—“have power to ’suage
The tumults of a troubled mind
And are as balm to fester’d wounds.”
If bad, they corrupt and may flourish, as Carlyle said: “Like a hemlock forest after a thousand years.”
“Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.”
One of the most historic structures in the world was the Campanile, or the bell-tower of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. Not long since it fell. One aged Lugui Vendrasco knew its danger. For ten years he had not ceased to beg the government to allow him to put the Campanile in better order. But his warnings were unheeded. One Sunday morning he took his son to see it. As the young man looked upon the crack he said, “That’s nothing. A small crack like that can really do no harm to such a building.” Replying, the father said, “Son, it is not the crack. It is that of which the crack is the effect and symbol. Our Campanile is doomed.” The next morning it fell with an awful crash. In like manner many a man has come tumbling down. His character was not safe because of some flaw in it. Improper words prove its great defect as the crack did the weakness of the Campanile.
Stephen Price, once Mayor of New York, and a warm friend to boys, lost his life in a steamboat disaster. When his body was recovered, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket-book. It was so worn with oft reading that the words were scarcely legible, but two paragraphs were finally made out, one of which was: “Good company and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue.” In fact, these are inseparable. Conversation is a reflex of character, and no boy can associate with another who delights in slangy, smutty talk without being more or less contaminated.
IMPROPER WORDS.
A very common and bad habit of some boys is the attachment of improper words to a sentence, as if it made it more binding. These in no sense give grace or beauty to language. They do not round out a period or enrich a metaphor. They define nothing, bound nothing, measure nothing, mean nothing, accomplish nothing, and he who uses them should be shunned. Vulgar expressions are never in order. “They help,” as South says, “no one’s education or manners. They are disgusting to the refined, abominable to the good, insulting to those with whom one associates, degrading to the mind, unprofitable, needless and injurious to society,” and beneath the dignity of any self-respecting person. “Are there any ladies around?” said a young officer to a group of others, “I’ve a splendid story to tell.” “There are no ladies present,” said General Ulysses S. Grant, who overheard the remark, “but there are gentlemen here, sir, and what is not fit for a lady to hear, is unfit for a gentleman.”