A Cure for Big Words.
Here is a good story of how a father cured his son of verbal grandiloquence. The boy wrote from college, using such large words that the father replied with the following letter:—“In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating superficial sentimentalities, and philosophical or pscyhological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversation possess a clarified conciseness, compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabical profundity, pompous prolixity, and ventriloquial vapidity. Shun double entendre and prurient jocosity, whether obscure or apparent. In other words, speak truthfully, naturally, clearly, purely, but do not use big words.”
[142.] With a pair each of four different weights, 1 lb. up to 170 lbs. can be weighed. What are the weights?
[143.] A man going “on the spree” spends on the first day 10s. 5d., the second 18s., the third £1 8s. 7d., the fourth £2 2s. 8d., and so on at that rate of increase until he has spent all he had—£183 6s. 8d. How many days was he on the spree?
[144.] Divide one shilling into two parts, so that one will be 2½d. more than the other.