PART FIVE

WHAT MAKES ENGLISH EFFECTIVE

CHAPTER XXV

STYLE

I love a plain and natural style, written or spoken; a strong, expressive style, curt and compact; not so much nice and faultless, as animated and direct. · MONTAIGNE.

Style Defined. Style is the manner in which thought is expressed. The word takes its meaning from the instrument used by the ancients in writing upon tablets covered with wax. A writer of ability soon comes to possess what we call his style. He gains an individuality in expression through which he may be known by those familiar with his work, even in fragments of his writing. His style is an essential part of him and of his work.

George Henry Lewes in his Life of Goethe says: "There is not the slightest difference in meaning expressed when I say, 'The dews of night began to fall,' or 'The nightly dews commenced to fall.' Meaning and metre are the same; but one is poetry, the other prose.

paints a landscape in this line,

Wordsworth

The river wanders at its own sweet will.

Let us translate it into other words, The river runneth free from all restraint.' We preserve the meaning, but

where is the landscape?" Yes, and we may add, where is Wordsworth? In the change of expression, Wordsworth vanishes with the landscape. Wordsworth's style is as much a part of Wordsworth as is the well-remembered smile of a friend a part and an essential part of that friend. Note the following example. The truth it sets forth is so well put that it will probably never be better stated. It is the author's style that distinguishes it.

Precept is instruction written in the sand. The tide flows over it, and the record is gone. Example is engraved upon the rock.

William Ellery Channing.

Style in Prose. The examples which follow, all from masters of English, illustrate the marked differences in English prose. As you read you feel that it would be hard to give the thought more fitting expression. No two are alike, while all indicate excellence of style.

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke.

What I mainly dislike in the New Philosophy is the cool impertinence with which an old idea folded in a new garment looks you in the face and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from childhood.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It is strange what humble offices may be performed in a beautiful scene without destroying its poetry. Our fire, red gleaming among the trees, and we beside it, busied with culi

nary rites and spreading out our meal on a mossgrown log, all seemed in unison with the river gliding by and the foliage rustling over us.

Nathaniel Hawthorne,

When the mariner has been tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution before the Senate.

- Daniel Webster.

All this while, Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter, scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff.

Then at last Alan smiled.

"Ay," said he, "now we have a chance."

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The twenty-third Psalm is the nightingale of psalms. It is small, of homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity; but O, it has filled the air of the whole world with melodious joy greater than the heart can conceive.

Blessed be the day on which that Psalm was born. What

would you say of a pilgrim commissioned by God to travel up and down the earth, singing a strange melody which, when one had heard, caused him to forget whatever sorrow he had? Behold such a one; this pilgrim God has sent to speak in every language on the globe. It has charmed more grief to rest than all the philosophy of the world; it has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows than there are sands on the seashore; it has comforted the noble host of the poor; it has sung courage to the army of the disappointed; it has poured balm and consolation into the hearts of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness. Nor is its work done. It will go on singing to your children and my children through all the generations of time.

Henry Ward Beecher.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world.

-Thomas Babington Macaulay

EXERCISES BASED ON PICTURES

Manistique Creek. This view of a little fishing stream in Michigan is taken from the scrapbook of a student who spent two weeks in camp there. It is in the heart of the fishing country.

Imagine yourself out in a motorboat, exploring for a site for your fishing camp, and tell about it.

Planning Your Camp. - Plan a fishing camp for a group of high school girls and two or three teachers; or for a party of boys, with one of their teachers along. Get accurate information as to how a camp should be conducted, and prepare a talk on the topic. Include tents, cooking equipment, dining tent, boats, fishing outfits for the individual and for the party, proper clothing, raincoats, or ponchos. Also study the larder, providing a reasonable outfit including groceries, ice, fruits, and items of staple food. Study the water supply, camp hygiene, and everything necessary for the camp. Do not forget to study what offers in the way of amusements for the camp. Write your plan, trying to put individuality into it.