Nay, we must carry our condemnation to an even greater extreme. The man who on public occasions covers his breast with decorations, the insignia of orders, the badges of high service or of mere distinction such as results from possession of the badge, is guilty of immodesty. “Why do you not wear your Victoria Cross?” the only recipient of it who ever failed to wear it was asked. “When I wish people to know how valiant I am in battle,” was the reply, “I will tell them.”
But below this lowest deep of vanity there is a lower deep of cupidity—and something more. The custom of displaying wedding presents duly labeled with the givers’ names and publishing the list in the newspapers supplies a very “genteel” method of extortion to those who have conscientious scruples against highway robbery. That extortion is very often the conscious intent I am far from affirming; but that such is the practical effect many a reader inadequately provided with this world’s goods will pause at this point feelingly to aver. But he is a lofty soul indeed if at the next silent demand he do not stand and deliver as meekly as heretofore. Looked at how one may please, it is a bad business, not greatly superior in point of morality to that of the sneak-thief who is one of its perils, and with whose intelligent activity its existence may, one hopes, become in time altogether incompatible.
FOR BREVITY AND CLARITY
MR. GEORGE R. SIMS once “invited proposals” for a brief and convenient name for the misdemeanor known in England as “traveling in a class of railway carriage superior to that for which the defendant had taken a ticket.” It is a ludicrous fact that the offense has never had another name, nor is it quite easy to invent a better one off-hand. I should like to know what it is in Esperanto. We have in this country certain clumsy phrases which might advantageously be condensed into single words. For example, to “join in the holy bonds of wedlock” might become to “jedlock.” The society editor would be spared much labor if he could say of the unhappy couple that they were “jedlocked,” or “lemaltared,”—the latter word meaning, of course, “led to the matrimonial altar.” Many of the ordinary reporter’s favorite expressions could be treated in the same practical fashion. The familiar “much-needed rest” would become simply “mest.” The “devouring element” would be “delement,” and have done with it. When it is, as so very frequently it is, necessary to say that something “reflects credit” on somebody, the verb “to refledit” would serve an honorable and useful purpose. Instead of writing of a man freshly dead that he was “much esteemed by all who knew him,” we should say that he was “mestewed.” By such simple and rational devices as these the language would be notably improved, and in a newspaper report of the birth of a rich man’s child a few lines could be saved for the death of a poet.
As the words “not either” have been condensed into “neither,” “not ever” into “never” and “no one” into “none,” why should not the negative or privative, when followed by a vowel, be always compounded in the same way? For example, “neven” for “not even,” “nin” and “nout” for “not in” and “not out.” “Nirish” for “no Irish,” and so forth. Nay, it is not necessary that a vowel follow the negative: “no Popery” could be “nopery,” “no matter,” “natter,” and “never-to-be-forgotten,” “notten,” or “netten.” The principle is pregnant with possibilities.
While reforming the language I crave leave to introduce an improvement in punctuation—the snigger point, or note of cachinnation. It is written thus ◡ and represents, as nearly as may be, a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence; or, without the stop, to every jocular or ironical clause of a sentence otherwise serious—thus: “Mr. Edward Bok is the noblest work of God ◡.” “Our respected and esteemed ◡ contemporary, Mr. Slyvester Vierick, whom for his virtues we revere and for his success envy ◡, is going to the devil as fast as his two heels can carry him.” “Deacon Harvey, a truly good man ◡, is self-made in the largest sense of the term; for although he was born great, wise and rich, the deflection of his nose is the work of his own coat-sleeve.”
To many a great writer the new point will be as useful as was the tail to his unlettered ancestor. By a single stroke of his pen at the finish, the illustrious humorist who reviews books for The Nation can give to his dismalist plagiarism from Mulgrub’s Theory of Quaternions all the charm and value of a lively personal anecdote, as he would relate it. By liberally sprinkling his literary criticism with it, Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie can give to the work a lilt and vivacity that will readily distinguish it from a riding-master’s sermon on the mount; the points will apprise his reader of a humorous intention not otherwise observable as a factor in the humorous effect. Embellished with this useful mark, even the writings of that sombre soul, Mr. John Kendrick Bangs, will have a quality that will at least prevent the parsons from reading them at the graveside as passages from the burial service.