FIELD AND STUDY 



the power of association, to fill the mind with 

 pleasing emotions. 



A writer may use pure English and yet his pro- 

 duction be flat and insipid. No matter what words 

 a fourth- or fifth-rate poet uses, his verse will be 

 fourth- or fifth-rate. Take any great piece of prose 

 and break it up into its word elements, and see if 

 you can find the secret of its power or beauty. The 

 words "beauty" and "power" may not be in it, 

 and yet it may have both these qualities. The dif- 

 ference between a quartz pebble and a precious 

 stone is not one of elements, but one of different 

 arrangement of the same elements. Both the dia- 

 mond and a lump of charcoal are made up of carbon 

 molecules, but behold the difference ! 



" In good writing words become one with things," 

 says Emerson. They give a sense of reality, the mind 

 feels them as tangible things. Of course, words that 

 stand for specific, concrete things come home to us 

 in a way that general and abstract words do not. 

 Take this quatrain of Emerson's : — 



"Cast the bantling on the rocks. 

 Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat. 

 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 

 Power and speed be hands and feet." 



How vivid and concrete the language ! Certainly 

 the words are one with things. 



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