A look of consternation spread over the faces of the boys at the failure of their spokesman, and there were many whisperings of "I told you so!"
It was now the foreman's turn. He drew his hand across his mouth and began as follows:
"Mr. Chairman, and Members of Hose Company Number 10: It is—it is—it is—it is with a—with a——(Looks at ceiling, and shifts his position uneasily. Begins over again, with a very confident air.) Mr. Chairman, and Members of Hose Company Number 10: It is with—with a—with a—with a—a—a—a—a heart——(Stops, stares wildly at the ceiling, floor and company. Begins over again, very angrily, and with his body in fighting attitude.) Mr. Chairman, and Members of Hose Company Number 10: I—I—I—it is—it is with a heart—with a heart full—-full——(Stops. Very loud and violently.) Ah! give us yer trumpet!"
DON'T USE BIG WORDS
ANONYMOUS
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact 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 and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.
In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully, purely. Keep from "slang"; don't put on airs; say what you mean; mean what you say. And don't use big words!
DER MULE SHTOOD ON DER STEAMBOAD DECK
ANONYMOUS
Der mule shtood on der steamboad deck,
For der land he wouldn't dread,
Dhey tied a halder rount his neck,
Und vacked him over der headt.
But obstinate und braced he shtood,
As born der scene to rule,
A creature of der holt-back brood—
A shtubborn, shtedfast mule.