“style”—­and so spoils himself, is known to the editor of every magazine.  Any editorial office force can insert missing commas and semicolons, and iron out blunders in the English; but it has not the time, if indeed the ability, to instil life into a lifeless manuscript.  A living style is rarer than an inoffensive one, and the road of literary ambition is strewn with failures due to “correctness.”

Cultivate readiness, even daring, of utterance.  A single turn of expression may be so audacious that it plucks an idea from its shroud or places within us an emotion still quivering and warm.  Sustained discourse may unflaggingly clarify or animate.  But such triumphs are beyond the reach of those, whether speakers or writers, who are constantly pausing to grope for words.  This does not mean that scrutiny of individual words is wasted effort.  Such scrutiny becomes the basis indeed of the more venturesome and inspired achievement.  We must serve our apprenticeship to language.  We must know words as a general knows the men under him—­all their ranks, their capabilities, their shortcomings, the details and routine of their daily existence.  But the end for which we gain our understanding must be to hurl these words upon the enemy, not as disconnected units, but as battalions, as brigades, as corps, as armies.  Dr. Johnson, one of the most effective talkers in all history, resolved early in life that, always, and whatever topic might be broached, he would on the moment express his thoughts and feelings with as much vigor and felicity as if he had unlimited leisure to draw on.  And Patrick Henry, one of the few really irresistible orators, was wont to plunge headlong into a sentence and trust to God Almighty to get him out.

EXERCISE — Tameness

1.  Study Appendix I (The Drift of Our Rural Population Cityward).  Do you regard it as written simply, with force and natural feeling?  Or does it show lack of spontaneity?—­suffer from an unnatural and self-conscious manner of writing?  Is the style one you would like to cultivate for your own use?

2.  Express, if you can, in more vigorous language of your own, the thought of the editorial.

3.  Think of some one you have known who has the gift of racy colloquial utterance.  Make a list of offhand, homely, or picturesque expressions you have heard him employ, and ask yourself what it is in these expressions that has made them linger in your memory.  With them in mind, and with your knowledge of the man’s methods of imparting his ideas vividly, try to make your version of the editorial more forceful still.