n to borrow a mess of
vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst
desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound?
And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more
so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should
call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty
shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath; deny it if thou canst."

EXERCISE - Wordiness III

1. Study the following paragraph, decide which ideas are important,
and strike out the details that merely clog the thought:

As I stepped into the room, I heard the clock ticking and that caused me
to look at it. It sits on the mantelpiece with some layers of paper under
one corner where the mantel is warped. When the papers slip out or we move
the clock a little as we're dusting, the ticking stops right away. Of
course the clock's not a new one at all, but it's an old one. It has been
in the family for many a long year, yes, from even before my father's
time. Let me see, it was bought by my grandfather. No, it couldn't have
been grandfather that bought it; it was his brother. Oh, yes, I remember
now; my mother told me all about it, and I'd forgotten what she said till
this minute. But really my grandfather's brother didn't exactly buy it. He
just traded for it. He gave two pigs and a saddle, that's what my mother
said. You see, he was afraid his hogs might take cholera and so he wanted
to get rid of them; and as for the saddle, he had sold his riding-horse
and he didn't have any more use for that. Well, it isn't a valuable clock,
like a grandfather clock or anything of that sort, though it is antique.
As I was saying, when I glanced at it, it read seven minutes to six. I
remember the time very well, for just then the factory whistle blew and I
remember saying to myself: "It's seven minutes slow today." You see, it's
old and we don't keep it oiled, and so it's always losing time. Hardly a
day passes but I set it up--sometimes twice a day, as for the matter of
that--and I usually go by the factory whistle too, though now and then I
go by Dwight's gold watch. Well, anyhow, that tells me what time it was.
I'm certain I can't be wrong.

2. Study, on the other hand, The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its judicious
use of details. Defoe in his stories is a supreme master of verisimilitude
(likeness to truth). As we read him, we cannot help believing that the