imordial constitution of the terrestrial
system; ineffable harmony rules the heavens. All the great
eternal forces act in solemn silence. The brawling torrent
that dries up in summer deafens you with its roaring
whirlpools in March; while the vast earth on which we dwell,
with all its oceans and all its continents and its thousand
millions of inhabitants, revolves unheard upon its soft axle
at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and rushes
noiselessly on its orbit a million and a half miles a day.
Two storm-clouds encamped upon opposite hills on a sultry
summer's evening, at the expense of no more electricity,
according to Mr. Faraday, than is evolved in the
decomposition of a single drop of water, will shake the
surrounding atmosphere with their thunders, which, loudly as
they rattle on the spot, will yet not be heard at the
distance of twenty miles; while those tremendous and
unutterable forces which ever issue from the throne of God,
and drag the chariot wheels of Uranus and Neptune along the
uttermost path-ways of the solar system, pervade the
illimitable universe in silence.

Of course, today, nobody talks like that. At least no one should.

Trite Expressions. Less easily guarded against is the delivery of
trite expressions. These are phrases and clauses which at first were
so eloquent that once heard they stuck in people's minds, who then in
an endeavor themselves to be emphatic inserted continually into their
speeches these overworked, done-to-death expressions, which now
having been used too frequently have no real meaning. One of the most
frequently abused is "of the people, by the people, for the people."
Others are words and phrases made popular by the war. Many are no more
than jargon--meaningless counterfeits instead of the legal tender of
real speech. It is amazing to notice how persistently some of them
recur in the remarks of apparently well-trained men who should know
better than to insert them. The following were used by a prominent
United States political leader in a single speech. He could; easily
have replaced them by living material or dispensed with them entirely.

Jot or tittle; the plain unvarnished truth; God forbid; the jackal
press; that memorable occasion; tooth and nail; the God of our
fathers; the awful horrors of Valley Forge; the blood-stained heights
of Yorktown; tell it not in Gath; proclaim it not in the