shadow that the soul flings across the page. Style
is simply the intellect rushing into exhibition and verbal form.
Therefore style is the balance of faculty, symmetry of development. A
man is healthy when he does not know that he has a single organ in his
body, and a page has style when you do not know where to find the note
of distinction. There is a world of difference between "style," and "a
style." Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural has style. Carlyle's French
Revolution has a style. A perfect Kentucky horse has style. A
knee-sprung horse has a style. Down the track comes this perfect horse,
eyes flashing, head up, neck arched, feet dancing, not a flaw, not a
blemish, upon leg or body. Looking at the glorious creature you exclaim,
"That horse has style!" For a horse's style is born of perfect health,
perfect lungs and perfect legs, one power balancing another, and all
united to produce an absolutely perfect horse. Now comes a horse that
represents a collection of ringbones, and glanders, and poll-evil. The
one horse limping in front has "a style." Thomas Carlyle's sentences are
knee-sprung in front and his phrases are spavined behind, and,
therefore, Carlyle has "a style" but not "style." You would know one of
his sentences if you saw its skeleton lying in the desert on the road to
Khartoum. But on the other hand, Lincoln has "style,"--that
indescribable bloom and beauty, born of balance, development and
symmetrical growth. Samuel Johnson bulged on the side of Latinity.
Daniel Webster is an example of the magnificent, illustrating
gorgeousness, opulence, and tropic splendour. Lincoln's sentences are
like the Bible and Bunyan,--they are plate-glass windows through which
you look to see the jewelled thought beyond.

Lincoln tells us how he made his style. One day he heard a man use the
word "demonstrate." For days he cudgelled his brains to find out just
what it was to demonstrate a statement. He tells us that when he was
about eight years old, he began to be irritated when men used long
words that he could not understand. He began the habit of thinking over
in the dark before he went to sleep any story he had heard, any
statement that had been made, and he tried to substitute for the long
hard words little short simple words, that a boy could understand.
During those early years, he learned that the rich, racy, homey words
are steeped and perfumed with beautiful associations. He knew that words
are fossil poetry. Wh