language, which in the days of the past stood out in marked contrast with the terseness and precision of written composition, giving rise to the saying that no good speech ever read well, have crossed over to the printed page. This means not only greater diffuseness, inevitable with any lessening of the tax on words which the labor of writing imposes, but it also brings forward the point of view of the one who speaks. There is the disposition on the part of the talker to explain, as if watching the facial expression of his hearers to see how far they are following. This attitude is not lost when his audience becomes merely a clicking typewriter. It is no uncommon thing in the typewriting booths at the Capitol in Washington to see Congressmen in dictating letters use the most vigorous gestures as if the oratorical methods of persuasion could be transmitted to the printed page.

The graphophone has been long enough before the public to make very clear its limitations. It is useful in transcription, but worthless in composition, and unless radically amended will always be useless. In its present form it is used at the National House of Representatives and among the court reporters, who read their stenographic notes into it; girls, with sounders over their ears, and playing the keys of the typewriter, turn the records into printed form. They regulate the speed exactly as they wish to write. In this respect it is ideal.

But the failure of the graphophone for composition arises from the unwillingness of a human being to be left behind in a race. The waxen wheel begins to spin; the person dictating must either keep pace with its rapid rotations, or bring it to a standstill. Such a race is not an invitation to careful thought or accurate utterance. Of all the devices to encourage verbosity and carelessness, this is without doubt the worst that has ever been invented. The graphophone is, therefore, not one of the present-day agencies modifying English style; but the rea

son for this is that it does not have the chance.

One other agency shows how trifles in mechanism may still have an influence on English usage. My attention was called to this not long ago by a serious editorial in the literary supplement of a substantial newspaper, discussing whether the word "tie-up" had obtained a sufficient footing in the language to be permissible. It was at the time of the coal strike, and some purist had objected to the prevalent use of the word. This editorial took the other view, giving as a weighty reason that the word was indispensable in making headlines, and so had earned a place for itself in English usage.

The headline writer enjoys in effect a form of poetic license. His constant study is to present the most salient and attracting feature of a dispatch in a series of words which may be spelled in perhaps twenty-two letters. It is letters, rather than words, that count with him, and he also has to give a special rating to M's and W's. When a leading newspaper recently changed its type, cutting its number of headline letters down to twenty, its veteran employees in this department narrowly escaped becoming maniacs; their whole mental machinery was completely disarranged; they were compelled to look at everything in the world at an angle of twenty twenty-seconds.

gone

The chase for a great deal of meaning with a few letters has led to the revival of some words which would otherwise have into complete disuse. Dr. Hornaday tried vainly to get the New York newspapers to say Zoological Park instead of "Zoo" when he began to give them material about it. They said that "Zoo" was essential in headlines, and by implication what was useful there could not be wholly tabood elsewhere. It was the old story of the camel's head under the tent, to use a figure suggested by zoological parks. "Sans" as a preposition is doubtless gaining some headway because of this need. "Wed" is a great headline word

"Jap," just now, for a Japanese seems destined in this way to be pushed toward general use. And the public reads the headlines; their influence is contagious. So is that of most of the mechanical agencies of the present day.

If I seem to exaggerate the effect of these agencies, or to overrate the part which they play in the development of present-day usage, I can only plead in extenuation the priceless heritage of English speech which it is ours to conserve. It is not the vanguards of the on-coming forces, but the richness of the treasures behind the citadels that give importance

to such a survey. Wider than Britain's Empire and our great stretches of territory is the dominion of the English tongue, rich with the spoils of its honorable conquest. Its words and forms have been gathered, alike from the patois of savages and the languages of every civilization, old and new. Certainly there can be no such thing as trifles and no considerations deserving to be called unimportant among the influences which affect in any degree the growth and permanency of our English, with its comprehensive and elastic vocabulary, and the splendid richness of its rhetorical forms.

COURT was already in session when the Eldons returned from Europe; but the judge, while at once taking his place on the bench, preferred to spend a month at the north shore cottage, going in to the city in the morning and returning to the cottage at night. He was fond of the north shore, which still kept its summer green.

Dinner over, he laid his wife's hand on his arm and led her to the veranda with a kind of familiar chivalry. She stood by as a matter of course while he pushed her chair to a better view of the lake and touched up the pillows.

He put his own chair on the other side of the door, lifted his neatly booted foot to the porch pillar, lit a cigar, and took in the smoke in calm luxury. The view included the neat lawn with its shrubbery, the white band of shore road, a bit of sand, and the expanse of lake, still as glass, and giving a pearly glow in the dying daylight. Lulling twilight smells of the woods and water spread up to them. The scene was full of a rich repose, and this suited the judge's mood very well.

His fortune had reached a flood as full

and rich as the hour. His affairs were in prosperous sorder. The six months abroad had greatly benefited his wife. She was now better than for ten years, and with good conditions a complete recovery was promised. His daughter's engagement was in every way satisfactory. And the day before Hanford had telegraphed to her the single word, "Success." This meant that the President had agreed to appoint Judge Eldon to the vacant place in the Supreme Court of the United States.

He was then fifty-two, hardly of medium height, and lean, with slightly stooping shoulders. His long face was smoothshaven, high-colored, and deeply wrinkled for one of his age. His nose was large, arched, and almost red,- a nose of power and dignity, which, with his bright blue eyes and large, half-bald head, gave the character of an urbane distinction that was one's first impression of him. He smoked with deliberate luxury, and was content to let his mind swim with a happy idleness on the full tide of his for

tune.

In a moment Anne came out, vigor

language, which in the days of the past stood out in marked contrast with the terseness and precision of written composition, giving rise to the saying that no good speech ever read well, have crossed over to the printed page. This means not only greater diffuseness, inevitable with any lessening of the tax on words which the labor of writing imposes, but it also brings forward the point of view of the one who speaks. There is the disposition on the part of the talker to explain, as if watching the facial expression of his hearers to see how far they are following. This attitude is not lost when his audience becomes merely a clicking typewriter. It is no uncommon thing in the typewriting booths at the Capitol in Washington to see Congressmen in dictating letters use the most vigorous gestures as if the oratorical methods of persuasion could be transmitted to the printed page.

The graphophone has been long enough before the public to make very clear its limitations. It is useful in transcription, but worthless in composition, and unless radically amended will always be useless. In its present form it is used at the National House of Representatives and among the court reporters, who read their stenographic notes into it; girls, with sounders over their ears, and playing the keys of the typewriter, turn the records into printed form. They regulate the speed exactly as they wish to write. In this respect it is ideal.

But the failure of the graphophone for composition arises from the unwillingness of a human being to be left behind in a race. The waxen wheel begins to spin; the person dictating must either keep pace with its rapid rotations, or bring it to a standstill. Such a race is not an invitation to careful thought or accurate utterance. Of all the devices to encourage verbosity and carelessness, this is without doubt the worst that has ever been invented. The graphophone is, therefore, not one of the present-day agencies modifying English style; but the rea

son for this is that it does not have the chance.

One other agency shows how trifles in mechanism may still have an influence on English usage. My attention was called to this not long ago by a serious editorial in the literary supplement of a substantial newspaper, discussing whether the word "tie-up" had obtained a sufficient footing in the language to be permissible. It was at the time of the coal strike, and some purist had objected to the prevalent use of the word. This editorial took the other view, giving as a weighty reason that the word was indispensable in making headlines, and so had earned a place for itself in English usage.

The headline writer enjoys in effect a form of poetic license. His constant study is to present the most salient and attracting feature of a dispatch in a series of words which may be spelled in perhaps twenty-two letters. It is letters, rather than words, that count with him, and he also has to give a special rating to M's and W's. When a leading newspaper recently changed its type, cutting its number of headline letters down to twenty, its veteran employees in this department narrowly escaped becoming maniacs; their whole mental machinery was completely disarranged; they were compelled to look at everything in the world at an angle of twenty twenty-seconds.

The chase for a great deal of meaning with a few letters has led to the revival of some words which would otherwise have gone into complete disuse. Dr. Hornaday tried vainly to get the New York newspapers to say Zoological Park instead of "Zoo" when he began to give them material about it. They said that "Zoo" was essential in headlines, and by implication what was useful there could not be wholly tabood elsewhere. It was the old story of the camel's head under the tent, to use a figure suggested by zoological parks. "Sans" as a preposition is doubtless gaining some headway because of this need. "Wed" is a great

headline word

"Jap," just now, for a Japanese seems destined in this way to be pushed toward general use. And the public reads the headlines; their influence is contagious. So is that of most of the mechanical agencies of the present day.

If I seem to exaggerate the effect of these agencies, or to overrate the part which they play in the development of present-day usage, I can only plead in extenuation the priceless heritage of English speech which it is ours to conserve. It is not the vanguards of the on-coming forces, but the richness of the treasures behind the citadels that give importance

to such a survey. Wider than Britain's Empire and our great stretches of territory is the dominion of the English tongue, rich with the spoils of its honorable conquest. Its words and forms have been gathered, alike from the patois of savages and the languages of every civilization, old and new. Certainly there can be no such thing as trifles and no considerations deserving to be called unimportant among the influences which affect in any degree the growth and permanency of our English, with its comprehensive and elastic vocabulary, and the splendid richness of its rhetorical forms.

COURT was already in session when the Eldons returned from Europe; but the judge, while at once taking his place on the bench, preferred to spend a month at the north shore cottage, going in to the city in the morning and returning to the cottage at night. He was fond of the north shore, which still kept its summer green.

Dinner over, he laid his wife's hand on his arm and led her to the veranda with a kind of familiar chivalry. She stood by as a matter of course while he pushed her chair to a better view of the lake and touched up the pillows.

He put his own wn chair on the other side of the door, lifted his neatly booted foot to the porch pillar, lit a cigar, and took in the smoke in calm luxury. The view included the neat lawn with its shrubbery, the white band of shore road, a bit of sand, and the expanse of lake, still as glass, and giving a pearly glow in the dying daylight. Lulling twilight smells of the woods and water spread up to them. The scene was full of a rich repose, and this suited the judge's mood very well.

His fortune had reached a flood as full

and rich as the hour. His affairs were in prosperous order. The six months abroad had greatly benefited his wife. She was now better than for ten years, and with good conditions a complete recovery was promised. His daughter's engagement was in every way satisfactory. And the day before Hanford had telegraphed to her the single word, "Success." This meant that the President had agreed to appoint Judge Eldon to the vacant place in the Supreme Court of the United States.

He was then fifty-two, hardly of medium height, and lean, with slightly stooping shoulders. His long face was smoothshaven, high-colored, and deeply wrinkled for one of his age. His nose was large, arched, and almost red,- a nose of power and dignity, which, with his bright blue eyes and large, half-bald head, gave the character of an urbane distinction that was one's first impression of him. He smoked with deliberate luxury, and was content to let his mind swim with a happy idleness on the full tide of his for

tune.

In a moment Anne came out, vigor