MORALITY OF CORRECT WORDS.

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uses it correctly, and his conclusions are so far just as they apply to the word in all its proper significations. The genuine scholar, when either speaking or listening to a good composition, might with propriety say to an unskilled audience,

"I see a hand you can not see,

I hear a voice you can not hear."

48. The Morality and Value of exact Expressions.There is an intimate connection between words and the moral character. It has been wittily said,

"Words lead to things: a scale is more precise;

Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice."

An eloquent writer forcibly remarks:

"Words are instruments of music; an ignorant man uses them for jargon; but when a master touches them they have unexpected life and soul. Some words sound out like drums; some breathe memories sweet as flutes; some call like a clarionet; some shout a charge like trumpets; some are as sweet as children's talk; others rich as a mother's answering back. The words which have universal power are those that have been keyed and chorded in the great orchestral chamber of the human heart. Some words touch as many notes at a stroke as when an organist strikes ten fingers upon a key-board. There are single words which contain life-histories; and to hear them spoken is like the ringing of chimes. He who knows how to touch and handle skillfully the home-words of his mother's tongue need ask nothing of style."+

On the value of abundant and appropriate words, Dr. J. G. Holland has written the following beautiful

"The robin repeats his two beautiful words,

The meadow-lark whistles his one refrain;
And steadily, over and over again,

The same song swells from a hundred birds. ·

*O. W. Holmes.

† Introduction to Mrs. Browning's Last Poems. By Theodore Tilton, Esq.

"Bobolink, chickadee, blackbird and jay,
Thrasher and woodpecker, cuckoo and wren,
Each sings its word, or its phrase, and then
It has nothing further to sing or say.
"Into that word, or that sweet little phrase,
All there may be of its life must crowd;
And low and liquid, or hoarse and loud,
It breathes its burden of joy and praise.
"A little child sits in his father's door,
Chatting and singing with careless tongue;
A thousand musical words are sung,
And he holds unuttered a thousand more.

"Words measure power; and they measure thine;
Greater art thou in thy childish years

Than all the birds of a hundred spheres ;
They are brutes only, but thou art divine.

"Words measure destiny. Power to declare
Infinite ranges of passion and thought
Holds with the infinite only its lot-
Is of eternity only the heir.

"Words measure life, and they measure its joy,
Thou hast more joy in thy childish years

Than the birds of a hundred tuneful spheres,
So-sing with the beautiful birds, my boy!"

But notwithstanding the value of words, it should be remembered that it is only intellect and emotion that make them valuable. "Language," as Professor Goldwin Smith forcibly says, "is not a musical instrument into which, if a fool breathes, it will make melody."

+49. Summary of Directions.-The directions to be observed in the use of words may be summed up as follows: Employ words of the English language, rejecting foreign words except as quotations, or when more expressive than native words, accompanying them by a translation if they are liable not to be understood;

SUMMARY OF DIRECTIONS.

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avoid obsolete words, new terms, and a profusion of technical terms, except when treating upon the subjects to which they especially apply, and then use them accurately; avoid vulgarisms, catch-words, provincialisms, unless the nature of your composition justifies them; use no words unnecessarily, especially in different shades of meaning; study to obtain as extensive a vocabulary as your thoughts require, and always to use the best words in their proper places.

Let no one suppose that too much attention has been given to this subject. Words are the vehicle of >thoughts. They indicate both the intellectual and the moral character. The surest proof of scholarship, of discipline, of strong thought, is the right use of words. D

PART II.

FIGURES OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT.