A second class of words is made up of those you speak on occasions either special or formal—­occasions when you are trying, perhaps not to show off, but at least to put your best linguistic foot foremost.  Some of them have a meaning you are not quite sure of; some of them seem too ostentatious for workaday purposes; some of them you might have been using but somehow have not.  Words of this class are not your bosom friends.  They are your speaking acquaintance, or perhaps a little better than that.  You must convert them into friends, into prompt and staunch supporters in time of need.  That is to say, you must put them into class one.  In bringing about this change of footing, you yourself must make the advances.  You must say, Go to, I will bear them in mind as I would a person I wished to cultivate.  When occasion rises, you must introduce them into your talk.  You will feel a bit shy about it, for introductions are difficult to accomplish gracefully; you will steal a furtive glance at your hearer perchance, and another at the word itself, as you would when first labeling a man “my friend Mr. Blank.”  But the embarrassment is momentary, and there is no other way.  Assume a friendship if you have it not, and presently the friendship will be real.  You must be steadfast in intention; for the words that have held aloof from you are many, and to unloose all at once on a single victim would well-nigh brand you criminal.  But you will make sure headway, and will be conscious besides that no other class of words in the language will so well repay the mastering.  For these are words you do use, and need to use more, and more freely—­words your own experience stamps as valuable, if not indeed vital, to you.

The third class of words is made up of those you do not speak at all, but sometimes write.  They are acquaintance one degree farther removed than those of the second class.  Your task is to bring them into class two and thence into class one—­that is, to introduce them into your more formal speech, and from this gradually into your everyday speech.

The fourth class of words is made up of those you recognize when you hear or read them, but yourself never employ.  They are acquaintance of a very distant kind.  You nod to them, let us say, and they to you; but there the intercourse ends.  Obviously, they are not to be brought without considerable effort into a position of tried and trusted friendship.  And shall we be absolutely honest?—­some of them may not justify such assiduous care as their complete subjugation would call for.  But even these you should make your feudal retainers.  You should constrain them to membership in class three, and at your discretion in class two.

Apart from the words in class four, you will not to this point have made actual additions to your vocabulary.  But you will have made your vocabulary infinitely more serviceable.  You will be like a man with a host of friends where before, when his necessities were sorest, he found (along with some friends) many distant and timid acquaintance.