Produced by David A. Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>
Life's Enthusiasms
By
David Starr Jordan
President of Leland Stanford Junior University
Boston:
American Unitarian Association
MDCCCCVI
To Melville Best Anderson
That is poetry in which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the right word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help toward doing this, instinctively automatically as other habits are acquired. In the affairs of life, then, is no form of good manners, no habit of usage more valuable than the habit of good English.