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Short Words

Short Words image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
December
Year
1897
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

1 A dozen or less newspaper men were sollected together, when somebody said ometbing about Budyard Kipling. "I notioe in the papers," said another, "that he is the best paid writer in the world afc present. " "The Pall Malí Gazette people say they paid him $750 a poem for all they printed of his, " ventured a third. "And why not?" ptit in a fourth. "He is the best veriter of English prose or verse now writing. That one line of his, 'A rag and a bone and a bank of hair, ' describing a vampire woman, couldn't be stronger, I think. " "Good and strong, " commented a fifth, "but Kipling is not the only man ■who has chosen monosyllables to give emphatic expression to his thought. If you will rernember, Pope in his essay on 'Criticism' remarked, 'And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,' and before and after him there were others, who, as he, were scarcely dull and seldom crept. Hymn writers are strong in this. Take Watts in that well known hymn, for instance: "Are there no foes for me to face í Must I not stem the fiood ? Is this vile world a frièbd to grace To help me on to God? "Shakespeare found tíne syllabled words good enough for him, and you all know that passage of Young's: "The bell strikes one. Wetekenonote of time, Bave by its loss, etc. "Bailey's 'Festus, ' that makes its reader feel as if he had 'eaten of the insane root that takes the reason prisoner, ' has mány examples, and this one you will recall: "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths. We sliould coiuit time by hesrt throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acta the best. "And tho Bi ble, the greatest of books, is filled with the short words. Bight at the beginning of things we flnd, 'And God said let there be light, and there was light,' and at the end of things, so to speak, 'For the greatdayof hiswrath is come, and who shall beable to stand?' and still further along, 'And the gatea of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there. ' "Oh, Kipling is all right! He knowa he has plenty of anthority for seeking short words whën he waats Btrong

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News