Oh, How Delicate They Are!

WORDS, I mean. ‘Sure a little warm cup of tea would do them good.’ It was so that that scamp, Billy Dawson, once prescribed for the devil ;and what the father of imaginative literature himself required, a mere word may very well accept. Many of them are Lydia Languishes, consumptive heroines. They are but strangers here; heaven is their home.

The motto for all dictionaries should be

HERE TO-DAY

I am only forty-six years old. To remember a quarter of a century is nothing. A locust tree that I used to run the lawn-mower over is now shading the garret windows. It only proves that locusts are fast growers. Yet in my short life I have outlived the heyday of a good many words. ‘Uplift’ was a hearty fat word in my young days. A ‘high brow’ was a dignified expression for a desirable trait. ‘Ladylike’ was a sweet rosy little creature. But oh, how delicate! It has grown anæmic, nervous. It never smiles; and people avoid coming in contact with it, for fear it may be a germ-carrier.

‘Domestic,’ too. ‘Domestic’ survived one long and serious illness, contracted at the time when it was first applied to houseworkers. It caught the ‘ flu ’ from housework at that time, and was left with a weak heart. It had n’t yet got back its strength, when woman suffrage attacked it.

People associate with these ailing words, without realizing the danger they run. There are people who will shut themselves up in a room with ‘respectable,’ and they are pathetically surprised when they find themselves bilious. Fresh air will cure them, of course; but they complain that it is cold out of doors.

Some words have never been strong. A good many of those with clinging and deprecating dispositions have constitutions to match. ‘Hence’ and ‘thus’ were born with rheumatic tendencies. They have to sleep between the hot blankets of printed pages, and are never met walking the streets of conversation. They boast, like Mrs. Pullet, of the boluses they have taken, in order to live on at all.

I hear that ‘project’ has been taken very ill — the result of overwork in the normal schools. Poor ‘constructive,’ too — what a pity! Two or three years ago, how well he was looking! He began to fail very fast soon after he fell into the habit of taking part in sermons, and in those moralizing tidbits that still fill up chinks in papers. He has grown very old — you would hardly know him.

Dissipation ruins some words. ‘ Bourgeon ’ is the horrible example (poor verb!) of a word that literally drank himself into a decline. Young words that frequent free verse, and are seen in the company of asterisks, will all end like ‘subtle’ and ‘desirous.’ I saw poor ‘subtle’ the other day, for the first time in years. His nose was radiant. Subtle, I believe, was heard to say, when he was young and in the swim, that he preferred a short and merry life. What nights he used to make! He began, before he was in long trousers, to associate with magazine poets.

But who knows when some obscure malady may attack a word which we consider absolutely healthy, and allow our children to play with! Some mothers, a few years ago, allowed that disreputable old ‘hundred per cent’ to come into their yards. How many epidemics of scarlet fever could be traced to him! He is now under observation in a hospital.

Of course there are whole families of good stout rural physique that we may all neighbor with as much as we like. ‘Apple’ and ‘corn’ and ‘potato,’ and ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ and ‘married’ and ‘buried,’ ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter,’ and ‘pleasure,’ and ‘homesick,’ and ‘overalls ’ — you never see them with a thermometer stuck in their mouths. ‘Washtub’ — ‘ baseball ’ — ‘ Ireland ’ — ‘ red-haired’ — ‘ thunderstorm’ — ‘ musical ’ — ‘ bawling ’ — ‘ fisticuffs ’ — who ever heard of any of these having breakfast in bed?