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 be come 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.
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