is often improperly used for the second; as, "Onions are a healthy vegetable." A man, if he is in good health, is healthy; the food he eats, if it is not deleterious, is wholesome. A healthy ox makes wholesome food. We speak of healthy surroundings, a healthy climate, situation, employment, and of wholesome food, advice, examples. Healthful is commonly used in the sense of conducive to health, virtue, morality; as, healthful exercise, the healthful spirit of the community-meaning that the spirit that prevails in the community is conducive to virtue and good morals.

Help. This word is often used colloquially in the sense of avoid, prevent, in a very peculiar manner; as, “I'll give him no more than I can help"; whereas, regularly, it would be "not help," which is contrary to idiom. It is better to avoid the expression.

Helpmate. The dictionaries suggest that this word is a corruption of help and meet, as we find these words used in Gen. ii, 18, “I will make him a help meet for him,” and that the proper word is helpmeet. If, as is possible, the words in Genesis mean, "I will make him a help meet [suitable] for him," then neither helpmate nor helpmeet has any raison d'être. Helpmate is to be preferred.

Hence. This adverb is often used when it serves no purpose; thus, “It will be many years hence, we apprehend, before," etc. Futurity is fully expressed with will be.

He was given, or was tendered, and like usage. See PASSIVE.

Highfalutin. This is a style of writing often called the freshman style. It is much indulged in by very young men, and by a class of older men that instinctively try to make up in clatter for what they lack in matter. Examples of this kind of writing are abundant in Prof. L. T. Townsend's Art of Speech, which, as examples, are all the better for not

being of that exaggerated description sometimes met with in the newspapers. Vol. i, p. 131: "Very often adverbs, prepositions, and relatives drift so far from their moorings as to lose themselves, or make attachments where they do not belong." Again, p. 135: "Every law of speech enforces the statement that there is no excuse for such inflated and defective style. [Such style!] To speak thus is treason in the realms and under the laws of language." Again, p. 175: "Cultivate figure-making habitudes. This is done by asking the spiritual import of every physical object seen; also by forming the habit of constantly metaphorizing. Knock at the door of anything met which [that] interests, and ask, 'Who lives here?' The process is to look, then close the eyes, then look within." The blundering inanity of this kind of writing is equaled only by its bumptious grandiloquence.

On page 137, Dr. Townsend quotes this wholesome admonition from Coleridge: “If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be!"

As an example of reportorial highfalutin I submit the following: "The spirit of departed day had joined communion with the myriad ghosts of centuries, and four full hours fled into eternity before the citizens of many parts of the town found out there was a freshet here at all."

A school committee in Massachusetts recommend exercises in English composition in these terms: "Next to the pleasure that pervades the corridors of the soul when it is entranced by the whiling witchery that presides over it consequent upon the almost divine productions of Mozart, Haydn, and Handel, whether these are executed by magician concert parts in deep and highly matured melody from artistic modulated intonations of the finely-cultured human

voice, or played by some fairy-fingered musician upon the trembling strings of the harp or piano, comes the charming delight we experience from the mastery of English prose, and the spellbinding wizards of song who by their art of divination through their magic wand, the pen, have transformed scenes hitherto unknown, and made them as immortal as those spots of the Orient and mountain haunts of the gods, whether of sunny Italy or of tuneful, heroic Greece."

We may be sure that the writer of this thought it beautiful. To him, beauty was not beauty unless adorned.

Hints. "Never write about any matter that you do not well understand. If you clearly understand all about your matter you will never want thoughts, and thoughts instantly become words.

"One of the greatest of all faults in writing and in speaking is this: the using of many words to say little. In order to guard yourself against this fault, inquire what is the substance, or amount, of what you have said. Take a long speech of some talking Lord and put down upon paper what the amount of it is. You will most likely find that the amount is very small; but, at any rate, when you get it, you will then be able to examine it and to tell what it is worth. A very few examinations of the sort will so frighten you that you will be for ever after upon your guard against talking a great deal and saying little."-Cob

bett.

“Be simple, be unaffected, be honest in your speaking and writing. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual husbandry; let home be home, not a residence; a place a place, not a locality; and so of the rest. Where a short word will do, you always lose by using a

long one you lose in clearness; you lose in honest expression of your meaning; and, in the estimation of al! men who are qualified to judge, you lose in reputation for ability. The only true way to shine, even in this false world, is to be modest and unassuming. Falsehood may be a very thick crust, but in the course of time truth will find a place to break through. Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us, but simplicity and straightforwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferiors, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are."Dean Alford.

"Go critically over what you have written, and strike out every word, phrase, and clause which [that] it is found will leave the sentence neither less clear nor less forcible than it is with them."-Swinton.

"With all watchfulness, it is astonishing what slips are made, even by good writers, in the employment of an inappropriate word. In Gibbon's Rise and Fall the following instance occurs: 'Of nineteen tyrants who started up after the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace or a natural death.' And not long since a worthy Scotch minister, at the close of the services, intimated his intention of visiting some of his people as follows: 'I intend during this week to visit in Mr. M- -'s district, and will on this occasion take the opportunity of embracing all the servants in the district.' When worthies such as these offend, who shall call the bellman in question as he cries, 'Lost, a silver-handled silk lady's parasol'?

The proper arrangement of words into sentences and paragraphs gives clearness and strength. To attain a clear and pithy style, it may be necessary to cut down, to re

arrange, and to rewrite whole passages of an essay. Gibbon wrote his Memoirs six times, and the first chapter of his History three times. Beginners are always slow to prune or cast away any thought or expression which may have cost labor. They forget that brevity is no sign of thoughtlessness. Much consideration is needed to compress the details of any subject into small compass. Essences are more difficult to prepare, and therefore more valuable, than weak solutions. Pliny wrote to one of his friends, 'I have not time to write you a short letter, therefore I have written you a long one.' Apparent elaborateness is always distasteful and weak. Vividness and strength are the product of an easy command of those small trenchant Saxon monosyllables which abound in the English language."-Leisure Hour.

"As a rule, the student will do well to banish for the present all thought of ornament or elegance, and to aim only at expressing himself plainly and clearly. The best ornament is always that which comes unsought. Let him not beat about the bush, but go straight to the point. Let him remember that what is written is meant to be read; that time is short; and that, other things being equal, the fewer words the better. . . . Repetition is a far less serious fault than obscurity. Young writers are often unduly afraid of repeating the same word, and require to be reminded that it is always better to use the right word over again than to replace it by [with] a wrong one-and a word which is liable to be misunderstood is a wrong one. A frank repetition of a word sometimes has even a kind of charm-as bearing the stamp of truth, the foundation of all excellence of style."- Hall.

"A young writer is afraid to be simple; he has no faith in beauty unadorned, hence he crowds his sentences with