To be sure, our understanding of them as individuals will
increase the worth and magnitude of our output. But clearly we must have
large dealings with them in the aggregate.
This chapter and the following, therefore, are given over to the study of
words in combination. As in all matters, there is a negative as well as a
positive side to be reckoned with. Let us consider the negative side
first.
Correct diction is too often insipid. There is nothing wrong with it, but
it does not interest us--it lacks character, lacks color, lacks power. It
too closely resembles what we conceive of the angels as having--
impeccability without the warmth of camaraderie. Speech, like a man,
should be alive. It need not, of course, be boisterous. It may be intense
in a quiet, modest way. But if it too sedulously observes all the _Thou
shalt not's_ of the rhetoricians, it will refine the vitality out of
itself and leave its hearers unmoved.
That is why you should become a disciple of the pithy, everyday
conversationalist and of the rough-and-ready master of harangue as well as
of the practitioner of precise and scrupulous discourse. Many a speaker or
writer has thwarted himself by trying to be "literary.
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