One has the sense of rude plenty
such as one gets from looking at the huge wheat elevators in
Minneapolis. Here are the harvests of innumerable fields stored up in
little space. There are not only vast multitudes of words, but each word
means something, and each has a history of its own, and a family
relation which it is interesting to trace.

But that which I should value most on my desert island would be the
opportunity of acquainting myself with the fine distinctions which are
made between different human qualities. It would seem that the Aggregate
Mind which made the language is much cleverer than we usually suppose.
The most minute differences are infallibly registered in tell-tale
words. There are not only words denoting the obvious differences between
the good and the bad, the false and the true, the beautiful and the
ugly, but there are words which indicate the delicate shades of goodness
and truth and beauty as they are curiously blended with variable
quantities of badness and falseness and ugliness. There are not only
words which tell what you are, but words which tell what you think you
are, and what other people think you are, and what you think they are
when you discover that they are thinking that you are something which
you think you are not.

In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as "fail," but the
dictionary makes up for this deficiency. It is particularly rich in
words descriptive of our failures. As the procession of the virtues
passes by, there are pseudo-virtues that tag on like the small boys who
follow the circus. After Goodness come Goodiness and Goody-goodiness; we
see Sanctity and Sanctimoniousness, Piety and Pietism, Grandeur and
Grandiosity, Sentiment and Sentimentality. When we try to show off we
invariably deceive ourselves, but usually we deceive nobody else.
Everybody knows that we are showing off, and if we do it well they give
us credit for that.

A scholar has a considerable amount of sound learning, and he is afraid
that his fellow citizens may not fully appreciate it. So in his
conversation he allows his erudition to leak out, with the intent that
the stranger should say, "What a modest, learned man he is, and what a
pleasure it is to meet him." Only the stranger does not express himself
in that way, but says, "What an admirable pedant he is, to be sure."
Pedantry is a well-recognized compound, two thirds sound learning and
one third harmless vanity.

Sometimes on