I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human DaysMacLane, Mary
General
I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days
MacLane, Mary
MacLane, Mary, 1881-1929; Montana -- Biography; Women authors, American -- Biography
Having failed of the thought often I fail of the words. When I have
a particularly M.-Mac-Lane thought to express I review the top tier
of my vocabulary of words to find proper ones for it. They are all
very nice words in that top-tier--neatly washed and dressed and
hair-brushed and tidied-up, like the children in a small private
school: words like Necessary and Irresolute and Crockery and
Inconvenience and Broth and Apprise: good words and useful if one’s
thought is radical or risky and wants conserving. I call some of
them to me and question them and consider them and ponder a bit, and
decide they will none of them suit. Then I go to the bottom tier, the
unkemptest of words in the untidiest attire: words like Traipse and
Nab and Glim and Hennery and Chape and Plash. And I at once reject
those as too carelessly bred for my terse thoughts to associate
with. (But for my uncombed ungroomed grimy-faced thoughts I turn to
them.) Then I glance over a tier of mysterious words, spruce but
with indefinable vagabond faces: such as Whelk and Mauger and Frush
and Gnurl and Yare and Hyaline. They are expressive but of a kind
it’s well to use with caution, the kind that may trip up thoughts
that would make them their medium and lead to slips ’twixt cups and
lips. So I dismiss them with a mental reservation of one or two to
use if I fail to find right ones among the less mysterious. Then I
turn to a tier that represents the virile middle-class in words, the
lower-case words, the mob and riot words, the words for poets and
anarchists and prophets: such as Adroit and Nightingale and Gallows
and Gutter and Woman and Madrigal and Death. And I say, ‘Without
doubt here are my words.’ But I use discretion. I know that tier of
words to be of the nature of bombs, of strychnine, of a dynamic force
resistible against all human and wordly substance. They also must be
used cautiously and with a sparing hand. With caution one can handle
a bomb, and sparingly one can eat strychnine, and one can control
any dynamic force by studying its tendencies and keeping out of its
direct road. It behooves one to heed those conditions in broaching
the countermining counter-irritant words if one would avoid blowing
oneself analytically broadcast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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