14 LITEEAEY VALDES 



hand or his eye or his ear — the living, palpable 

 body of his thought, the incarnation of his spirit. 



The true writer always establishes intimate and 

 personal relations with his reader. He comes forth, 

 he is not concealed ; he is immanent in his words, 

 we feel him, our spirits touch his spirit. 



Style in letters is a quality of mind — a certain 

 flavor imparted to words by the personality back 

 of them. Pass language through one mind and it 

 is tasteless and colorless ; pass it through another, 

 and it acquires an entirely new value and signifi- 

 cance and gives us a unique pleasure. In the one 

 case the sentences are artificial ; in the other they 

 bud and sprout out of the man himself as naturally 

 as the plants and trees out of the soil. 



There is nothing else in the world so sensitive 

 and chameleon-like as language ; it takes on at once 

 the hue and quality of the mind that uses it. See 

 how neutral and impersonal, or old and worn and 

 faded the words look in the pages of some writers, 

 then see how drastic or new and individual they 

 become when a mind of another type marshals them 

 into sentences. What vigor and life in them ! they 

 seem to have been newly coined since we last met 

 them. It is the test of a writer's real worth — does 

 the language tarnish, as it were, in his hand, or is it 

 brightened and freshened in his use ? 



A book may contain valuable truths and sound 

 sentiments of universal appeal, but if the literary 

 coinage is feeble, if the page is not strongly individu- 

 alized, freshly and clearly stamped by the purpose 



