and be content ? . . . Chap. XXL] BOMBAST. 421 That a profound mind doing honest work cannot make profound thought clear, implies intellectual disease or imbecility in the rest of mankind to an extent which is never true, except in effete or decadent mces. It is more probable that some of our philosophi- cal writers strain after the look of profoundness when the reality is not in them. That was a perilous principle which Coleridge advanced respecting the capacity of human language, that it can- not express certain metaphysical ideas, and therefore that clear- ness of style in a metaphysical treatise is prinui facie evadence of superficialness. As Coleridge was accustomed to illustrate it, the pool in which you can count the pebbles at the bottom is shallow water ; the fathomless depth is that in which you can only see the reflection of your own face. This would be tiiie if thinking were water. But the principle opens the way to the most stupendous impositions upon speculative science. It tempts authors to the grossest affectations in style. In the study of modem psychology, therefore, a preacher needs to be on his guard. We may safely treat as a fiction in philo.sophy anything which claims to be a dis- covery, yet cannot make itself understood without huge and un- manageable contortions of the English tongue. — Phelps. Bombast, whicli originally meant tlie cotton wadding with which garments are stuffed and lined, is now appro- priately applied to inflated diction, words that are big but empty. (See page 223.) A« one of the faults of over-civilization, an intellectual as well as a personal coxcombry is apt to prevail, which leads jx»ople to expect from each other a certain dashing turn of mind, and an ap- {x^arance at least of having ideas, whether they can afford them or not.— LmoH Hunt. Ignorant and unreflecting persons, though they cannot be, strictly speaking, convinced by what they do not understand, yet will very often suppose each tliat the rest understand it ; and each is ashamed to acknowledge even to himself his own darkness and perplexity : so that if the speaker with a confident air announces his conclusion as established, they will often, aircording to the maxim omne ignoium pro matpiijico^ take for granted he has ad- vanced valid arguments, and will be loath to seem behindhand in 4^22 PRECISION. fPAUTlV. comprehending them. It usnally requires that a man should have some confidence in his o\*ti understanding to venture to say, *' What has been sjwken is unintelligible to-me."— Whatelt. I have heard of a preacher wlio, desirous to appear verj- pro- found, and to make observations on the commonest subjects, which had never occun*ed to anybody before, remarked as an instance of the goodness of Providence that the moments of time come suc- cessively and not simultaneously or together, which last method of coming would, he said, occasion infinite confusion in the world. — Campbell. See similar illustration at foot of page 85. Examples of Bomhaat ai*e unliappily frequent; the newspapers are full of them. Here are a few. (See also pages 306, 307.) "Mr. and Mrs. D , Boston, U. 8. A. Best and -most pros- perous countrj^ under the sun. Thank God ! Just arrived from Chamouny on mules ; pleased with the mountains." This is an inscription on a Swiss hotel register. The mules could not write* — Gokltn Age. A yoimg man at Elkhart, Ind., has started a six-column weekly paper with the avowed object of ** restoring to the Republic its wonted grandeur and prosperity." You can't do it, young fellow. We tried for six years to restore the Republic to its wonted gran- deur and prosperity by publishing the ablest paper in this country and taking turnips and slab wood on subscription, and never had money enough to buy a dog ; but of late years we have let the wonted grandeur of the Republic shirk for itself, and on the first of January we had over six dollM*s. — Peck's Sun. "Young Subscriber" wants to know " what is an organ ? " It is the opposition paper, my son; the vile and truckling sheet through whose venomoiis maw, fetid with vice and festering with the loathsome corruption in which it daily wallows, the other party, blistered with the x^lague spot of political leprosy, sewers the noisome filth of its i>estilential ideas. Gur-r-r ! ! That's what an organ is, my boy. Our own j^aper is a Fearless and Out- spoken Champion for the Truth. You may have noticed that. — Burlington Haw key e. Chap. XXI] BOMBAST. 423 Congress has been nnder bad influences, according to the Hon. Rolliu M. Daggett, of Nevada, who, in a late speech to the House, remarked: " M»ny-tongued rumor, tho unblest evangel of caJumny, has more than hinted that to the flitter of gold have been added the enchantments of beauty to warp the judg- ments of mm, and that the corporate Aladdinn of tho land, whose influence it in impoB- •ibte not to feel, even in the inner chambers of thii4 temple, have uallcil to their council? both the sightleas son of Ceres and the star-eyed cyprlan whose home is on the heights." Mr. Daggett himself is inclined to charitably disbelieve these reports ; but even his alleged disbelief is not reassuring, because this is its basis : *' Even were it possible for me to believe them, over my shoulders I would hang the mantle of doubt, and, like the blessed of Noah's sons, walk backward with it to cover the infamy before the world beheld it or our own eyes were blasted by the unwelcome vision." The matter would seem to be one for inquiry, even if the sight- less son of Ceres and the star-eyed cyj^rian had to be summoned to testify.— .yan which has been sooared and drii-d, and then add a little butter (goootinn so as not to let the oysters or the milk Imm : add a tittle juice If you choone, and then watch the pan closely so that it it coinea to a boil yoa can whip It off. At the same time have a deep 424 PRECISION. [Part IV. dish warming near at hand, and when yoa see the flnt dgn of boiling empty the pan into the dish. Do jou think yoa can remember that f ** " One stew I " the waiter called oai.—RetaUer. The mellow light that saffused this valley at the dawn of the annlTenary of the birth of liberty on Tuesday morning was reflected npon acanva« that was pare and virgin ; the bmsh of oiroamstances had never Tisited it, and it was rung up by the Divine Crtator amid the din and noise of the universe — yea, it revealed a day that was bright with the contributions of nature. Here below everybody was in an apparently happy mood, and the spirit of good-fellowship seemed to prevail The air was aromatic with the smoke and fumea of hot salt-petra, and the reaonant sound of caonon waa mingled with the roar of human voicea and the shitoka of steam whixtles. The streets were thronged with participants In Fooith of Joly faativitiea, and everybody abandoned themselves to a general good time. But there was a tragedy rapidly incubating, and it wa8 to cast a gloom and terrible awe over the happy features of the natal day of freedom. The bullet was to play its part and stab hilarity to the heart. Between two and three o'clock, while peace supported the aoeptre, oommoUoo and strife suddenly seized it and tore along liar rison Avenue. Ouns were seen glittering m the sunlight, and a man was seen tottering across the street. It was Tommy Bennett who had been shot. —LeadviUe Herald. Let it be written on every leaf that trembles in the Canadian and American forests, every blade of grass that waves in the morning breeze, every sail that whitenH the sea of commerce : let it blaae from the stm at noontide and be reflected in the milder radiance cA every star that bedecks the ftrmaroent of Ood , let it echo through the arches of heaven and reverbeiate through the corridors of our national temple, that the grand and sym pathetic words cf Queen Victoria which flashed on the wings of cltHrtricity over the At- lantic cable and hovered like a guardian angel over the l>ed of the dying President Oar- field, were words of pearls and diamonds set in the necklace of international unity and harmony, hung aroand the neck of the Goddess of Liberty. — Cokkul A. B. Elxjott. Now 1 haven't the slightest disposition to become liyperbolical, nor in any way to mis- represent or exaggferate the state of facts relative to the repeated annoyance to which 1 have been subjected, both by envious, jealous, and half -educated renegades and counter- feits, pretending to be of my own political faith and friendly to me, and the ridiculously insane and contemptible bowlings of a partisan press ; but I du wish to say, that if there be an adult of masculine persuasion on the face of this mundane sphere, upon whom at- tempts at persecution are l)eing daily and hourly enacted, and by a class of men, neither represented by the honest, fair-minded, and hard-working mechanics, nor by the purely high-toned, reliable, and justice-dealing business men of this community, that very un- favored individual is your most obedient and bumble Bub6cril)er. Throwinp aside every- thing in the shape of political sentiment, and givins? heed to naught but the spirit of justice and fairness among men, as they live, move, and have their being in the world, I desire to say that I have, at all times, endeavored to comply strictly, and have complied strictly, I flatter myself, with all the requirements of the law, in the discharge of my official duties, and that it is my solemn purpose to continue to do so during my occu- pancy of the public position with which fortune, fate, chance, or circumstances have found or burdened me.— Sheriff Crosby, in the Viclsburg Herald. The American people — and we are glad to call ourselves that— are rocked on the bosom of two mighty oceans, whose granite-bound shores are whitened by the floating canvas of the commercial world ; reaching from the ice-fettered lakes of the north to the febrile waves of Australian seas, comprising the vast interim of five billions of acres, whose alluvial plains, romantic mountains, and myst.c rivers rival the wildest Utopian Chap. XXI.] AFFECTED HUMOR. 426 drsMiu tiimt ever gathored around the inspired bard, as he walketencc. lie can remain calm when his cook MMidH hitii up an uneatable dinner. The appearance of an unexpected milliner's bill is not Miffleient to throw him off his balance. Ho is able to witnesa his sons playing havoc with his furniture without expe- riencing an in»-linaiion to commit murder. -/.<*«ra/ Review. (d) Looseness of Thought is, however, the commonest cause of looseness of language. Rhetorical principles can do little for minds that express themselves satisfactorily in sentences like the following. He knew an Irishman who, overcome by heat, lay six weeks spoechloHs ill the mouth of August, and all his ciy was " water.** — QutUt'ii hij St'iiKfiE i)K Verk. This extraonlinary man left no children except his brother, who was killed at the same time.— J/ei;toir of Jiobeitj)ierre. 420 PRECISION. [Part IV. A deaf man named Taff was run down by a passenger train and killed on Wednesday moniing. He was injured in a similar way about a year ago. — New Jersey Journal. Monthly school reports must be handed in on Wednesday of each week to insure their publication. On a bridge at Athens, Ga., was the following: "Any person driving over this bridge in a faster pace than a walk shall, if a white person, be fined 35, and if a negro, receive twenty-five laslies, half the i>enalty to be bestowed on the informer." A Mr. Crispin of Oxford announced that he sold '* boots and shoes made by celebrated Hoby, London." Mr. Hoby, irate, put into the Oxford pai^er, ** The boots and shoes Mr. Crispin says he sells of my make is a lie." — Alfobd. Carelessness often leads to expressions so exagger- ated as to be absurd, or so loosely constructed as to be ridiculous. A manufacturing wire-worker in an advertisement invites the public to come and see his invisible wire fences. Of course, erery one mil be thei-e, and for the edification of those who are absent, a full report ^ill be found in oui- next paper. The applause at the end of the scene was unanimous, having been heard in various jmrts of the house ; there were few hisses. I follow fate, which does too fast pursue. — DbtD£N. Those who recommend the exclusive employment of either the simpler or the more complex words of our rich English, both err. — Popular Grammar, Such was the end of Murat at the premature age of forty-eight. — Alison. The command was reluctantly forced upon Prince Eugene. — Alison. The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysylla- bles into one. —Swift. To Millers. —To be let, a windmill, containing three pair of stones, a bakehouse, corn shop, and about five acres of land, dwelling-house, and garden. — Alford. I had like to have got one or two broken heads for my imperti- nence. — Swift. Chap. XXL] COLLOCATION. 427 The editor of the New England Journal of Education b&jb we referred to that committee matter at the American Institute in a "half -serious, half-truthful way." That puzzles us. Is the lialf-truthful the same half as the half- serious, or is it the other half ? If it is the same half what is the other half, and how many halves are there to that ? — School Bulletin. Another Hmall banner bore the device : '' Jonmeymen Stonecatters* Society ; " on the back, " Kight Hours for Wurk, BiKht Hours for Sleep, Eight Hours for Recreation, and Bight Hours for HcMt." Still another banner had a similar inscription in Gorman. Eight houi-8 for work does not seem out of the way, neither does eight hours for sleep ; but to make a thirty-two-Iiour day might prove a diihoult matter. Bamum's tattooed Greek sailor was on exhibition in Albany, and the advertisement said : He boa upon his body 7,000,UOU punctines, and it war all done by a female savage. The poor man loet a drop of blood and fihcd a tear for every puncture, and was the only one of tirenty-four who survived the operation. The woman who did the tattooing worked Biz houn a day for ninety days iteforc the task was completed. A mathematician of the Albany Express figured as follows : The woman raoFt have given him 3^ punctures a second. Then, if he lost one drop of blood with every puncture, h<> lost, estimating the usual number of drops to a pint, and taking a pint for a pound. 5,833 i>ouneaker— as in one sense he had said he would. A sheriff asked the wife of a Quaker ag^nst whom he had a writ if her husband was at home. She replied: "Yes; he will see thee m a moment." The sheriff waited ; but the Quaker did not appear. He was contented with seeing the sheriff ; he did not care that the sheriff should see him. "Edward," said Mr. Rice, " what do I hear, that you have dis- obeyed your grandmother, who told you just now not to jump down these ste})s ? " •* Grandma didn't tell us not to, papa, she only came to the door and said, * I wouldn't jump down those steps, boys,' and I shouldn't think she would, an old lady like her ! " " The candles you sold me last week were very bad," said Jer- rold to a tallow-chandler. "Indeed, sir, I am very sorry for that." " Yes, sir ; do you know they burnt to the middle, and then would bum no longer ? " "You surprise me! What, sir, did they go out ? " " No, sir, no ; they burned shorter ! " — Mail. ' Many popular puzxles depend on the ambigaity or donble meaning of words nnd phrases. Thus we are told there was a man who had six children, and had never seen one of them. We are led to suppose that none of the children had ever been belichl by their parent. But the words may mean equally as well that one of them had been bf>ru while the man was on a journey, and he had, consequently, never pe»'n that one. An- other puzzle is this. There was a poor blind beggar who had a brother : the brother died, but the man who died had no brother. What relation was the begijar to the m:in who died ? We are apt to think that the b^gar was a man ; but, when we think that the beggrar might be a girl, the answer becomes quite plain. We are told of two men who met each other at an inn, and greeted each other affec- tionately. The hotel-keeper inquired of one how he was related to the other, who replied : " Brother and sister have I none. Yet this man's father was my father's son." This is a perfectly plain st:\teraent, and yet there are few whose minds are clear enough to see at once that this jingle of words is only a roundabout way of saying that this man was the speaker's son. Chap. XXI. J COLLOCATION. 429 "The New York Central fast express ran oflf the bridge at Schenectady to-day»'* cries out a man, in affected horror, as he rashes up to a crowd of i)eople. After many exclamations and in - qniries, he explains that after a train has run upon the bridge it generally does run off again. •* I hope, my lord, if you ever come within a mile of my house, you will stay there all night,** wrote Sir Boyle Roche to a friend. The proprietor of a phosphate mill advertises that parties send- ing their own bones to be ground will be attended to with fidelity and despatch. In like manner a chemist advertises : " The gentle- man who left his stomach for analysis will please call and get it.'* Notice at the door of a ready-made clothing establishment in one of the poorer quarters of Paris : '* Do not go somewhere else to bo robbed ; walk in here." "Furnished Lodgings.— A young man is open to hear of the tkho\e"—AdvU. He must be the yoimg man so easily seen through, because he had a pain in his chest and in his back. Perhaps it was he that testified in an application for life-insurance that his little brother died of some funny name. **I propose introducing some new features into the service," said Rev. Mr. Textual. "All right," remarked Fogg. "New features in tliat pulpit are just what I am longing for." A lion tAmer quarrelled with his wife, a powei-ful virago, and was chased by her all around his tent. On being sorely pressed he took refuge in the cage among the lions. " Oh, you contemp- tible coward/* she shouted, " come out if you dare." An Iri8hman*s friend having fallen into a slough, the Irishman called loudly to another for assistance. The latter, who was busily engaged in cutting a log, and wishetl to procrastinate, in- quired, " How deep is the gentleman in ?" " Up to his ankles." "Then there is plenty of time," said the other. "No, there is not," rejoined the first ; " I forgot to tell you he*s in head first." This reminds one of the man who exasperated a painter by driv- ing a close bargain for a lialf-length portrait. The portrait was delivered according to agreement, but proved to be of the lower half, stopping at the waist-belt. Dominique, when at table with the King, kept his eyes on a 430 PRECISION. [Part IV. dish of partridges. The Prince, who noticed it, said to the ser- vant, "Give tliat dish to Dominique." "Wliat, Sire, and the partridges too?" The King replied, "Yes! and the partridges too." So Dominique had, with the i>artridges, the phite, which was of gold. A Philadelphia pai>er published the following paragraph : An enamored PhUaticlithian haH been convicted of petty larceny for abatraoting his adored one's carte de viaite from her photofnraph album ; the Judge decided that to steal a " carte " waa an bad aa to steal a horae. A contemi)orary made use of it as follows, being careful, of course, to leave out the pun : A Philadelphia Judge decides that stealing a girPs photograph from her album is as b«d as stealing a hone from a bam. Here is an interesting piece of local information from Newburg : One of our most thickly inhabited streets ha^ had a caae of varioloid. A contemporary in reproducing this blunder says seriously enough : Such news should make other localities careful about vaccination. In a recent number of a fashionable morning paper there is a paragraph headed, ** A Dangerous Cow," of which it is said not only that it tossed several persons, but that "it plunged and tossed about the street in a formidable manner." — Moon. A story is told of an Englishman who landed at Dublin, filled with apprehension that the life of any loyal subject of her Majesty was not worth a farthing there and there- abouts. The Land Leafruers, he imagined, were all bloodthirsty assassins, and all that sort of thing. But it was his duty to travel in the land— a duty he approached with fear and trembling. Now there happened to be on his route a number of towns the names of which begin with the sujrgestive syllable "Kil." They were Kilmartin, and so on. In his ignorance of geographical nomenclature, his affrighted senses were startled anew on hearing a fellow passenger in a railway carriage remark to another as follows : " I'm just afther bein' over to Kilpatrick." " And I," replied the other, "am afther bein' over to Kilmnrj-." •' What murderers they are ! " thought the Ensflishman : " and to think that they talk of their assassinations so publicly!" But the conversation went on. "And phare are ye goin' now * " asked assassin No. 1. " I'm goin' home, and then to Kilmore." was No. ys reply. The Englishman's blood curdled. "Kilmore, is it?" added No. 1. •' You'd betther be comin' along wud me to Kilumalle ! " It is relate«l that the English- man left the train at the next station. Constructions must be avoided that make it difRcnlt to determine which of two parts of speech a word is, or what Chap. XXI.] AMBIGUITY. 431 relation it bears to the rest of the sentence. See pages oil, 414. Thus, on page 191, "dreams" may be eitlier a verb or a noun. The ambiguity is removed by substi- tuting " to dream," for " and dreams." Care to avoid ambiguity from collocation must extend even to the possibility of mispronunciation. Once when Edwin Forrest was playing " William Tell" in Bos- ton, Sdniem, Gesler's lieutenant, should have remarked : "I see yon love a jest, but jest not now." Imagine Forrest's feelings when that worthy declaimed : "I see you love a jest, but not jest now." Lady (engaging footman) : " You are clever at table ? " Jeames •' Yes, ma'am." Lady : " And you know your way to announce ? " Joanies : ** Well, ma'am, I know my weight to a iK)und or so, but I hardly like to say to im ounce.'' — Funny Folks. Some special words are so liable to produce am- biguity that they should be scrutinized in re-reading a composition. Any, when not modified by a negative, means " any you like," Le.f "every;" but "not any" instead of meaning "not every" means *• not a single one." Hence, when the negative is carelessly placed, any becomes ambiguous, because we cannot tell whether it means erery, or one, e.g. : No |M>r»on iihall lievc anythma yon chooae toaay, anything means, in the first case, '* a single thing," in the second case " everk-thing." It is quite iin)M).sHiblc to determine, without fuller context, the meaning of the word any in such a sentence as — I am DOC booitd U> receive any mc«i«vnger whom ymi may aend. 432 PRECISION. [Part IV. But sometimes causes obscurity ; and since it may mean, ac- cording to the context, ** except," or "on the other hand," or •* only," must be very carefully handled. Am for the falsehood of yoar brother, 1 feel no doubt ; but wh*t joa wy ia tme. A» for the falaehood of your brother. I feel uo doabt but what yoa s»y ix true. I expected twelve ; but (either oitiy or contrartf to my eaepectcMon) ten came. The following is perfectly clear, but shows the possibility oi ambiguity : — There'* ne'er a Tillain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.— £/amie<.— Abbott. Nothing less than is another phrase susceptible of opposite interpretations. Thus, He aimed at nothing less than the crown, may denote either, Nothing was leai aimed at by him than the crown, or, Nothing inferior to the crown could aatlsfy his ambition. All such phrases ought to be totally laid aside.— Campbell. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Precision. 1. The icords emplayed, p. 399. Words may lack precision through : a. The confounding of synon^Tns, p. 399. An exteu.sive vocabulary, p. 401. The choice of words, p. 408. 6. The use of equivocal words, p. 409. c. The use of general words, p. 410. 2. The construction J p. 411. a. Brevity, p. 411. i. Omission of necessary words, p. 411. ii. Use of ambiguous pronouns, p. 413. 3HAP. XXL] TOPICAL ANALYSIS. 433 A genderless personal noun, p. 416. The use of " one," p. 417. Reflexive pronouns, p. 417. b. Redundance, p. 418. c Affectation, p. 419. Bombast, p. 421. Affected humor, p. 425. d. Looseness of thought, p. 426. Carelessness, p. 42G. Collocation, p. 427. Some special words, p. 431. "Nothing less than," p. 432 CHAPTER XXII. PERSPICUITY. Out of the relations of thonfcht and language, and the speaker to the hearer, grow three qualities of a good rtyle. They are pcrspicaity, energy, and elegance. Perspicu- ity txpnmm the otoarnean of the thought to the iieroeKions of the hearer. Energy ex- presses the force of the thought to the Mensibilities of the hearer. Elegance expresses the beauty of the thought to the taste of the hearer.— Phku>s. PuRiTi', Propriety, and Precision are all absolute qual- ities. Perspicuity, Power, and Perfection are relative (jualities, dependent upon the perception, the sensibilities, and the taste of the reader. Precision demands that the sentence say what the writer means. Perspicuity demands, further, that it say what the writer means so clearly that the reader cannot mistake it.* Whether a given sentence is perspicuous depends upon who is to read it. Herbert Spencer's defi- nition of evolution (see page 357) is precise, but it is per- spicuous only to scientists. The fundamental requirement of perspicuity is adaptation to the audience addressed. "I had remarked to him " [Coleridge], says Mr. De Quincey, "that the sophism, as it is usually called, but the difficulty, as it should be called, of Achilles and the Torioise, which had puzzled all the sages of Greece, was, in fact, merely another form of the perplexity which besets decimal fractions ; that, for example, if you threw | into a decimal form, it ^s-ill never terminate, but be .666666, etc., ad infinitum. ' Ye^,' Coleridge replied, * the appar- • Non nt intelligere poesit, sed ne omi:iiio posdt non iutelligere curandum.— QniN TILIAN. Cbap. XXII.) PBUSPICUITY. 435 ent absnrdlty m the Grecian problem arises thns, — because it as- Bumea the inonite tlinsibility of space, but drops out of view the correHi)omling intiuity of time.' There was a fla.sh of lightning, which illuminated a darkness that had existed for twenty-three centuries." Coleridge's explanation was precise ; as addressed to De Quincey it was perspicuous ; but had it been made to a class in a primary school it would have been decidedly obscure. Universally, indeed, an unpractised writer is liable to be misled by his own knowledge of his own meaning into 8upi)osiiig those expressions clearly intelligible whieh are so to him, but which may not be 80 to the reader, whose thoughts are not in the same train. And hence it is that some do not write or speak with so much per- spicuity on a subject which has long been very familiar to them, as on one which they understand indeed, but with which they are less intimately accpiainted, and in which their knowledge has been more recently ac(piired. In the fonner case it is a matter of some difficulty to keep in mind the necessity of carefully and copiously explaining principles wliieh by long habit have come to assume, in our minds, tlie api)eftrance of self-evident truths. Utterly in- correct, therefore, is Blair's notion, that obscurity of style neces- sarily springs from indistinctness of conception. A little conversa- tion on nautical afTaii-s with sailors, or on agriculture with farmers, would soon have undeceived him.— Wiiately. A Government surveyor tells of a western pioneer who seemed interested in the theodolite. The suneyor explained its work- ing, and found the pioneer so attentive that he went on to illus- trate the variation of the needle, the ^magnetic currents, the pre- cession of the equinoxes, and finally the calculation of coming ecIiiMios, congratulating himself ui)on finding so intelligent a listener. Aft-er two hours of this, the ]Moneer for the first time broke silence. " It's wonderful, wonderful," he exclaimed. •* And nieblH) you can show me another thing that's always bothered me. Why is it that in adding up figures, you have to cany one for eveiy ton ? ** A36 PERSPICUITY. [Part IV Teachers learn to measure the information they give not by what they tell their scholars, but by what their scholars t€ll back to them. It in agreed among all writers upon rhetoric, that the first property in style is that by virtue of which it is intelligible. The understanding is the aveooe to the man. No one io affected by truth who doe* not apprehend it. Diaooune must, therefore, first of all, be plain. This property was termed ptr^teuUOM, by the Latin i hetorictans. It is trans paren«y in diaoourM. as the e^molagy denoCea The word cvcpycia. which the Greek rheiorloians employed to mark thla mme oharacteriatio;, tignilles distinctness of outline. The adjective iripyiK is applied by Honoer to the goda, when actually appenring to hu- man Tiaion in their own bright forms : when, like Apollo, they broke through the dim ether that ordinarily veiled them from mortal eyes, and stood out on the edge of the horiaon distinctly defined, radiant, and splendid (Od. vii. SUl, 2). Vividness seems to have been the ruling conception for the Greek, in this property of style, and tranRparenoy for the Latin. The English and French rhetoricians have transferred the I^tin perapi- CHtUu, to designate the quality of intelligibility in diaoonrae. The Germans have not transferred the Latin word, beoauae the remarkable flexibility of their langiinge relieves them from the necessity of tranaferring words from other languages, but they have coined one (DurchtiehUgkeU) in their own mint, which agrees in signification precisely with the Latin pertptcHUoM. Theee facta evince that the modern mind is inclined, with the Latin, to ccMupare the property of intelligibility of style to a clear pellucid medium ; to CKyatal or gimm. that permits the rays of light to go through, and thus permits the komaa eye to see through. While, however, the attention is fixed upon this conception of transparency, and the property under ctmsideration is denominated perspicuity in the rhetorical nomenclature, it is important not to loi« sight of that other conception of distinctness, or vividneas, which was the leading one for the Greek mind. Style is not only a medium, it is also s form. It is not only translucent and transparent, like the undefined and all-pervading atmo<;phere ; it also has definite outlines, like a single object. Style is not only clear, 'like the light; it is rotund lik3 the sun. While, therefore, the conception of persptcuity of medium is retained, there should also be combined with it the conception of fulness of outline, and vividness of impression, so as to secure a comprehensive and all-including idea of that first fundamental quality of style which renders it intelligible- It is not enough that thoughts be seen through a clear medium ; they must be seen in a distinct shape. It is not enough that truth be visible in a clear, pure air ; it must stand cut in that air, a single, well-defined object. The atmosphere most not only be crystal- line and sparkling, but the things in it must »)e bounded and defined by sharply cut lines. There may be perspicuity without distinctness, especially vrithout that vivid distinctness which is implied in the Greek ivepyeta. A style may be as transparent as water, and yet the thoughts be destitute of boldness and individuality. Such a style cannot be charged with obscurity, and yet it does not set truth before the mind of the reader or hearer in a striking or fmpressive manner. Meie isolated perspictaity is a negative quality ; it furnishes a good m»»dium of vision, but it does not present any distinct objects of vision. Distinctness of outline, on the other hand, is a positive quality. It implies a vigorous action of the mind upon the truth, whereby it i.s moulded and Rhai)ed : whereby it is cut and chiselled like a statue; whereby it is made to assume a substantial and well-defined form which smites upon the eye. and which the eye can take in.— Shedd. " Our laneruage," says Quintilian, "ought to convey our meaning so clearly that the meaning shall fall on the hearers' minds as the sunlight falls on our eyes." But the sun- Cdap. XXII.] SIMPLICITY. 437 shine of winter w col«1 ami barren, although its radiance ifl brightened by the traniipar- •ncy of the air and the reflections of the ice and t-now. The snmmers snn has le«s bril- liancy indeed, bat far more heat u heat that causes blue vapors u> veil the distant hills and (diver mists to wreath the green mountains, that gathem ^torm-clouds whicli darken th* earth and sky and discharge such Tolleja of lightning as render that darkneas all the man appalling.— Hkbtxt. Simplicity is a prime essential to Perspicuity, and should be aimed at both (i) in Thought, and (ii) in Ex- pression. (I.) Thought is Simple when it is direct, straight- forward, intent solely on the truth concerned, and its clearest expression. (See pages 346, 347, 348.) Mozart gave as his reasons for marrying : " I wish to marry because I have no one to take care of my linen ; because I cannot live like the dissolute men around me ; and be- cause I love Catharine Weber." Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge ; or rather, I shonld say, banish elaborateness ; for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into daylight its own modest buds, and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of expression. I allow no hot-beds m the gar- dens of Parnassus. — C. Lamb. Youthful vanity and inexperience alone sufficiently account for the g^eat part of the deviations from propriety, simplicity, and common sense now alluded to. Those who laud nature in oppo- sition to art are too apt to forget that this very vanity forms a jwirt of it. . . . While some men talk as if to speak naturally were to speak like a natural, others talk as if to sjieak with simplicity meant to speak like a simpleton. True simplicity does not con- sist in what is trite, bald, or commonplace. So far as regards the thought it means, not what is already obvious to everybody, but what, though not obvious, is immediately recognized, as soon as propounded, to be true and striking. As it regards the expression, it means that thoughts worth hearing are expressed in language that every one can understand. In the first point of view it is opposed to what is abstruse ; in the second, to what is obscure. — Whatet^t. I . Conceive of things clearly and distinctly in their 438 PERSPICUITY. [Pakt IV. own natures. 2. Conceive of things conqiletely in all their parts. 3. Conceive of things coniprehensively in all their properties and relations. 4. Conceive of things ex- tensively in all their kinds. 5. Conceive of things orderly, or in a proper method. — Watts. I cannot conclude this lectare without insisting on the impor^ tance of accuracy of style as being near akin to veracity and truth- ful habits of mind; he who thinks loosely will write loosely.— COLERIDOE. Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commaiily found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs froLi confusion of ideas ; and the same wish to dazzle at any cost which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to prodwce sophistry in his reasonings. — MacauiiAT. One would indeed think it hardly pomible that a man of sense who perfectly nnder- Rtandeth the language which he aneth should erer speak or write in such a manner an to be altofrether unintelligible. Yet this is what frequently happens. The cauw of this fault in any writer I take to be always cne or uther of the three following : first, great confusion of thought, which is commonly accompanied with intricacy in the expression ; secondly, affectation of excellence in the diction ; thirdly, a total want of meaning. I do not mention as one of the causes of this imputation a penury of language : though this, doubtless, may contribute to produce it. In fact I never found one who had a justness of appreciation, and was free from affectation, at a loss to make himself understooi in his native tongue, even though he had little command of language, and made but a bad choice of words.— Campbell. Titles often mislead through affectation of qiiaintness. Unfortunately, writers are not careful in their choice of names, and titles are occasionally adopted which, instead of explaining the nature of the book, serve only to mislead the buyer. Mr, Ras- kin, who is noted for such unintelligible titles as " Fors Cla^dgera " and " Sesame and Lilies," issued a theological discoui-se under the name of *' A Treatise on Sheepfolds," thus leading a.stray many librarians and indexers, as well as imsnspecting fanners and shep- herds. The "Diversions of Purley," at the time of its publication, was ordered by a village book-club under the impression that it was a book of amusing games. The " Essay on Irish Bulls '* was another work which was thought by some folks to deal with live Chap. XXILJ SIMPLICITY. 439 stock. •• Moths,** a novel by Ouida, has been asked for under the impression that it was an entomological work, and Charles Kings- ley's "Yeast," by those in search of information on the Torula cerevisicPt or yeast-plant. Coleridge's ** Ancient Mariner " was sold largely to seafaring men, who concluded from the name that it had some relation to nautical matters. Coleridge himself says : It is somewhat singular that the name of another and larger book of Mr. Wordsworth's should also owe its drcolation to a mibconccptiuu of the title. It has been my fortune to hare met with *' The Excursion *^ at a great number of inns and boarding-houseH in pic- ttureeqae soenes— in places where parties go for excunions ; and upon inciuiry bow it hap- pened that so expensive a book was purchased, when an old Universal Jfagaaine, an " Athenian Oracle," or, at best, one of the " Bridgewatcr Treatises," would do as well to send the guests to sleep— 1 was given to nnderrtand in those separate places that they were left by parties who had flnisheil their material excuroion, but, ala8 for their taste, had left their poetic " Excursion *' untouched — uncut, even, beyond the story of " ICar- gtnt.'"— Chambers' $ Joitmal. (ii.) Expression is Simple when it expresses the thought in the most direct and obvious words. "Think witli the learned, speak with the vulgar," says Bacon. " There are six little ones who call General Grant * grandpa,' " was a recent newspaper paragraph. This was in the first place untrue, the counting of the grandchildren having been suggested by the birth of the sixth, who at this time did not call anybody anything. But on general principles the paragraph would be more perspicuous and more forcible if it read simply, " General Grant has six grandchildren." Tlie whole merit of violent deviations from common style de- pends upon their rarity, and nothing does for ten pages together but the indicative mood.— Sydney Sxuth. If you take Sophocles, Catullus, Lucretius, and the better parts of Cicero, and so on, you may, with just two or three excep- tions, arising out of the different idioms as to cases, translate page after page into good mother English, word by word, without altering the order; but you cannot do so with Virgil or Tibullus. If you attempt it you will make nonsense.— Colertdoe. Tlie writings of Addison and Dr. Johnson have often been com- pared. One of the chief points of contrast in their style lies, I 440 PERSPICUITY. [Part IV. apprehend, in the easy and natural recurrence in the former of the verb, and the artificial preponderance given in the latter to the noun. Since Dr. Johnson's time the substantive has been gaining ground ; the infinitive mood, the gerund, and the compound par- ticiple have been in the same proportion suppressed in many works of which the composition is highly elaborate. As ftu* as un- studied writings can be expressed in sot phrases, the usurpation has extended even to these. — HaiiL. Dr. Allen wm pnaddaff e dis- canlod altogether. But this I imagine is also an extreme. If the I)art>nthe8is Im» short, and if it be iiitrcnluced in a proi)er place, it will not in thc> least hurt the cltMUiiess, and may add both to the vivacity and to the energy of the sentence. — Oajipbell. ^2 PERSPICUITY. [Part IV. " I Sat." — ^A very bail sentence this ; into which, by the help of a parenthesis and other interjected circumstances, his lordship has contrived to thrust so many things that he is forced to begin the consti-uction again with the phrase / mi/, which, whenever it occurs, may be always assumed as a sure mark of a clumsily ill- constmcted sentence ; excusable in speaking, where the greatest accuracy is not expected, but in polished writing unpardonable. — Blair. Excessive Simplicity seems at first an impossi- bility, but there are certain considerations worthy of at- tention. (a) Simjdiciti/ mu^t not he Affected, — Simple language is to be chosen, not because it is simple, but because it best expresses the meaning. To assume unnatural sim- plicity under the impression that simplicity in itself is an ornament, and because it is thought to be an ornament, is more ridiculous than the affectation of elegance. Observations should not be proposed in scholastic style, nor in commonplace guise. They should be seasoned ^\-ith a sweet ur- banity, accommodated to the capacities of the people, and adapted to the manners of good men. One of the best expedients for this purpose is a reduction of obscure matters to a natural, popular, modem air. You can never attain this ability unless you acquire a habit of conceiving clearly of subjects yourself, and of expressing them in a free, familiar, easy manner, remote from everything forced and far-fetched. All long trains of arguments, all embar- rassments of divisions and subdivisions, all metaphysical investi- gations, which are mostly impertinent, and, like the fields, the cities, and the houses which we imagine in the clouds, the mere creatures of fancy — all these should be avoided. Care must be taken, however, to avoid the opposite extreme, which consists in making only poor, dry, spiiitless observations, frequently said under pretence of avoiding scliool-divinity, and of speaking only popular things. Endeavor to think clearly, and try also to think nobly. Let your observations be replete with beauty as well as propriety, the fmits of a tine fancy under the Chap. XXII.] SIMPLICITY. 443 direction of a sober jndgment. If you be inattentive to this ar- ticle, you will pass for a contemptible declaimer, of mean and shallow cajmcity, exhausting yourself and not edifying your hear- ers ; a very ridiculous character. — Claude. WonJsworth'8 weak side, as a poet, was hU great difficulty in perceiving when he had ami when ho had not Kuccceiletl tn fusing the langunge which ho used with the fire of his own meditative iiassiun. Sometimes in the midst of a passage of the truest rapture, he will descend suddenly uiK>n a little bit of dry, hard fact, and not be at all aware that the fact remain? like an irregular, unlovely stone pressing down u group of flowers, a raona- mentof the sudden failure of the power of his emotion over his language. Thus, in the lovely lines, '* She was a phahtoin of delight,*' the reader is suddenly oppressed by being told that the poet at last sees, " with eye serene, the very pulse of the machine," — as if a phantom of delight could possibly hiivc been a machine, or even, like a waxwork figure, contained one. There is the same fault in one of the finest of the original '* Lyrical Bal- lada,**— the one called " The Thorn," of which Mrs. Oliphant, by the way, who does not ■eem to have written with a copy of the " Lyrical Ballads " before her, makes no men- tion, but which Lord Jeffrey epitomized, if we remember rightly, as describing how a woman in a red cloak went up to thu top of a hill and said, " Oh, misery 1 " and then oame down again. The greater part of the ballad. L^rd JefTrey '* to the contrary in auy- wlae notwithatanding,'' as the lawyers say, is i)cnctrated through and through by the moat geooine imaginative pasaion ; but when, in the form in which the ixxsm originally i^tpeued, Wordsworth apooifled the dimensions of the little muddy pool by the infant's BraTe— Fve measured it from side to side; 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, he suddenly precipitated, as it were, into the midst of his |ioem a little deposit of ngly clay, which made his readers change the sob which the finer parts of the ballad excited Into a hysterical giggle. Wonlsworth's weakness— es|)eci ally in the earlier part of hia oureer as a poet— was this, that he never knew hotv far bis imagination had tranimnted, or bad failed to transmute, the rough clay of rude circumsUnces into the material of plaatic art. Ue was not awakened from his dream by such a de«;ccnt as we have just quoted, and he did not know that his readers, who did not fully enter into his ecstasy, and probably did we, what Wordsworth ooald not see, the lodicroua oontrasta and ine- qnalitiea of bit mood, woold be awakened from their dream by these shocks.— 7%« Spec- tator. (b) SivipUcUy must never seem a Condescension. — Not men alone, but children as well, resent the impntation that it is necessary to adapt one's thoughts and vocabulary to their ignorance. It is a just and curious observation of Dr. Kenrick that *' the case of languages, or rather speech, being quite contrary to that of science, in the former the ignorant understand the h^arned better than the learned do the ignorant, in the latter it is other- wise.*' — Oamfbkll. 444 PERSPICUITY. [Part IV. The style of a sermon mav, like the stars, be at once very clear and very lofty ; while the peasant derives from the stars rules for farming and the mariner for sailing, the mathematician equally draws thence the principles that guide him in his astronomical calculations. The former, unable, it may be, either to read or write, can nevertheless apprehend the stars as far as is necessary for him ; the latter, in spite of all his scientific knowledge, is very far from comprehending all the stellar universe. — Antonio Vie- TERA. So far as it is meant to gain favor by patronizing, sim- plicity, like other affectations, fails of its end ; for there is in ignorant minds a not wholly unreasonable fondness for thoughts they have to grope after. Part of Rufus Choate's power over juries lay in the delicious iiidefinite- ness of his style, which made the unlearned feel there was much to admire, and would be much to convince if they could only understand it. It must be accepted as a fact (and we commend it to the atten- tion of those who cherish romantic notions of human nature), that the more weak and ignorant men are, the less inchned they are to receive instraction, unless it is in somewise concealed, or made to pass under another name. In proof of this we need only mention the incessant return of the phrase *' you know " in talk and cor- respondence. — Hervey. A clergyman in the country had a stranger preaching for him one day, and meeting his sexton asked, "Well, Saunders, how did you like the sermon to-day?" "It was i-ather ower plain and simple for me. I like thae sermons best that jumbles the joodg- ment and confounds the sense. Ah, sir, I never saw one that could come up to yoursel' at that." The ultra-practical Francis de Sales, after hearing from another in his own pulpit a sublime sermon that greatly delighted his mountaineers, asked some of them what they had gained from it. One of them replied : * ' This preacher teaches us to esteem more highly the grandeur of the mysteries of oui' religion." De Sales Chap. XXII.] SIMPLICITY. 445 was forced to admit that this man, at least, had profited by the sermon. Richard Baxter, no mean example for religious teachers and oatechisers, purposely threw out some things in his sermons that were beyond the comprehension of his hearers, in order that they might learn to be dissatisfied with their existing stock of Christian knowledge. '* Wherefore," says Chrysostom in one of his homilies, ** have I presented this difficulty and not appended its solution ? " He replies that herein he proceeds like doves, which, as long as their young remain in the nest, feed them from their own bills ; but as soon as they are fledged and leave the nest, the mother lets food fall upon the earth, and the little ones pick it up. — Hebyet. The more simple, clear, and obvions any principle is rendered, the more likely if ita •xposition to elicit these common remarks : ''Of coarse I of courterflnous, is apt quickly to disgust us. The reason is, not because anything is said too ijerspicuously, but because many things are said which ought not to be said at all. Nay, if those very things had been expressed obscurely (and the most obvious things may be expressed obscurely), the fault would have been much g^reater ; because it would have required a good deal of at- tention to discover what, after we had discovered it, we should perceive not to be of suflicient \'alae for requiting our pains. To 446 PERSPICUITY. [Part IV. an author of this kind we bIiouUI be apt to apply the character which Bassanio in the phiy gives of GrtUiano's conversation : He speaks sn infinite deal of nothing. His raisons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff : jroa shall seek all day ere yoa And them, and when yon have them they aru nut worth the search. — McrdkatU nf VttUct, It is therefore futility in the thought, and not iHjrspicuity in the language, which is the fault of such performances. There is as little hazard that a piece shall be faulty in this respect, as that a mirror shall be too faithful in reflecting the images of objects, or that the glasses of a teleseoi>e shall be too transparent. At the same time it is not to be dissembled that \iith inatten- tive readers, a pretty numerous class, darkness frequently passes for depth. To be perspicuous, on the contrary, and to be super- ficial, are regarded by them as synonymous. But it is not surely to their absurd notions that our language ought to be adapted. — TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Perspicuity. Simplicity essential to perspicuity, p. 437. i. Stinfliritii ill f/i»inj/it, j). 4'.i7. 1. Things should be conceived clearly, 437. 2. '* " '* completely, p. 438. 3. " ** " comprehensively, p. 438. 4. " '* " extensively, p. 438. 5. '* '* '* orderly, p. 438. Titles, p. 438. ii. JStmjdinty in expression , p. 439. Periodic structure, p. 440. Parenthest'S, p. 441. Excessive simplicity, 442. a. Simplicity must not be affected, p. 442. b. '' must never seem a condescension, p. 443 Simplicity t$. Triteness, p. 445. CHAPTER XXm. POWER. Power (often known as Energy, Strength, Force) is that quality of style which makes it impressive. Pre- cision and Pei*spiciiity make the reader know wliat is meant ; Power makes him feel what is meant. Precision and Perspicuity make the hearer know what he ought to do ; Power makes him resolve to do it. These words, which have their synonyms in all language — energy, strength, force, vigor — do certainly express an idea not otherwise definable than by Interchange of these words. They convey an idea which the common sense of men never confounds with the impressiveness of a mathematical theorem, or that of a bird of pai-adise, or that of the tail of a peacock. These words are ultimate in all languages ; so that we cannot add to their sig- nificance, except by material emblems. We can only say that energy is a peculiar kind of impressiveness ; it is the impressive- ness of strength, as distinct from that of clearness ; it is the im- pressiveness of force, as distinct from that of beanty ; it is the im- pressiveness of vigor, as distinct from that of vivacity. — Phelps. (I-) In Thought, Power is dependent chiefly upon {a) Sincerity, and [h) Directness. (a) Sincerity combines reality of conviction, and earnestness of purpose, with freedom from unfairness and from dishonesty. The Latin original meant " without wax," and was applied to honey that was just what it pur- ported to be. In speech we apply the word when one Chap. XXIII.] DIRECTNESS. 449 BAys what he means, and means what he says. Such utterance always commands respect, and usually commands attention. Without it, words are as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. Conviction is more than opinion ; it is firm belief, attained by considemtion, and fortified by experience. One who holds only opinions — vague, shifting, embodying little thought or observa- tion — will write nothing forcible, because he has no vigorous ideas. So true is this that in the lightest conversation (see pages 27, 7C) one must take sides temix)rarily even upon subjects that are indifierent, or the talk will be platitudinous. In convereation this is sometimes excusable and even necessaiy, because the range of practical topics may include none upon which both persons have pronounced opinions. Sometimes in periodical newspaper work the same necessity arises ; the editor must say something about a subject tliat has no interest for him, because his readei-s expect something said about it. But if such occasions are frequent, the editor may be sure that he has mistaken either his calling or his community ; he cannot long assume an interest he does not feel, and he will find no readera for articles he has written with- out an interest. The exceptions are rare to the rule that the essay should be written because one hasacomdction to express. A con- viction hastily and artificially built up because one has an essay to write will fall flat. (b) Directness characterizes a strong mind. To see clearly, to feel deeply, to speak forcibly, the mind nmst be fixed on one thing, and one thing only. A dozen argu- ments, a score of illustrations, a hundred facts may be cited, but all must be subordinated to the one end in view — selected because they promote it, and arranged with reference to the perspective (see page 251). These are ascending stairs— a good voice, winning manners, plain speech, chastened however by the schools into correctness ; but we most come to the main matters, of power of statement- know your fact, hug year fact.— Emsbson. ^50 POWER. (Part IV. (2) In Expression, i'recision and perspicuity being assumed, power is dependent chieiiy on {a) plainness, and (b) conciseness. (a) Plainness of speech indicates that the writer has something to say, and that his reliance is upon the ideas themselves — not upon their verbal apparel. The first valuable power in a reasonable mind, one would say, was the power of plain statement, or the power to receive things as they befall, and to transfer the picture of them to another mind unaltered. 'Tis a good rule of rhetoric which Schlegel gives — •'In good prose every word is underscored;" which, I suppose, means never itaUcize. Spartans, Stoics, heroes, saints, and gods use a short and ix)8itive speech. They are never off their centres. As soon as they swell and pant and find truth not enough for them, softening of the brain has already begun. It seems as if in- flation were a disease incident to too much use of words ; and the remedy lay in recourse to things. I am daily struck with the forcible undei*statement of people who have no litemry habits. The low expression is strong and agreeable. The citizen dwells in delusions. His dress and draperies, house and stables, occupy him. The poor countiyman, having no circumstances of car^Dets, coaches, dinners, wine and dancing in head to confuse him, is able to look straight at you, without refi*action or prismatic glories, and he sees whether your head is addled by this mixture of wines. The common people diminish ; "a cold snap ; " "it rains easy ; " ** good haying weather." When a farmer means to tell you that he is doing well with his farm, he says : ** I don't work as hard as I did, and I don't mean to." When he wishes to condemn any treatment of soils or stock, he says: "It won't do any good." Under the Catskill mountains the boy in the steamboat said, *• Come up here, Tony ; it looks pretty out-of-doors." — Emerson. ** I don't know how to apologize,^' Max Adeler makes a raga- muffin who is ashamed of himself exclaim ; " but if you want to kick me down the front steps, just kick away — I'll bear it like an angel." Even a sophisticated mind is caught by plain utterances. The man who has spoiled his tastes and sympathies by an artificial and Chap. XXIILl BLUNTNESS. 451 showy cultivation is nevertheless struck by the vigor and raciness of plain sense. In the phrase of Hoi-ace, though he has driven nature out of his understanding with a fork, she yet returns when tmth appeai-s. And this is a hold which a plain speaker has upon an audience of false tastes and false refinement. There is an in- stinctive sagacity in man which needs this plainness of presenta- tion, and which craves it and is satisfied with it. — Shedd. Coleridge says of Roger North : Hia langnage gives ns the veiy nerve, pnlae, and sinew, of a hearty, healthy, conver- EngUsh ; and he gives this illustration of his style : He appeared very ambitiotu to Icam to write ; and one of the attorney's got a board knocked np at a window on the top of a staircase ; and that wan his desk, where ho sat and wrote after copies of court and other hands that the clerks gave him. On the title-page to " Put Yourself in his Place," Charles Beade thus translates a famous sentence of Horace's : I will frame a work of Action upon notorious fact, so that anybopular ear, and substantially exact. No language is more so. Thus, when a prince has provod him.self boldf quiok, decisive, ponderous in character, the popular voice has summed up its verdict in one figurative but exact title, " Charles the Hammer." When a military chief has proved him- 453 POWER. [Part IV. self sanguinary, cniel, ferocious, relentless, the people have told the whole story of his life in the single phrase, '* Alva the Butcher." The watchwords of political parties again illustrate the same thing. They are often intensely figurative ; yet, if they have great force with the people, they are as intensely true. No style can ex- press the truth with more of that vividness which is often neces- sary to precise ideas in the popular mind. General Harrison owed his elevation to the presidency of our republic, in lai'ge measure to his Kup(>08ed symi)athy with the simple and rude usages of backwoodsmen ; and this was expressed in the old war-cry of the Whigs of 1840 : " Log cabin and hard cider." General Taylor owed his election to the same oflSce largely to the sobriquet which his soldiers gave him in the Mexican war, " Old Bough and Ready." General Scott was believed to have lost his election lie- cause of the nickname by which his enemies ridiculed his well- known fondness for military etiquette, ** Old Fuss and Feathera." Thousands of voters who cared nothing, and knew nothing, about the politics of the contending imrties, knew as definitely as you do what those watchwords meant ; and they voted for and against the things which these words painted to their mental %dsion. A style in which men said what they meant, and meant what they believed, carried the day, although it was made up of populai- slang. — Phelps. Find illostrations on pages 67, 71, MS. Coarseness, however, enfeebles; for it produces disgust with tlie writer, which prejudices the reader against the views presented. "You Scotchmen," said Edward Irving to Chalmers, "would handle an idea as a butcher handles an ox." It has generally happened that the most effective public speak- ers, whether secular or sacred, have by a fastidious class been accused of -s-ulgarisms. So with Cicero, Burke, and Chatham ; so with Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster ; and to turn to eminent preachers, so with Luther, Latimer, and Whitefield. The reason was that, intent on the greatest good to the gi*eatest number, they used what Dr. Johnson, after Daniel Burgess, called "market language." And yet some carry this notion so far that they imag- Chap. XXIII. ] COARSENESS. 453 ine that in speech the more vulgar they are the more energetic they must be. ** Nor is it true," as Dr. Ward says, '* that rough and harsh language is more sti'ong and nervous than when the composition is smooth and harmonious. A stream which runs among stones and rocks makes more noise, from the opposition it meets with in its course ; but tliat which has not these impedi- ments flows with greater force and strength." — Hervey. In criticising, we must keep in mind how the standard of propriety has varied, from age to age. The Rev. Joseph Dwight was the minister of Woodstock, Conn., about the year 1700. The sensational jmlpit of our own time could hardly surpass him in the diollery of its expressions. " If unconverted men ever get to heaven," he said ; " they would feel as uneasy as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak." This probably seemed lees offensive to his congregation than it seemed not long ago, at a prayer-meeting, when Heuiy Ward Beecher told about certain cellars from which malarial odors arose, and said that first one of the family died and then anotlier from these odors. * ' They called it mysterious Providence," said Mr. Beecher. ' ' No such thing ; God knows it was rotten onions." In tlie use of words, again, local usage must be recog- nized. " Do taste this soup," said an English young woman to the man beside her at dinner; "it isn't half nasty." The remark was unnoticed there, but would have been unpardonable at a Boston table. Mr. I^owell insists that " perspire " is a vulgar word, and that only " sweat " siiould be used. Yet in most American circles one does well to remember the distinction that a horse sweats, a man perspires, and a woman glows. The young man who began a letter to his betrothed, " Thou sweatest," found her no longer sweet to him. Those things which it is indecent to express viviilly uio always such as are conceive*! to have some turpitude in them, either nat- ural or moral. An example of this decency in expression, where 454 POWER [Part IV. the subject hath some natural turpitude, you will find in Martha's answer, as it is in the original, when our Saviour gave orders to remove the stone from the sepulchre of her brother Lazarus, " Lord, bj this time he smelleth (7^17 o^et), for he hath been dead four days." In our version it is somewhat indelicately, not to say indecently, rendered stinketh. Our translators have in this in- stance unnecessarily receded from their ordinary rule of keeping as close as possible to the letter. The synecdoche in this place answers just as well in English as in Greek ; the x>erspicuity is such as secures the reader from the possibility of a mistake, at the same time that the expression is free from the indecency with which the other is chargeable. But if it be necessary to avoid a ^ivid exhibition of what appears uncleanly to the external senses, it is much more necessary in whatever may have a tendency to pol- lute the mind. It is not always the mention of vice, as such, which has this tendency. Many of the atrocious crimes may be men- tioned with great plainness without any such danger, and there- fore without the smallest indecorum. What the subjects are which are in this way dangerous, it is surely needless to explain. And as every person of sense will readily conceive the truth of the gen- eral sentiment, to propose without necessity to produce examples for the elucidation of it, might justly be charged with being a breach of that decency of which I am treating. — Campbell. The Distinction between bluntness and coarseness is that the former is recognized by the writer as harsh, but adopted because harshness seems, under tlie circum- stances, to be necessary ; while the latter is the uncon- scious manifestation of low instinct and low taste. Thus in rhythm what would if unconscious be an unpardonable blunder, may, when a certain eifect is to be produced, appear an artist-stroke. For instance, And ten slow words oft creep in one dull line, is a most unmusical verse, and perfect because it is unmusical, being intended to illustrate that fault. But there would be no hope for the writer who let such verses slip into his poems with- out knowing that they were unmusical. Chap. XXIII. ] THE VELVET GLOVE. 455 So tme is it that only the necessity of such ntterance makes blontness permissible, that the severest remark gains force when it can be converted without loss of distinctness into courteous ex- pression. The edge of the axe does more execution than the hoasition. He was essentially manly — of tln»t fin.- ^^ly^ of manliness whi«'» irvl'idee the bes- * ^^ POWER [Part IV. gentleness and tenderness of womanly nature, blended with the highest moral fortitude of manhood. We know that the man who created Imogen^ Portia^ Viola, Hosaiind, Hamlet, Borneo, Troiius, OthellOf comprised this dual womanly and manly nature in his own ; and we know that Nelson, who knew not what fear was, desired when dying to liave a kiss from the lips of his faithful lieutenant, Hardy. So with Leigh Hunt: he was sensi- tive as a woman, yet in every fibre— moral, intellectual, and physi- cal—thoroughly a man. — ^Maby Cowden Clabke. Find illustrations on papes 11, 00. See alao pages 29, 89-43, (b) Conciseness is not synonymous with Brevity. Brevity refers only to the number of words ; conciseness refers to the amount of tliought they convey. Brevity implies the use of few words, whatever the thought may be ; conciseness implies the use of no unnecessary words, however many may be employed. Brevity may be attained by leaving much unsaid ; conciseness tells it all, but tells it compactly. A concise discourse is like a well-packed trunk, which contains much more than at first sight it appears to do ; a brief discourse may be like a trunk half full; short, because it is scanty. — Whatelt. A strict and succinct style is that where you can take away nothing without losse, and that losse to be manifest. — Ben JONSON. Brevity is a means, not an end ; it is to be desired when it gives best expression to the thought, and only then. To assume that there is a special virtue in laconism is to imitate the absurdity of Dryden's line, My wonnd is great, because it is so small ; which Buckingham thus parodied, It would be en^«ater, were it none at all. Conciseness is attained chiefly (i) by Pruning, and (ii) by Compression. Chap. XXIII.] PRUNING. 457 (i.) Pruning is possible in almost all composition to an extent that will amaze those who have not experiment- ed. Not to speak of words like very (see page 227) that young writers sprinkle through their manuscript as from a pepper-box, phrase after phrase, clause after clause, sen- tence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, will be found superfluous because they repeat, or excrescent be- cause they are not a growth from the idea. "The three ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation," says Coleridge, "are Security to possessors, Facility to acquirers, and Hope to all." Why this last clause? It is not co-ordinate with the other two, but a result from them. It is not one of three ends, but the single end, to be attained by means of the other two. The Declaration of Independence is a famous document, but it begins with a similar blunder : We hold these tmths to be Belf-cvident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable righta ; that among theae are life, lib- erty, and the pnmiit of happinewi. Life ? yes ; liberty ? yes ; but the pursuit of happiness ? Why is it an inalienable right? How can you prevent a man from •' pursuing" happiness ? You may help him to attain it, but how can you help him to *• pursue" it? The fact is, that in nearly half of the instances where three specifications are made, one of them is either superfluous or ex- crescent It is a sort of rhetorical rhythm to which mankind has become accustomed, that three s])ecifications give a sounding ro- tundity to the close of a sentence ; so when only two are involved in the thought a third is tacked on for the sake of completeness. Economy of Attention is the principle upon which the j>ower of conciseness depends. This is a busy age. People are overwliclmed on all sides with things to see and to liear. Any one thing that absorbs attention ab- stracts that attention from a thousand pressing objects, and must prove itself of more immediate importance than 4r58 POWBB. [Part IV. those objects. Hence tlie idea must be presented witli as few wrappings as possible. The busy niercliant will not stop to tear open a series of envelopes to get at a circular from an unknown correspondent — envelopes and all will go into the waste-basket. We are told that " brevity is the soul of wit." We hear styles condemned as verbose or involved. Blair says that every needless part of a sentence " interrupts the description and clogs the image ; "* and again, that " long sentences fatigue the reader's at- tention." It is remarked by Lord Eames that " to give the utmost force to a period, it ought, if possible, to be closed with the word that makes the greatest figure." That parentheses should be avoided, and that Saxon words should be used in preference to those of Latin origin, are established precepts. But, however in- fluential the truths thus dogmatically embodied, they would be much more influential if reduced to something like scientific or- dination. In this, as in other cases, conviction will be greatly strengthened when we understand the why. And we may be sure that a comprehension of the general principle from which the rules of composition result, will not only biing them home to us with greater force, but will discover to us other rules of like origin. On seeking for some clue to the law underlying these current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in many of them the impor- tance of economizing the reader's or hearer's attention. To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effbi-t, is the desideratum toward which most of the rales above quoted point. When we condemn writing that is wordy, or confused, or intricate— when we praise this style as easy, and blame that as fatiguing, we consciously or unconsciously assume this de- sideratum as our standard qf judgment. Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged in its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or listener lias at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and in- Chap. XXIII.] CONCISENESS, 459 terpret the sjxnbola presented to him requite pftH of this power ; to arrange and combine the images suggested recinires a further part ; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea, and the less vividly will that idea be conceived. How tnily language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instniment of it, we shall clearly iKjrceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say "Leave the room" is less ex- pressive than to point to the door. Placing a finger on the lips is more forcible than whisi^ering "Do not s^jeak." A beck of the hand is better than " Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so Wvidly as opening the eyes and raising the eye- brows. A shrug of the shouldei-s would lose much by translation into words.* Again, it may be remarked that when oral language is employed, the strongest effects are produced by intei-jections, which condense entire sentences into syllables. And in other cases, where custom allows us to express thoughts by single words,, as in BetrarSf HeigJto, Fudge, much force would be lost by expand- ing them into specific propositions. Hence, carrying out the metaphor that language is the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all cases the fric- tion and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency, and that in composition, the chief, if not the solo thing to be done is to re- duQe this friction and inertia to the smallest possible amount. — Hebbbbt Spemcbb. The very same sentiment, expressed diffusely, will be admitted barely to be just ; expressed concisely will be admired as spirited. To recur to examples, the famous answer returned by the Countess of Dorset to the letter of Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of Stato to Charles the Second, nominating to her a member for the l)or- ongh of Appleton, is an excellent illustration : "I have been bul- lied," says her ladyship, " by an usurper, I have been neglected * " It wMiU that I ** mid Sir Joshuft ReTnoIda of a pictare, ntapping hit llngen. On the tomb of Bardaoftpaltu U tnaeribod " Pmm on, Btranger, eat, drink, and amoM tbyaclf, for nought alM fa worth a fllUp,** and a plotara U given of flngar* i ^^0 POWER. [Part IV. by a court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand." — Campbell. I'BOUxiTT.— There is an event recorded In the Bible which men who write btxAa Bhonkl keep constantly in remembrance. It is thete set forth that nuiny centuries ago the earth was covered by a great flood, by which the whole human race, with the excep- tion of one family, were destroyed. It appears, also, that from thence a great alteration was made in the longevity of nuuikind, who, from a range of seven or eight hundred years, which they had enjoyed before the flood, were oonflned to their present period uf seventy or eighty years. This epoch ia the history of men gave birth tu the twofold di- vision of the antediluvian and poHtdilnvian style of writing, the latter of which natur- ally contracted itself luto thuHc inferior limits which were better accommodated to the abridged period of human life and literary labor. Now to forget this event, to write without the fear of the deluge before bin eyes, and to handle a subject as if mankind could lounge over a itamphlet fur ten yeara. aH before their submersion, is to be guilty of the most grievous error into which a writer can pos- sibly falL The author of this book should call in the aid of some brilliant pencil, and cause the distressing scenes of the delnge to he portrayed in the mofit lively colors for his ose. He should gase at Noah, and be brief. The ark should constantly remind him of the little time there is left for reading : and he should learn, as they did in the ark, to crowd a great deal of matter into a very iimaU compass.— Stdmxt SitrrH. De Quincey calls the German sentence an arch between the ris- ing and the setting sun, and declares that one of Kant's sentences was found by a carpenter to be twenty inches long. Louis XIV., who loved a concise style, one day met a priest, whom he asked hastily : ** "Whence come you ? Whither are you going ? Wh&t do you want ? " The priest replied, *' From Bmges. To Paris. A benefice." ** You shall have it," answered the king. (li.) Compression. — "One must study contraction as well as omission. There are many sentences which would not bear tlie omission of a single word consistently with perspicuity, which yet may be much moi-e concisely expressed with equal clearness by the employment of dif- ferent words, and by recasting a great part of tlie ex- pression." Take, for example, such a sentence as the following : A severe and tyrannical exercise of power must become a matter of necessary policy with kings when their subjects are imbued with such principles as justify and authorize rebellion. This sentence could not be advantageously nor to any consider- able degree abridged by the mere omission of any of the words; Chap. XXIII.] CONCISENESS. 461 but it may be expressed in a much shorter compass, with equal clearness and far greater energy, thus : Kingt will be tyrants from poUoy when subjects are rebels from principle. — Campbell £xEBCi8£. — Condense the following sentences by a change of form. Example. — They disputed who should be greatest. There arose a dispute among them, who should be greatest. I have a doubt whether the story be true. Generally a discussion arises whether a fee shall be paid. I am going to yonder gate to receive further direction how I may get to the place of deliverance. He gave us a long account how he had hooked the fish. We are indebted to him for the suggestion as to making an abstract. Henry Smith failed, which astonished them. Conversation with you has satisfied me as to the fact. I had often received an invitation from my friend. If we know extensively, we shall operate extensively. Being cultivated mentally is important. The equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles is a previous assumption. Of the same nature with the indulgence of domestic affections, and equally refreshing to the spirits, is the pleasure which results from acts of bounty and beneficence, exercised either in getting money or in imi)arting to those who want it the assistance of our skill and profession. — Quoted hy Bain. The Degree of conciseness conducing to power de- pends largely upon the capacity of the class of readers addressed. It is remarked by anatomists that the nutritive quality is not the only requisite in food ; that a certain degree of distention in the stomach is required to enable it to act with its full powers, and that for this reason hay or straw must be given to horses as well as com, in order to supply the necessary bulk. Something analogous to this takes place with respect to the generality of minda, which are incapable of thoroughly digesting and aasimiiat- 462 POWER. [Part IV. ing what is presented to them, however clearly, in a very small comimss. Repetition in a condensed form of an idea already expressed at length often produces the effect of concise- ness. To an author who is in his expression of any sentiment waver- ing between the demands of perspicuity and of energy (of which the former, of course, requires the first care, lest he should fail of both) and doubting whether the phrase which has the most of forcible breWty will be readily taken in, it may be recommended to use both expressions : first, to ex}xmd the sense sufficiently to be clearly understood, and then to contract it into the most com- pendious and striking fonu. This expedient might seem at first sight the most decidedly adverse to the brevity recommended; but it wiU be found in practice that the addition of a compressed and pithy expression of the sentiment which has been already stated at greater length wiU have the effect of breWty. For it is to be remembered that it is not on account of the actual number of words that diffuseness is to be condemned (unless one were limited to a certain space or time), but to avoid the flatness and tediousness resulting from it ; so that if this appearance can be obviated by the insertion of such an abridged repetition as is here recommended, which adds ix)ignancy and spirit to the whole, con- ciseness will be practically promoted by the addition. — ^Whately. In the following sentence Archbishop Whately violates the principle just laid down, putting the compact expression first. Universally, a writer or speaker shonld endeavor to mainta'n the appearance of ex- pressing himself, not as if he wanted to Fay something, bat as if he had something to say; i.e., not as if he had a subject set him, and was anxious to compoen8t of any descripliun whatever. Energy of thought here requires particularity of detail ; there- fore energy of expression requires many words. Sometimes a descriptive sjKjaker needs to gain time for a thought to take hold of an obtuse hearer. Macaulay says of the effects of the French Revolution, ** Down went the old church of Fi-ance, with all its pomp and wealth." This is forcible fact, forcibly jnit. But he intensifies it by saying, " The churches were closed ; the bells were silent ; tlie shrines were i)lunderoil ; the silver cnicifixos wore molted down ; l)uffoons dressed in suii)lices came dancing in the carmagnole even to the bar of the Conven- tion." By these details time is gained for the imagination to realize the main tnith that the church was destroyed. Longinus illustrates the two styles here contrasted by the examples of De- mosthenes and Cicero. He says, "Demosthenes was concisely, Cicero diffusely sublime. Demosthenes was a thunderbolt ; Ci- cero was a conflagration.'* — Phklfs. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Power. 1. In thought pau&r dependton: a. Sincerity, p. 448. b. Directness, p. 449. 2. In expression pateer depends on : a. Plainnessi p. 450. Bluntness, p. 451. Coarseness, p. 452. Distinction between bluntness and coarseness, 454 The velvet glove, p. 455. b. Ck)nciseness, p. 456. i. Pruning, p. 457. Economy of attention, p. 457. ii. Compression, p. 460. Degree of conciseness, p. 461. Repetition, p. 462. Exceptions, p. 462. CHAPTER XXIY. PERFECTION. Perfection (usually referred to as Elegance, Grace, Beaut}) is the artistic linish put upon composition already elaborated. The essay being true, precise, perspicuous, powerful, the careful writer goes over it line by line, changing here a word, there an expression, until each word not only expresses his meaning but expresses it more happily than any other word could. The safest rule is never during the act of comixjsition to study elegance or think about it at all. Let an author study the best models, mark their beauties of style and dwell upon tbem, that he may insensibly catch the habit of expressing himself with ele- gance ; and when he has completed any composition he may re- vise it, and cautiously alter any expression tliat is awkward and harsh, as well as those that are feeble and obscure ; but let him never while writing think of any beauties of style, but content himself with such as may occur spontaneously. He should care- fully study i>erspicuity as he goes along ; he may also, though more cautiously, aim in like manner at energy ; but if he is en- deavoring after elegance, he will hardly fail to betray that en- deavor ; and in proportion as ho does this, he will be so far from giving pleasure to good judges, that he will offend more than by the rudest simplicity. — Whatelt. A nan sbocUd «o d«UT«r hlmaatf to the natara of tho sabj«ot wharaof he apealEi, that hia hearer majtaka knowMgaof his diadpUiM with mm* deUgfat: and soappHrel fair and good mattar that tha ftodfcmii of elegancy be not defraoded ; redeem art* from their rough and braky Mate, whata they lay hid and overgrown with thoma, to a pore, open, and floiwery Ught, where they may taka the eyv, and be taken bj tha hand— Bw ^QQ PERFECTION. [Part IV. A Change of Taste. — Blair's *' Rhetoric," founded upon the style of Addison as an ideal, treats of Beauty as cliaracteriziug writing of a certain kind. The author says : I am, indeed, inclined to think, that re^Iarity appear* beautifnl to ub chiefly, if not only on acoount of iUi sni^gefttins the ideas of fltnem, propriety and use, which hnvo alwayN a greater connection with orderly and proportioned 'forma, than with those which appear not oonstmcted aocordinK to any certain rule. . . . There io, however, an- other sense, somewhat more definite, in which boantj of writing chnr^cterizefl a particn- lar manner ; when it is naed to Hignify a certain grace and amenity in th(> turn, either of style or sentiment, for which some authors have been particularly distinguinhed. In this sense, it denotes a manner neither remarlcably snblime, nor vehemently pAHcyond doubt, in the English langnage, thi must perfect exam- ple; and therefore, though not without some faults, he is, on the whole, the safest model for iniitstion, and the freest from considerate defects which the language affords. Per- spicuous and pure he is in the highest degree ; his precision indeed not very great, yet nearly as great as the subjecU which he treaU of reiiulre ; the constmction of his sen- tences easy, agreeable and commonly very musical ; carrying a character of smoothness, more than of strength. . . . If he fails in anything, it is in want of strength and precision, which renders his manner, though perfectly suiteil to such essays as he writes in the Spectator, not altogether a perfect model for any of the higher and more elaborate kinds of composition. From this search aft^r beauty as an end there has been a marked reaction. It is no longer the languid, complacent style of Queen Anne's reign that is sought as a model, but the racy, vigorous uttemnce of the Elizabethan writers. The English mind, and, as an offshoot of it, the American mind as well, are not par- tial to the elegant (lualitia*, specially in public oral addresses. We are jealous for our strength. We are proud of our Saxon stock. We are, therefore, morbidly afraid of im- pjsing on ourselves by elegant literary forms. We are in this respect what our language is, hardy, rough, careless of ease. The languages and temperaments of Southern Europe are in this respect our opposites. We have cultivated learning at the expense of taste ; they, taste at the expense of learning. This prejudice, moreover, is often aggravated by affectations of the beautiful in liter- ary expression. Aflfectations create caricatures of beauty : these repel taste, as they rep3l good sense. That cast of character which le.vd^ a young man to wear long hair, and to part it in the middle, often appears in literature in a straining after the feminine qualities of style when no beauty of thought underlies and demands them. This nau- seates short-haired men, and lends reason to their prejudice against the genuine because of the counterfeit elegance. The cant of literature, like that of religion, is never more disgusting than when it takes the form of the e.tquisite. iiorbid delicacy rasps manly nerves. — Phkij>8. Cbap. XXIV.] EPIGRAMS. 467 Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Ceesar ; but in gen- eral a correct and elegant stylo is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action ; and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungranimatical truth. — Sidney Smith. Epigrams are short poems ending in a point or turn of wit ; as, An epigram is like a bee— a thing Of Uttle sixe, with honey, and a sting.— Mabtial. Retort should perhaps be classed with the forms just referred to, as its effect depends upon the turn it gives to the words of the lirst speaker. Thus : A French oflBcer reproached a Swiss for fighting upon either side for money, "while we Frenchmen," said he, "fight for honor.** •• That is natural," i*eplied the Swiss ; " eveiy one fights for what he most wants." One ilay Sheridan met two royal dukes in St. James's Street, and the younger flippantly remarked : " I say, Sherry, we have just been discussing whether you are a greater fool or rogue : what is your opinion, oKl boy ? " — Sheridan bowed, smiled, and as he took each of threm by the arm replied, *' Why, faith, I believe I am between both." — Workn. Wlien Henry FV. was at Amiens, and very much fatigued, the mayor, with Ids council, came to pay their respects to him. Tlie mayor began his harangue in this way : *• King forever blessed — very puissant, very clement, veiy great — " Then the King cut him short by saying, ** And very tired," and so ended the mayor's fine speech. A lawyer, fined for expressing contempt of Court, protested, urging with great earnestness that on the contrary he had care- fully concealed his feelings. Brilliancy is perhaps the proper terni to aj^ply to language which puts the tliought in sucli dear light, that the light itself attracts attention. To be memorahle, style must possess something of this distinction. 468 PERFECTION. [Part IV. Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amased with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced ; for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke, and Burke was a great and universal talker ; yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell, The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous ; hence he is not reported ; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which pro- duce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off. — Coleridoe. I think Steele shone rather than sparkled. Those famous beatLx-esprits of the coffee-houses . . . would make many brilliant hits — half a dozen in a night sometimes ; but, like sharp-shooters, when they had fired their shot they were obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again, and wait till they got an- other chance at the enemy ; whereas Dick never thought that his bottle-companion was a butt to aim at — nay, a friend to shake by the hand. — Thackeray. But brilliancy is legitimate only when it is the result of polish, of fine finish, of artistic completeness of utterance. We liave no respect for the ideas of men that seek to say bright things for the sake of display. We look upon them, as upon professional wits (see page 129), as per- formers rather than as companions, dealing with words rather than with thoughts, fit to amuse us in idle mood, but not to be consulted when we are in doubt. When Ruskin says that he could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles, his aim is to be epigrammatic, but he only makes us impatient of his morbid affectation. "^Tien Professor Clifford leaves for an in- scription on his tomb, *'I was not, and was conceived; I lived and did a little work ; I am not, and grieve not," the Spectator justly remarks that though many will think the epitaph fine, it wotild be finer if it were inscribed above a hoi-se. Coleridge has made some of the most exact distinctions known in literature, Chap. XXIV. J EUPHONY. 469 but in the following he seems to have sought striking foim rather than precise expression : Let • yoang man wparate I from Me an far as he possibly can. and remove Me till it ia almost lost In the remote disUnoe. " I am Me," is as bad a fanlt in intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, while none bat one— Ood— can say, *' I am I," or '' That I Amr— Work; \L 496. Euphony is another element of literary perfection. Words have their aristocracy. Some have a noble birth ; a magnificent history lies behind them ; they were born amid the swelling and the bursting into life of great ideas. On the con- trary, there are words which have plebeian associations. Some are difficult of enunciation ; and, by a secret sympathy, the mind at- taches to them the distortion, perhaps the pain, of the vocal or- gans in their utterance. A single uncouth word may be to style what an uncontrollable grimace is to the countenance. Neither is a thing of beauty. Words not inelegant in themselves become so through pedestrian associations which colloquial usage affixes to them. Our Yankee favorite "guess" is a perfectly good word, pure English, of good stock, and long standing in the language. A better word, in itself considered, we have not in English use. But because it is a colloquial favorite, used by everybody, on every variety of subject and occasion, and often in a degraded sense, as in the compound " guess-work," it has become vulgar in the sense of "common; "so that in many connections in which the real meaning of it would be entirely pertinent, the word would be unelegant. "Conjecture," or some equivalent, must take its place. . . . Wordsworth's poetry, again, is not wholly de- fensible from the charge of using in poetic measure an inelegant vocabulary. He believed in the poetry of common things, com- mon thoughts, common people, and their common affairs. It was the aim of his life to lift up into the atmosphere of romance things lowly and obscure. "The Excursion" wrought in this resjject one of the silent revolutions of literature in the direct interest of Christianity. But, in his attempt to effect that revolution, he did lean to an extreme. Even his regal imagination could not dig- nify such linos as these ; viz. : — A hoasriiold tab. Ulm one of tboaa •470 PERFECTION. [Part IV. Notions of enphony are not the same all the world over. I once asked a pundit, a professor of poetry, what he considered to be the most melodious word in Sanscrit. His reply was, slakshna. And he was not jesting.— HAUi. A practice almost indispensable to a satisfactory essay is to take it up, after revision according to every other standard has been completed, and read it aloud, noting for correction not only all harsh expressions, but all that the combination of sounds makes it difficult to enunciate. In Lincoln's first inaugural occurs the following phrase, the peculiar combination of consonants and labials of which can only be ai)preciated by an attempt (we use the word attempt advisedly) to read it aloud : ''Will yoa haaurd m dMperate « step, while anj portion of the ills yon fly from have no real ezintenoe ? Will yoa, while the oertain UIk yoa fly to are greater than all the real onea yoa fly from ? ^—Mngatine of Ameriean History. Variety is, finally, one of the most essential elements of perfection. In diction an extensive and daily widening vocab- ulary is indispensable (see pages 401-403). I have long been in the habit of reading daily some first-class English author, chiefly for the copia rerborum, to avoid sinking into cheap and bald fluency, to give elevation, dignity, sonorous- ness, and refinement to my vocabulary. — Choate. It is a mark of weakness, of poverty of si)eech, or at least of bad taste, to continue the use of i>et words,* or other peculiarities of language, after we have become conscious of them as such. In dialect, as in dress, individuality founded upon anything but gen- eral harmony and su])erior propriety, is offensive, and good taste demands that each shall please by its total impression, not by its distinguishable details. — 1 * It is to be remarked that this very expression, " pet words," is a pet term of Mr. Marsh, oocurrinR again and again in hia "LecLares on the English Language.^' Chap. XXIV.] VARIETY. 471 Many of Mr. Carlyle'a pecaliarities of style m a writer are to be aroided rather than imitated, bat at the same time a writer whow pages present so stronfc a front as do bis is wmlby of analytical study. What givott to Mr. Carlyle's sentences that vigor and fresh- nen so manife«t to every one ? A partial explanation lit to be found in the richness of his Tooabolary. Probably no man living in this age was so thoroughly acquainted with the Bnglish dictionary as Mr. Carlyle, or used words more discriminatingly without marring hi8 work with the appearance of labored construction. Take up any book of his and notice how seldom he has repeated even the smallest words in any given i>a8sage or paragraph. You rarely And more than one "and" in his longest sentences. \Nliole pages may be tX^,^^9C^ without discovering a single "the," '"to," or "but." Take up any of his writings, block out a section of one hundred words, and then count the distinct words that occur in it, counting each word only once. Here are a few results of such a test. In "Sartor Itesartus " to one hundred words in the text 84 individual words ; in the eaaay ■II " Mirabeau," 82 ; in the essay on " Goethe," 76 ; in the essay on " Bums," 78 ; in the French Revolution," 90; in the "Reminiscences," bl ; in the short essay on the *' Death of Goethe," 87. This last section comraencen with the second paragraph of the eway, and contains few words of more than one syllable. These test selections have all been nmde at random, our only care being to avoid passages containing several proper names and ttiose disagreeable home-made adjectives of which Mr. Oarlyle was so fond, word'< generally ending in " ish." They seem to the reader to have tteen brewed in that old teniMtt of his. Of course a writer could put together intelligible sentences by the yard without duplicating his words, but what man or woman does without effort, and effort painfully apparent, ever achieve this phenomenal result ? Probably Mr. Carlyle strove to keep the percentage of new words in every page as high as possible. There is reason for believing that his beat productions— those that pour gurgling from the author's heart — have been measored, weighed, every drop examined in his {wnetrating mental miottMoope, before it went forth to mingle in the flood. His work was slow, tiring, and be oame to the conclusion late in life that so much iiains cost too much. Still Mr. Cartyle*t fame as a literary artist mast have fallen short if he had been less careful in his strokea.— Jf. C. Adoocate. In movement there must be a like variety. Long sentences must be interspersed with shorter ones, periodic structure must be followed by sharp, crisp utterance ; the reader must be kept constantly on the alert for something unexpected, never being suffered to adjust himself to a sing-song gait of which he has caught tlie rhythm. " It is here,** says Marmontel, "that we perceive the force of Liician*8 comparison when he desireil that the style and the thonpht, like a horseman and his horse, might be of one will, and move together harmomoQsly.'* And, as the same author adds, this oratorical motion is free and various ; the bold and skilfnl horse- nan, whose steed is well-trained, and oWdient to the whip and pur, may sometimee venture to leap the highest fences and clear 472 PERFECTION. [Part IV. the widest ditches, bnt when the chase is over he will slacken his pace, and be content to walk slowly along the well-beaten bridle- path. — HSBYSY. In La FonUine, ao many renea, ao tomnj different styles of thongbt But onoe Mm- Billon hita on • certain kind of • sentence, he holds on to it with a death-like grip, page after page. Like a hone-oar unable to leave its tramway, like a canal-boat which cannot Mrr of cats, the hotel of the wolf, the bray of an ass, the whinny of a horse, the caic of the i-aven. . . . Such words con- tain a power of expression from a natural resemblance which can never belong to signs merely instituted. After these mimical words, whose whole sounds are nearly the same with those formed by the several animals from which they were taken, there is another class which bears a fainter resemblance, merely from some letters contained in them, which were borrowed from the animal world. Thus among the vowels a was borrowed from the crow, a from the goat, a from the sheep, oo from the dove, o from the ox, ow from the dog, etc. Of the consonants, we boiTowed the b from the sheep, k from the crow, m fi-omjthe ox, r from the dog, s from the serpent, th from the goose. We have also sounds resembling those made by inanimate objects. Thus / is like the sound of winds blowing through certain chinks. V is the noise made by some spinning-wheels when i-apidly moved. Sk is the sound made by squibs and rockets previous to explosion. S by the flight of darts. -^ by a bell. — Sheridan. Care must be taken to employ onomatopoeia only as a means to more perfect expression ; if used for its own sake, it meets the common fate of all affectation. Especially must the misuse of words of this character be avoided. Poe, who uses onoraatopceia with great eflFect, tells most happily of — ^the tintinnabulation that so musically swells From the bells, bells, bells, bells ; but when Dickens in " Dombey and Son " speaks of " the Chap. XXIV.] TAUTOPHONY. 477 tintinnabulation of the gong " we stare at the page with wonder that his taste could have permitted the use of a figure so incongruous. Tautophony, or the repetition of the same sound, is usually a defect iu composition, but is sometimes employed with happy effect to produce a peculiar emphasis. Thus Epictetus says that all philosophy lies in two words, sus- tain and abstain. The resemblance of the two words makes it easier to remember their distinction. Shedd is fond of this figure, as, for instance : Bnential truth in the tUment, and the alimetu, of a ratioDal mind, and nothing tbort of this form of trath can long Radsfy its wanta. [The oae of " short " and " long " is here But such usage is permitted only when the contrast between the two words is marked and obvious. On page 87 of this book will be found two instances; "omitting — admitting," and "in- stinctive—distinctive." For the first pair there is a reason, but the second pair is due to a slip of the pen that oversight did not cor- rect. This Usage easily slides into punning (seepages 117- 122), which to a certain e.xtent is permissible when plainly a means to the forcible expression of an idea. " Truth is mighty," announces one stump-speaker, impressively. " Yes, it is mighty," retorts his opponent, sarcastically, " mighty scarce." There is always a certain satisfaction in seeing the person attacking beaten by liis own weapons, and this occurs when his words are so dexterously turned as to tell against him. ••You are nothing but a demagogue," said a tipsy fellow to Tom Marshall, who promptly replied : '• Put a wisp of straw around you, and you will be nothing but a demijohn." What is mind ? No matter. What is matter ? Never mind. *• We must all hang together," urged Hnnco«k. :u m , i: signing 478 PERFECTION. [Part IV. of the Declaration of Independence ; ** Yes," added Franklin, " or we shall all hang separately." A London paper says that ** Mrs. Alma Tadema wore at a recent reception a dress of gold brocade, made with a ciiirass bodice, with shoulder-straps of gold guipuie, and a plain petticoat of gold color, trimmed with a deep gold ruche, the inside of which was lined with gray-gi'een satin." The Chicago Tribune understands that Mr. Alma Tadema wore a look of fixed melancholy. Hew thou, gTMt Anna, whom three wwlda obey, Doat eoinetimeii coanwl take, and aometimes tea.— Pops. The pun must be appropriate to tlie occasion, and its purpose manifest, or it will seem an oversiglit ; as when Max Miiller declares, that " Sound etymology Las noth- ing to do with sound." Compare the use of tlie same words on page QQ. The use of the same word successively as two different parts of speech is usually to be avoided ; yet under this principle it is sometimes effective, as in the following sentence, where " more " is used first as an adjective and then as an adverb. That he should be in earnest it is hard to conceive ; since any reasons of doubt which he might have in this case would have been reasons of doubt in the case of other men, who may give more but cannot give more evident signs of thought than their fellow-creatures. — Bolingbroke. Care must of course be taken not to be misled by the resemblance of sound. " 1 never get over a first feeling of repulsion," says a young writer ; " if I am once re- pulsed." But what he means is, " if I am once repelled." " I wish to be a friend to the friendless," said a gushing speaker at a benevolent meeting, ** a father to the fatherless, and widow to the widowless." " Oh, I don't object to standing on a platform and allowing in- formation to ooze out of me — to use Mark Twain's simile — hke ottar of roses out of the otter ! " Chap. XXIV.J ALLITERATION. 479 Alliteration, or the use of successive words begin- ning with the same letter, is a form of tautophon y, and is often employed witli liappy effect, especially in j)oetry. So far has this figure been carried that long poems and stories have been written, in which every word began with the same consonant. CACOPHONOUS COUPLET ON CARDINAL WOLSEY. Begot by bntchern, but by bUhops bred, How high Ilia honor holtlH hit> hHiighty head. Mrs. Crawford says she wrote one line in her ** Kathleen Ma- voumeen" on puii>ose to confound the CJockney warblers, who would sing it, The 'om of the 'unter Ir 'eard on the 'ilL So Moore — A *eart tbMt la ^omble might 'ope for it 'ere. Or: Ha helephant heasily heats hat his hease Hunder hambrageoiu humbrella treea I Whole poems have been written wherein every word begins with the same letter. Of these the best known is the ''Pugna Porcorum," containing about three hundred lines, every one of which begins \i'ith the letter P. . . . The poem"DeLaude CSalvomm " is perhai>s the most curious literary i>erformance in the world. This }>oom of one hundred and forty lines, every word of which begins with a C, was composed in honor of Charles the Bald, by Hugbaldi or Hugbald, a monk who flourished about the year 876. Perhaps the best English alliterative verse is the following : army, awfully arrayed. Boldly by batteiy bedege Belgnule: ; co Bim a n dwa ounMmading come, I'a deraatating doom ; •y. For Hum, for foctane llghUng— f ariooii fray. OcMrala 'gainat lanerala grapple ; grMsiooa God, Bow honora Heaven heroic hardihood I laftttete. indliorimiDaie in ill, KUumea kUl kinaaian, kindred kinamen kW. Labor km leveb k>rUort, kMigmt Unea ; Men march *aid wownd*. 'mid molea, *mld mnrdarona minac ; 480 PERFECTION. [Part IV. Now noisy nozioiu niimban aotioe nanght Of uutward obstaclea oppoHing ought ; Poor |>atriot8, partly purchaaed, partly prened. Quite quaking, quickly " Qoarter I Quarter i " qaart. Reason returns, religious right redoiuids. Sorrow soon stops suoh sanguinary sounds. Truoe to thee, Turkey, triumph to thy twain. Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukraine I Vanish vain Tictory ! vanish viotoiy rain I Why with we warfare ? Wherefore wdoome were Xerxes, Zimenes, Xanthus, Xavier ? Yield, yield, ye youth ; ye yeomen, yidd your ydl, Zeno*R, Zanwte's, Zoroaster's seal, Attnu^ng all, arms against arms appiil ! With like waste of labor the Lipogrammatists excluded some particular letter from their compositions, while the Pangramma- lists crowd all the letters of the alphabet into each of their sen- tences. Both these attempts are shown in the following stanza written with ease without e's. ^ A jovial swain may rack his brain. And tax his fancy's might, To quiz in vain, for ^tis most plain. That what I say is right. Lord Holland, in 1824, wrote a story, called " Eve's Legend," that contained no other vowel except e. The Acrostic is a poem in which the first letters of the succes- sive lines spell a word that is the subject of the whole. The actress Rachel received the most delicate compliment the acrostic has ever paid. A diadem set with precious stones was given to her, so arranged that the initials of the names of the successive stones were in their order the initials of six of her principal parts, and in their order formed her name, thus : R uby, R oxana. A methyst, A meniade. C omelian, C amille. H ematite, H ermione. E merald, E milie. L apis Lazuli, L aodice. In No. 60 of the Spectator y Addison says of the Chrcniogravi : This kind of wit ap))ears very often on modem medala, especially those of Gtermany, when they represent in the inscription, the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphiis the following words : ChrlstVs DuX ergo trlVMphVs. Chap. XXIV.] ANAGRAMS. 481 If yoa take the painii to pick the figrurea oat of the several words, and range them in tbelr proper order, you will find that they amoiuit to MDCXVVVIL, or IG'-T., the year iu which the medal was Htamped ; for, aa some of the letters di«tingui«ih tlteniselves from the reat, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double cai>acity, both aa leCtofa and aa flgorea. Your laborious Germim wito will turu over a whole dictionary for DIM of these ingeniona Aevioea. A man would think they were searching aft^-r an apt ' lanical term ; but, Instead, they are looking out a word that has an M, an L, or a D in When, therefore, we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look ill thorn for the thought, as for the year of the Lord. The Anagram hides the word signified by transposing the let- t ora HO as to form a new word. Camden gravely announced that the following anagram showed the "undoubted rightful claim to the monarchy of Britain, as successor of the valorous King Arthur," of the prince whose name was transposed : Charles James Stuart— Claims Arthur's seat Here is another : James Stuart— A jnat master. Lady Eleanor Davies, wife of the poet Sir John Davies, was the Cassandra of her day ; and as her prophecies, in the troubled times of Charles EL., were usually against the Government, she was at one time brought into the High Court of Commission. She was not a little mad, and fancied the spirit of Daniel was in her, from an anagram she had formed of her own name : Bleanor Davies- Reveal, O Dnniel ! This anagram hatl too much by an 1, and ioo little by an s, bui such trifles as these were no check to her aspirations. The court attempted to expel the spirit from the lady ; and the bisnops argued the point with her out of Holy Writ ; but to no purpose. She returned text for text, until one of the deans of the Arclies, says Heylin, " shot her through and through with an arrow bor- rowed from her own quiver." Taking up a pen, he wrote : Dame Bleanor Daviea— Never so nuul a ladle ! This happy fancy set the solemn court to laughing, and drove Cassandra to the utmost dejection of spirits. Foiled by her own wea)K)n, her energy forsook her ; and either she never afterward ventured to enrol herself among the onler, or the anagram dis- imned her uttennoes, for we hear no more of her among the prophets. 482 PBRFECTION. [Part IV. In Hhophalic Verses a mouobyllable is followed by a dissyllable, a trisyllable, aud so on to the end of the line. The Palindronie reads the same either backward or forward ; like this, ascribed to Napoleon : AblP was I era I mm Elba ; or this, quite as plausibly reported as the first speech of the first man: Equivocal Verse reads one way acroBS both of two columns, and quite another when each column is taken separately. Thus : THB HOUSES OP BTUaRT AND HANOVER. I loTe with all my heart The Tory party here The Hanoverian part Moat hatefnl doth appear ; And for that settlement I ever have denied Mj oonao i enoe gives oonaent, To be on James's nide. Most rightaoDS is the oansa To fight for Ruch a king To light for George^ laws, Will EiiRland's ruin bring. It is my mind and heart In this opinion, I Though none will take my part, Retiolve to live and die. Serpentine Letters in like manner convey one meaning when read down each page, but a contrary when read across both pages. The swindling contract on page 201 is an illustration. Cento Verse is made up by patching together lines from stand- ard poems. Thus : The heath this night must be my bed,— Scott. Ye vales, ye Rtreamf. ye groves, adieu !— Pops. Farewell for aye, e'en love is d< ad,— Pbocteb. Would I conld add, remembrance too !— BraoN. In Concntenatioriy or chain-wi-iting, the last word or phrase in «ach line is taken for the beginning of the next. Thus : TRUTH. Nerve thy soul with doctrines noble. Noble in the walks of time, Time that leads to an eternal. An eternal life sublime ; Life sublime in moral beauty, Beauty that shall ever be ; Ever be to lure thee onward. Onward to the fountain free ; Free to every earnest seeker. Seeker for the Fount of Youth, Youth exultant in its beauty, Beauty of the living truth- Chap. XXIV.) FORM. ^83 Echo Verses have been famous in every tongue. Thus : Echo, my«teriou8 nymph, declare Of what yuu're made, and what you are. £dU>— Airl Ben JoQson speaks of "A xmir of scissors and a comb in verse," and the Spectator ridicules the fantastically shaped ])oem8, axes, eggs, altars, etc., of which a Greek ix>et, Theodoric, is said to have been the inventor. One of the best is the following : THE WINE-GLASS. Who hath woe? Who hath worrow? Who hatJj contentions? Who hath woiuuIk without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine. They that go to acck mixed wine. Look not thou ui>on the wine when it is red, when itgivethits color in tho CUP; when it moTcth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingcth like an adder. Further illustrations of this misapplied ingenuity in the construction of verse will be found in Morgan's " Maca- ronic Poetry," from which most that has been said on the subject has been taken. AVe have treated the subject thus fully in order to impress the principle that the moment form is studied for itself, and not for what it expresses, the exercise is no longer literary composition. We have used the word Perfection in preference to Beauty in speak- ing of this quality of style, because the only legitimate beauty of written language is the perfection with which it expresses the idea. F'orget the idea, study beauty for tlie sake of beauty, permit the insertion or the retention of an 484 PERFECTION. [Part IV. unnecessary' sentence for the sake of its euphony, and the composition is degraded from the expression of thought into sometliing akin to riddle-making. The principal advantage of an acquaintance with form-peculiarities is readiness in discerning and discarding them when they accidentally appear. More than once has a newspaper been misled into publishing a libellous Acros- tic, because the editor did not glance down the first letters of the lines when he read the little poem handed in ; and hundreds of farmers would have escaped a swindle had they applied the principle of Sei'pentine Letters to the contract shown on page 201. Commonest of all the errors under this head, however, is Tautophony. Only the most experienced writers can afford to let an essay appear befoie they have glanced through it to see that the same sound is not unintentionally repeated in a way to catch the ear unpleasantly. Thus : Scene at Continental knrsaal: English party at card table — *• Hello, we are two to two." English party at opposite table — ** We are two to two, too." German spectator, who ** speaks Eng- lish," to companion who is acquiring the language — "Veil, now you see how dis is. OflF you want to gife expression to yourself in English all you have to do is to blay mit der French horn! " — iV. V. Sun. " The fact is, the rales of emphasis come in in interruption of your supposed general law of position. — Alford. I used the word in an unusual sense, but at the same time one fully sanctioned by usage. — Id. Mayhe I may be able to come before the year is out. — Charles Lamb. Find other illustrations on pages 75, 125, 235. Exercise. — Vary the expression so as to escape tautoph- ony in the following sentences : In a calm moonlight night the sea is a most beautiful object to Chap. XXIV.] TAUTOPHONY. 485 see. The abilities as well as the virtues of King Alfred justly en- titled him to the title of the Great. To oppose this formidable in- vasion, the Royalists were divided into four divisions. Napoleon's ambition led him to aspire to universal dominion, the pursuit of which finally led to his complete overthrow. The vn-itings of Bu- chanan are written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness. The same character has churadeiHzed their descendants in modem times. The few who regarded them in their true light were regarded as mere dreamers. It is not the least of the many attractions that per- manently atti-act sti-angers to the French capital. This renowned fortress was of the very highest imjx)rtance from its strength and important situation. Wellington was anxious to be relieved from all anxiety in that quarter. The designs of Providence extend to the extension and dis^^ersion of the species. Seduced by these flat- tering appearances, the monarch appears for a time to have trusted to the pleasing hope that his difficulties were at an end. Avoidance of tautopliony, especially of the repetition of the same woi'd, may, however, be carried so far as to obscure the sense (see page 411). Thus Marsh writes (" Lectures on the English Language," page 22) : I must here once for all make the sad concession that many of Chaucer's works are disfigured, stained, polluted, by a gi-ossness of thought and of language which strangely and painfully con- trasts with the delicacy, refinement, and moral elevation of his other productions. Here we have ''woikh*' apparently contrasted with " productions," as though they were two different things. The author might much better have said "of his other works;" though indeed, "of the others," or "of the rest," would be precise and perspicuous. Compare the following : It is said there was an Amsterdam merchant who had don It largely in com all his life, who had never seen a field of wlu at growing : this man had doubtless acquired by experience an accu- rate judgment of the qualities of each description of com,— of the 486 PERFECTION. [Part IV. best methods of storing it, of the arts of buying and selling it at proper times, etc. ; but he would have been greatly at a loss in its cultivation, though he had been, in a certain way, long conversant about com. Campbell has well remarked : It is justly observed by Abb€ Girard that when a performance grows dull through an excess of uniformity, it is not so much be- cause the ear is tired by the frequent repetition of the same sound, as because the mind is fatigued by the fretjuent recurrence of the same idea. If, therefore, there be a remarkable paucity of ideas, a diversity of wortis will not answer the purpose, or give to the work an agreeable appearance of variety. On the contrary, when an author is at great jiains to vary his expressions, and for this jjur- pose even deserts the common road, he will, to an intelligent reader, but the more expose his poverty the more he is solicitous to conceal it. Proverbs, Aphorisms, Apothegms, Para- doxes, and Epigrams admit considerable attention to form, being usually marked by antithesis, climax, tautoph- onj, alliteration, and other figures that would be oppres- sive in continued discourse. Proverbs, " the wit of one and the wisdom of many," forcibly express some practical truth, the result of expe- rience or observation ; as, " He runs far that never turns." The pithy quaintness of old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be sense^ shortness, and salt. . . . Proverbs have often resulted from the spontaneous emotions or the performed reflections of some extraordinary individual, whose energetic expression was caught by a faithful ear, never to perish. — Disraeli. A woman is as old as she looks ; A man as old as he feels. Aphorisms differ from proverbs in relating to ab- stract truth, rather than to practical matters. An apho- Chap. XXIV. J APOTHEGMS. 4^87 risin is the snbstance of a doctrine, and is characterized by the disproportion between the simplicity of the expression and the richness of the sentiment conveyed by it (Smith) ; as, Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. That aphorism of the wise man, "The desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands refuse to labor." — Barrow. Censure is the tax a man pays to the pubUc for being eminent. — Swift. There are calumnies against which even innocence loses cour- age. —Napoleon. There is a great difference between an egg and an egg-shell, but at a distance they look very much alike. — Coleridge. Thought widens, but lames ; activity narrows, but quickens. — Goethe. Men ride their arguments as children their horses. They put their legs over a stick, i-un far afield, and make believe that the stick has carried them. — Dallas. Custom has no power over us except as it implies sympathy ^lith ourselves in past conditions. — Id. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind, bowing and nod- ding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable. — Coleridge. Thought is Uke the spring of a watch, most powerful when meet compressed. Wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of anal- ogies. — Whately. Apothegms are in common matters what aphorisms are in higher. Their characteristic is terseness, as shown in PwicfCs advice to those about to be married : " Don't." Maurice Block describes the American press as " des|x>tism tem- pered by aHHftSHJnation. '*—AUanlic Monthli/. *'I would bestow my daughter," said Themistoclos, "upon a man without money, rather than upon money without a man." My hving in Yorkshire was so far out of the way that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon. — Sidvey Smith. The following notes passed between two celebrated comedians : Dbab J : Baud mo » lOiUUng. Yoan, B. r.8.— Oo Moond tboagbtt, main It two. ^88 PERFECTION. [Part IV. To which his friend replied : DXAB B : I have bat one shilling in the world. Toara, J. P.8. — On second thoughts, I want that for dinner. The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. — Swift. Fontenelle declared that the secret of happiness is to have the heart cold and the stomach warm. Montesquieu put forth a wicked epigram, that the only good book of the Spaniards is that which exposes the absurdity of all the rest. Paragraphers get very wealthy if they live long enough. The chief difficulty with them is to get money to live long enough. This reminds me of the boy who grew impatient at the slow grinding of the wheat he had brought to mill. '• I could eat that flour faster than you turn it out," he said to the miller. " How long?" "Till I starved." Mark Twain was asked to contribute to the paper issued at the fair in aid of abused children, in Boston, and responded as follows : Habtford, November 30, 1880. DmjlM EorroBS : I do it with pleasure, . . . but I also do it with pain, because I am not In favor of this movement. Why should I want a " Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children " to prosper, when I have a baby down-stairs that kept me awake •everal hours last night, with no pretext whatever for it but a desire to make me trouble ? This occurs every night, and it embitters me, because I see how needless it was to put in the other burglar alarm, a costly and complicated contrivance which cannot be depended on, because it's always getting out of order and won't ' ' go." whereas, although the baby is always getting out of order, too, it can nevertheless be depended on, for the reason that the more it does g^t out of order the more it does go. Yes, I am bitter against your society, for I think the idea of it is all wrong ; but if you will start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fathers, I will write you a whole book. Yours, with emotion, Mark Twain. Life would be tolerably agreeable if it were not for its pleas- ures. — Sir George CoRXEWAiiL Lewis. Our knowledge consists in tracing ignorance as far back as pos- sible. — ROYER CoiiLARD. I do not love even his faults. — Sheridan. Artemas Ward voted during the late Civil war for Henry Clay. *' I admit that Henry is dead," he explained, ** but inasmuch as we don't seem to have a live statesman in our National Congress, by all means let us have a first-class corpse." Chap. XXIV. ) PARADOXES. 489 Paradoxes are seemingly absurd in appearance and language, but true in fact. Thus : Of Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, and Mrs. Grote, Sidney Smith once wittily said : " I do like them both so much, for he is so ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman ! " Thackeray's idea of a dandy is given in the following note : "My dear Edward, — A * dandy ' is an individual who would be a lady if he co\ild, but as he can't, does all he can to show the world he's not a man." A beau is everything of a woman but the sex, and nothing of a man beside it. — Fielding. There are lots of men who have attained high reputation for strict attention to business, but the trouble has been it wasn't t heir own business. — Marathon Independent. Glucose is described in a recent French paper as follows : " Glucoso — a product with which wine is manufactured without grapes, cider without apples, and confectionery without sugar." Definitions of the Period. — A privileged person — One who is so much a savage when thwarted that civilized persons avoid thwart- ing him. A liberal-minded man — One who disdains to prefer right to wrong. Radicals — Men who maintain the supposed right of each of us to help niin all. ^ Liberals — Men who flatter radicals. Conservatives — Men who give way to radicals. A domestic woman — A woman like a domestic. Humor — Thinking in fun while we feel in earnest. A musical woman — One who has strength enough to make much noise and obtnseness enough not to mind it. — Gboboe Eliot. I owe much ; I have nothing. I leave the rest to the poor. — Rabblaib's WiiL When the superannuated statesman went to Iiis rest : " Lamar- tine has ceased to surviye himself," announced a Paris journal. Prince Mettemich remarked to the best-dressed lady of the Second Empire : " I notice that your bonnets grow smaller and smaller, and the bills larger and larger. One of these days the milliner will bring nothing but the bili" TOPICAI. ANALYSIS. Perfection. Epigrams, p. 467. Retort, p. 467. Brilliancjr, p. 467. Euphony, p. 469. Reading the essay aloud, p. 470. Variety in words, p 470. Variety in movement, p. 471. Felicity of diction, p. 472. The fitting word, p. 474. Onomatopoeia, p. 474. Tautophony, p. 477. Punning, p. 477. Alliteration, p. 479. Lipogrammatists, p. 480. Pangrammatists, p. 480. Acrostics, p. 480. Chronograms, p. 480. Anagrams, p. 481. Hhophalic verses, p. 482. Eqiiivocal verse, p. 482. Serpentine letters, p. 482. Cento verse, p. 483. Concatenation, p. 482. Echo verses, p. 483. Advantage of an acquaintance with form peculiarities, p. 484 Avoidance of tautophony carried too far, p. 485. Proverbs, p. 486. Aphorisms, p. 486. Apothegms, p. 487. Paradoxes, p. 489. CHAPTER XXV. PREPARATION FOR THE PRESS. The art of printing demands from its Bngrlish and American patrons not a mnltipU- city of wordfi merely, but a style combining rtimplicity and catholicity of stmctnre, con- formity to the principles of nniverwil prainmar, and conHcquently a freedom from proTlucialisnu and arbitrary idiomn. intelligibiltty, in short, to a degree not required in the literatnre of any other age or racG.-MABSii. SocTHEY says in his *' Colloquies " that " one of the first effects of printing was to make proud men look on learn- ing as disgraced by being thus brought within reach of the common people. When laymen in humble life were enabled to procure books, the pride of aristocracy took an absurd course, insomuch that at one time it was deemed derogatory to a nobleman if he could read or write. Even scholars themselves complained that the leputation of learning and tlie respect due it and its re- wards were lowered when it was thrown open to all men. Even" in this island, ignorance was for some genei'ations considered a mark of distinction, by which a man of gentle birth chose, not unfrequently, to make it apparent that he was no more obliged to live by the toil of hU bniin than \}y the sweat of his brow." However true this may once have been, no traces of this feeling appear at the present day. In 1870, when (ilad- stone and Disraeli wore battling for the premiership of England, a cartoon in Puiwh represents the one picking up from a book-Btall a novel just publislied by the other^ 492 PREPARATION FOB THE PRESS. (Part IV. who, in turn, is examining a book on mythology just com- pleted by the first. Queen Victoria wrote, and prudently invested the proceeds of, a life of her late husband, and lier daughters have followed in her footsteps. In no other field is distinction so universally sought as in literature. A considerable proportion of intelligent people appear in print in some way or other during their lives, and a larger pro{X)rtion try to. So it seems desirable to add to the directions already given for letter- writing (see pages 102- 104) some further hints for those who are ambitious to see something printed more pretentious than news-letters. (I) Make your Manuscript Legible.— This point has been insisted upon in letter-writing, but it must here be emphasized again, because there is much more at stake. A blotted letter may cause annoyance, loss, serious difficulty, but these will be limited to few persons, and will usually be temporary. A misprint is practically final, and its mischief will be as wide as is the circulation of the page it appears in. The general rule is, Make your manu- script read exactly as you want the printed page to appear, in spelling, in punctuation, and in capitals, as well as in words. A singular suit came before the courts of Michigan in which the letter of the law was in conflict with its spirit, and the question before the court was whether the letter or the spirit must be obeyed. The State Legislature at- tempted to pass a law making it a penal offence to sell liquor to minors, but, by a typographical or a clerical error, the law was made to read mint'rs. The intent of the law was too plain to be mistaken, and in one of the counties of the State the prosecuting attorney brought suit against a saloon-keeper for selling liquor to minors. In the trial of the case the counsel for the defence put in the plea Chap. XXV.] PROOF. 493 that the act nnder which the action was brought could not be applied to the case in question, and upon investigation it was discovered that the act, as it reads, applies to miners and not to minors. The prosecuting attorney, however, secured the conviction of the saloon-keeper, on the ground of the intent of the law, rightly holding that it was plainly meant to prohibit the sale of liquor to minors. The case was appealed. (2) Read your Proof. — It is a curious fact that the average compositor will deviate more from printed than from written copy, showing that a legible manuscript, though much, is not all that is required. One can better afford to insist upon seeing the proof, and to correct it carefully, than to be the victim of such blunders as are frequent even in carefully edited newspapers. It is said that an entire form of the last edition of the " Ency- clopaedia Britannica " had to be reprinted because of the unnoticed dropping of the first t from the last word in the following sentence : A page wan trained to receive his best reward and worst ponishment from the smile or frown of the lady of the castle, and, as he grew to manhood, to cherish an abeorbing paaalon aa the atrongeat stimulus to a noble life, and the contemplation of female virtue, aa embodied in an laolde or a Beatrice, as the tmeat earnest of future immortality. The flowing reporter who wrote, with reference to a well-known belle, ♦« Her dainty feet were encased in shoes that might have been taken for fain' boots," tied his wardrobe up in his handker- chief and left for jiai-ts unknown when it appt^ared the next morn- ing : •• Her dirty feet were encased in shoes that might be taken for ferry boats." Many errors oconr by the omission of an initial letter, as where " The Polish insurgents were defeated with great laughter." The cutting off of a final letter is quite as bad, as, for instance, " You cannot fight against the future ; Tim is on our side.** Other let- ters are often dropped, to the great amusement of those who enjoy the indelicate blunders of the typo. A Southern paper says : Tha iUamer omim to grief through nuining haftvily into a nU, 494 PREPARATION FOli THE PRESS. [Part IV. And another Southern paper was obliged to ajwlogizo and ex- plain for having called Mobile, to the great indignation of the in- liabitants, "A g^eat coffee-pot," meaning innocently enough **a great coffee port.** Compositors make strange work of scientific statements. I sometimes fancy they are not altogether so innocent in this matter as they would have us believe, and that they compose sometimes ** \*ith their tongue " very much " in their cheek." They are fond, so far as my own individual experience is concerned, of substitut- ing "comic'* for "cosmic,*' "plants** for "planets,** "human*' for " known," and in other ways making hash generally of my more serious and solemn statements. The most remarkable change they ever arranged for me was one of which I still retain ' ' docu- mentary e\'idence " in a proof of the little book on Spectroscopic Analysis, which I wrote for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Here the words which in the work itself appear— as they were certainly \iTitten — " lines, bands, and stria in the violet part of speetm," were positively printed " links, bonds, and stripes for the ^aolent kind of spectres.'* — Pboctor. The following, from MucmilknCs Magazinet are further speci- mens : VThere wadOUtto in a pool of blood The bravert Tuscans lay, where for " wadiUing " read " wallowing." In a passage on William Riif us occur the lines — Who spacious regions grave, A waatofu/ becuP! where the original has " a waste for beasts.** No triumph flushed that haughty Brown, only differs from the original by the capital and the addition of the final letter to the last word. In a reprint of " Lord Ullin's Daughter" occurs this curious reading : Come back ! he cried in Oreet, Across the stormy water. Here is a new version of Scott : He is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-drietl fountain. When our need was the mw dust. Chap. XXV.] PRINTERS' ERRORS. 495 Here a variation on Macaulaj : And the rod glare on Skiddaw rooaed the burokura of Carlisle. Another : Herniinius on black Auster, Grave chaplain on grave steed. From a description of a waterfall : Prom rock to rock, the giant elephant Leaps with delirioun bound, where, of course, "elephant" is a varia lectio for ** element." If ever two great men might seem during their whole lives to have moved in direot opposition, Milton and Jerry my Tailor were they. A variation on Scott : The way was long, the wind waa oold. The minstrel was infernal old. Another on Macauhiy : Hard by, %Jle»he on a block had laid his viUle» down, Virginias oaogbt the vUtleti up, and hid them in hia gown. Plorenoe De Laigne, who recently published some versex on " Autumn ^ in these ool- tuons, writes to ask, " Who is responsible for the tyttographical errors in the Hawkeye f" Lean down here, Flort'nco-, while we whisper in your ear : " sh ; nobody is. The editor writes sa plainly that even a blind man can Rpell out his wonia ; the compositors are college men who have edited papers of their own, and they set up the matter exactly •■ U la written, and correct what mistiikes the editor makes ; the proof-reader is a pro- ftanr of rhetoric and pliilulogy in an Iowa college, and never made a mistake in his life ; and he corrorts what few mistakes the compositors may make : the foreman is a Oot- tiniren graduate, who has nothing to do bat to see that the matter is perfect when the forma go down. There isn^t a mistake in the Hawkeye when it reaches the press. But we'll tell yon, as a professional secret, Plorence, how the mistakes creep in. The press- man told the manager, and the manager told us ; it's the ink, Florence, it's the ink. We pay oat thoosands and thousands of dollars a year for good ink, and we qMl k'el an arti- cle that won't fairly meanle the paper with typographical erron.'^—HurUn§ton Uuickeye. Many of the blunders of the press are of the sort which one miplit .snpi)ose would be oorreoted by the most careless conii)ositor and would certainly be detected by the most onliiiaiy of i)roof- readers. Perhaps this is one reason why these errors ap})car so amusing. Not long since the British public were edified by the interesting information that twenty-flvo Russian men-of-war were prooeeding to the Black Sea '• to take part in the autumn mancou- vres next summer." Of a like sort was the announcement that Beethoven's jxiAtoml symphony wouUl '* l>o performed at th«^ Mon- day Popular Ck>ncerts next Saturday." So also the statement that 496 PREPARATION FOR THE PRESS. [Part IV. "on one day of last week a hundred and forty deaths by cholera occurred in Naples m forty-eight hours." Another country news- paper in England apologized for a slight enor in a previous issue, in which it was stated : ** Much regret is felt at the death of Coun- cilman Cooper, who was seventy-eight years of age, and has been a member of the council for over eighty years ^ So again : *' Now paper was first made of linen in 1300. Linen was first made in 1563, but the introduction of cotton, etc." That editor should take the Scotchman's advice ** to buy a bag of dates and swallow the seeds." Even more exasperating are errors i-esulting from what some presumptuous compositor or proof-reader supposes to be corrections of errors by the author. Freeman's historical essays were amended more or less by the editors through whose hands they passed for publication in the Reviews. For book-publication, Mr. Freeman has restored the original reading. Examples : Editor — Every renewed instance. Freeman — Every fresh instance. Ed. — The Turks were exi^elled. F.— Tlie Turks were driven out. Ed. — Never was Greece either nobler or baser. F.— Never did Greece rise higher or fall lower. Ed. — The kind of government established. F. — The kind of gov- ernment which was set up. This is a good lesson of taste in choice of words. Further than that, in one or two instances, the meaning is not as i)recisely given by the editor as by the author. An eminent French philological writer, when accused of violating his own principles of orthography in one of his printed essays, thus replies : '• It was not I that printed my essay, it was Mr. Didot. Now Mr. Didot, I confess it with pain, is not of my opinion with regard to the spelling of certiin plurals, and I cannot oblige him to print against his conscience ani habits. You know that every printing-oflRce has its rules, its fixed system, from which it will not consent to depart. For example, I think the present system of punctuation detestable, because the points are multiplied to a ridiculous excess. Well, I attempt to prove this by precept and example, and the very printers who publish my a- gument scat- ter points over it as if they were shaken out of a pepper-box. It is their way. What would j-ou have * They will print my theory only on condition that I will submit to their practice."' — Marsh. Finally, there is the chance of whole lines being mis- placed in the transferring of the type from the '' galley " to the page. Xot till the press is fairly at work can the author be sure that his essay will appear as he wrote it. Chap. XXV. ] CORRECTING PROOF. 497 A ludicrous transposition occurred in the make-up of a couple of telegraphic items in the New Haven Journal and Courier re- cently, which produced the following effect : The first item read, '• A lai-ge cast-iron wheel, revolving 900 times per minute, ex- ploded in that city yesterday after a long and painful illness. Deceased was a prominent Thirty-second degree Mason." This was followed by the second item, which read: "John Fadden, the well-known florist and real estate broker of Newport, R. I., died in Wardner & Russell's sugar-mill, at Crj'stal Lake, 111., on Saturday, doing ^3,000 damage to the building, and injuiing sev- eral workmen and Lorenzo Wilcox fatally." — Boston Post. HOW TO CORRECT PROOF. The following are tlie chief rules observed, and signs used, by Printers in correcting proofs for the press : 1. No alteration should be made between the lines which has not some mark opposite it in the margin, to attract the printer's eye. 2. Instrnctions to the printer should be enclosed within a circle, to distinguish them from additions to the proof. 3. When a point, letter, or word is To BE CH.\NGED, draw the pen through it, and write the new point, letter, or word in the margin. (See Nob. 1, 5, and 0.)* 4. When points, letters, or words are to be inserted, write them in the margin, and mark a caret (a) at the place where they are to be intro- duced. (See Nos. 2, 1«, 19, 20, and 22.) 5. In the case of ({notation marks, a.sterisks, or apostrophes, which •re TO BE iNSEitTEH, a curve should be drawn under them, thus ^ '. (See Nos. 24, 30, 31, 33, 34, and 37.) 6. In the case of a pericnl to be insertei>, it should be placed in the margin wUtUn a cirrlf , otherwise it might be overlooked. (See No. 29.) 7. When a point, letter, or word is to be omitted altogether, draw the pen through it, and write ^ (dele) in the margin. (See Nos. 3, 25, 85, and 86.) 8. Letters or words placed too close should have a stroke drawn between them, and a $paf^ (^ marked in the margin. (See No 4. ) 9. Letters too fab separated should be joined by curves (3)» »nd have curves marked in the margin. (See No. 12.) • TiMW Noti iil^ to tfi* mmbHv of tlM eoRwtioM ia tlM ** KzBmple of an Anthor'a Proof,*' Ate, on pago 4Mi 498 PREPARATION FOR THE PRESS [Pakt IV. 10. When two paragraphs are to he conjoined, draw a curved line from the end of the one to tlie beginning of the other, and write in the margin, *'n/wt>w." (See No. 7.) 11. When a sentence in the body of a paragraph is to ueuin a new rAitAGKAi'ii, draw a square bracket ( [ ) round tlie first letter of it, and write in the margin, N.P. (new paragraph). (See No. 11.) 12. When a word in italics is to he puinted in Roman, underline it, and write nun. in the margin. (See No. 8.) 13. Wlien a word in roman is to be printed IN ITALICS, underline it, and write iUtl. in the margin. (See No. 10.) 14. When a word is to be printed in small capitals, draw a double line under it, and write am. cap. in the margin. (See No. 18.) 15. When a letter or word is TO BE printed in capitals, draw a triple line under it, and write caj)s. in the margin. (See No. 23.) 16. When a word in capitals or small capitals is to be printed in small letters, underline it, and write in the margin, I. c. ("lower case,^' the "case" in which capitals are kept being above the other). (See No. 21.) 17. When a letter is inserted upside down, draw a line under it, and make a reverse 9/ in the margin. (See No. 9.) 18. When a deleted word is to be retained, draw a dotted line under it, and write aU*t (let it stand) in the margin. (See No. 13.) 19. When a space sticks up between two words, it is noticed by a stroke in the margin (See No. 14.) 20. When a line siioitld be indented, put a square bracket at the j>oint where the line should begin, and write in<''ent in the margin. (See No. 17.) 21. When a letter of a different character has got into a word, a line should be drawn under it, and wf. (wrong font) marked in the margin. (See No. 26.) 22. When two letters are to be transposed, draw a short line under them, and write //•. in the margin. (See No 28. ) 23. When two or more words are to be transposed, draw a curved line above the first and below the second, and write tr. in the margin. (See Nos. 15 and 27.) 24. When letters or lines stand crooked or irregular, draw lines above and below them. (See No. 32. ) 25. When a second proo!", incorporating first corrections, is wanted, write Revue on the upper corner : When no such proof is wanted, and it is ready to be printed o% write Press on the upper corner. Chap. XXV.] CORRECTING PROOF. 499 Examples of an Author's Proof, with the marks for making Corrections and Alterations, according to Eules stated on pages 497, 498. Popular glory ia a perfojt coqnotte; her loyera mtrat *c/ toil^feel' every' inquietude, indulgejevery caprice | and'^/ ^ •j^ ',/ perhaps at last be jilted wtA the hargain^ • into] ' run onj vTruo glory, on the other hand, resembles a woman of fittsB : her admirers must play no tric3[3; thoy^foel no ^rom.j * y great anxiety, for they are sure in tho end o f hoing re- " ital.f warded in proportion to their merit. [I know not how '* JS'.P.I to turn so trite a sub^jcct out of tho beaten road of »« O/ gww wiHH place, cxccpt^y illustrat ing it, rat hcrHjy tho " stet.} '* | assistance of my|judgmont \than myj memory, and instead " /r./ of making reflections by tcHng a story. *' A^/ A rChincso, who had long studied tho works of "indcntj Confucius , who knew fourteen thousand words, and could ^ «"• capa.J read a great part of every book that came^his way, onco ^ « '^y ^ took it into his head to travel into K pbqpk . and observe " 1x4 tho customs of a people jn the arts of refining upon every pleasure. Upon his arrival at Amsterdam, his "cap.j ** ^ passion for letters naturally led him to" a booksellersi mJ » ^ | |* shop; and as he could speak Dutch la littlo he civilly "ir/./ V tT.\ © g* asked the bookseller for tho works fo tho immortal **/r/ S-^ Ilixifon^ The bookseller assured him he had nevez • O Is. heard the book mentioned before. " What \ have you sever heard of that immortal ix)ct,Aretumed the other, ■• f^\ I much Burprised.Athat light of tho eyes, that favourite of '* a^ S "^ kings, that rose of perfection I I suppose you know Dq. ■''' — * I thing of the immortal Fipaihihi, second cousin to {h^ ■■/>'*" S» moon?*' "Nothing at all indeed, sir," returned^'J^ ^ V» other. *' Alas !a cries our travoller.Ato what purpose " tCiA ** f^^ %* then has one of thcso f^tcd to death, and the other "* iJ offered Ihoi himself up as a sacrifice to the Tartarean "* ^ enemy to gain a renown which liaa nevez travelled bt>- yond the precincts of China a ^ A^ 500 PREPARATION FOR THE PRESS. [Part iV. The Author's Proof after the corrections marked on page 499 have been made : Popular glory is a perfect coquette ; her lovers must toil, feel every inquietude, indulge every caprice, and perhaps at last be jilted into the bargain. True glory, on the other hand, resembles a woman of sense : her admirers must play no tricks ; they feel no great anxiety, for they are sure in the end of being rewarded in proportion to their merit. I know not how to turn so trite a subject out of the beaten road of common place, except by illustrating it, rather by the assistance of my memory than my judgment, and instead of making reflections by tell- ing a story. A Chinese who had long studied the works of CJonfucius, who knew the characters of fourteen thousand words, and could read a great part of every book that came in his way, once took it into his head to travel into Europe, and observe the customs of a people whom he thought not very much inferior even to his own countrymen in the arts of refining upon every pleasure. Upon his arrival at Amsterdam, his passion for letters naturally led him to a bookseller's shop ; and as he could speak a little Dutch, he civilly asked the bookseller for the works of the im- mortal Ilixifou. The bookseller assured him he had never heard the book mentioned before. *'What! have you never heard of that im- mortal poet," returned the other, much surprised, "that light of the eyes, that favorite of kiags, that rose of perfection ! I suppose you know nothing of the immortal Fipsihihi, second cousin to the moon ? " ** Nothing at all indeed, sir," returned the other. " Alas! " cries our traveller, "to what purpose then has one of these fasted to death, and the other offered himself up as* a sacrifice to the Tartarean enemy to gain a renown which has never travelled beyond the precincts of China." (3) Avoid Egotism.— In certain kinds of news- paper articles, especially personal and literary criticisms, there has lately been a growing affectation of the nse of " I " and " me " and " ray," instead of the " we " and " us " and "our" hitherto generally adopted by editors. At present it seems an affectation, and in newspaper work is not to be recommended, especially to young writers. But in using the " we " care must be taken : {a) Not to extend the plural use beyond the possessive. Chap. XXV.] EGOTISM. 501 Thus, we would not say, "You, Mary, shall do this yourselves,** nor should the editorial writer say, "We oureelves made the tenth." The sentences should be: "You, Mary, shall do this yourself," " We oui-self made the tenth." Correct the following : The Jodge Is « (^loriotu aailor u well as jarist, and we would gladly tmst oar Uvea with him on the most dangerons seaa. — N«w York Standard. (h) To avoid ambiguous expressions. A little book of information for foreign travellers, issued by E. M. Jenkins, contains this sentence : A remedy recommended by many, and thoroughly bellevoi] in by our wife, is a mix- ture of glycerine and collodion. This reminds one of the Mrs. Brown asking for credit at a dry- goods store, who, when her name was not recognized by the clerk, said, with scarcely justifiable ellipsis, " Why, don't you know me ? I am Tompkins & Brown's wife." {c) To use the " we " only in newspaper articles of an editorial character. Even newspaper letters are now written commonly in the singu- lar, while in books, essays, sermons, and public addresses the best usage is pronouncedly in favor of the singular form, when the author speaks of himself apart from his readers. Tliis last quali- fication is necessary, because in most instances where the pronoun is in the first person the author is carrying along his audience with him, or speaking of general usage. Thus we should say "I have been led to give special study to this subject," where the refer- ence is manifestly to the speaker as an indi^adual; but "we should say," as at the beginning of this sentence, where the mean- ing is that any intelligent person would say so. {d) Make as few references to yourself as possible. In narration of what one has done or seen, one must speak of one's self, and should do it naturally and unaffectedly (see pages 140, 142, 145, 197) ; sometimes vividness is added to an illustra- tion or an anecdote by mentioning tlie speaker's part in it ; but as a general rule, statements and urgunicnts should be cast in im- personal fonn. The writer should aim to fix the reader's attention on the thought, not on himself. 502 PREPARATION FOR THE PRESS. (Paut IV. (4) Do not be Discouraged by Rebuffs.— Probably most experienced writers would advise a young person not to write for publication, believing that ninety- nine of every hundred will write nothing worth reading, and that the hundredth will be so impelled to write that no discouragement will prevent him. And it may be said without qualification that for getting a livelihood almost every other field offers more inducements than literature. In the first place, it is diflScult to get started, as witness the experience told on pages 88, 89 ; and, in the second place, the money reward in the higher walks of literature bears no proportion to that attained for corresponding eminence in other vocations. The professional literary man is usually a failure, but finds no great prizes awaiting him if he happens to succeed. So one might better hoe com or make bonnets than write poems for a living ; but it does not follow that one who has tastes in tliat direction should not exercise them in waiting, and test them in trying to get the writing into print. Nor should the fact that a dozen editors decline it make the author ashamed to offer the manuscript to a thirteenth. Usually it will be well before offering it to any publisher to go to a friend whose judgment and whose frankness can be trusted, and be sure of his indorsement before it is offered at all ; but if it is vouched for emphati- cally by some one who ought to know what is worth print- ing, don't let your light go out because the editor of the Squashtown Bugle or of the Pacific Review declines it. Keep trying, keep trying ; but in the meantime don't let your bread and butter be dependent on it. A correspondent of the Boston Transcript tells about James Russell Lowell's playing a joke upon the Atlantic. He wrote an article called the "Essence of American Humor," which was said Chap. XXV.] COPYRIGHTS. 503 by friends to whom he read it to be among the best of his writ- ings. •* He employed some one to copy it," says the correspond- ent, ** and signed it * W. Perry Paine,' and sent it to the Atlantic, with the request that, as it was a maiden effort, the editor would give an opinion in writing to said Paine. He waited a fortnight, but heard nothing from his pai^er, when, being in Boston, he dropped into the office of the Atlantic, and, meeting James T. Fields, adroitly turned the conversation ujxjn humor, and remarked it was singular so little was written upon the subject. Fields re- plied, * We get a great deal of manuscript on humor, but it is so poor that we cannot use it. I threw into the waste-basket the other day a long screed christened the " Essence of American Humor," which should have been styled the "Essence of Non- sense," for a more absurd farrago of stuff I have never seen.' Lowell, much to the surjmse of the editor, burst into a roar of laughter and informed Mr. Fields of the authorship of the article. The editor turned all colors and swore it was one of Lowell's jokes. * Indeed it is,' responded Lowell, ' and the best joke I ever played. I never thought highly of my scribbling, but I didn't believe it was the most ridiculous farrago of stuff you had ever seen.' By way of self-defence, Fields declared he did not read the thing, but that he did not believe that a man who signed his first name with an initial and the second full could writ« for the Atlantic. That was about as ingenious an exense as he could make for his partiality." (6) Copyrights are easily obtained. It is only neces- sary (a) to have printed upon a sheet of paper the title of the article or book, {h) to forward the same to ''The Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C," (c) enclosing one dollar (whereupon the copyright will be entered and a copy sent you), and finally, when the article or book is pul)lished, (d) to send two copies to the Librarian, for deposit in tlie Library at Washington. A copyright thus secured is valid for twenty-eight years, and may then be renewed for anotljor fourteen. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Preparation for the Press. 1. Make your manuscript legible, p. 492. 2. Read ytmr proof, p. 493. HOW TO CORRECT PROOF, p. 497. 8. Afioid egotum, p. 500. In unng the we care muttt be taken : a. Not to extend the plural use beyond the possessive, p. 500. b. To avoid ambiguous expressions, p. 501. e. To use the ^ce only in editorials, p. 501. d. To make few references to self, p. 501. 4. Do not be discouraged by rebuffs, p. 502. 5. Copyrights, p. 503. PART V. OIUTORY PART V. THE RATIO K. CHAPTER XXYL ELOQUENCE. The object of rhetoric U persaasion,— of lo^o, conviction,— of grammar, Bignifloanoy. — COLBBUMK. De Qainoey divide* all llteratare into two daaaea— the literature of linowledge and the UlMfBtare of power. The function of the first ia to teach ; the function of the second is to for the beat deflnition which I thinic can be given of Eloquence is, the art of npeak- ing in auch a manner k* to obtain the end for which we Rpciik.— Blub. The word Eloquence in it« greHteitt Lititude denot««) that art or talent bj which the dlaooorae is adapted to its end. " Tlio beRt orator in he that so speaks as to instruct^ to daligfat, and to move the minds of bin hearers.*' *— Campbell. A now element enters into the construction of tlic Oration. The fundamental purpose of Conversation is to entertain, of I^etter-writing to inform, of the Essay to in- terest. The Oration must entertain, must inform, must interest; but it must do more, it must persuade. A speech has a purpose, and it is or i.s not a good speech ac- cording as it does or does not effect that purpose. It may be wise and witty and weighty, but if it does not move the audience it is a faihire. The essayist or the j)oet may feel • Optimna «t ontor qui dtoaado nlnn ■wHanHmn «k deoat, •» Jiliohit. ak p«^ BOVeL— ClOBBO. 506 ELOQUENCE. [Part V. inly assured that his work is wortliy ; that though neg- lected now, it will some time be recognized as a master- piece. The orator has no such solace. Ilis speech is for the moment and the occasion of its delivery ; if it fails then, it is a failure forever. These two varieties of power are illustrated in the styles of Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate. Both were powerful speakers ; but Webster was the superior, because of his superior power of selection. Much as one is dazzled by Choate's marvellous com- mand of vocabulary, still one cannot avoid thinking of his style in the reading. That always indicates a defect. An absolutely per- fect style attracts no attention to itself. Criticism of it is an after- thought. Members of the Bo.ston bar all alike yielded to the spell of Choate's rhetoric ; yet, in the very act of admiring, they found time to note that he ** drove the substantive and six," allud- ing to the multitude of adjectives which he harnessed to a noun. Men with tears coursing down their cheeks, in listening to his sonorous periods in his eulogy upon Webster, yet slyly made a memorandum that they would count the words in some of those periods when they should be i^rinted, and afterward remarked that one of them was the longest but one in the English language. Who ever heard of any such arithmetical criticism of Webster's reply to General Hayne of South Carolina ? When Choate spoke, men said, "What a marvellous style. How beautiful, how grand, how immense his vocabulary, how intricate his combinations, how adroit his sway over the mother- tongue." When Webster spoke, men said, '*He will gain his case." Webster's vocabulaiy was much more limited than that of Choate, but he had a much sterner power of selection and rejection. His command of language was like Darwin's law of species in the struggle for existence — only that lived which deserved to live. — Phelps. Adaptation to the audience and the occasion is there- fore the prime consideration. Nothing merits the name of eloquent or beautiful which is not suited to the occasion, and to the persons to whom it is ad- dressed. — BliAIR. Chap. XXVLl * ADAPTATION. 507 Universally indeed in the arguments used as well as in the ap- peals to the feelings, a consideration must be had of the hearers, whether they ai-e learned or ignorant, — of this or that profession, — nation,— character, etc., and the address must be adapted to each ; so that there can be no excellence in writing or speaking, in the abstract ; nor can we any more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than upon the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended. — Whately. Even the common people are better judges of argument and good sense than we sometimes think them ; and upon any ques- tion of business, a plain man, who speaks to the point, without art, will generally prevail over the most artful speaker who deals in flowers and ornaments, rather than in reasoning. — Blaib. In applauding an orator, we usually applaud ourselves. He says what we were just ready to say ; we seem to have suggested the idea. The deliberate ezpreaHion of baman tboaght will always aaaume a form rappoeed to be adapted to the intelligence, the tem|>er, the tasten, and the aims of those to whom it la addreMed. Ue who speaks to an audience oompoeed of men of one class, of one pro- faadoD, of one party, or of one sect, will use a narrower vocabulary, a more restricted or a more select dialect, than he who ezpecta to be heard by a more various and compre- hanaive drde ; and a writer who appeals to a whole people, who seeks to oonvinoe the imdenlandiiig or enlist the sympathies of a nation, must adopt a diction, employ arga- ■MBta, and raaoct to illustrations, which shall, in their torn, suit the comprehension and awaken the interest of men of every class and of every calling. — Mamh. Special care must be taken to exclude from popular speeches certain features, which Abbott has thus classified : (a) Connderations that are gubtiie or fur-fetched. — Though an audience may applaud these if they are skilfully presented, they will be practically guided by plainer and coarser arguments. (b) Language and imagery that are subtile or pedantic. — In Tay- lor's •♦ Edwin the Fair," the Pedant, in addressing an audience of monks, begins figuratively — On Moant Olympoa with the Uvmm %tu» I arar dwait. Upon which the cry i H« doth oontai It, lo t Ha doth cooflMB tt t Fanotaaadastakal He is a beathao ; shall a haaUicti apaakf S08 ELOQUENCE. ' [Pabt V. So when in debate, in reply to the argument of an opponent that his client in a man of lettei-s, a Hpeaker retorts, "Yes, a man of three letters," the retort is lost on those who do not happen to know that tliis phi-ase is the translation of the Latin euphemism for thief, Jioino trium Utterarum (fur). (c) Considerations alien to tlie ways of thinking of the assembly addressed, — Thus it has l)een said in the House of Commons of a scheme laid before it by a philosopher, '• It is not of our atmos- phere.'* For the same reason it has been remarked that lawjei-s seldom succeed in the House of Commons ; and Erskine, the greatest of advocates, excited nothing but contempt in Pitt, who ruled the House of Commons. Hence, also, the kind of oratory which suits a jury — i.e., an unskilled audience— differs from that which is likely to convince a judge ; i.e., a skilled auditor. (d) Considerations cf a hiylier moral tone than is likely to be ap- jyreciated by the assembly. — A speaker may feel it his duty to urge such considerations, but they are not oratorical. An interesting example of oratory, ineffective for this reason, is the speech in justification of the murder of Caesar, attributed by Shakspere to Brutus. It appeals to abstract principles of morality quite beyond the comprehension of the crowd, and therefore excites nothing but a cold respect for the speaker. Then follows Antony, with an appeal to feelings, some good, some bad, but actually present in the minds of the audience, and excites them to frenzy. A little boy was shown the picture of the martyrs thrown to the lions. He startled his friends by shouting : '* Ma ! O Ma ! Just look at that poor little lion way behind there. He won't get any." There are audiences that from abstract discussion draw reflec- tions far from those intended. It is not by his own taste, but by the taste of the fish that the angler is determined in his choice of bait. — Macaulat. (e) Imagery^ phraseology^ arid rhythm, too rich and exquisite to he readily appreciated. — Specimens have been given above of the highest eloquence of English prose. Scarcely one of them be- longs to oratory as here defined ; that is, scarcely one of them would be tolerated in the House of Commons, or in a law court. Students must not be misled by the speeches of Burke so as to suppose that the richness and ingenuity of his style is properly Chap. XXVI. ] ADAPTATION. 609 oratorical. Burke wa^, in fact, little listened to in the House of CJommons. The true oratorical style is much less elaborate and ingenious. The following is a specimen of the manner of Fox, the most powerful of English oratora : " We most keep Boii«|Mirte for sotnc time Ioniser at war, an a state of probation ! Gra- dun* Ood, Bit, U war • state of probation ? la peace a raish HyBteui y Is it daiitferous for natioan to live in amity with each other ? Are your vi(:ilunee, yuur policy, your wouanon powers of observation, to be extinguixhcil by putting an end to the horron* of war ? Can- not this state of probation be ax well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human ■offerings ? Bat we muHt /kinm .' What ! mut>t the liowelu of Great Britain be torn out, ber beat blood Rpilt, her treasure wai'ted, that you may make an experiment {■ Put your- e elr ee oh, that you would put youmelves in the field of battle, and learn to judge of the ■ort of horrors that you excite ! In former wars a man might at least have some feeling, ■ome interest, that served to Imlance in his mind the impresFions which a scene of car- nage and of death must inflict. If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for Instance, and hod inquirc the care- lessness of the language and the complete absence of rhythm, the orator evidently beginning his sentences without knowing how he would end them. To these characteristics it owes very much of ita persuasiveness. What you are asked to believe is not anything paradoxical, and tbe language used is so direct and natural that you suspect no artifice. The character of the speaker is also a powerful consideratiuii. We permit ourselves to be entertained, 510 ELOQUENCE. [Part V. informed, and interested by almost any one that has the requisite intellectual ability ; but we are slow to be per- suaded by those whom we do not respect. One thing is certain, and I shall hereafter have occasion to illustrate il more fully, that without possessing the virtuous affec- tions in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sub- lime parts of eloquence. — BiiAIB. • It may be objected that bad men have been great orators. It would be more exact to say that most such men have had within them the cajmcity for distinguished probity, but that they have fallen through moral weakness. Such a man sees the right way, and can still point it out to an audience, though he no longer fol- lows it ; while a naturally bad man, having never seen it, uncon- sciously betrays his ignorance of it. Hence weak men do more mischief than bati men ; for their sympathy with all that is true and noble gives them an influence over the good that the bad man could never establish, and which they betray. It may be urged that to adapt one's self to the audience is a sort of duplicity ; but this view has been well refuted, as follows : Much declamation may be heard in the present day against ex- pediency, as if it were not the proper object of a deliberative as- sembly, and as if it were pursued only by the unprincipled. And this kind of declamation is represented as a sign of superior moral rectitude ; though in truth it implies very unsound morality, in any one who is not led into it through mere confusion of thought and inaccuracy of language. — Whately. Vanity, always a weakness, is in oratory unpardonable. It is a peculiarity in the rhetorical art that in it, more than in any other, vanity has a direct and immediate tendency to interfere with the proposed object. Excessive vanity may indeed in various ways prove an impediment to success in other pursuits ; but in the endeavor to pei-suade, all wish to appear excellent in that art operates as a hinderance. A poet, a statesman, a general, etc., though extreme covetousness of applause may mislead them, will, Chap. XXVI.] SINCERITY. 511 however, attain their respective ends certainly not the less for being admired as excellent in poetiy, politics, or war ; but the orator attains his end the better the less he is regarded as an orator. If he can make the hearers believe that he is not only a stranger to all unfair artifice, but even destitute of all perauasive skill whatever, he will persuade them the more effectually, and if there ever could be an absolutely perfect orator, no one would, at the time at least, discover that he was so. . . . It is important to remark that an orator is bound as such, not merely on moral but (if such an expression may be used) oii rhetorical principles, to be mainly and indeed exclusively intent on carrj'ing liis point ; not on gaining approbation or even avoid- ing censure, except with a view to that point. He should, as it were, adopt as a motto the reply of Themistocles to the Spartan commander Eurybiades, who lifted his staff to chastise the earn- estness with which his own opinion was controverted : " Strike, but hear me." I would not indeed undertake to maintain (like Quintilian) that no one can be an orator who is not a virtuous man ; but there cer- tainly is a kind of moral excellence implied in that renunciation of all effort after display, in that forgetfulness of self, which is abso- lutely necessary, both in the manner of writing and in the delivery, to give the full force to what is said. — Whately. Look at Dogberry, anxioiu to be written down an asa, and proving his donkeyhood by ntter ancoatcioiuDem of it. Look at FalstaiC, on the other hand, luuKbing at hiraadf and Ntopping the laoghter of others when he aays, ** I do begin to perceive I am made an aaL" And it is not only the final test of donkeyhood, bnt gocn down to the deeps of life. Shakspere is very fond uf nuch phrases as thcw : " The fool doth think he is wise, bat the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'* " The wont is not as Ung as we cam say. This is the worst.** " I am not very sick sinoe I can reason of it."— Dallas. Sincerity is imperatively demanded. Universally a writer or si)eaker should endeavor to maintain the appearance of expressing himself not as if he wanted to say some- thing, but as if he had something to say.— Whately. Asked what was the secret of his success in public debate. President Lincoln replied: **I always assume that my audience are in many things wiser than I am, and I say the most sensible thing I can to them. I never found that they did not understand me.'* 512 ELOQUENCE. [Part V. I know that young people, on purpose to train themselves to the art of 8i)eaking, imagine it useful to adopt that side of the question under debate which to themselves api)ears the weakest, and to try wliat figure they can make upon it. But I am afraid this is not the most improving education for public speaking ; and that it tends to form them to a habit of flimsy and trivial dis- course. — BliAIB. If at leMt that man it to be aoooaiited th« mo«t perfect orator who (an Cicero lays down) can Kpcak the best and moat penoaalvaly on oajf qnestion whatever that may arise, it may fairly be doubted whether a J b r ttr ate mtm can be aflret-rau orator. He may indeed speak admirably in a matter he has well conKiderod : bat when any new sub- ject or new point is started in the ooume of a debate, though he may take a jiiHter view of it at the first ^anoe, on the exigency of the moment, than any one else conld, he will not fail — as a man of more superficial cleverness would— to iiereeivc how impofwible it must be to do full justice to a subject demanding more reflection and inquiry ; nor can he therefore place himself fully on a level In such a ca«e with one of shallower mind, who bein^ in all cases leas able to look beneath the Rnrface of things obtains at the glance the best view k» can take of cmy subject, and therefore can display, without any need of artiflt-e, that easy unembarrassed confidence which can never be with equal effect assumed. To npeak perfectly well, in Hhort, a man must feel that he haii got to the bottom of the subject ; und to feel this on occasions where from the nature of the case it is impossible he can really have done so, is inconsistent with the character of great profundity. — Whatelt. The Funny Man can never be an orator. He may amuse us, but we do not let liim persuade us. We yield our judgment only to the speaker who is thoroughly in earnest. There are things incompatible with unction, such as wit, an analysis too strict, a tone too dictatorial, logic too formal, irony, the use of language too secular or too absti-act, a form too literaiy ; for unction supposes abundance, overflow, fluidity, pliableness. — ViNET. The pathetic and the facetious differ not only in subject and effect, a? will appear upon the mast sui>erficial review of what has been said, but also in the manner of imita- tion. In this the man of humor descends to a minuteness which the orator disdains. The former will often successfully run into downright mimicry, and exhibit peculiarities in voice, gesture, and pronunciation, which in the other would be intolerable. The rea- son of the difference is this: That we may divert, by exciting scorn and contempt, the individual must be exjwsed ; that we may move by interesting the more generous prin- ciples of humanity, the language and sentiments not so much of the individual as of hu- man nature must be displayed. So very different, or rnther opposite, are these two in this respect, that there could not be a more effectual expedient for undoing the charm of the most affecting representation, than an attempt in the speaker to mimic the personal Cbap. XXVI]. MODERATION. 513 ■inRulmritics of the man for whom he desires to interwit na. On the other hand, in the humorous when- the em\ is diversion, even overacting, if imxlerat*', is not improper.— Cajipbkix. The Objection to a predominance of the humorous in a public speaker is not to the Innnor but to tlie affecta- tion, the bent of mind that seeks to look upon things not as they are, but as tliey may be made to seem laughable. When the wit is plainly subordinate to the thought, and employed not for itself but as the most forcible expression of the thought, it is the happiest element of perfection in a discourse, especially in discussion. (See page 81.) Wit may sometimes be of service at the bar, especially in a lively reply, by which we may throw ridicule on something that has been said on the other side. But though the reputation of wit be dazzling to a young pleader, I would never advise him to rest his strength upon this talent. It is not his business to make an audience laugh, but to convince the judge ; and seldom or never did any one rise to eminence in his profession by being a witty lawyer. — Blair. Moderation is another essential quality, especially in enlisting the sympathies of the audience. Even when passion is aroused, and the orator seems to be sweeping his hearers along by the torrent of his fiery words, he will still be wary not to be more violent than their excitement warrants, remembering that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Besenre haa great force. This devout and holy sobriety of ex- pression is not merely a discipline worthy of being reverenced for its motive ; it is a wise and wholesome economy. Feeling is ex- hausted by the expression of feeling. Never without an evident and impracticable miracle can the words of the i>oot respecting the magic cup be spoken of the soul : And atUl the more the Taae poured forth Th« IDOCW a BMOMd to hold.— OTID. 514 ELOQUBNCK [Part V. Beserved men, when that reserve is not the mark of sterility, preserve the strength of their soul just as temperate men preserve their bodily vigor. Nay, their very reser\'e is usually a pledge and a foundation of mental strength. Nothing moves us so deeply as a single word from the heart of one whose words are, from a sense of duty, few. — Vinet. M. Clemenceau, the French Minister, was devoid of enthusiasm and made no secret of his contempt for the imaginativeness and "gush" of the Southern orators. Once, after one of Gambetta's most impassioned speeches, Clemenceau was seen to wear a scorn- ful expression. ** Why, you must admit that it was a magnificent oration," expostulated M. Naquet. "It was incomplete," replied Clemenceau, dryly ; •* M. Gambetta should have accompanied him- self on the guitar." The following eulogy upon Justice Clifford, by Senator Davis, is an admirable example of moderation in a field of oratory where there is peculiar temptation to extravagance : The members of the bar have come togfthcr to perform the sad duty of oflfering proper r*q>eot to the memory of the late Mr. Justice Nathan Clifford. It was my privilege to be •Modated with him on the bench for fifteen years, and it was my pleasure to know him (doaely daring all that time, in the relationH of an unbroken personal friendship. He wan's Oratoby. — Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. His lan- guage (where he could spare or pass by a je*) was nobly cen- sorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his 8i>eech but consipted of his own graces. His hearera could not cough or look aside from him without I0.S8. He commanded where he sjioke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affectioiu3 more in his iK)wer. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end. — Johnson. Thb Obatoby op Dkmosthekes. — He not only prompts to vigor- ous conduct, but he laj-s down the plan of that conduct ; he enters into particulars ; and points out, \*ith great exactness, the meas- ures of execution. This is the strain of these orations. They art* strongly animated, and full of the impetuosity and fire of public spirit Tbey proceed in a continued strain of inductions, conse- quences, and demonstrations, founded on sound reason. The fig- ures which he uses are never sought after, but always rise from the subject. He employs them sjiaringly, indeed, for splendor and ornament are not the distinctions of this onitor's composition. It is an energy of thought i>eonliar to himself which forms his char- acter and sets him above all oMiers. He api>oar8 to attend much more to things than to words. We forget the orator and think oi 516 ELOQUENCE. [Part V. the business. He warms the mind and impels to action. He has no parade and ostentation ; no methods of insinuation ; no labored introductions ; but is like a man full of his subject, who, after preparing his audience by a sentence or two for hearing plain truths, enters directly on business.— Blair, i. 366. There in the epeaker who has nothing lo mj, and who wys it ; there is the speaker who has aomething lo aay, and who doe* not aay It ; and there ia the speaker who haeakei 8 who are all iutnxluction. They are always coming up to their theme. It appears to be a kind of ignUfeUuwt to them. They are perpetually nearing it, but " the faithless phantom tlies," and they are shut off. or choked off, before they have overtaken it. You feel, in hearing, like the man who conscientiously believed he was to eat through the bill of fare, and who was weary but unsatisfied by the time he had got through the six kindi> of soup at the top. Others are all conclusion. They have " finally," and " once more," and " another re- mark," and " it occurs to them to add," and " before sitting down they wish to express,'" and in conclusion they have two or three " observations to offer." This is the modem substitute for the rack. It tortures one from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. It goes to the very marrow of one's bones. You envy those who. unrestrained by fear or shame, can go out. You inquire mentally. Is this a free country ? You feel as the peasant must have felt, who stood by the river to cross when the water had all flowed past ; and when your fluent and gifted tormentor really ends, you are too exhausted to have a lively feeling of pleasure ; and yet the sickly signs of satisfaction you show at his having finished at all, he probably takes as a tribute to his powers. There is the gushing speaker. He has emotions "always on hand." His "Oh's" and " Ah's " fall like rain. He is a standing interjection. Sometimes he is violently enamored of everybody present Even the doorkeeper hardly escapes. He singles out classes, and individuals, and tells the audience the particular kind of affection he has for them, its duration, and the occasion of its birth. Such speakers are the " free-lovers" of the platform. They ought to he frowned upon. They use up the tender words of good- will, and do not leave a man phrases enough unvulgarized by their cheap emotion, un- smeared by their treade, in which to express honest love to his wife, his friend, or his children. There is the pleasing speaker — dress faultless, words clean-cut, neat and select, no conviction to make any one uncomfortable — yon could not disagree with him if you tried. Chap. XXVL] SPEAKERS. 517 The crystal utrwuna with pleasing murmon creep : bat the man hai wnae enoogh to atop before — as in Pope's lines — the hearer ia Threatened, not in vain, with sleep. He makea a lorely " chairman,*' and is good at a preeentation, and returns thanks with extraoadinary grace of words. The world is much indebted to the " pleasing " speaker. He Inbrloates the wheda of eodal life, and putn men in good temi>er. There ia the gymnastic speaker. He acts all he sayH, and more. He is to be seen, like the dear little pets at table, rather than heard. His hands, his limbs, his walk, his mnning aboat, keep at least yoor eyes oocapied. He gives some enjoyment to a certain order of mind, of the same kind afforded to children by the monkeys. 80 does the flashing speaker. He sparkles— without any needful connection between the gleams — any more than between the flashes of sheet-lightning. When he has made a rcpntation, the hearers wait and watch for the displays, and even dificount them, and when he has burnt out there is no more impression left than by ftre-works In the sky. *' We have Keen, admired, applauded ; now let as go home." There is finally the heavy, generally sensible, siieaker, who has ideas more or leea clear or valaable in which he believes, and manages, more or less clumsily, to get out. Of this class of speaker, the writer knows little with certainty, for we do, as a rule, the least know onrselves. But on general principles it may be confidently alleged that if one haa Ihooghta — not imaginations or notions of them (which are to thoughts as clouds to a gtaw of water)— he is to be blamed if he does not toke pains to overcome difficnlties in the way of uttering them : for they can be overcome : and the human tongiie, under proper management, is equal to the expression of all practical and really aerrioeable Idea*.— Jobs Hall. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Eloquence. Persuasion, p 505. ADAi-rATH)X, p 5()fi. Special care must l>e taken to exclude : a. Subtilo an08itlon Khali be continu- ally kept before the hearer. Their plans are apt to resemble the pine or tlr. the main body of whi(4i grow* straight up to the very top of the tree, while branches shoot out on ita aidea at regular intenrala; and there are. it must be allowed, certain subjects, eg., thow of the argumentative ami demonstrative kind, which sometimes derive considerable energy and gracefulness from the conntant visibility of the stem proposition. But still it in tu be remembered that there in also a unity of amplification and of varioos applications. Almost all fruit-trees divide the trunk among the first brunches, and sacrifice height and symmetry of stem, limb, and twig to that rotundity which exposes the greatest amount of fruit to the ripening weather and the admiring eye. It is, therefore, by keeping the util- ity of our sermoo ever before n« that wo acquire the truest unity, and, at the same time, that art of deceiving art, of which Ven.uitiuH FortuiiotUH writes. No man can methodiie thoroughly well whose mind has not been disciplined to habitM of aoand thinking ; for " method." a-« Colendge observes, " is a |X)wer or spirit of the in tolleet. pervading all that it doea, rather than it« tangible product.*^ Nor is he Ukely to radooe any aabjeet to a jnat method who has not a distinct, particular, and comprebensivw kaowladg* thereof. Bat to learn to arrange a snbject practically and popularly, we ••hould add to all thla nooh lateroo un e with men and considerable experience in public ■peaking. Bat h not aa analytic mind neeessarily lacking in force ? Believe it not. The ten- dflpoy of nethod la asaotly the opposite. By contribating to perspionity and by reducing the whole eabieet to one view. It stlmnlatcs energy, sometimes to an extravagant degree. MasalUon and Baxter ware both analytic thlnken, and yet both wrote and spoke with a force that is Demnethenlan The latter stndied the schoolmen chiefly, It would seen, be* caoae of their aentenees and skill in methodology. " And tliongh,^ says he. '* I know no man whose genios iBore abhorreth conf ludon instead of nuo mmtry distinction and method, yM I loathe the ImpertineBt, oaekM art, and pratended pceoepta, and dlstinolioiM which 522 ARGUMENT. [Part V. have no foundations in the matter.*^ He aomewhere t»yn he never thought hu understood anything until he could anatomin iL Method, therefore, as it belongs in germ and potentiality to the mind itaelf, w> it is the moat perfeoCljr evolved by the moat capeciooa and cultivated minds.— Hebtkt. So important is analysis, that the best writers re- commend its practice upon themes of all kinds, whether or not they are to be spoken upon. The young speaker will find it an excellent habit when in public assemblies of any kind to reflect upon what he would say if he were callee the analyzing, in the same way, the composition of another, whether heard or read. — Whatklt. Above all things, in divisions take care of putting anything in the first part which *:up- poses the understanding of the second, or which obliges yon to treat of the second to make the first understood ; for by these means you will throw yourself into great confusion, and be obliged to make many tedious repetitions. You must endeavor to disengnge the one from the other as well as you can ; and when your parts are too closely connected with each other, place the most detached first, and endeavor to make that serve for a foundation to the explication of the second, and the second to the third ; so that at the end of your ex- plication the hearer may with a glance perceive, as it were, a perfect body, or a finishetl building ; for one of the greatest excellences of a sermon is the harmony of its component parts, that th« first leads to the second, the second serves to introduce the third ; that they which go before excite a desire for those which are to follow ; and, in a word, that the last has a special relation to all the others, in order to form in the hearers* minds a complete idea of the whole.— Claude. (I) The Introduction is the last part to be com- posed. (See page 328.) The best authorities concur in the opinion that the exordium should not be chosen and planned until the principal matter of the sermon be selected and arranged. This is in accordance Chap. XXVII.] THE INTRODUCTION. 623 with Cicero's example and advice : ' ' Quod primum est dicendum postremnm soleo cogitare." ("The last thing one finds out is what to put first."— Pascal.) Some forbid us to dream of the in- troduction until the rest of the discourse has been written. But Vinet thinks this mode of proceeding is not natural, as a good ex- ordium prepares the reader to compose, as well as the congrega- tion to hear. And yet he approves Cicero's method. If, however, we thus write our exordium, we are compelled to begin to arrange and to express those thoughts first which have occupied our thoughts the shortest time. Now, as a good exordium is confess- edly very diflScult to compose, and the success of the sermon so much depends upon its beginning, it is but fair to allow the preacher the longest possible time for pondering its materials and for making such changes in them as the composition of the rest may happen to suggest. — Hkrvey. The rule laid down by Cicero, not to compose the introduction first, but to consider first the main argument and let that suggest the exordium, is just and valuable ; for otherwise, as he observes, seldom anything vnU suggest itself but vague generalities, ' ' com- mon" topics, as he calls them, i.e., what would equally well suit several different compositions; whereas an introduction that is composed last will naturally spring out of the main subject and appear appropriate to it. — Whately. I And Oicero were in the habit of preparing at th«ir Itinire different Intro- i to be prefixed to their extemporaneous orations. They thni aecored variety at tiM •xpenae of pertinence. That kind of exordium which might be adapted to aeveral oaosM waa in Qnintilian^s time rei^irded with little favor, and was called vulaare, although he admit* that it was not alwayii avoided by the greatest orators. Some old rhetorician or other ha* compared such exordia to the sword used at the temple of Detphi, which served the doable purpose uf immolating the sacred victims and executing malefactors.— Sometimes the introduction may be omitted, the speaker proceeding at once to the matter in hand. Dean Swift, called upon to preach a charity sermon, was warned not to make it too long. So he chose for his text these words : " He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord ; and that which he hath given will he pay him again." The dean, after looking around, and repealing his text in a more emphatic tone, 524 ARGUMENT. [Part V. added, ** My beloved friends, you hear the terms of the loan ; and now, if you like the security, down with your dust." The result was a satisfactory collection. Let the student bear well in mind that the greatest possible diversity requires him occasionally to proceed at once to the matter in hand. — And yet some brief premonition is almost always neces- sary, lest the people imagine, as Claude says, that the preacher is aiming to do with them what the angel did with the prophet, when he took him by the hair of the head and carried him in an instant from Judea to Babylon.— Hebvey. Conciliation is the main purpose of an introduction. Tlie speaker shows a certain presumption in coming before an audience to occupy their time, and he must placate them by showing that he appreciates the privilege, and that his effort will be to do his utmost to justify it. Hence he should be moderate in tone and modest in man- ner. If he can make some bappy allusion to the place and time, especially to what has just been said, or to some circumstance fresh in the minds of his audience, be will gain attention the more readily because he will seem to rely rather on his wit than on his memoiy. The exordiiun and the peroi-ation are, according to Cicero, the two parts which are to be devoted to excitation. But Quintilian has made an important distinction as to the degrees of excitation which these two parts of a speech allow. "In the introduction the kind feelings of the judge should be touched but cautiously and modestly ; while in the peroration we may give full scope to the pathetic." . . . One principal object in an exordium is to gain and secure atten- tion. Among the things that draw attention are reverence and modesty. Simeon advises his students to adopt such a tone of voice as they would naturally choose if they were speaking to per- sons older than themselves and to whom they owed reverence. Vinet would have the preacher even timid, but with this distinc- tion of Mai-montel, that he should be timid for himself but bold for his cause. Another way to make jieople give ear is to set out Chap. XXVU.] THE NARRATION. 525 with a popular saying, objection, difficulty, apparent contradic- tion, excuse or question, which is afterward to be disiwsed of. A fact or short narrative is sometimes sufficient to seize and enchain the minds of an audience. . . . Some are in the habit of for- mally asking attention. . . . The transition from the exordium to the proposition should be short and easy. For the reason that the matter of their introduction is either inelevant or badly arranged, some preachers appear to leap a very broad chasm when they i>as8 from their exordium ; and a written or printed discoui-se of theii-s seems, when read, not unlike a temple from which the poi-tico has been separated by an earthquake.— Hebvet. (2) The Narration (or Description, as it is some- times called), should be presented with all the art of in- teresting suggested in the chapter on this form of compo- sition (see pages 208 and following), but with this kept in mind, that the story is told not for its own sake, but to prepare the minds of the hearers for the proposition and arguments to follow. Hence only that need be told which will tend to make one's hearers prepared to hear the side one is about to present ; though often this will require a frank presentation of circumstances that are, or seem to be, of C(»ntraiy tendency. (3) The Proposition usually precedes the Argu- ment, and is to be stated distinctly (see page 318). A proposition that is well known (whether easy to be established or not), and which contains nothing jwirticularly offensive, should in g(>neral be stated at once, and the proofs subjoined ; but one not familiar to the hearers, esi>eoially if it be likely to be unac- ceptable, should not be stated at the outlet. It is usually l>etter, in that case, to state tlie arguments fli-st. or at lea.st some of them, and then introduce the conclusion, thus assuming, in some degree, the character of an investigator. There is no question relating to arrangement more important than tht» jiresont.— Whately. (4) The Argument should sometimes begin with 526 ARGUJiENT. [Part V refutation of tlie arguments of an opponent, or allaying of known prejudice on the part of the audience. Refutation of Objections should generally be placed in the midst of the Argument ; but nearer the beginning than the end. If indeed very strong objections have obtained much currency or have been just stated by an opponent, so that what is asserted is likely to be regarded as paradoxical, it may be advisable to be- gin with a Refutation ; but when this is not the case, the mention of Objections in the opening will be likely to give a paradoxical air to our assertion, by implying a consciousness that much may be said against it. If, again, all mention of objections be deferred till the last, the other arguments ydU. often be listened to vrith prejudice by those who may suppose us to be overlooking what may be urged on the other side. Sometimes, indeed, it ^dll be difficult to give a satisfactory refutation of the opposed opinions till we have gone through the argimients in 8upix>rt of our own ; even in that case, however, it will be better to take some notice of them early in the Composition, with a promise of afterward con- sidering them more fully, and refuting them. This is Aristotle's usual procedure. A sophistical use is often made of this last rule, when the ob- jections ai-e such as cannot really be satisfactorily answered. The skilful sophist will often, by the promise of a triumphant Refuta- tion hereafter, gain attention to his own statement, which, if it be made pLiusible, will so draw off the hearer's attention from the Objections, that a very inadequate fulfilment of that promise will pass unnoticed, and due weight will not be allowed to the Ob- jections. . . . The force of a refutation is often overrated : an argument which is satisfactorily answered ought merely to go for nothing ; it is possible the conclusion drawn may nevei-theless be true ; yet men are apt to take for granted that the conclusion itself is disproved, when the arguments brought forward to establish it have been satisfactorily refuted ; assuming, perhaps, when there is no ground for the assumption, that these are all the arguments that could be urged. — Whately. Chap. XXVII ] FRANKNESS. 527 Frankness in stating objections that are sure to be presented is always an element of strength. On the above principle, that a weak argument is positively hurtful, is founded a most important maxim, that it is not only the fairest, but also the wisest plan to state objections in their full force ; at least wherever there does exist a satisfactory answer to them ; otherwise those who hear them stated more strongly than by the uncandid advocate who had undertaken to repel them, will natui-ally enough conclude that they are unanswerable. It is but momentary and ineffective triumph that can be obtained by ma- noeu\Tes like those of Turennes's charioteer, who furiously chased the feeble stragglers of the army, and evaded the main front of the battle. Such an honest avowal as I have been recommending, though it may raise at fii'st a feeble and brief shout of exultation, will soon be followed by a general and increasing murmur of approbation. Uncandid as the world often is, it seldom fails to applaud the magnanimity of confessing a defect or a mistake, and to reward it \inth an increase of confidence. Indeed, this increased confidence is often rashly bestowed by a kind of over-generosity in the pub- lic, which is apt too hastily to consider the confession of an error AS a proof of universal sincerity. Some of the most skilful soph- ists acconlingly avail themselves of this, and gain credence for much that is false by ai^knowledging, with an air of frankness, some one mistake, whiili, like a tub tlirown to a whale, they sacri- fice for the sake of persuading us that they have committed only one error. — Whately. Objections to the view presented must not be un- dervalued (see page 64). On the whole, the arguments which it requires the greatest nicety of art to refute effectually (I mean for one who has truth on his side) are those which are so very weak and silly that it is difficult to make their absurdity more palpable than it is already. — Whatelt. Cicero tells us that he always conversed at full length with every client who came to consult him ; that he took care there 528 ARGUMENT. [Part V. Bhouhl be no witness to their conversation, in order that his client might explain himself more freely ; that he was wont to start every objection, and to plead the cause of the adverse party with him, that he might come at the whole truth and be fully prepare-rooted prejudices, and maintaining ua|>opular and paradoxical truths, the point to be aimed at should be to adduce what is sufticient, titut ntU 'nuch more than is sufficient to prove your conclusion. If (in such a ease) you can but satisfy men that your opinion is decidedly more probable than the opjwpite, you will have carried your point more effectually than if you go on much be\ ond this to de- monstrate, by a multitude of the most forcible arguments, the extreme absurdity of think- ing differently, till you have afiCrontet! the self-esteem of sonic and awakened the distrust of others. A French writer, M. Say, relates a story of some one who, for a wa-rer, stood a whole day on one of the bridges of Paris, oflfering to sell a five-franc piece for one franc and (naturally) not finding a purchaser. Laborers who are employed in driving wedges into a block of wood are careful to use blows of no grreater force than is just sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity of the wood will throw out the wedge. . . . Some, perhaps, conscious of having In^en the slaves or the suppear perfectly evident evin to a child, will t-onscquently be stung by a feeling of shame passing oflf into resentment, which stops their ears against argument. They could have borne perhaps to change their opinion, but not so to change it as to tax their former opinion with the grossest folly. They would be so sorry to think they had been blinded to such an excess, and are so angry with him who is endeavoring Chap. XXVII] RIDICULE. 529 them to think ko, that these feelings determine them not to think it.— Whatblt. Hence the absurdity of the paradox that he who confesses a mistake merely shows that he is wiser to-day than he was yester- day ; the fact that a man was mistaken yesterday, so far as it shows anything, indicates that he is likely to be mistaken to-day. Ridicule is a most effective mode of refutation. Cleverly to burlesque an opponent's arguments will cover him with confusion. It was a just opinion of Gorgias, and approved by Aristotle, that the serious argument of an adversary should be confounded by ridicule, and his ridicule by serious argument. — Campbell. He (Sydney Dobell) nays : *' To cxpreM ia tocurry out To express a mind is to carry oat that mlnii Into i^omc equivalent. By an equivalent I mean that product of an active mind which being presented to the Bame mind when pa»i8ive, could restore the former nutc of activity.'* This HeiMiiH to us to mean (if it means anything) th.it the full, verbal « xi>rc«.'«iot) of any fevling— hate, for instance— would bo such wor Is -as would nrouso the fceliiiR of hate in iho mind that ha that the only poMibIc judge of the perfect ex|>rcs.sion of a feeling is the person who cxprea«e8 it, for he ii« the only one who can tell whether the words are adequate to re- express the feeling in his mind. Thus the only possible judge of a poem is the author, a conclusion which will be eagerly hailed by mnny unappreciated geniosen.— iS^McXotor, July 1. 187n. Good Temper must be maintained under any pro- vocation (see pages 30, 77). It is not unfrocpiently the case that i>ersons who are participat- ing in debate become flushed with irritation, and render ill-natured and splenetic replies to questions which may be propounded to them by a debater on the o])po8ite side of the question to them- selves. This is exceedingly iniiK>litic. If a si)eaker cannot pre- serve his comi>osure when such interrogatories are put to him he ought to refrain from any replication to them whatever. For a mere ebullition of batl tem|M»r, ^lithout being armed with the ])rop- erty of sni)erior \snt or roiiartee, i)laces the speaker himself in a di.sailvantageons ]>oint of view before his audience, and sheds an euer\'ating influence on his cause. — McQuben. I^gic is the proper criterion of argument considered 530 ARGUMENT. [Part V. in itself, and it is for Rhetoric only to apply and arrange the reasoning that logic provides. In general it may be said that the strongest arguments should come last, and that when circumstances make it necessary to put the strongest first, they should be recapitulated in reverse order. Of all rules it is most important to converge all one's power on the main point at issue. Ignore the non- essentials (see page 69), but let nothing swerve your mind or that of your hearers from the strong point on which you rely. " Know your fact ; hug your fact." Indeed, in any composition that is not very short, the most fre- quent and the most appropriate kind of conclusion is a recapitu- lation either of the whole or of part of the arguments that have been adduced. — Whatelt. It is a weighty remark of Cicero that " it will be necessary to avoid letting it have the air of a childish display of memory ; and he will best keep clear of that fault who does not recapitulate every trifle, but touches on each particular briefly and dwells on the more weighty and important i)oints." Quintilian advises us to vary and enliven our enumerations with different figures, and cites as an excellent example Cicero's oration against Verres : *' If your father himself were your judge what would he say when these things are proved against you ? " and then enumerates the recapitu- lation. Maury is unsparing in his censure of enumerations such as were made in his day. He quotes in his favor the language of Cicero, who compares the orator that dryly and formally recapitu- lates to a serpent crawling round in a circle and biting his own tail. — Hervet. Unity is more important in oratory than in any other composition, yet it does not exclude occasional digression for legitimate ends. The imagination is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate and incapable of bearing fatigue ; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded. Chap. XXVII.] UNITY. 531 exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of an- swering any farther appeal till it has had rest. — Kuskin. The effect of disorder in reasoning is sometimes grand and over- whelming, like that of an army scaling the walls of a city. Robert Hall's manner is an example of this. Foster compares his inde- pendent propositions to a number of separate and undisciplined savages. . . . He who knows not how to wander knows not how to explore ; and circumnavigators have changed the map of the world and greatly enlarged the domain of civilized nations, because furious gales swept them out of their course, drove them up and down, and finally wrecked them among the rocks of the imknown coast. '•I have observed," says John Bunyan ("Grace Abounding," 287) "that a word cast in by the bye hath done more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken besides." " He wanders from his subject," complained some critic of the late English preacher, John Gualter. *' Yes," was the reply, " he wanders from his sub- ject to the heart." . . . The regressions of Demosthenes are more frequent and more natural. Lord Brougham, commenting upon a passage of his oration on the Crown, thus draws attention to them, and at the flame time contrasts them with those of Fox. •* Here is the same leading topic once more introduced ; but introduced after new topics and fresh illustrations. The repetitions, the enforcement again and again of the same points, are a distinguishing feature of Demosthenes, and formed also one of the characteristics of Mr. Fox's great eloquence. The ancient, however, was incomparably more felicitous in this than the modem ; for in the latter it often arose from carelessness, from ill-arranged discourse, from want of giving due attention, and from ha\'ing once or twice attempted the topic and forgotten it, or perhaps from having failed to produce the desired effect. Now, in Demosthenes this is never the case ; the early allusions to the subject of the repetition are always per- fect in themselves, and would sufficiently have enforced the topic had they stood alone. But now matter afterward handled gave the topic new force and fresh illustration by presenting the point in a new light.**— Hkbvby. (6) The Conclusion (or Peroration, as it is com- - -' ARGUMENT. [Part V. iiionlj called) is so important that even the extempore speaker is advised to be sure of very nearly the language he will use. It is the part that remains in the hearers' minds, and that more than any other affords the basis for estimate of the entire address. Many a noble speech has been spoiled because the orator groped about for a place to stop, and failed to find it before he had disappointed and discomfited his hearers. It is observed by all travellers, who have visited the Alps or other stupendous mountains, that they form a very inadequate notion of the vastness of the greater ones till they ascend some ot the less elevated (which are yet huge mountains), and thence view the others still towering above them. And the mind, no less than the eye, cannot so well take in and do justice to any vast object at a single glance as by several successive approaches and repeated comiiarisons. Thus, in the well-known climax of Cicero, in the oration against Verres, shocked as the Romans were likely to be at the bare mention of the crucifixion of one of their citizens, the successive steps by which he brings them to the contemplation of such an event were calculated to work up their feelings to a much higher pitch: "It is an outrage to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is an atrocious crime ; to put him to death is almost parricide ; but to crucify him — what shall I call it ? " So in the ideal address, as the speaker rises, the audi- ence look upon him with indifferent curiosity; they are attracted by his introduction, they are interested in his narration, impressed by liis argument, and, finally, roused to enthusiasm by his conclusion. A famous preacher said wisely that if he failed to make the last part of his address more forcible than the first, he would go back and enfee- ble the first rather than have the audience dampened by an anti-climax. It may be worth while here to remark that it is a common fault of an extempore speaker to be tempted, by finding himself Chap. XXVII.] THE CONCLUSION. 533 listened to with attention and approbation, to go on adding another and another sentence (what is called in the homely language of the jest *' more last words") after he had intended, and announced his intention, to bring his discourse to a close ; till at length, the audience becoming manifestly weary and impatient, he is forced to conclude in a feeble and spiritless manner, like a half- extin- guished candle going out in smoke. Let the speaker decide be- foiohand what shall be his concluding topic, and let him premed- itate thoroughly not only the substance of it, but the mode of treating it, and all but the very words ; and let him resolve that whatever liberty he may reserve to himself of expanding and con- tracting other parts of his speech, according as he finds the hearers more or less interested (which is for an extemporary speaker natu- ral and proper) he will strictly adhere to his original design in respect of what he has fixed on for his conclusion ; and that when- ever he shall see fit to arrive at that, nothing shall tempt him either to expand it beyond what he had determined on, or to add anything else beyond it. — Whately. The Will of the audience is to be influenced in the conclusion. The introduction appeals to their taste, and pleases; the argument appeals to their understanding, and convinces; the conclusion appeals to their passions, and persuades to action. It is worth remarking, as a curious fact, that men are liable to deceive themselves as to the degree of deference they feel toward various persons. But the case is the same with many other feel- ings also, such as pity, contempt, love, joy, etc.; in respect to which we are apt to mistake the conviction that such and such an object deserves pity, contempt, etc., for the feeling itself— which often doee not accompany that conviction. — Whately. We often appreciate the good, the true, the noble. wImm they inspire no impulse to contact. To say that it is possible to persuade without speaking to the passions is but at best a kind of specious nonsense. The coolest reasoner always in persuading addreeseth himself to the passions 534 ARGUMENT. [Part V. some way or other. This he cannot avoid doing if he speaks to the purpose. To make me believe, it is enough to show me that things are so ; to make me act, it is necessary to show that the action will answer some end. That can never be an end to me which gratifies no passion or affection in my nature. You assure me ''It is for my honor." Now you solicit my pride, without which I had never been able to understand the word. You say, •* It is for my interest.** Now yon bespeak my self-love. ** It is for the public good." Now you rouse my patriotism. ** It will relieve the miserable.*' Now you touch my pity. So far, there- fore, is it from being an unfair method of persuasion to move the pMUons that there is no i>ersuasion without moving them. But if so much depend on passion, where is the scope for argu- ment ? Before I answer this question, let it be observed that in order to persuade there are two things which must be carefully studied by the orator. The first is to excite some desire or pas- sion in the hearers ; the second is to satisfy their judgment that there is a connection between the action to which he would per- suade them and the gratification of the desire or passion which he excites. This is the analysis of persuasion. The fonner is ef- fected by communicating lively and glowing ideas of the object ; the latter, unless so cN-ident of itself as to supersede the necessity, by presenting the best and most forcible arguments which the nature of the subject admits. In the one lies the pathetic ; in the other the argumentative. These incorjjorated together constitute that vehemence of contention to which the greatest exploits of eloquence ought doubtless to be ascribed. — Campbell. Instead of exclaiming as Demosthenes ceased, '*What an orator ! " his liearers would call out, " Up ! let ns march against Philip." The one way to rouse the passion of the audience is to be thoroughly aroused one's self. " If you wish me to weep," says Horace, "yon must first yourself be deeply grieved." But Yinet admirably remarks that Horace does not say the orator must shed tears in order to inspire them. His power is in the emotion he feels, not in the Chap. XXVILl PERSUASION. 535 expression of it ; and he will affect his audience most by seeming to struggle to repress its manifestation. Shak- spere's art is nowhere more perfect than where he illus- trates this in the speech of Antony over the corpse of CfEsar. It was remarked above that if the pathetic exceeds a certain lueasure, from being very pleasant it becomes very painful. Then the mind recurs to every expedient, and to disbelief among others, hy which it may be enabled to disburden itself of what distresseth it. And indeed whenever this recoui-se is had by any, it is a sure indication that with regard to such the poet, orator, or historian hath exceeded the proper measure. — Campbell. The proper course for the orator to take is to excite the emo- tions of the hearers by means of images, and not to attempt to execute any images in the mind of the hearer by means of his emotions. For while some of the passions and sentiments api>ear to have the power to execute images in the mind indei)endently of volition and the judgment, yet it should be considered that as the orator is necessitated to address the mind of the hearer in accord- ance with its common and noimal operations, he cannot count uiK)n this reflex art, which the hearer may indeed practise upon his own imagination, but which the orator cannot reasonably expect to practise upon it except incidentally and casually, and therefore with no ttniform results. — Hebvey. Sflrmons woold probably hmre more efleot if instead of bring, m they frer|tiently •ra, dtawUy hoctetocy, they w«n mora in • didactie fonn ; oooaptod chiefly in explain- ing mam tnuuactioo related, or doctrine laid down in acriptore. The generality of beam* ara too mooh fkmiliarlied to direct exhortation to feel it adequately ; if they are led tothe nme point obUqoaly as it were, and induced to dweU with intermit for a con- riderable time on aoma point doeely though incidentaUy connected with the moat awful and important tmtha, a very slight application to themselves might make a greater im- presaioB than the moat vehement appeal at the outset. Often, indeed, they woold them- srtTca maka this appttoMlon n n ooas ofam sly, and if on any this prooednra made no impna* aioa,HoaBhanUy ha axpaoiad that anything •!«> woold. To use a homaly illnatratlon, a moderate charge of powder will have mora effieot in splitting a rock, if we begin by deep boring, and intrododng the charge into the rtrj heart of it, than tan timea the qnanti^ TOPICAL ANALYSIS. (division of the argumentative oration, p. 519. rruminence of the partition, ]>. ■")1'.*. ImporUnce of aualysis, p. 522. 1. The itUrodvrtinri , jt. 522. Sometiiu I, p. 523. Concilia: , J4. 3. Thi' ]tn>i">.'<'(' 4. T/ic (iryuihi / ' Frankness, p. 5^7. Objections, p. 527. Pftjudice, p. 528. Ridicule, p. 529. Good temper, p. 529. Unity, p. 530. :. The condiman, p. 531. Influencing the will, p. 533. CHAPTEK XXYTII. EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING. Methods of Preparation for public speaking may be grouped under four lieads. (1) Writ'mg out tlie discourse, and then Reading it. Only by courtesy can this be called speaking at all. Its Advantages are : (a) It in8U7'es study. A man may talk at random, and never find it out ; bnt if he write his address he must have some connection of thonght, and be led to some consideration. (b) It secures covvplete treaiment. The man finds it most difficult to say what he wants to, who is overflowing with ideas that ho has not thoroughly systematizeil. He that knows nothing of a subject can look up a few ideas and deliver them with much more efiect than he that knows a hun- dred times as much of it, but is overwhelmed by the torrent of thoughts that come surging for utterance. In writing his address the latter has opiJortunity to measure his words by the time at his disposal, and to jwrtion out his moments according to the rela- tive importance of each subdivision. Sir Boyle Roche, whose speeches have so long been a thesaunis to rhetorical writers of illustrations of rhetorical blunders, was not void of thought, even in the well-known instance of liis inquiry, "Wliat has posterity done for us?" He had a tliought which was entirely logical to his purpose. It was tliat of the reasonable- ness of reciprocity of service. Probably he was driven into a 538 EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING. [Part V. vacuity of thought by the burst of laughter wliich followed, and which he met by explaining, *• By posterity, sir, I do not mean our ancestors, but those who are to come immediately after." One of the aims of conquest in the mastery of extemporaneous speech is that of beating back the rush and trampling of thoughts which huddle themselves into these bovine forms of style. — Phelps. Thomas Bradley of the Sydney Legislative Council found fault with the newspaper reporters on the ground that they did not give the speeches accurately. Therefore they took gi-eat pains to re- port his remarks verbatim. The following is the passage : The reporters— oaght not to— the rciKNien ought not to Ik> tho ones to judge of what is important— not to wiy what should be k-ft oot— but— the incmlK-r «»n only judge of what is important. As I—as mj speeches — as the reportK— an uhat I say Ik reported aometiroes, no one — nobody can nnderatand from the report»— what it is— what I mean. Even Daniel Webster was known to fail when he had insuf- ficient time for preparation, though when he delivered the follow- ing speech at Rochester, he is said to have been under the influ- ence of the cup that cheers and does inebriate : Men of Bocheeter, I am glad to Kf) yon, and I am ^ad to tre your noble city. Gentle- men, I saw your falls, which, I am told, are a hundred and fifty feet high. Gentle- men, Rome had her Caesar, her Scipio. and her Bnitus. but Rome in her proudest day never had a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high ! Gentlemen, Greece had her D«v mosthenes, her Pericles, her Socrates, but Greece in her palmiest days never had a water- fall a hundred and fifty feet high ! Men of Rochenter, go on ! No (leople ever lost their who had a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high.— Sohklb dk Ykbb. The Disadvantages are: {a) It is rigid. The happiest feature of a speech is special appropriateness to the time and circumstances (see page 506). To these the written ad- dress can be only guessingly adapted, and when the guess goes \vTong (as when it is made to allude to the crowd of i>eople present, and is delivered before a handful) it becomes ridiculous. Such ad- dresses have been likened to a heavy piece of ordnance built into the solid wall of a fortress. If the enemy's vessel happens to come in range it is very effective ; but it can hit only one certain spot. {h) It lacks spontaneity. Chap. XXVIII.] PREPARATION. 539 It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully aflfected. What can be more ridiculous than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervor of a week old ; taming over whole pages of violent passions, written out in Ger- man text ; reading the tropes and apostroj^hes into which he is hurried by the ardor of his mind ; and so affected at a precon- certed line and page that he is unable to proceed any fiirther. — Sidney Smith. An old Scotch lady was told that her minister used notes, but would not believe it. Said one : " Gang into the gallery and see." She did so, and saw the written sermon. After the luckless preacher had concluded his reading on the last page, he said, "But I will not enlarge." The old woman called out from her lofty position, "Ye canna, ye canua, for your paper's gien out." Besides that the audience are more sure that the thoughts they hear expressed ara tha geuaine emanations of the speaker's mind at the moment, their attention and interest are the more excited by their sympathy with one whom they perceive to be carried for- ward solely by his own unaided and unremitted efforts, without having any book to refer to ; they view him as a Hwimmer supported by his own constant exertions ; and in every sooh oaae, if the feat be well accomplished, the surmounting of the difficulty affords great gratifloatioo, especially to thoec who are conscious that they could nut do the same. And one proof that part of the pleanurc conveyed does arise from thiA murce is that as ■pcctatora of an exhibition of siipiKMed unuDual skill in swimming would instantly with- draw HMMt at their interest and admiration if they perceived that the performer was aup- ported by oorka, or the like, m> would the feelings alter of the hearern of a supposed ez- temporaoeous diacooroe, as soon as they should perceive or even suspect that the orator had it written down before him. — Whatklt. (c) The inspiration of the audience is lost. The mental stimulus of a great assembly in sympathy with the speaker is the noblest inspiration iK)ssible to the intellect. This and this alone makes possible the great triumphs of oratory. The speaker that reads what he has written may become a finished es- sayist, but he will never even conceive of the possibilities of ora- tory until he has been lifted out of himself and his previous thought into the surge of living thought that rushes from a thou- sand eager eyes he sees bent upon him. A flnlabad ocmtian. ia dne proportkms, prononnoed by a maater of tb« art, is no moiv an •ztcmporaiiMiu eltort than was •' t>aradiw l/»t" lu method and praparaUon and the grandloee ■tyle of delivery are all sUuHed. like Booth's ffamUt. Such were the ora- tioneof D einort h eiiee and Otoero. Snch wet« Barkers I and each, we may add, have been aU the fMdly grmt onUlone into w|uiae origin we can penetrate. We don't yet know 540 BXTEMrORANEOUS SPEAKING. [Pabt V.^ how Qowmnot Long imkm hia perfect ponies of after dinner speeches, with all their flowsn of rhetoric safe in due oontrast, but some time, we presame, we shaU know. Ereratt followed the daasio models ; and from the balauoed structure of his sentenoes down to the varying tone* of his Toioe, and to the pathetic use of a handkerchief as fine as a cloud, he was letter perfect. Webster's preparation was a kind of prolonged brood- ing over a subject. Ue maaterod it by slow ougitation, turning it in mind in all interior light^ while phrases slowly formed the^laelTe^ and poinU were fixed, and iUuRtrations crystallixed, and hints of grand images and apostrophes came like dim q>irits at his call. The oration was potentially done without putting pen to paper. Mr. Everett relates that the night before Webster reified to Hayne, he felt anxious for his friend's success, and called upon him to ask about his preparation. Mr. Webster exhUrited his notes ; they were dpon a piaoe of paper the sise of his palm. The effect Is a matter of history. The tpoaoh was well reported for the yatiunal f ntelH^ me$r, but whoever will look at that report and compare it with the oration as it stands in Mr. Webeter^s works, will tee with what care, and with what maafearlj literaiy art, the great orator elaborated and |x>liHhed hia grand sentences. Webster's speeches grew ; they were not made. Wcudull Phillips cannot be wholly indifferent to Uterary art ; hot he values it as a means, and not as an end. One can see that he ocosiders the nice refin e men t s of style as filigree work, and a pntfessed phrasenKmger as a very unimportant person. With him language is a means of establishing truth and carrying convictiparation, the trenchant phrases and the brilliant illustrations come in their matured form at the moment they are uttered. It is a cairious coincidence that the great friend of the Irish race is so characteristically Irish in temper and genius. The Irish naturally admire him, partly because of his old friendship for O'Connell, but more, we think, because his fervid eloquence touches the ready sources of sympathy, and produces the rapid and resistless emotions in which this imaginative race delighU. When he is aroused, metaphors and tropes are the spontaneous products of his mind, and the torrent of his impassioned words reminds ns of the wonderful eloquence that distinguished the last of the Irish parliaments.— Bo«(or<«Mv»Ml ]>io- sent themselves under the pen. Si^eaking is thinking aloud, but it is more ; it is thinking with method and more distinctly, so that in uttering your idea you not only make others understand it, but you understand it better yoorBelf while spreading it out before your own eyes and unfold- ing it by word". Writing adds more still to R)>eech, giving it more precision, more fixity, more strictness ; and by being forced more closely to examine what you wish to write down you extract hidden relations. 542 EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING. (Part V. yon reach greater depths, wherein may be disclosed rich veins or abundant lodcH. We are able to declare that one is never fully conscious of all that is in one's ov^-n thought, except after having written it out. So long as it remains shut up in the inside of the mind, it pre- serves a certain haziness ; one does not see it completely unfolded, and one cannot consider it on all sides, in each of its facets, in each of its bearings. Again, while it merely flies through the air in words, it retains something vague, mobile, and indefinite. Its outlines are loosely drawn, its shape is uncertain, the expression of it is more or less precarious, an^ there is always something to be added or with- drawn. It is never more than a sketch. Style only gives to thought its just expression, its finished form, and perfect mani- festation. — Bautain. Bonapai'te used to say that he never felt acquitted, after an ac- tion had terminated, if he was sensible of having omitted any re- source of defence which was clearly within his reach. Preparation for Speaking. — Having often heard that the longer a member sits in the House of C!ommons without 8i)eaking, the harder it is for him to make a beginning, I determined to lose no time in delivering my maiden speech. It had not until last election been my intention to enter Parliament, so that I had never ** got up " any political subjects. It was therefore necessary, before any speech could even be planned, tliat I should take a subject, and study so as to form definite opinions upon it. The following plan I adopted. Ha\'ing chosen for my topic, I read all the debates and pamphlets which could throw any light upon it, and wrote very numerous notes while reading. "When this part of the labor was accomplished, I reviewed the notes, and arranged them under heads in an order which had suggested itself to my mind. I then cast out all that appeared to be irrelevant, and whatever did not make straight for the point at which I \vished to aim. To make a short schedule of the various heads, together with memoi-anda of some embellishments and illustrations, was my next care. And when this schedule was clearly imprinted on my mind, I frequently spoke the si^eech over to myself whilst out walking, in order to accustom myself to various modes of expression. Then Chap. XXVIII.] DIFFICULTIES. 543 I wrote out the whole speech, bestowing particular care upon the exordium and on the j)eromtion. And lastly I learned these two partH by heart, but never looked again at the rest of the speech. The same plan, leaving much more to the chances of the critical moment, I have found to answer on less important occasions. — LoBD , quoted by H.iLCOMB£. HE CANNOT MAKE A SPEECH. A Texas correspondent is in great trouble of mind because he finds himself unable to make speeches which satisfy his own criti- cal taste in oratory. There are so many men who have experienced difficulties like those he describes, and who have stlflfered from the same sort of mortification at their failure to make a ci*editable ex- hibition of themselves when they undertook to address an audienc(\ that it is worth while to carefully consider the questions wliioli !)•> propounds in the following letter : Sometimes, and that very fre4l u> lay this to a defloient education, for I never went to school but very little in life ; but then I fre()uently hear men make rral logical speeches who I know have no better cductition than myself— hence my theory fails. My flrst oratorical effort was at a school exhibition eight yrars atro, and I look upon It as mj best. From that time until now I have had to do more or leno speaking ; bat for the last year or two the evil of which I B(M>ak is growing un me. I find of late that for eight or ten minutes I can do tolerably well, bnt if I underuke anything like a praotSeal or logleal sp ssc h , my ideas beoome all oonfnaed, and I have to quit. I am DOW thirty^llve years of ago, and in full possession of all my faculties. If yon can advise ms bow to remedy the above evil I will be placed under many obligations to yon for your kind advios ; not that I ever expect to try to make a living by public speak- ing, bat I would like very mooh to be qnaliOed to speak In a calm, dignified mannar whenever cnUcd oo to do so. RsADia. The trouble with our Texas friend is probably that he tries to make too great a speeoh. His first attempt at oratory was so sue- 544 EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING. [Pabt V cessfol that he dreamed of becoming a Demosthenes or a Cicero, and, instead of keeping np the simple, off-hand manner he uncon- sciously adopted on that occasion, he lias bt^en thinking about himself and whether he was making a creditable apj^earance in his subsequent speeches. He has been too anxious about the effect he was producing to keep his ideas together. He could not think about himself, about what his audience were thinking of him, and about his subject, all at the same time. Of course his ideas be- came confused under such circumstances. Even in an ordinary conversation between two people, where the speaker is assisted by the remarks, questions, and replies of his interlocutor, nobody can keep up the interest if he makes his self -consciousness manifest, and betrays too much anxiety to create a good impression. To be a really entertaining talker, in public or private, it is necessary that the speaker should forget himself, and discourse spontaneously after he has once secured the sympathy of his hearers. TJsually when men get on their feet to talk to a crowd, they as- sume an unnatural manner, and try to put things after a fashion foreign to them, but which they regard as the appropriate one for an orator. They are in a frame of mind which dis}x>ses them to embarrassment, and that destroys their ability to speak well. They can no more discourse with force and grace than a bashful boy who is conscious of his dress can make himself entertaining in company. But our Texas friend need not conclude that he is necessarily a fool because he cannot make a brilliant off-hand speech, or one which would bear reporting. The men who can do that are very few. At no period are there many first-rate extemporaneous ora- tors, and unless he has a natural gift that way, it is hardly worth his while to undertake to become one. He can, however, by practice, learn to command his thoughts while he is on his feet, and succeed in overcoming his embarrassment in the presence of an audience. Then, if he has anything to say in public, he can say it simply and clearly, and, if he is really in earnest, with a force and direct- ness which will make his hearers forget the mere manner of his oratory. Our advice to him, therefore, is never to set out to make a speech unless he has some important points to make ; something Chat. XXVI II.] DIFFICULTIES. 545 to say which will be worth listening to, no matter how he may say it. And, above all things, let him never try to interest other peo- ple in things in which he has no real interest himself. Nor should he expect his thoughts to come to him without preparation. He must discoui-se of matters of which he knows, and about which he has reflected, if he expects to engage the attention of intelligent men. It is a good rule, in public and in private, never to under- take the office of teacher, adviser, admonisher, jester, or satirist, unless you have some good reason to suppose you are fitted for the bnsiiiefls.— ^(no York Sun, TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Extemporaneous Speaking. Methods of preparation, p. 537. 1. WritiiKj out tlif diMyjurse and t/ien reading »Y, p. 637. Adv antages : a. It insures study, p. 537. b. It secures complete treatment, p. 537. Disadvantages : a. It is rigid, p. 538. b. It lacks sj>ontan«*ity, p. 538. c. The inspiration of the audience is lost, p. 539. 3. Writing out the dincourse and thtn committing it to memory , p. 540 8. Appearing irit/tont any written prcparatujn, p, 540. 4. Amiff/zint/ iln- mbjeet unde^r irritlen hemUy p. 541. Written analysis, p. 541. HE CANNOT MAKE A SPEECH, p. 543. CHAPTER XXIX. THE VOICE. Demosthenes had three particalar defects : (1) weakness of the Toioe, which he strengthened by declaiming on the sea-shore, amid the roar of waters ; (2) shortness of breath, which he remedied by reiK'alin); his unitioiis as he walkend difference ; we cannot see or hear more or lean at pieasnre, except by intorpoeing some veil or obstacle between the external world and ourselves. But not 80 with the voice ; we speak fast or slow, loud or low ; wc regulate the measure of vooal action as well as the action itself. Hence, the natural inference is that we cannot be taught to hear or see (I refer to mere material action ), and that consequently there in no art of seeing or hearing ; while we may learn to talk, language being susceptible to changes resulting from the will. One word will sufBce to oxpluin this difference. The Tocal apparatus is not only an cgyparaiug, it is an Hutrument, like a piano. Now what is the characteristic feature of the piano ? The key- board is composed of from six and a half to seven octaves, divided into three classes of notes — upper, lower, and middle — whoae tones correspond to strings of variouH sizcK. The voice has ltd key-board also, divided into two octares instead of sefven, but having its three species of notes like the piano, and its chords of differing Hize ; and we can never play upon the voice properly without study, any more than we can on the piano. Let me go even farther. On leaving the hands of a good maker, the piano is a com- plete and perfect inHtniment, the sonnd issuing from it as musical as it is harmonious, when called forth by an artist's fingers. But the little piano given us at birth seldom reache s anch perfection. Tkera are missing chords, squeaky kcj^ false notes ; so that before we can become good pianists we must turn makent and tuners, and set our instru- menU in order.— LkoouvC. Reading Aloud is pcrliup8 the must iiulispensahle exercise for strengtlieiiiiig the voice. In general this should be done standing, and with as much voice as pro- priety will admit. Bead aloud resounding Homer's strain. And wWA the thonder of Demosthenes. The oheat, so exercised, impmves in stxength. And qolck Tibratfcms through the bowels driva •^50 I'HE VOICE. [Pabt V. PROPER USE OF THE VOICE. Breathing is an art that immediately underlies good speaking. This has been admirably shown by M. Legouve, as follows : Many inay think tliat if there be a natural and instinctive action npon earth \iith whicli art htm nothing to do it is the act of taking breath. To breathe is to live, and we breathe unconsciously as we hve ; and yet no one can read well without breathing properly, and no one can breathe properly without study ; indeed, it is one of the rarest accomplishments in a reader. Let me explain myself. When we breathe in every-ilay life, the air enters and leaves the lungs like a stream flowing continuously, ioscnsibly, and equably. But this gentle passage of the air through the throat does not suf- fice to set the vocal chords in vibration, and they are mut« Uke the keys of an untouched piano ; the air must strike them a shaq) blow before they will resound, as the fingers strike the keys of the piano. Some of my readers may have heard an ^^olian harp : it stood in a doorway or window ; if there was no air it was silent, but let the air be condensed into wind, and the strings wake to music. A similar phenomenon occurs every time that we sjieak. We condense and compress the air contained in the lungs, force it into the throat, and this shock produces speech. But this re- quires more air than the ordinary act of breathing, and we can no longer use the simile of a flowing stream : we must compare the breath to water gushing from a pump, spurting out faster and faster at every stroke of the handle. The usual conditions of breath- ing are. now set aside. The scant supply of air stored away for ordinary breath-taking is insufficient for the energetic act of speech ; a balance must be struck between what we have and what we should hare. We must go to headquarters, to the atmos- phere itself, and demand the necessaiy amount of air. This de- mand is called inhalation ; the act of breathing being divided into two parts — inhalation and expiration. To inhale is to gain a sup- ply for future need ; to exhale, to expend that provision. Each of these is an act in itself. The art of inhalation consists in drawing breath from the very base of the lungs, from the dia- Chap. XXIX] BREATHING. 551 phragm ; for if wo breathe from the upi)er part of the hings only, we obtain foo small a supply of air, which is soon exhausted, and if we have a lengthy passage to read we are in the condition of a traveller in the desert who starts with his water-skins but half full — breath fails us ; we ai*e obliged to pause and take in a fresh stock, which is fatiguing both to oureelves and to othei-s, as we shall presently see. The first duty of tlie reader who is to fill a long programme is to take a deep breath at the start, to be sure that his lungs are well furnished. Then comes the second and most difficult part — expenditure of this breath. A bad reader does not take breath often enough, and si^nds it too ficely ; ho throws this precious treasure out of the window, as it were, squan- dering it as a s}>endthrift his gold. The result is that the speaker, reader, actor, or singer, as the case may be, is continually at the pura{), giving sudden gasps, which are most disagreeable to his audience. An accomplUhed singer of my aoqaaintance bad thin failing ; he waa conatantljr Uk* ing breath, and the belloWH-likc soand mingled with bix ringing wa8 unendurable. He finally perceived and corrected hia mlRtako, proving that it may l)c cun>d. M. Stock- hatum, an eminent artist, astonished all tlie Swiss guides by never looing breath in dimbing the steepest mountains. " My secret is a simple one,"* said he ; "I nndersuuid the art of breathing." The great singer, Rubini, was a thorough master of the art. No one erer beard him breathe. The following anecdote of Talma may aerve to explain tbii^ ■remiog mystery : While a young man. Talma played Diderot's •' Pire de Faraille," and on reaching the famoos speech, '• Fifteen hundred {Kuinds a year and my Sophy," he burst out, stormed. raged, and Anally hurrying behind the scenes in a state of complete exhaustion, aank against the wall, panting like an ox. " Fool ! " said Mol^ who was standing by, " and yon pretend to play tragedy I Come to me to-morrow, and Til teach yon how to be impanBioned withoat getting out of brnth.*" Talma went ; but, whether the master lacked patience or the pupil docility, the les- son did him little good. At that time there was an actor at the theatre named Dorival ; thin, oglj, and waak-voioed, he was noTerthelees quite saooes^f ol as a tragedian. " How does that fellow manage ? " thought Talma. *' I am ten times as strong, and yet I fa- tigne myMeir ten times mors. I mnst ask him his seoret." DoriTal baffled his querist by this bitter-sweet reply, which has a smack of envy in it : " O ! yon are so snooeskfol, M. Talma, that yon need no leaaons.** •• ril make you give me one, though.^ muttervtl Talma ; and the next time that Do- rival pUiyctl rk/UUlnn In "Zaire," the young man hid himself— gness where! In the prompter's \wt. where bo oouM bear and see withont being seen. There he watched and •tudiiHl Ui sneh good purpose that, after the great s|N>ech in the aroond act, he left his IMwt, exclaiming, " Tve got it! rMffrttU! ' He saw that DorivaTs whole art lay in bis giMiius for brmtbing, which led him always to take bn>:ith befon^ his langs were quite empty, and, to conceal this repeated inhalation from the public, ho strove to piaoa 552 THE VOICE. [PaktV. it iMfon «, e, or o— thafc ia, mt pUcca where, hU moatli baing already open, he could bcMfche lightly luid imperoeptihiy. ^ We Me what an immenae part the breath haa to play in doootionary art ; ita mlesare the only iuTMable onea. A» actor laoMhad an a atotuiy paaiiage, carried away by paa- aion, may foigat the lawa of pnnotnatkm. eonfooad eommaa and perloda and haten be.td> long to the condoaion of hb phraae ; bat he miut always be master of his breath, even whrn he aeema to loae it ; an aocompliahed actor ia never oat of breath except in ap- pearance and foreffaci. Talma rednoed ttiaaa mka to a atriking maxim : ' The artiat who tirea hiowelf is no genioa.*' I baar my readar'a objection : '* Thia art may be Tory naefnl to an actor; bnt wo are talking of reading, not the theatre."" Tea, bat the reader needs it yet more ttian the ac- tor ; for, kmg and important aa the latter** part may be, be always haa tim< a of forced reat Ue ia ailent whan oUiera upeak, and his very ge^torea, added to hiff wi.rds, help to mske them trne and toaching. But the reader often goes on for an hour without panfie, the immobility of hia body obliging him to draw all bin p wcr from hin will alune. Con- aider, thorefora, whether it ia naalaaa for him to untlerstmnd the nuinagemcnt of that pradoaa breath which alone can carry him tiiumphantly and untired to the end. Hare iaacnrioaa example of the adenoe of economy applied to the breath. Take a lighted candle, atand in front of it, and aioK a ; tlie light will scarcely flicker : but, in- atead of a aingle tone, sing a scale, and yon will see the caudle quiver at every cote. The linger, Dellr Sedie, muH up and down the scale before a flame, and it never wavers. This ia beoaoae he permits only the exact amount of breath to escape which is requisite to fbroe tha aoand atraight forward ; and the air, being thuR occupied in the emission of the note, loaaa its qoalit)* of wind, and is rednoed to its quality of sound. You or I, on the contrary, waste a great «lcal of breath, and i^end the .si.nnd right and left, as well aK for- ward. Prom this elocationary rule we may deduce a moral lesson : In every act of life spend no more than the exact amount of energy required ! Every mentxil emotion is a jewel. Let us hoard them up for fitting use. How many jieople waste, in impatience and patty atrife, the treaaare of anger, so sacred when it becomea righteoas wrath ! Now for a few final and most necessary suggestions to readers. To breath easily, choose a high seat. Buried in an easy-chair, it is impossible to breathe from the base of the lungs. I would also say, be careful to sit erect. No one who stoops can breathe other- wise than ill. To this admirable exposition of the subject may be added the following practical suggestions : A full inspiration elevates and expands the chest, and, by de- scent of the diaphragm, slightly protrudes the abdomen; and a correct vocal expimtion manifests itself, first, in the flattening of the abdomen, and then in its very graausibility of the pharynx, the cavity at the back of the mouth and above the throat. Distention of the pliarynx may be plainly seen in the neck of a player on the bugle or cornet-a- piston . — liEGOUVfe. Inspiration is allowable : i. After all words preceded or followed by an ellipse, ii. After words used in apostrophe, as. Sir, Madam. iii. After conjunctions and interjections, when there is silence. iv. After all transixjsitious ; for example, to live, one must work. Here the preposition to takes the value of its natural ante- cedent, work ; that is to say, six degrees, since by inversion it pre- cedes it, and the gesture of the sentence bears wholly on the preposition. V. Before and after incidental phrases. vi. When we wish to indicate an emotion. . . . The su8i)en8ory wt expres.ses reticence and disquietude. A child who has just been corrected desor\'edly, and who recognizes his fault, expires. Another, corrected unjustly, and who feels grief more than love, inspires. — Deusabtb. Closed Teeth will prevent distinct utterance. A considerable loss of resonance is the consequence, because the cavity of the mouth is never placed in the best position for rein- forcing the laryngeal tones, and also Itecanse the sound-waves can- not issue Mith sufllcieut freedom to the external air. It is only 654 THE VOICE. [PartV. necessary to recognize the habit, when existent, in order that the iiurliiiation to it may l>e overcome by tho will. — Holmes. The Pitch of voice is a matter of great consequence. To quote again from Legouve : The auditorium of the Conservatory, said Febv^, resembles an excellent Stradivarius. No violin surpasses it in harmonious reso- nance. The sounds that you send forth are returned to you by its melodious walls fuller, rounder, softer. Your voice can i)lay on these walls as your fiugei-s play on the keys of a fine musical in- Etrument. Be very careful, therefore, to avoid too high a pitch. And lay down this rule as a principle : Always adapt and propor- tion your voice not only to the size of the hall in wliich you speak, but also to its acoustic properties. The three varieties of voice known as high, low, and medium, are all indisj^ensable to artistic reatling ; but they should be very diflfei*ently used, their strength being quite unequal. The medium voice is the strongest, most flexible, and natural of the three ; in- deed, the famous actor Mold once said, "Without the middle register no reputation." In fact, the modiuin voice, being the ordinary one, is used to express all the truest and most natural emotions : the lower notes often have great power, the upper notes great brilliancy ; but they should never be used unseasonably. I might compare the upper notes to the cavalry in an army, to be reserv^ed for sudden, bold attacks, triumphant charges ; the lower notes, like the artillery, are used for feats of strengih ; but the true dependence of the army, the element on which the tactician chiefly relies, is the infantry — the medium tones. The first rule in the art of reading establishes the superior value of the middle register. The upper tones are much more fi*agile, are liable to wear out, or become shrill and discordant if too much used. Some- times this abuse of the upper notes affects the very judgment of a speaker. M. Berryer once told me how he lost an excellent case by unconsciously beginning his plea, on too high a key. Fatigue soon spread from his laiynx to his head, his thoughts became in- volved, and he lost a part of his brain-i)Ower, simply because it never occurred to him to descend from the lofty perch to which his voice had climbed at the outset. Chap. XXIX. 1 PITCH. 555 Nor is Abom of the lower notes leoi aerions ; it prodnoea monotony and a certain diil- nem and deadnetw of quality. Talino, when young, was much given to this failing. His volw, though powerful and eloquent, wiis rather sombre ; and it was only by dint of hiinl study that ho nim-il it from the di'pth« where it naturally lingered. Apropos of thiK, let ine relate an nnealote of my father, who, as 1 said before, was a fine reader— much of his succetw at the College of France, where he taught, depending on this talent. He Often intnxlucwi quotations from the great poets of France in his lectures, which won universal uppIauH*. This applause, to which he was naturally susceptible, gained him many envious 1 .IS. and at last a criticism appeared, as follows: "Yesterday. M. Legouv6 reatJ two - . lu-s from Ilaoino in hin aepulchrai voice." This fell under the notice of one of his fri.-nds. M. Parxeval Orandtnaison, who immediately said : *' Dear me, Legouv6 must be v.Ty nuich vexee lost, could it l)e nuule at Mill ; but it may be changed ; it may gain IkkIv, brilliancy, and expression, not only from a series of gymnastics adapted to strengthen the whole organ, but from a certain method of attacking the note. Additional notes may also be gained by study. On one occasion, the famous Malibrau, when 556 THB VOiCR [Pabt V. singing the rondo from " Bomnambula," finished her cadenza with a trill on D in alt, running up from low D, thiw embracing three octaves. These three octaves were no natural gift, but the result of long and |jatient labor. After the concert, some one expressed liLs admiration of her D in alt, to which she replied : " Well, I've worked hard enough for it. I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it everywhere — when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair ; and at last I found it in the toe of a shoe that I was put- ting on ! " Thus we see tliat art will not only aid us in governing, but also in extending, our kingdom. It hardly need be added that the pitch must be wlioUy under control of the speaker. The woefe of Mr. Orator Puff have been thus set forth : Mr. Orator Pnff had two tone* in his Toioe, The one iranaklng that, and the other dovn ao; In each aentenoe he ntter'd he gmrm yoa your oholoe» For one-half was B alt, and the rest G below. Oh 1 oh I Orator Puff, One voice for an orator's sorely enongh. But he rtill talked away, spite of oonghs and of '. So distracting all ears with his npe and his downs, That a wag once, on hearing the orator say, '' My voice is for war,"* ask'd him, " If^lc* bf them, iiray ?** Beeling homeward, one evening, to|>-heavy with gin. And rehearsing his speoch on the weight of tlie crown. He tripp'd near a saw-pit, and tumbled right in, ** Sinking fund,^^ the last words as his noddle came down. "Alas ! " he exclaimed, in his he and she tones, '* Help me out ! — help me out !— I have broken my bones ! " " Help yon out ! " said a Paddy, who |»ass'd, '* what a bother ! Why, there's tioo of you there ; can't you help one another ? ' PRESERVATION OF THE VOICE. The Hygiene of the voice is a matter of vital mo- ment to every speaker. The story is told of a famous singer tliat the stage he was rid- ing in tumbled down a i>recipice. When it had stopped rolling over and over, and our tenor could recover his wits, he rose to a ftitanj^ '^osture, and instantly began to pi-aetise the scales. *' Thank CuAP. XXIX. 1 BEST. '^57 heaveu ! " he exclaimed, •* my high C is here yet ! " And then he proceeded to tiud out whether any limbs were broken — a matter of minor consequence. Porter gives these rules for the preservation of the voice : (a) Sustain the general health. (6) Spare the vocal organs : (i) keep on the normal key ; (ii) rest the organs when inflamed. (c) Be rested before sjieaking ; speak after you have recovered from the labor of prepai-ation. {d) Do not sjieak when hungr\% or just after a hearty meal. (rtant than any other single rule for the protec- tion of the throat and lungs Snch facts indicate clearly that nasal inspiration exerts an ini- l)<)itaiit protective power, local and general, over the health. Hence we can nnderstand the fervor ^^ith which Professor Tyudall • xclaims that if lie could leave a perpetual legacy to mankind, he would embody it in the words, "Keep youi* mouth shut." Every precaution should be taken in order to reduce to a mini- iiium the evil of inspiiing through the mouth. In 8i)eaking, the nostrils will usually furnish enough air, unless in occasional (It'clamations where great vehemence is demanded. That the oi*a- tor will find as.siduous attention to breathing through the nose, whenever practicable, a most effective agent for the preservation <»f his voice, may be considered as proved by experience, on the tostimouy of numerous eminent teachers of elocution. We even I'md that in the last contuiy the knowledge of this hygienic fact, tiu»n only recognized by experts, was believed to be of such value tt» the professional speaker, that it was often sold for a large sum under a pledge of secrecy. — Gordon Holmes. THE VOICE AS AN INTERPRETER. I IumI been or^Ucking oert«tn poenm, and M. Coiuln, itaongh agreeing with me, WM •arpriwd by my the>iricM, and askt-d me how I carnt? by such noiSona ''By r<-adiuR uIuikI,' 1 n-pHnl. "The voice is a revealer, an initiator, whose power Is aa marveUoua km it in nnknuwii.'* " I do not nndvmtand/* ** Lai me explain. II mo. Talma, a famous actretn of the laxt century '* *♦ Tve Men her I " cried Couiiln. •* What soul ! What sensibility ! " ** Well t Mme. Talma t<.-lls us in her memoirs that, when playing ' Andromache.* she was oooa w> deeply moved that tears flowed, not only from the eyes of all her bearera, but from bar own aa weU. The tragedy over, one of her admirr n« ruHlird to her box and. gratp- ing her hand, exclaimed : » Ob I my dear friend, it was wonderful 1 It was Andromache beraelf ! Pm sore that yon really fMt yoonwlf In Bpiras, Heotoi's widow I * "'Not a bit of it! * she replied, with a langh. " ' And yet yon were raally ailtated, for yoo wept 1 ' *" To be sure I dM.* " ' But why r why r Wbat made yon wwp T * "•My voice.' "'What! yourTolceT' •'^^0 THE VOICE. [Part V. " ' Yi'H, my own voice 1 I wm toactuxl by the cxpresRion which my vuicc gave to the Borrows of Amlrumaohe, not by the eorrown themHeiveK. The nurvouK shiver which tr»- vetMNl my frame wm tho eieeferio Hhock produced on my nerves by my own tones. For the time being I wM both actreM ami nutlienue. I magnetised myself/ ~ ** How Htmnge ! "^ cried Couidn. *' And bow, much li^t the story throws upon the power of voice I Nor waA this feel- ing jtoculiar to Mme. Talma. Rachel once made a remark which I can never forget. Hhe was s^teaking of having radted in the garden at Potsdam tiefore the Czar of Ruw-ia, King of Prussia, and ot^er crowned heads, and she naid : ' That audience of kinga elttctrified me. Never were my tones more omni|iotent; my voice betoltched my eors." " Nur is this alL One of the greatest Frenowerij in them. The voice is an invisible actor hidden within the actor, a mysrerioos reader concealed within the reader, and serving both as prompter. I give you this problem to solve, my dear philosopher, but I draw from it this conclusion, which I hope you will grant— that, inferior as I am to you in many respects, I do know La Fontaine better than you, simply because I read him iiloud."* '' So be it ! " said my friend, smiling ; " but who can Hiy that you do not attribute In- tentions which they never had to I>a Fontaine and other great men ? '' " I answer you by a quotation from Comeille. Some one once showed him certain ob- scure ver&esof his own coni|>o-ening the mouth when going home in the cold air. p. 567. Rest after exertion, p. 557. The proju'r pit.b, p .V»7. Protertion of the thr«»at, p. 558. Breathing throuirh the n<»s«'. p 550. THE VOICE AS AN INTERPRETER, p 569. CHAPTER XXX. DELIVERY. Ackkm i« doqiMioe and the eyes of the ignotaai More tauiMd than th^ ours.— Sbaksfkkx. A dergyman Mked Ganick, " Why to it that yoa are able to prodnce ao mnch more effect with the recital of your fictions than we by the delivery of the most important truths ? ^ Garriclc replied, '* Because you speak tmtha as if they were fictions ; we speak fictions as if they were truths.*^ The friends of a yonng man destined to proftoHkmal life as a public speaker were solid* tons about his snoceas in spe a k ing, and suggested the importance of bis devodng himoelf to the stndy and practice of elooation. " I want no artificial training," was the prompt reply ; " find me the thing to ^y, and Til find tlie manner of saying it.'^ This young man must have oonsdonsly possessed by s|iecial endowment all that it ooet Demotabenes so many laborious years to master. — RussuJ.. Demosthenes having once harangued the people very nnanooessfnlly, hastened home with his head covered, and in much chagrin. Meeting with Satyms, the trsgedian, he complained bitterly to him, that though he labored more than ail other orators, and had greatly impa red his health by it, yet he could not please the people ; but that drunlcards, mariner8,and other illiterate pu-aons were wholly in possession of the popular ear. " You say true," answered Satyms ; "but I shall soon remove the cause, if yon will repeat me some verses of Enripides or Sophocles without book." Demosihenes did so, and Satj-rus repeated the verses after him, but with such variety of expression and aptnes-s of gesture that Demosthenes scarcely knew them to be the same. The lesson was not lost ; De- mosthenes saw what a vast accession of power was added to an oration by action and elo- cution, and thenceforth considered all declamation vain where these qualities were n^- lected.— P«rcy Aneedotet. Npxessity of Study. — There is a common impression among jonng speakers that delivery is a natural gift ; that a good discourse will find natural and effective expression ; that there is something theatrical in making a study of tone, accent, emphasis, and gesture. People, by a strange confusion of terms, use indifferently and in the same sense the two words speak and talk. No two words Cn\r. \\\ NECESSITY OF STUDY. 563 are more iinliko in meaning. There are people wlio, from the standpoint of good diction, talk very well and speak quite as ill- If you x^-ish to prove this fact, go into any court-house ; address home lawyer of your acquaintance, and chat with him for a mo- ment. His delivery will be natural and simple. Follow him into the court-room and listen to his plea. He is another man ; all his merits disapi^ear : he was natural, he is now bombastic ; he talked in tune, he speaks out of tune — for we can speak as well as sing out of tune. — LiEooirvfe. AVhen Cowi)er expres-ses his abhorrence of the " start theatric pi-actisod at the glass," all the world approves the censure, be- f tl„- < /o-rishiny or the re^uscittUituj of nature. —RUHSBIiL. BdnR endued with phyHicul and Mpiritnul mi«c(>ptihintlin^ that *' there was something in him which stranirely pteaaed when he spoke, which those who twrused Us owtlops ooald aot flad." Tha y o m i g er Pitt remarked that he could never conjecture from reading hb fathe(*s speeches where their eloquence lay hidden. And there have been thousands of preachers who ottered truths which no stenographer could seize, which no ready writer, with a command of the most eztensiTe vocabalary, could tranirfer to the sitont psge, for they were troth* that beamed from the eye, and were breathed out in the tones of the vo'ce, anc circum8crit>ed within arbitrary 8>mboI<<.— Russkix. I was once intimate wjth a yoonfc deputy, full of talent and learning, who deemed his depotjrship mcn-ly a Rtepping stone to the ministry. On one occasion, he was to del*rer an addroM before the ministers and Honse of Deputies, and begged me to come and bear him. His speech over, he honied toward me, anxious to learn my opiniun. *' Well, old fellow.** said I, *' this speech will never get yoo into the Cabinet.** •'Why not?** " Because yon absolutely don*t know how to speak.** '* Don't know how to speak I " said he, somewhat hurt and offended ; " and yet I thought my R{>eoch — .-■' "Oh, your Ki»eech was in excellent taste— fair and sensible, even witty; but what avails all that, if no one could hear you ? ^ " Not hear me ! But I began so lood ** " That you may say you shrieked ; accordingly you were hoarse in fifteen minutos.** " That's true.*' " Wait ; I haven't finished yet. Having spoken too loud, you spoke too fast." ♦•Oh ! too fast ! " he exclaimed, deprecatlngly ; "perhaps I did at the end, because I wanted to cut it short.** " Exactly : and you did the very opposite — you spun it out Nothinp, on the stage, makes a scene seem so long us to reel it oflf too fast. An audience is very cunning, and guesses by your very has^to that you think the thing drags. Unwarned, the listener might not notice it ; j-ou draw bis attention to the fact, and he loses patience." '* True again ! " cried my friend. " I felt the audience slipping from me toward the end ; but how can I remedy this ill ? " " Nothing easier. Take a reading-master.*' " Do you know one ? ** ** A splendid one." *" And who ? " '•M. Samson." " Samson, the actor ? ** " Yes." " But I can*t take lessons of an actor.** " Why not ? " " Just think of it ! A politician ! a statesman 1 All the comic papers would make fun of me if it were known 1 " Chap. XXX.] OPENING SENTENCES. 565 " Yoa mn right ! Peopte are jost stapid enough to tarn yoa into ridicule for ttody- ing yonr proferaion. But rest easy, no one shall know it.*^ " You'll keep my aecret ? " " Ye« ; and Sanmon too, I promise yon." So he set to work. Samson placed his voice, strengthened It, and made it flexible. He made him read aloud page after page of Bossuet, MassiUon, and Bourdaloue ; he Uught him to begin a speech slowly, and in a low voice— people are hushed to hear you, and end by listening. These wise lessons bore their fruit. Six months later my friend wax a minister l—LKOouri. The Opening Sentences are, for the orator, the must difficult, and lie is especially to remember the im- portance of keeping calm, and of exhibiting no haste to begin. A speaker shotdd never adopt a hurried maimer in opening a speech but in one instance, and that is when he takes some con- cluding remark of the speaker who has last preceded him, and cdiumences his own argument with a reply to such concluding sentence. In this solitary instance he may begin his argument by the time the opix)site speaker has touched his seat, and whilst the replying si>eaker is scarce erect in rising from his o\^ti. If an apt reply to the concluding remark, or indeed to any important remark of an adverse si>eaker, shall be made under the circum- stances just 8i>ecitied, the opening remarks of the replying speaker will not only be appreciated for their own intrinsic value, but they will secnre a favorable reception for the sequel of the speech. . . As a general pro{>o8ition, a s]>oaker should not commence the business of speaking immediately on rising from his seat, but should take sufficient time to survey his audience, and to collect his ideas with every appearance of the calmest self-possession, and of respectful but easy confidence. After a few preliminar}' mo- ments thus occupied, he should commence his remarks in a mod- orate tone of voice, and in such a way as to introduce the subject Uofore him directly to the attention of his audience. He should take due care to begin his remarks with the briefest sentences within reach of his powers. For no circumstance is better calcu- lated to throw a speaker out of an easy style of enunciation than a long sentence at the very oiiening of an argument. It requires a great expenditure of breath to speak one of these sentences through, where it is so long before a pause is reached. And independent 566 DELIVERY. [Part V. of the irksomeness of the operation connected with the delivery of such sentences, it is difficult in speaking, as it is in singing, to blend any particular measure of music or intonation with the speaking of them. And if the measure or music of the speaker should be wrong at the commencement of the speech, as it will be veiy difficult to rectify it when he has once gotten under way, his style of speaking will be apt to continue erroneous through the whole speech. . . . Daniel Webster has pronounced eloquence to be ** action, God- like action." In the celebrated debate with Bobert Hayne, desire having been expressed that the discussion be deferred, Mr. Hayne said that something had fallen from the gentleman from Massa- chusetts which had created sensations from which he would desire at once to relieve himself ; Mr. Webster had discharged his weapon, and he wished for an opportunity to return the fire. Mr. Webster remarked that he was ready to receive it, and wished the discus- sion to proceed. It has been said that Mr. Webster's acceptance of the implied challenge exhibited an air of majestic authority which might have ser\'ed as a rebuke even to royalty itself. — McQtieen, condensed. Points requiring especial attention in public speaking are — (i) Pitch, (ii) Emphasis, and (iii) Gesture. (I) The Pitch of the orator's voice was a matter re- garded by the Greeks as so important that even the public crier was accompanied by a musician to give him the proper tone. Quintilian tells that Gracchus kept a flute- player standing near him as he spoke, and Cicero, though he thought this custom beneath the orator, advised that though the flute should be left at home, the custom of attending to the pitch should be carried into the forum (see page 557). (a) The Loudness of voice should be proportioned to the place and to the audience, the general »-ule being to speak just so as to be heard easily by tho«e farthest away. Chap. XXX.] LOUDNESS. 567 A convenient practical rule has, however, been given for tho gnidance of 8i)eaker8 in accommodating the loudness and pitch of their voices to the size of the room in which they have to speak. It consists in fixing the eyes on the farthest corner of the room, and ambly he is engaged in addressing. If his position should be near the chair of the presiding offloer when he commences addreaaing any assembly, he should speak loud enough at the beginning of hU remarks to be lieard by pemonH at the centre of the hall. If he should be standing at the centre of the hall, he should commence his remarks at the pitch of t\ e Toice which will cause him to be heard distinctly at the extremities of the hail. If he ■houtd occupy a position within four or five feet of a jury, at the opening of an address to a body of that kind, he should commence his remarks so ns to be distinctly audible to them, and not louder, for his proximity to the i^ersons he is addressing will render it nn- graofllnl, nnbeooming, and injnriooa to his cause to s|)eak louder at first than has be« n ■oigMtod, for he tamj enlarge the compass of his voice as he advances in his address. If • spsakar should be engaged in addressing a moUitude in the open air, he should com* menoe speaking pnciaelj with that decree oftfoudness which would characterize h!s voice in opening a convertation with a iierson about the distance of ten paces from I ini. And he should permit his voice afterwnnl to swell it* compass so gradually that it will have attained its acme, or what may be termed the ultimate limit of its volume, when he shall have spoken about fifteen minates.— McQubbm. Unnecessary Loudness of tone is usually re- gjiro»ed tu power. It n an error to raptwse that the voice must be increased as the heiirt in laid bare. TtM loweat tones are the best understood. If we would make a low voice audible, let as •peak M aoftly as we can. Oo to the aea-shore when the tempest rages. The roar of the waves as they break •gainst the vewel's side, the muttering thunden*. the furious wind-gusts render the strongest vokse impotent. Oo upon a battlc-fleld when drums beat and lnini)>et8 sound. In the midst of this uproar, thi.se dixconlaht cricH, this tumult of opposing armies, the leader's commands, though uttered in the loudest tones, can scarcely be heard ; but a low whistle will be distinctly audible. The voice is intense in serenity and calm, but in pas- sioo it is weak. Let those who would bring forwatd subtle arguments against this law rentember that logio is often In default when applied to artistic facts. A oonoert is given in a contracted space, with an orchestra and a double-bass. The doa b l e t Ms s is very weak. Logic woald suggest two double-basses in order to produce a stronger tone. Quite the contrary. Two double-basses give only a semi-tone, which half a doable-lMM renden of itself. So much for logic in this case. The gfVAtert jcj is in sorrow, for here there is the greatest love. Other joys are only ontheanrfMe. We suite and we weep because we lore. Of what avail are tears r The ■w enti a l thing is to love. Tears are the accessories ; they wilt come in time, they need not to be sought. Nothing so wearies and disgusts us •• the lachrymose tone. A man who amounts to anything is never a whimperer. Take two instruments in discord and remote from each other. Logio forbids their ap proach lest thdr tones beeom* more disagreeable. The reverse is tme. In bringing them together, the loweet bceomes higher and the highest lower, and there is an accord. Let na niypose a ball with tnpestriea, a chnrdi draped in black. Logic say* " Sing more londly.** But this mmt be guarded against, test the voke becomes lost in the dra- peries. The voice should soaroe reach theee too htvrj or too sonorous partitions, but leavug the iipa softly, it should pokato through the MidlMice aad go no further. 570 DELIVERY. [Part V. ia Mteep. Loglo denuinds more wannth, more fire. Not at all. Keep riknt, and the deepen win waken.— Dblsabtb. Better be oold than affect to feel. In tnith, nothing U so cold as aaeamed. noisy en- thmdam. Its best emMem is the northern blast of winter, which fteeses as it roars.— Chavhivo. A little girl was asked by her mother, on her retom from churrb. how she liked the praaoher. " Didn't like him at all,** was the reply. " Why ?** asked the mother. " 'Cause he pceacbed till he made me sleepy, and then he hoUered so kmd he wouldn't let me go to (b) The Final Words of the sentence must not be neglected, or obscured by tlie iiiannerisin of a fi.xed cadence. "Both readers and preachers shonhl remember the old nile : ' Take care of the end of the sentence, and the beginning will take care of itself.' Some preachers are in the habit of suddenly low- ering the voice for the purpose of rendering the impoi-tance of some concluding remark more deeply felt. Let them be warned against the consequence which frequently follows, viz., that of becoming inaudible except to the nearest listeners. *' In endeavoring to avoid the fault of concluding sentences in- audibly, some readers and speakers fall into an opposite error. They terminate almost every sentence with the upward slide of the voice, or rising inflection. . . No doubt this method may make the concluding words better heard, but this object is not effected without injury to the sense of the passage, and pain to the culti- vated ear of taste." Articulation {days an immeuK part in the donudn of reading. Articulation, and ar- ticulation alone, gives cleame8R, energy, passion, and force. Snch is its power that it can even overcome deficiency of voice in the presence of a large audience. There have been actors of the foremost rank, who had scarcely any voice. Putier had no voice. Monvel, the famous Monvel, not only had no voice, he had no teeth ! And yet no one ever lost a word that fell from his lips ; and never was there a more delightful, mure moving artist than he, thanks to his i»erfect articulation. The best reader I ever knew was M. An- drieux. whow voice was not only weak, but worn, hoarse, and croaking. Yet his perfect enunciation triumphed over all these defects.— LKOOirv^. ii. Emphasis is dependent partly npon (a) Stress, but even more so upon (b) Punctuation. (a) Stress may be used (1) for Perspicuity, or (2) for Power. There are two principal kinds of emphasis, (1) emphasis of sense, (2) emphasis of force. Emphasis of sense is that emphasis which Chap. XXX.] STRESS. 571 marks aiul indicates the meaning or sense of the sentence ; and which being transferred from word to word has the power to rhange the particular meaning of the sentence. In other words, it is the placing on the particular word which carries the main l)oint of the sentence, or member of the sentence, the inflection due to such sentence or member, and giving weight or emphasis to such inflection : — the word so marked and distinguished is called the emphatic word. Thus, Bid you reach home to-day? Did you reach home to- day? etc. Emphasis of force (or it might be called Emphasis of feeling) is that emphasis or stress which a speaker uses arbitrarily to add force to some particular word or phrase ; not because the sense or meaning intended to be conveyed requires it, but because the force of his own feeling dictates it. — Vamdenhoff. ( 1 ) Sentences that depend for their meaning upon the selection of some particular word for stress are to that e.xtent ambiguous, and sliould often be reconstructed (com- pare page xx). Ka7i in Chinese signifies at the same time the roof of a house, a cellar, well, chamber, bed - the inflection alone determines the meaning. Roof is expressed by the falling, cellar by the rising in- flection. The Chinese note accurately the depth and acuteness of sound, its intei-vals, and its intensity. We can say "It is pretty, this little dog," in six hundred and seventy-five diff'ercnt ways. Some one would do it harm. We say: "This little dog is pretty, do not harm it." "It is pretty because it is so little." If it is a mischievous or vicious dog, we use pretty in an ironical sense. " This dog has bitten my hand. It is a pretty dog, indeed." Etc.— Dei^abte. (2) Words which require marked stress of voice to show that they are emphatic should be avoided in speech, on the same principle that italicised words are avoided in print, and gestures are avoided in conversation. An in- telligent person should be able so to construct his sen ten- 572 DELIVERY. [Part V. ces that the position of each word will indicate its relative importance. To itahcise a word, to thunder it, or to mark it by a gesture, is like writing underneath a picture, " This is not a cow, hut a rosebud/' The picture ouglit to be painted accurately enough to show what it is without an inscription ; the sentence ought so to place the words that their force is inevitable. Sing-Songy or the repetition of stress at regular in- tervals, is a fatal defect in prose composition. (See chap- ter on Rhythm, Part VI.) There can be no doubt that the school methods of scanning poetry, and of reading prose by punctuation, are directly produc- tive of this worst and most prevailing oratorical taint (sing-song). It is but rarely that a reader of poetry can be found whose voice is entirely free from this blemish ; and the habit of reading with a rhythmical regularity is speedily extended from poetry to prose, so that the expressive irregularity of prosaic rhythm is entirely lost in the uniformity of time to which the reader's voice is set. Like the pins in the barrel of an organ, his accents come precisely in the same place at every revolution of a sentence, striking their emphasis, at one turn, upon a pronoun or a conjunction, and, at another, impinging sonorously on an article or an expletive. 'Tis edncation forms the common mind ; Just as the twig is bent, the tree^s inclined. The little twigs in the grammar-school are sedulously bent into the barrel-organ shape, and pegged to play their destined tune by the systematic teaching of the school ; and when the tiny twig- baiTel has swelled into a full-grown cylinder, and rolls forth its cadences in far-sounding pitch, the old pegs are still there, strik- ing the old chords in the old way. — Bell. (b) Oral Punctuation is not only different from written punctuation (see page 256), but often directly at variance with it. The first principle of accurate punctuation is that the subject Chap. XXX.] PAUSES. 573 and preilicate should not be seimrated by a grammatical pause ; the first principle of good reading is, that they should be sei)aratcd by a marked suspension of the voice. So much vahie may we attach to punctuation as a guide to the reader. — Halcombe. Rhetorical punctuation subdivides for the taste, the judgment, and the ear, and regards i)au8es as the means by which the hearer may follow and uudei-staud the reader or speaker, and the latter is enabled at such pauses or rests to supply his lungs with air by the act of inspiration, and so ensure clear tone of voice and distinct articulation in deliveiy. Rhetorical punctuation is a system which does not so much regard the actual dm-ation in point of time of the various pauses introduced, as it does the places where, in reading or speaking, they may be properly and eflfectively in- troduced. Tlie shortest pause is necessarily introduced at the end of every oratorical word ; the middle pause at the end of any distinct part of a i>ropo8ition ; and the longest pause at the termination of an important division of a discourse. The rhetorical sense, not the grammatical expression, determines the relative situation and length of each pause. Knles for rhetorical pause. Pause and replenish the lungs with breath : i. After the nominative, when it consists of several words, or of one important word. A pause after a pronoun in the nominative case is admissible only when it is emphatic. It. Before and after all parenthetic, explanatory, and interme- diate clauses. in. After words in apposition or in opposition. tr. Before relative pronouns. V. Before and after clauses introduced by prepositions. vi. Between the several members of a series. rti. Before all conjunctions ; and after all conjunctions whicl introduce important words, clauses, or sentences. rt'it. Between all nouns and pronouns that are nominatives to a ▼orb, or that are governed by a verb ; between all adjeoUvea (ex- cept the last) which qualify a noun ; and all adverbs (except the last) which qualify either verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. 574 DELIVERY [Part V. iar. Before the infinitiye mood, when not immediately prc^t .1. .1 by a modify iug word. X. Wherever an ellipsis takes place. xi. Between the object and the modifying word in their invert- ed order. • xii. Ctenerally, before and after emphatic words. — Plumptre. There is a line in ** The Fair Penitent" which for many years was spoken by the most celebrated actor of these times in the following manner : West of the town— a mile among the ntdkm, Two boon ere noon to-morrow I expect thee, Thy dngle arm to mine. It is a challenge given by Lothario to Horatio, to meet him at a place a mile's distance from the town, on the west side, well known by the name of The Bocks. And this would have been evident had there been a comma after the word mile ; as : West of the town a mile, among the rod», etc Whereas, by making the pause after the word town, and join- ing mile to the latter i>ai-t. West of the town — a mile among the rocks — the ridiculous idea is conveyed that they had a mile's length of rocks to scramble over ; wliich made Quin sarcastically obsei*ve that they should run great risk of breaking their shins before they reached the appointed place of combat. — SHEmDAN. The tongue punctnate'* as well as the pen. One day Samson, sitting at his desk, sees himself approached by a yonng man appa rvntly pretty well satisfied with himself. " Yon wish to take reading lessons, sir?^ " Yes, Monsieur Samson.*' " Have yon had some practice in reading aloud?" " O yea, Monsieur Samson, I have often recited whole passages from Comeille and Molidre." " In public ? " " Yes, Monsieur Samson." " With success ? " " Well, yes, Monsieur, I think I may flatter myself so far.'* '•Take up that book, please. It is ' La Fontaine's Fables.' Open it at * The Oak and the Reed.' Let me hear you take a turn at a line or two." The pupil b^ins : "The Oak one day, said to the Reed " Chap. XXX.] PAUSES. 575 " That's enough, sir : yon don't know anything abont reading ! *' " It is becaase I don't know much, Monoipur Samson," repliefl the pupil, a little net- tled ; *' it iH preciwly bocaose I don't know much that I have come to yoa for lenaons. But I don't exactly comprehend how from my manner of reading a aiugle vers©—" " Read the Ime again, sir." He reads it again : •' The Oak one day, aaid to the Reed " " There ! Yon can't read ! I told you so ! " " But " "But,'^ interrupts Samson, cold and dry; "but why do you join the adverb to the noun rather than to the verb? What kind of an oak is an oak one day ? No kind at all I There in no snch tree ! Why, then, do you say, ' The oak one day, said to the reed ? ' This ia the way it should go : ' The oak, one day aaid to the reed.' Tou understand, of ooaraet" "Certainly I do," replied the other, a new light breaking on him. "It seems as If there should be an invisible comma after Oak." " Yoo are right, sir," continues the master. "Every passnge has a double set of punctuation marks, one visible, the other invisible ; one is the printer's work, the other the reader's." *' The reader's ? Does he also punctuate ? " " Certainly he does, quite independently, too, of the printer's point', though it must be acknowlctlged that sometimes both coincide. By a certain cadonci* DELTVl'RY. [Part V. was satirically romarketl (on account of liis imving this habit) that he muHt have learned to Ki)eak in a boat. The prejudice agaiust gestuix) arises from its fre- quent use as a trick of manuer instead of as an uncon- trollable expression of feeling. Tliat the lumd may deliver a truth in gesture, which the voice is enunciating, is most true. But it is just as tnie that the hand is, so to speak, the mere handmaid of the voice, and should never ambitiously aspire to a parallel importance. It is the work of the hand in gesture, not to duplicate the whole work of the voice, but odIj at necessary points to reinforce the vocal utterance. Now, as not every point which is susceptible of gesture is necessary^ to seek to add force by gesture is simply to weaken the effect of all ne- cessary gesture. CJesture, like all high appliances of force, must be charily used or it becomes powerless from mere common- The great gesture province lies where the fact or the thought, which has all along been burning before the glance of the orator, is to be squarely brought out and driven home. It is false elocu- tion, then, to anticipate or overshadow emphatic gesture, by any noticeable display of that which is purely subordinate, descriptive gesture. It is poor tactics to weaken the main battle by a too lav- ish development of the skirmishing lines. And once more, all gesture is but an outward, and at best im- perfect, symbolling of the inward emotion. Almost any gesture, opiX)sed to mle though it be, is truthful and effective, if it only be spontaneously shot forth by the uncontrollable inward energy. No gesture, however artistically fashioned, and with whatever nice ex- actness overlaid upon the vocal delivery, has in it any ti-uth, beauty, or power, if it be merely the studied product of the art, and not the natural outbiu-st of the inward force. Hence, we do not think it extravagant to say, that no true elocu- tion for any j^erson can be taught except upon the basis of simple, direct, earnest composition. Teach the pupil, first, to write it as he thinks and feels it, and then teach him its natuml and effective de- livery, as thus thought and felt, and you will hit upon an enun- ciation and gesture that know how to do an honest work, and, still Chap. XXX ) GESTURES. 577 better, know how to keep their proper place. Aside from this, ordinary instruction in either can bo useful, not as teaching the pupil what he is actually to use, or just where lie is to use it, but as a means of habituating him, in a general way, to an eiisier and more natural use of his organs and powers ; so that, when- ever the true impulse comes, and either bursts out into action, what is si)ontaueous and earnest may not be crude, angular, and ill-fitted. — New England Journal of Education. Gestures have been divided into three classes: First, gestures of ptocc, which answer the question, where? Secondly, gestures of imitation, which answer the question, Jww t Thirdly, gestures of einpJuisiSy which show the degree of the speak- er's earnestness. Suggestions as to the use of gestures have been made uii good authority, as follows : (1) Conceive as >'ividly as possible the things you would locate, and j-ieKl to the impulse of nature to glance or point in the direc- tion in which they aie imagined to be. (2) Conceive as vividly as possible the action or scene described, and yield to the imi)ulse of nature to imitate, being careful always to "overstej) not the motlesty of nature." (3) Yield to the inclination to strike or nod or bow for emphasis, l>eing careful "in the veiy torrent, temj^est, and whirlwind of i>as- eion, to acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smooth- ness.*' (4) Avoid gestures for which you can give no reason. The Fundamental Rule for gesture is that it must precede tho vcM-hal e.xpression of the thought it illus- trates. Oestnre must always precede 8iK>c(*h. In fact, speech is re- flected expression. It must come after gesture, whicli is {mrallel with the impression reoeivetl. Nature incites a movement, si)eech names the movement. Speech is only the title, the label of wliat gesture has anticipated. Speech comes only to confirm what the ^78 DELIVERY. [Part V. audience already comprehend. Speech is given for naming things. Gesture asks the question "What?" and speech answers. Ges- ture after speech would be absurd. Let the word come after the gesture and there will be no pleonasm. Priority of gesture may be thus explained. First a movement responds to the sensation ; then a gesture, which depicts the emo- tion, res]M)nds to the imagination which colors the sensation. Then comes the judgment which approves. Finally, we consider the audience, and this view of the audience suggests the ajjpropiiate expression for that which has already been expressed by gesture. — DEIiBABTB. How far gesture should be carried depends upon tlie speakers power of dramatic feeling and expression. Few would interpret gesture as minutely as Delsarte, who makes distinctions like the following : •' The deep voice with the eyes open expresses worthy things. The deep voice with the eyes closed expresses odious things. . . . We understand the laugh of an indi\'idnal ; if upon e long, he has made a sorrj' jest ; if upon a long, he has nothing in his heart, and most likely nothing in his head ; if upon a short, the laugh is forced. 0, a long, and oo are the only normal expres- sions. Thus every one is measured, numbered, weighed. There is reason in every thing, even when unknown to man. "We can judge of the sincerity of the friend who grasps our hand. If he holds the thumb inwaid and j^endent, it is a fatal sign ; we no longer trust him. To pray with the thumbs inward and swaying to and fro, indicates a lack of sacred fei-vor. It is a corpse who prays. If you pray with the arms extended and the fingei-s bent, there is reason to fear that you adore Plutus. If you embi-ace me without elevating your shoulders, you are a Judas." Mimicry is, however, below the dignity of the plat- form (see page 131) ; and descriptive gesture must be used with moderation. Many a speaker who is more cor- rect in his interpretation, is scarcely less ridiculous in his Chaf.xxx] gestures. 570 gestures than the boyj who lifted the skirts of his coat, as he declaimed : Soon Rs the eTening KhadeH prevail, The moon takes np the wondrouR tale. Finally, gesture, as an art, should be so practised as to be imcouscious. The orator should not even think of what he is doing. The thing should have been so much studied that all would seem to flow of itself from the fountain. — Delsabte. This principle has been carried so far that a hesitating awkwardness is sometimes assumed, to convey the impres- sion of exteinporaneousness. Mr. DisraeU hesitated much, says the London Truth, like Ser- jeant Ballantine. Before biinging out some telling and well-pre- pared adjective, he would "er-er-er" for a minute or two, so as to make his hearers 8upiK)se that he was choosing between half a dozen words. And yet many of Mr. Disraeli's most effective speeches were leanied by heart. He would give tjiem to the Times reporter before they were delivered, and although the re- porter followed the speech, i>encil in* hand, he seldom had to alter a single word, so excellent was Mr. Disraeli's memory. In ivadfnf; your own (Uaconn««, jonr very defecti) are yonr flrrt requii-ite« of raoorn. Thoy form a portion of your own individnality. A single in«tance will make my mean liic clear. Jiileo Bandcan naked me to reiid in pablic a charming reply which he had writ- t«n to Camille Doncet. " I will do nothing of the kind," replied I. "Why not? ' he naked. " yoo read no ninch better." " Yea," was my answer, ** but that particular piece of yo'trs I should not rend half »o well ; yonr diKoumc is youn>«lf . In reading it I certainly should not commit the faults that yon will commit, I should not dr p my breath at the last syllable. I should try to bring out the strong points with higher relief. Burthat unstudied attitude of yours I ooald never catch, nor that indolent voice, nor that touch- me-not air, nor that easy-going indifference, all of which ontpplete the effect of yonr words by producing your personality- -which are so charming in you, because they are ao de- lightfully dWnraU but which would be abaolntely displeasing in me as ton unnatural, too atodiad, and too far-fetchepn-i>s the exaggeration and affectation resultant, we have an excellent and most useful lesson, especially in regard u> La Fontaine. A general impresnion, now passed into a principle, declare!^ that his fables are to be read simply. Certainly I but what do we mean by sinicly ? Du we mean— let us be plain— do we mean prosily ? If so, I say. No I a thousaud times. No ! That is not the way to read La Fontaine; that is disfiguring him. It Ih betraying, not translating him. La Fontaine is the most complex of all French poets. No other poet unites in himself so many extremes. No poetry is so rich in oppositions. His nickname of good fellow, and his reputation for simplicity, deceive us. His character as a man leads us astray in re- gard to his character as a poet. Pen in hand, he is the most wily, ingenious, 1 may say foxiest, of writers. With I>a Fontaine, every effect is calculated, premeditated, and worked for ; and at thi same time, by a marvellous faculty, every thing is harmonious and natural. All is artistic: nothing artificial. A line, a woid, sufflces to open vast horizons. He is an incomparable painter, unrivalled narrator. His character-drawing is almost equal to that of Moli^rc himself. And can we suppose that all this may and can be rendered simply and straightforwardly ? Heaven forbid I Deep study slonc confers Dpon a reader the power of understanding and explaining even in imperfect fashion such profound art. Take, Cor example, the fable of " The Heron : '* " One day — no matter when or where — A long-legged heron chanced to fare, With his long, sharp beak Helve an«l the pike there at will Porsueil their silent fun. Turning np ever and anon A golden ride to the snn I " Oh ! yon donH know yontr tnul* tm a reader if yonr gay. Uvely, iportive tone doea r * paint the antks of this (roUoMMne ooaple I ** With eaae the heron might have made Qraat proAta in the flnhing trade ; 80 near cane the soaly fry Thejr might b* CMght by the ytaut hy.** Simple narrative etyle. " But he thought he better might Wait fur a ^hanwr aupetite.** 5^2 DELIVERY. [Part V. lUrk tbU I bere w« xsi an inmghi into the Urd*s oharaoter I The heron ia a (wnROAlist, •n epicure, nther thui m ghiUoo. Appetite Is a pIcMora to thow of dainty Rtomach. Gire the word a pp « m $ that accent of eartefwcitinn always nnued by the thoaglit or sight of anjr thing pleaauit ; we shaU see diraotlj ham useful thi« Rlight hint will bo. " For he lived by rule, and could not eat, Kzoapt at his hours, the bent of meat." Second deacriptiTe Terse. The heron to an important personage, and respects himself accordingly. " .\non his i4[»petite returned once mor&'* The heron to quite satiaflcd. ** Approaohing thai again the shore. He saw KNne tewdi taking their lei^M, Kow and than, tnm the lowest deepn.'' A perfect picture I an admirable stann ! It expreeses that ntmantic feeling which all of un have experienced in Ashing, when a fish rises slowly through the watery veil, faint and ▼ague at first, but growing eTer more distinct, until it leaps to the surface ! Paint all thto with joor Toioe I " With as dainty a taste as Horace's rat. He turned away from such food as that.*^ The character-drawing goes on. " What ! tench for a heron ? Poh ! I scorn the thought, and let them go." Hark the A in heron well ; dwell on it^make it as prominent nu hiu own long legs. " The tench refused, there came a gudgeon. ' Far all that,' said the bird, ' I trudge on.' " Here he laughs a laugh of scorn I " I'll ne'er ope my beak, so the gfods please. For such menu little fishes as these. He did it for lew ; For it came to pass That not another fish could he sec ; And at last, so hungry was he," — Hungry ! Do you see the difference now between this word and " appetite?" Do you think La Fontaine used this neat, sharp little phrase by mere chance ? No longer an epi- cure, the very word is brief, pressing, and importunate as the want it expresses ! Give all this with your voice, and also depict the sudden ending of the tale, scornful and sum- mary as a decree of fate : " That he thought it of great avail To find on the bank a single snail ! " READING AS A MEANS OP CRITICISM. After listening attentively to my thoughts and ideas on this subject, Sainte-Beuve said : "By your reckoning, then, a skilful reader is a skilful critic." "To be sure," said I, "you are closer to the truth than yon guessed ; for in what, indeed, does the reader's talent lie, if not in rendering all the beauties erly. he must of course underbtnnd them. But the astonishing thing is, that it is his very effort to render them well which gives him a Chap. XXX. ] READING. 583 clearer oomprehenidon of them. Reading aloud girefl a power of analysis which silent reading can never know." Sainte-Beave then asked me to give him an example to illastrate my meaning ; and I qaoted Racine's famous speech on Comeille, which containf> one passage specially re- markable, where he draws a comparison between the French theatre before and after Comeille. I had often read this passage to myself, and admired it much ; baton attempt- ing to read it aloud, I encountered difficulties which surprised me and gave me cause to reflect. The second part struck me as heavy, and almost imposuible to render well. Compoeod of seventeen lines, it yet forms but a single phrase I Not a breathing- place ! Nut a period, colon, or even hcmi-colon ! nothing but commas, with clause sncoeeding i-lause, prulon^dng the sense just aa you deem it complete, and forcing you to follow it, nantlng for breath, through ail its endless mazes I I reached the end, gasping, but thoughtful. Why, I (lucried, did Racine write so long and labored a phmse? Instinct- ively, my eye turned to the first part of the fragment. What did I we ? A jwrfect con- trast I Seven sentences in nine lines I Kxclanialion points everjwhcre ! Not a single verb I A disjointed, jerky style 1 All was fragmentary and broken 1 I uttered a cry of joy ; light dawned upon me ! Desiring to express the two states of the drama, he did more than describe, he painted them in words. To represent what he himself calls the chaotic stage of the dramatic poem, he employed a violent, abrupt, and inartistic style. To give a perfect picture of dramatic art as Comeille made it, he imagined a long and well-turned period, harmonious and concordant, — similar, in fact, in its labored arrange- ment to Ck>raeille'B own tragedies,—" Rodogune " and *' Polyeucte,"— in the skilful com- bination of situations and characters. This clew once gained, I took up the book, and re-read the fragment Let any one read it accordingly, and judge for himself :— " In what a wretched condition was the French stage when Comeille began his la- bors! What disorder 1 What irregularity I No taste, no knowledge of true dramatic beauty. Authors as ignorant as their audience, their themes for the most part extrava- gant and improbable, — no morals, no characters ; the style of delivery even more vicious than the action, miserable puns and witticisms forming the chief ornament ; in a word, every rule of art, and indeed of decency and propriety, violated. " In this infancy, or rather this chaotic state, of the dramatic poem in France, Cor- iieille, having long sought the right road, and straggled, if I may venture to say ao, nirainat the bad taste of his age, finally, inspired by rare genius and aided by his reading of antique literature, produced upon the scene reason, but reason accompanied by all the l>omp and splendor of which the French language is oafMble, brought the wonderful and the probable into harmony, and left far behind him all his rivals, most of whom, despair- ing of erer kMpinit pace with him, and fearing to dispute the fnize with him, confined themseivee to impogning the plandiU awarded him. and vainly strove, by their words and foolish critidsms. to depredate a merit which they oooM not equal.'' I think this proof deoiUv««, this demonstration inefutoble It is evident that the ex- triMt a es nmes an entirely novel aspect when read aloud. New light falls upon it, and the aothoi^i ttMWght is made manifest. Shall I n\A that the very dlfllmlty of rvading this liasaage makes it an excellent leaonT I know nothing hanler, and therefore mora profitable, than to rarry to a soe u ea tfu l <4oae this terrible srvcntocn lina-kmt santanoa, withaatooea.stoppiBgbyth»way, wtthoofc aeeming fatlgoml. always marking by year inlleotiona that the aaaaa is not eompMe, and Anally unrolling the whole majestic phrase in all its amplitade and anperb anpplsassa. My studies as a reader were Tcry nacfal to me that day : an