64 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 

 Delivered at the Annual General Meeting, 25th July, 1884. 



By M. C. Cooke, M.A., LL.D., A.L.S., &c. 



Gentlemen, — On a similar occasion to the present, I took the 

 opportunity last year of suggesting a subject for reflection and 

 consideration, which seemed to me calculated to impart an interest 

 to your holiday hours. On the present anniversary, I purpose, for 

 a very short time, offering a few words of warning, which originate 

 in a sense of duty, as I vacate your chair. A week or two since, 

 whilst pondering a subject, I was skimming over one of those 

 small volumes provided for railway travellers, which are presumed 

 to furnish amusement rather than instruction, and encountered the 

 following short paragraph : — 



" The besetting sin of popular authors is the intense. I mean 

 intensity of epithet — the strongest expression is generally the 

 briefest and barest. Take the old ballads of any people, and you 

 will find few adjectives. The singer says, 'He laughed; she 

 wept.' Perhaps the poet of a more civilized age might say, ' He 

 laughed in scorn ; she turned away, and shed tears of disappoint- 

 ment.' But nowadays the ambitious young writer must produce 

 something like this, ' A hard, fiendish laugh, scornful and pitiless, 

 forced its passage from his throat through the lips that curled in 

 mockery of her appeal ; she covered her despairing face, and a 

 gust and whirlwind of sorrowing agony burst forth in her irresis- 

 tible tears.' " * 



Naturally enough, as I thought, this little quotation sent me 

 into a dream of intensities, and exaggerations, and sensationalism 

 which seems to pervade everything in these latter days, politics, 

 religion, science, art, business, and even common conversation. 

 Manifest exaggeration, such as led Mark Twain to write his essay 

 on " Decay in the Art of Lying," and to say, " Of course there are 

 people who think they never lie ; but it is not so — and this igno- 



* " Echo Club Diversions," p. 61. 



