OUR FACILE MASTERY OF ENGLISH 7 



taken by one of his friends in a charming southern girl who was 

 spending the summer in our little town, and his bewildering words 

 were these: "So Frank went sifting over to the shack to see if he 

 couldn't start a one-ring fussing fest. But, say, didn't the old dame 

 hand him out some bunch of talk ? What ? It was Frankie for the 

 tallest timber in the deep, deep woods." For a moment I was stag- 

 gered by this example of what Walt Whitman calls "an attempt of 

 common humanity to escape from bald literalism and express itself 

 inimitably"; but I subsequently inferred that the mother of the 

 young lady had discouraged a certain tendency to unconventionality 

 manifested by Frank. However, the foregoing is hardly more suc- 

 cessful in "snatching a grace beyond the reach of art" than this 

 sentence from the academic authority mentioned above: "If not a 

 polyphrastic philosophy seeking to dignify the occupation of the 

 workshop by a pretentious Volapuk of reasons and abstract theories, 

 we have here the pregnant suggestion of a psychological quarry of 

 motives and spirit opened and ready to be worked." 



Between these two poles might be found every variety of the 

 abuse of words. We have a veritable language-distorting, phrase- 

 tormenting mania, tumbling out alleged thoughts in a weird jumble. 

 But why should I adduce further instances from the lips of other 

 speakers or the pens of other writers? Truly, "Their words are a 

 very fantastic banquet, just so many strange dishes"; and this 

 capricious fare is rapidly becoming the standard diet. 



Occasionally a dull and dreary pedant may put in a plea for a 

 reasonable treatment of words, and even quote Bacon's pertinent 

 dictum: "It were good that men in their innovations would follow 

 the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly 

 and by degrees scarce to be perceived." But the popular advocates 

 scoff at him, and plausibly retort that by adhering too closely to the 

 traditions of pure English one makes the language stereotyped, 

 thereby preparing it for fossilization. If they read Bacon, they would 

 strengthen their plea with another sonorous sentence: "A froward 

 retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation; and they 

 that reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the new." Then 



