THE PLEONAST.
“This barren verbiage current among men.”—Tennyson.
The habit of this talker is to encumber his ideas with such a plethora of words as frequently prove fatal to their sense. Some of this class employ fine words because they are fine, with perfect indifference to the signification: others do it from “that fastidiousness,” as one says, “which makes some men walk on the highroad as if the whole business of their life was to keep their boots clean.”
Mr. Hill was a man very much accustomed to talk in this way. He had read little, but had studied the dictionary with considerable diligence. His ideas were few and far between, but his words were many and diversified, long and hard, sometimes connected in the most absurd and ludicrous manner. Most of the illiterate who heard him thought he was highly educated and intelligent, while men of taste and judgment considered him greatly deficient in the first rudiments of correct speaking.
Mr. Hill and his friend Mr. Pope made a call one day last spring upon Squire Foster. As they came to the front door of his house Mr. Hill said to Mr. Pope,—
“Will you do me the exuberant honour of agitating the communicator of the ingress door, that the maid may receive the information that some attendant individuals are leisurely waiting at the exterior of the mansion to propose their interrogatories after the resident proprietor.”
“Did you want me to pull the door bell for you?” asked Mr. Pope.
“If you have that extremely obliging state of mind, which will permit you to do that deed of exceeding condescension, I shall experience the deepest emotionals of unprecedented gratitude,” replied Mr. Hill.
“Why didn’t you say, If you please? and have done with it,” replied Mr. Pope, in a manner which indicated impatience at his gibberish.
The servant appeared and opened the door.