John Falstaff for his indebtedness to her. "What is the gross sum that I owe thee?" he inquires. She might answer simply: "If thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst promise to marry me. Deny it if thou canst." Instead, she plunges into a prolix recital of the circumstances of the engagement, so that the all-important fact that the engagement exists has no special emphasis in her welter of words. "If thou wert an honest man," she cries, "thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath; deny it if thou canst." EXERCISE 1. Study the following paragraph, decide which ideas are important, and strike out the details that merely clog the thought: As I stepped into the room, I heard the clock ticking and that caused me to look at it. It sits on the mantelpiece with some layers of paper under one corner where the mantel is warped. When the papers slip out or we move the clock a little as we're dusting, the ticking stops right away. Of course the clock's not a new one at all, but it's an old one. It has been in the family for many a long year, yes, from even before my father's time. Let me see, it was bought by my grandfather. No, it couldn't have been grandfather that bought it; it was his brother. Oh, yes, I remember now; my mother told me all about it, and I'd forgotten what she said till this minute. But really my grandfather's brother didn't exactly buy it. He just traded for it. He gave two pigs and a saddle, that's what my mother said. You see, he was afraid his hogs might take cholera and so he wanted to get rid of them; and as for the saddle, he had sold his riding-horse and he didn't have any more use for that. Well, it isn't a valuable clock, like a grandfather clock or anything of that sort, though it is antique. As I was saying, when I glanced at it, it read seven minutes to six. I remember the time very well, for just then the factory whistle blew and I remember saying to myself: "It's seven minutes slow today." You see, it's old and we don't keep it oiled, and so it's always losing time. Hardly a day passes but I set it up-sometimes twice a day, as for the matter of that-and I usually go by the factory whistle too, though now and then I go by Dwight's gold watch. Well, anyhow, that tells me what time it was. I'm certain I can't be wrong. 2. Study, on the other hand, The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its judicious use of details. Defoe in his stories is a supreme master of verisimilitude (likeness to truth). As we read him, we cannot help believing that these things actually happened. More than in anything else the secret of his lifelikeness lies in his constant faithfulness to reality. He puts in the little mishaps that would have befallen a man so situated, the things he would have done, the difficulties he might have avoided had he exercised forethought. Though Defoe had little insight into the complexities of man's inner life, he has not been surpassed in his accumulations of naturalistic outer details. These do not cumber his narrative; they contribute to its purpose and add to its effectiveness. In this selection (Appendix 5) observe how plausible are such homely details as Crusoe's seeing no sign of his comrades "except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows"; as his difficulty in getting aboard the ship again; and as his having his clothes washed away by the rising of the tide. Find half a dozen other such incidents that you consider especially effective. Verbal Discords We may pitch our talk or our writing in almost any key we choose. Our mood may be dreamy or eager or hilarious or grim or blustering or somber or bantering or scornful or satirical or whatever we will. But once we have established the tone, we should not-except sometimes for broadly humorous effects-change it needlessly or without clear forewarning. If we do, we create one or the other of two obstacles, or both of them, for whoever is trying to follow what we say. In the first place, we obscure our meaning. For example, we have been speaking ironically and suddenly swerve into seriou utterance; or we have been speaking seriously and then incongruously adopt an ironic tone. How are our listeners, our readers to take us? They are puzzled; they do not know. In the second place, we offend—perhaps in insidious, indefinable fashion-the esthetic proprieties; we violate the natural fitness of things. For example, we have been speaking with colloquial freedom, sprinkling our discourse with shouldn't and won't; suddenly we become formal and say should not and will not. Our meaning is as obvious as before, but the verbal harmony has been interrupted; our hearers or readers are uneasily aware of a break in the unity of tone. A speaker or writer is a host to verbal guests. When he invites them to his assembly, he gives each the tacit assurance that it will not be brought into fellowship with those which in one or another of a dozen subtle ways will be uncongenial company for it. He must never be forgetful of this unspoken promise. If he is to avoid a linguistic breach, he must constantly have his wits about him; must study out his combinations carefully, and use all his knowledge, all his tact. He will make due use of spontaneous impulse; but that this may be wise and disciplined, he will form the habit of curiosity about words, their stations, their savor, their aptitudes, their limitations, their outspokenness, their reticences, their affinities and antipathies. Thus when he has need of a phrase to fill out a verbal dinner party, he will know which one to select. Certain broad classifications of words are manifest even to the most obtuse user of English. Shady, behead, and lying are "popular" words, while their synonyms umbrageous, decapitate, and mendacious are "learned" words. Flabbergasted and higgledy-piggledy are "colloquial," while roseate and whilom are "literary." Affidavit, allegro, lee shore, and pinch hit are "technical," while vamp, savvy, bum hunch, and skiddoo are "slang." It would be disenchanting indeed were extremes of this sort brought together. But offenses of a less glaring kind are as hard to shut out as February cold from a heated house. Unusual are the speeches or compositions, even the short ones, in which every word is in keeping, is in perfect tune with the rest. For the attainment of this ultimate verbal decorum we should have to possess knowledge almost unbounded, together with unerring artistic instinct. But diction of a kind only measurably inferior to this is possible to us if we are in earnest. To attain it we must study the difference between abstract and concrete terms, and let neither L intrude unadvisedly upon the presence or functions of the other; do the same by literal and figurative terms; and instruct ourselves in the nature and significance of connotation. Before considering these more detailed matters, however, we may pause for a general exercise on verbal harmony. EXERCISE 1. Study the editorial in Appendix I for unforewarned changes in mood and assemblages of mutually uncongenial words. Rewrite the worst two paragraphs to remove all blemishes of these kinds. 2. Compare Burke's speech (Appendix 2) with Defoe's narrative (Appendix 5) for the difference in tone between them. Does each keep the tone it adopts (that is, except for desirable changes)? 3. Note the changes in tone in the Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4). Do the changes in substance make these changes in tone desirable? 4. In the following passages, make such changes and omissions as are necessary to unify the tone: How I loved to stroll, on those long Indian summer afternoons, into the quiet meadows where the mild-breathed kine were grazing! An old cow that switches her tail at flies and puts her foot in the bucket when you milk her, I absolutely loathe. How I loved to hear the birds sing, to listen to the fall of ripe autumnal apples! It wasn't the girl yclept Sally. This girl was not so vivacious as Sally, but she had a mug on her that was a lot less ugly to look at. Gee, when she stood there in front of me with those mute, ineffable, sympathetic eyes of hers, I was ready to throw a duck-fit. Old Grimes is dead, that dear old soul; He wore a great long overcoat, |