; certainly that speech, or that way of
speaking, which is most easily understood, is the best way of speaking.
If any man were to ask me, which would be supposed to be a perfect
style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five
hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics
excepted, should be understood by them all in the same manner with one
another, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be
understood--this would certainly be a most perfect style.

All exotic sayings, dark and ambiguous speakings, affected words, and,
as I said in the last chapter, abridgement, or words cut off, as they
are foolish and improper in business, so, indeed, are they in any other
things; hard words, and affectation of style in business, is like
bombast in poetry, a kind of rumbling nonsense, and nothing of the kind
can be more ridiculous.

The nicety of writing in business consists chiefly in giving every
species of goods their trading names, for there are certain
peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the
greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are
written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not
understand you--for example, if you write to your factor at Lisbon, or
at Cadiz, to make you returns in hardware, he understands you, and
sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. So, if a merchant comes to me
to hire a small ship of me, and tells me it is for the pipin trade, or
to buy a vessel, and tells me he intends to make a pipiner of her, the
meaning is, that she is to run to Seville for oranges, or to Malaga for
lemons. If he says he intends to send her for a lading of fruit, the
meaning is, she is to go to Alicant, Denia, or Xevia, on the coast of
Spain, for raisins of the sun, or to Malaga for Malaga raisins. Thus, in
the home trade in England: if in Kent a man tells me he is to go among
the night-riders, his meaning is, he is to go a-carrying wool to the
sea-shore--the people that usually run the wool off in boats, are called
owlers--those that steal customs, smugglers, and the like. In a word,
there is a kind of slang in trade, which a tradesman ought to know, as
the beggars and strollers know the gipsy cant, which none can speak but
themselves; and this in letters of business is allowable, and, indeed,
they cannot understand one another without it.

A brickmaker being hired by a brewer to make s