| Show literary LITh BAKY caff the above caption the boston globe publishes the following it is too often the case that as s soon as a man acquires a certain degree of literary lile renown he affects the literary manter uses book words erudite allusions lu lus ioos and all the elaborate ties of too tda word d lop fop and phrase builder budder he has written a book and tor forsooth sooth tie he must bust talk like a book tat restal his bis days in order to maintain a reputation tor lor consistency but bud his literary cant and affectation is not confined by any means within the circle of crual authors the tendency to literary ar anti pervasive and almost us as universal as the tendency to original sin ain it crops out in men who eulogize shakespeare hower homer and dante aud and never read thew them in men who go into hysterical raptures over poetry and who stumble through a v verse e arse of longfellow as a man maa aoel broes down braim in the oark eark two steps at a time in all men iu in short who are literary because they live in a literary lile or wish to mingle in a literary society but who lave have no literary instincts but toe worst kind of literary pedant is id atie word lurler the lavish of guage aage who is too frequently ap prodigal al of f speech ant and a miser of ides there is no terror so terrible to the wayfaring man as the finical word purist men blen dread to meet delicate language lau gaage epi epicure cures as much as the good wife dreads the tae food epicure educated up to the delmonico standard W with ith his bis conscience converged in nis stomach whom her husband takes home bobu to dinner hard headed mea f ahe t whose limber lips are facile enough to abero elve coall to all the colloquial isms iams 0 of the english tongue tingue anil and even to some of the heretic slang phrases that will be good english as soon ay ae the con ic lie nary makers get their eyes open are terrified in the company of these prim purists sad and stand in their presence awkward and confused as speechless spee culess caless as if struck by lock lockjaw lockow jw the they dare not speak the ilie icy frigidity or of the finical phrase builder has frozen the genial current of their bouls these never hold bold a conversation with anybody it always descends ino info a soliloquy for or no man jas the hardihood to dialogue witt with ahem what is a plain blunt man to do in such a case his hia lips are padlocked he cannot use his tongue let les nim use his legs let him seek some solitary retread retreat anti and rest his face language is not made by the dictionary man the dictionary man is made by bv thy the language words grow like plants and if some of them are accounted weeds it is well to remember emersons saying A weed I 1 is only a plant whose use aas not been discovered some of hese luxuriant slang phrases lufte the much despised tomato we edmay some time boast the most sturdy growth in our linguistic garden at any rate it is pretty evident that a man cannot row erow over lit literary in this ibis speech and tia retain his friends you cannot enjoy many companionable strolls with a friend if you persist in walking on brilts you must get on the same stratum stra of atmosphere as the man with eliom you would fellowship and oot not attempt to breathe a rarer ether than ne lie A man whose language it if and literary must not complain it if he soon grows familiar with the echo of his own voice |
