porter; and by a single word give me to understand wherein one cab
horse differs from fifty others before or behind it."

I have explained his notions of style at greater length in another
place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have
just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one
word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one
adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this
verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near
it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have
recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest
things may be rendered and suggested by applying the hint conveyed in
Boileau's line:

"D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir." "He taught the power
of a word put in the right place."

There is no need for an eccentric vocabulary to formulate every shade
of thought--the complicated, multifarious, and outlandish words which
are put upon us nowadays in the name of artistic writing; but every
modification of the value of a word by the place it fills must be
distinguished with extreme clearness. Give us fewer nouns, verbs, and
adjectives, with almost inscrutable shades of meaning, and let us have
a greater variety of phrases, more variously constructed, ingeniously
divided, full of sonority and learned rhythm. Let us strive to be
admirable in style, rather than curious in collecting rare words.

It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make
it express everything--even what it does not say, to fill it full of
implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new
expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which
have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are
as a dead language.

The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected
writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the
limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has
remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and
impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear,
logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity,
or corruption.

Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make
rain and hail fall on the _cleanliness_ of the window panes, may throw
stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the