ably, diary, for the sort of daily record Samuel Pepys so delighted to make. These words diary, diurnal, and journal at one time offered themselves for use as exact equivalents. But popular usage drew them apart, until each now carries a sense of its own: thus diurnal means day by day, or daily; journal refers to one sort of account book, to a newspaper, or to a daily record of any sort; while diary usually implies a less formal recital of daily incidents or happenings in one's everyday life.

Remember in your choice of synonyms that a short word is always better than a long one, if it carries your meaning equally well. The Saxon word daily is good enough for anybody's use and actually better than the Latin form diurnal; yet one may chance to need a three-syllabled word to help out his rime or his rhythm in the writing of verse, or in the stately formal prose of oratory a speaker may wish sonorous, or high-sounding terms, as better suited to a lofty thought.

In the following passage from Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe," you will see how the lowly-housed Saxon throve among peasants, while the lordly Norman-French was heard alone in palace and castle. Gurth the swineherd and Wamba the jester, talking together in Saxon, discourse as follows:

"The curse of St. Withold upon these infernal porkers!" said the swineherd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. Wamba, up and help me an thou beest a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain the wind on them; and when thou'st got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them before thee as gently as so many innocent lambs."

"Truly," said Wamba, without stirring from the spot, "I have consulted my legs upon this matter, and they are altogether of opinion that to carry my gay garments through these sloughs would be an act of unfriendship to my sovereign person and royal wardrobe; wherefore, Gurth, I advise thee to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into Normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort."

"The swine turned Normans to my comfort!" quoth Gurth ; 66 expound that to me, Wamba, for my brain is too dull and my mind too vexed to read riddles."

"Why, how call you those grunting beasts running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba.

"Swine, fool-swine," said the herd; "every fool knows that." "And swine is good Saxon," said the jester; " but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?"

"Pork," answered the swineherd.

"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, “and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles. What dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?" "It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate."

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Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba in the same tone; "there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner: he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment."

"By St. Dunstan," answered Gurth, "thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us

to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders.

The finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either the will or the power to protect the unfortunate Saxon.”

EXERCISES

I Mental: Study the following lists, observing (1) which columns are most alike; (2) which words of those here given are unchanged from the original Latin forms:

II Oral: Show that you understand the differences between the related forms by using both words of every pair correctly in one sentence or in two; as, for example: Only by taking care can we cure a bad habit. Consult a dictionary if necessary in order to obtain an intelligent use of the words.

III Written: The same.

IV Mental: Compare carefully the first and the second columns of words in Exercise I, trying to decide whether the words of the first column seem to you on the whole more or less musical in sound than those of the second.

O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,

The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet

Could tell our love and make thee know it,

Among the nations bright beyond compare?

From the "Commemoration Ode," by James Russell
Lowell.*

* Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company, authorized pub

lishers of Lowell's works.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NEWSPAPER AND NEWSPAPER ENGLISH

The newspaper is one most remarkable feature of our modern life. For a penny, or at least for two, one may buy daily eight or ten pages of news, comment upon public affairs, and advertisements of all things wanted and for sale in store and market. America has more than twice as many newspapers as any other country, boasting, in 1901, over twelve thousand five hundred. Surely this is the newspaper age.

Now, the men who edit these twelve thousand five hundred newspapers have come to write much as they speak; hence everybody understands at once what they say. The great art of the newspaper writer and you may be sure it is an art- is that of being able to put things" in the strongest manner and in the fewest words. The chief lesson in newspaper work is constantly "Be brief," and then "Be more brief," for this is the first step toward learning how to "put things."

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Just here lay one great power of Abraham Lincoln's; and you will be interested to know how he gained this:

Before he [Mr. Lincoln] was nominated for the presidency he had attracted the notice of people by a remarkable contest in debate with a famous Illinois statesman, Stephen Arnold Douglas. As a consequence Mr. Lincoln received a great many invitations to speak in the Eastern States, and made, among others, a notable speech at the Cooper Union, New York. Shortly after, he spoke also at New Haven, and the Rev. J. P. Gulliver, in a paper in the New York Independent, September 1, 1864, thus reports a conversation which he held with him when travelling in the same railroad car: