“I’m so glad!” she said. “Poor, dear Dad! He was really too taken up with ‘The Deterioration of Language’—don’t you think so? I mean, he seemed to treat it too seriously!—because, after all, it doesn’t very much matter!”
“Doesn’t it?” The Philosopher gave her an amused, half-tolerant glance. “Not perhaps in your opinion! But you are a woman—and young—and your ideas are necessarily limited. You see nothing to deplore in the breaking-down of fine forms of speech—which are really as necessary to the status of a people as fine forms of conduct and manner—”
She stopped her sewing and listened, needle in hand.
“Fine forms of conduct and manner,” he proceeded, with an academical air. “The inroads of slang upon the splendid English used by our forefathers are rather like the vulgar rush of noisy, half-tipsy folk into a beautiful garden full of well-kept trees and flowers. Dr. Maynard is quite right in his views.”
“Oh, yes, I am sure of that!” said Sylvia quickly and eagerly. “But do you really think it is any use for him to teach, or try to teach people these higher views of life and language when they all show so plainly that they don’t want to learn?”
He bent his brows kindly upon her, with a smile.
“Well, if you come to that,” he answered. “Nothing is of any use! Neither language nor literature! I’m sorry to state the fact, but fact it is. Civilisation itself is no use. History will convince you of that. What has become of Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes? They all had language and literature doubtless,—no use! You see? If once you begin to question the uses of any learning you run up against the blank wall of positive negation!”
She looked up.
“Ah, that is only your way of looking at it!” she said. “It is your philosophy!”
“It is every man’s philosophy if he is a philosopher at all,” he replied. “Nothing can alter facts—facts which are proven and plain. A bit of Egyptian papyrus scrawled with hieroglyphs speaks more eloquently for ‘The Deterioration of Language’ than a thousand of our printed volumes.”