The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language Part 22

"Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, "yes, I think I do."

"I do mine," said Polly "Have you any brothers and sisters?"

"No, have you?"

"Mine are dead."

"O!" said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he would not have known how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was always ready for him.

"What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "are you going to do to amuse me, after dinner?"

"Upon my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, "I have not the slightest idea!"

"Then I tell you what," said Polly. "Have you got any cards at the house?"

"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers, in a boastful vein.

"Very well. Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me. You mustn't blow, you know."

"O no!" said Barbox Brothers. "No, no, no! No blowing! Blowing's not fair."

He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself by saying, compa.s.sionately: "What a funny man you are!"

Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by all-conquering Jack, than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.

"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession:

"What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" said Polly.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession:

"Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember it, you know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards?"

He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavor to retain it in his mind. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of which every relishing clause began with the words: "So this," or "And so this." As, "So this boy;" or, "So this fairy;" or "And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep." The interest of the romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy appet.i.te. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and swelled. There were many tributary circ.u.mstances, but the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious attentive face, an ear bent down, much jostled on the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by and found deficient.

Exercise. Rewrite this little story, locating the scene in your own town and describing yourself in the place of Barbox Bros. Make as few changes in the wording as possible.

CHAPTER X.

THE EPIGRAMMATIC STYLE:

Stephen Crane.

A peculiarly modern style is that in which very short sentences are used for pungent effect. If to this characteristic of short sentences we add a slightly unusual though perfectly obvious use of common words, we have what has been called the "epigrammatic style," though it does not necessarily have any epigrams in it. It is the modern newspaper and advertis.e.m.e.nt writer's method of emphasis; and if it could be used in moderation, or on occasion, it would be extremely effective. But to use it at all times and for all subjects is a vice distinctly to be avoided.

Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" is written almost wholly in this style. If we read three or four chapters of this story we may see how tiring it is for the mind to be constantly jerked along. At the same time, in a brief advertising booklet probably no other style that is sufficiently simple and direct would be as likely to attract immediate attention and hold it for the short time usually required to read an advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Crane's style has a literary turn and quality which will not be found in the epigrammatic advertis.e.m.e.nt, chiefly because Crane is descriptive, while the advertiser is merely argumentative. However, the advertis.e.m.e.nt writer will learn the epigrammatic style most surely and quickly by studying the literary form of it.

From "The Red Badge of Courage."

The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.

As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like bra.s.s devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving ma.s.ses of men.

He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields...

His thoughts as he walked fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.

The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed that he could measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.

Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past. He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions. He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the gra.s.s of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of youthful summer.

Exercise.

After reading this pa.s.sage over a dozen times very slowly and carefully, and copying it phrase by phrase, continue the narrative in Crane's style through two more paragraphs, bringing the story of this day's doing to some natural conclusion.

CHAPTER XI.

THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY:

The Bible, Franklin, Lincoln.

We have all heard that the simplest style is the strongest; and no doubt most of us have wondered how this could be, as we turned over in our minds examples of what seemed to us simplicity, comparing them with the rhetorical, the lofty, and the sublime pa.s.sages we could call to mind.

Precisely this wonder was in the minds of a number of very well educated people who gathered to attend the dedicatory exercises of the Gettysburg monument, and Abraham Lincoln gave them one of the very finest ill.u.s.trations in the whole range of the world's history, of how simplicity can be stronger than rhetoric. Edward Everett was the orator of the day, and he delivered a most polished and brilliant oration. When he sat down the friends of Lincoln regretted that this homely countryman was to be asked to "say a few words," since they felt that whatever he might say would be a decided anticlimax. The few words that he did utter are the immortal "Gettysburg speech," by far the shortest great oration on record.

Edward Everett afterward remarked, "I wish I could have produced in two hours the effect that Lincoln produced in two minutes." The tremendous effect of that speech could have been produced in no other way than by the power of simplicity, which permits the compression of more thought into a few words than any other style-form. All rhetoric is more or less windy.

The quality of a simple style is that in order to be anything at all it must be solid metal all the way through.

The Bible, the greatest literary production in the world as atheists and Christians alike admit, is our supreme example of the wonderful power of simplicity, and it more than any other one book has served to mould the style of great writers. To take a purely literary pa.s.sage, what could be more affecting, yet more simple, than these words from Ecclesiastes?

From "Ecclesiastes."

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened; and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the gra.s.shoppers shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto G.o.d who gave it.

This is the sort of barbaric poetry that man in his natural and original state might be supposed to utter. It lacks the nice logic and fine polish of Greek culture; indeed its grammar is somewhat confused. But there is a higher logic than the logic of grammar, namely the logic of life and suffering. The man who wrote this pa.s.sage had put a year of his existence into every phrase; and that is why it happens that we can find here more phrases quoted by everybody than we can even in the best pa.s.sage of similar length in Shakspere or any other modern writer.

We see in proverbs how by the power of simplicity an enormous amount of thought can be packed into a single line. Some of these have taken thousands of years to grow; and because so much time is required in the making of them, our facile modern writers never produce any. Their fleeting epigrams appear to be spurious coin the moment they are placed side by side with Franklin's epigrams, for instance. Franklin worked his proverbs into the vacant s.p.a.ces in his almanac during a period of twenty-five years, and then collected all those proverbs into a short paper ent.i.tled, "The Way to Wealth." It may be added, also, that he did not even originate most of these sayings, but only gave a new stamp to what he found in Hindu and Arabic records. For all that, Poor Richard's Almanac is more likely to become immortal than even Franklin's own name and fame.

The history of Bacon's essays is another fine example of what simplicity can effect in the way of greatness. These essays were originally nothing more than single sentences jotted down in a notebook, probably as an aid to conversation. How many times they were worked over we have no means of knowing; but we have three printed editions of the essays, each of which is immensely developed from what went before.

In reading the following lines from Franklin, let us reflect that not less than a year went to the writing of every phrase that can be called great; and that if we could spend a year in writing a single sentence, it might be as well worth preserving as these proverbs. Some men have been made famous by one sentence, usually because it somehow expressed the substance of a lifetime.