command means that we have curtailed ourselves in much that makes life worth living, in freshness and keenness of sensation, and in breadth and depth of thought. The difference between a wide-awake, energetic man, with an acute, well-disciplined mind, and a dull or stupid man, is largely due to a state of mind of which the best sign is a limited or hackneyed vocabulary. The dull man does not discriminate; he lumps a dozen things together under one name: all things which are at all alike are to him exactly alike. He does not trouble himself to distinguish among them. Nice, fine, good, for instance, do duty for a score of adjectives with more special meanings.

111. How to Increase the Individual Vocabulary. The following advice will aid students in enlarging their vocabularies:

(1) If possible, get a sound elementary knowledge of Latin, not only because the study of Latin trains the mind, but because Latin is the basis on which a large number of important English words is formed. (2) Use new words, even if it takes an effort to do so, until they become familiar to you.

(3) Read as much as you can in good English authors of all kinds. Read carefully; do not skip or pass lightly over words the meanings of which you only half know or do not know at all.

(4) In all your writing try to express yourselves exactly; realize what it is which you want to express, and do not be satisfied until you have found the word or words that express your meaning adequately.

(5) Beware of using the same words too constantly. A hackneyed vocabulary, or the careless and unnecessary repetition of a word in a single sentence or in several successive sentences, detracts greatly from the force of what you write.

(6) Write frequently. It is by use that a vocabulary grows rich and keeps vigorous.

(7) Have a good dictionary by you and use it frequently.1

EXERCISE 51

I. Read carefully the following passage, underscoring the words with which you are not so familiar as to use them naturally. Make sure of the meaning of these words, and construct sentences which will illustrate their use.

"Although as boys we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind,

1 Worcester's Dictionary, the International, the Century, and the Standard are the best English dictionaries for ordinary use, and at least one of them should be accessible in every school library. The Century has the advantage of giving a number of examples under each word, illustrating the precise sense which usage gives to it. This plan is followed much more elaborately in the largest and best dictionary of the language, the New English Dictionary. The great size of this work, which after many years of labor still remains incomplete, prevents it from being used largely by younger students, but it is to be hoped that teachers will see that their school libraries and town libraries possess it, and from time to time refer pupils to it, with a view to giving them a clear idea of the extent and variety of the English vocabulary, and the numerous shades of meaning to which usage gives authority.

for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested of late in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth at no period any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the House of Usher' appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.". POE: The Fall of the House of Usher.

an

II. Criticise the vocabulary of the following passages:

(a) "The wind even took up the sand and gravel, and carried it away with the snow. On the side it piled up the snow till the houses were almost covered up. No one ventured out, even on snow-shoes; but the wind came in where it could, and sifted in the fine snow about windows and under doors and the snow that came down the chimneys melted and stained the walls."

:

(b) "The next step is to put this photograph into words. Care should be used in the selection of words. A few wellselected, expressive words are a great deal more valuable in description than two or three pages of words that are not forcible, and not characteristic of the subject."

(c) It is not of that class of writing that finds a lasting place in literature that I am speaking, for that is attainable by few among us; but of writing that, while not necessarily possessing an elegant and artistic literary finish, is nevertheless capable of conveying to its readers in a straightforward and simple manner the idea that we wish them to grasp.

III. Choose at random a page from an unabridged dictionary, and notice (1) how many of the words there defined you know the meaning of, and (2) how many you actually use in speech or composition.

CHAPTER X

WORDS: TOO MANY; TOO FEW

112. Too MANY WOPDS.-113. How TO SECURE COMPACTNESS. 114. Too FEW WORDS, -115. THE SCALE OF COMPOSITION. EXERCISE 52.- EXERCISE 53.

112. Too Many Words. One of the most important principles of rhetoric is also one of the most obvious: we should not use more words than those which express our meaning adequately. Obvious as it is, this principle is one of the hardest to put into practice. The habit of writing compactly, of going straight to the point, of saying just what one has to say and then of stopping, is not easy to acquire. The opposite and more frequent habit, the vice of using too many words, usually appears in one of three forms:

(1) Useless repetition of an idea, as in the following sentence, "Hence the universal testimony which all the nations of the earth have conspired to give to some few works of genius." Here the relative clause merely repeats the idea of universal.

For

(2) Useless words, which, though not repeating any preceding thought, add nothing to the sense. example, (a) can, by the omission of superfluous words, be reduced to (b).