"The Prompter thought of the grave diction of sober, moral writers, and the pompous, flowing style of modern historians. Fame began now to prick up his vanity to try an imitation of the great Dr. Robertson, Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Gibbon, those giants of literature. He thought if he could muster dollars enough to buy a style-mill, which those heroes of science undoubtedly used to cut out sentences for their works, he should succeed to a tittle. But then it occurred to him that when he had cut and shaped his periods into exact squares, diamonds, pentagons, parallelograms, and other mathematical figures, they might not contain very clear, precise, definite ideas; one half of his readers would not understand him. The style-mill, then, or, as some people contemptuously call it, the word-mill, would not answer the Prompter's purpose of doing as much good as possible by making men wiser and better.
"At length he determined to have nothing to do with a brilliant flow of words, a pompous elegance of diction; for what has the world to do with the sound of words? The Prompter's business is with the world at large, and the mass of mankind are concerned only with common things. A dish of high-seasoned turtle is rarely found; it sometimes occurs at a gentleman's table, and then the chance is it produces a surfeit. But good solid roast beef is a common dish for all men; it sits easy on the stomach, it supports, it strengthens and invigorates. Vulgar sayings and proverbs, so much despised by the literary epicures, the Chesterfields of the age, are the roast beef of science. They contain the experience, the wisdom, of nations and ages compressed into the compass of a nutshell. To crack the shell and extract the contents to feed those who have appetites is the aim of this little book."
The several essays are expansive of the familiar sayings or proverbs which stand for their titles, as, "It will do for the present," "I told you so," "He is sowing his wild oats," "He would have his own way," "A stitch in time saves nine," "Any other time will do as well," "He has come out at the little end of the horn." The papers are all short, and no time is wasted in coming at the point; indeed, there is a succession of thrusts in each paper, and the reader is prodded more or less efficiently at each step. Here, to give a single example, is Number XVIII.: "What is everybody's business is nobody's."
"The consequence is that everybody and nobody are just the same thing,—a truth most pointedly exemplified in the kitchen of a Southern nabob. 'Phil!' says the mistress, with the air of an empress. Phil appears. 'Go tell Peg to tell Sue to come along here and pick up a needle.' 'Yes, ma'am,' answers Phil, and waddles back like a duck. 'Peg, mistress says you must tell Sue to go to her and pick up a needle.' Peg carries the message to Sue, but Sue is busy cleaning a candlestick. 'Well,' says Sue, 'I will go as soon as I have done.' The mistress wants the needle; she waits ten or fifteen minutes, grows impatient. 'Phil, did you tell Peg what I told you?' 'Ye—s, ma'am,' says Phil, drawling out her answer. 'Well, why don't the jade do what I told her? Peg, come here, you hussy! Did you tell Sue what Phil told you?' 'Yes, ma'am.' 'Well, why don't the lazy trollop come along? Here I am waiting for the needle! Tell the jade to come instantly!'
"Risum teneatis? Hold, my readers don't know Latin; but can you help laughing, my friends? Laugh, then, at the Southern nabob, with twenty fat slaves in his kitchen,—laugh well at him, for there is cause enough; then come home and laugh.
"You want a good school, perhaps, and so do your neighbors. But whose business is it to find a teacher, a house, etc.? 'John, I wish you would speak to William to ask Joseph to desire our friend Daniel to set about getting a good school. We want one very much; it is a shame to us to be so negligent.' This is the last we hear of the good school. What is everybody's business is nobody's.
"You want to collect the public taxes into the treasury of the State. The towns choose constables or collectors of taxes. No security is taken for a faithful discharge of the trust, but a law is passed, which says, like the mistress to her wenches, Treasurer, do you tell the constable to collect and pay over the taxes. The collector, like the nabob's slave, has no motive for diligence; he gets not half enough for collecting to pay for his horse-flesh. He lounges about a year or two, squanders away the money, and where is his bondsman? The town! Right, the town is his bondsman. The law says, Treasurer, do you issue your execution against the sheriff, and command him to levy upon the constable, who is not worth a farthing; get a return of non est inventus; then levy upon his bondsman, the town; take the estate of everybody, post it for sale, get it receipted and not delivered; sue the receipts-man, get the money, make the town pay it twice,—27,000l. in arrears! It is a shame! Oh, such a bustle with Mr. Everybody, and all to pick up a needle! The State is like the nabob's family. 'Phil, tell Peg to tell Sue to pick up the needle.'
"Now in fact it is a very easy thing to pick up a needle, but if one cannot stoop to pick it up another ought to be paid for it. One servant who is paid for his work will pick up more needles than twenty fat, lounging slaves that think it a drudgery and get nothing for it.
"It would be a good thing for a State to know that everybody's business is nobody's. Every man in Connecticut is responsible for a faithful collection of public money; then it is nobody's business. The Prompter never saw a watch with two mainsprings, much less with two hundred. One spring is enough, and that government, the executive of which depends on many springs, will jar, clash, stop, and be always out of order,—27,000l. in arrears.
"Appoint one collector, the treasurer; make him answerable for the collection of the whole state revenue. Let him appoint his deputies; let them be few, but let them be paid. All the difficulty will vanish; one spring will move the whole; the state treasury, like the federal, will be supplied; no arrears then, no levying executions on towns."