is regarded as something pleasant to the ears of the average reader, who
is supposed to think it funny. This is enough. If the readers want it,
the editors will furnish it; and so we may expect to be "bulldosed," or
otherwise dosed with some like nauseous mess of language, until
journalism has some other purpose than to pander to the lower cravings
of the moment.
--It is said that in the schools for girls it is now becoming the
fashion to teach the large angular handwriting which is commonly used by
Englishwomen. The announcement is welcome and surprising in one respect;
for it implies that writing is taught in schools, as to which an
acquaintance with the chirography of the rising generation justly
awakens some doubts. But as to the beneficial result of the adoption of
the style in question, that is a matter of some uncertainty. This
angular English hand is very elegant and lovely to look upon in a little
note, particularly if it assures you of the fair writer's high regard,
or asks you to dinner. But in fact it is so uncertain in its forms that
sometimes it is quite difficult to tell which is meant, the high regard
or the dinner. We have heard of one case of deplorable uncertainty. A
lady going out of town hastily on a short visit left a key upon her
husband's table with a slip of paper on which was written in the new
style a few words which after much toil and with the hint from the key,
he deciphered and read as "Key of wine closet. Please put on gin-sling."
He was amazed; for whatever his fondness might have been for gin-sling,
it was not his habit to put it on the table. Wherefore he inferred that
instead of "gin-sling" he should read "green seal," but there was none
of that brand of champagne in the wine closet. Further investigation led
him to adopt the reading, "please put on full swing." This, however, he
abandoned as not exactly a feminine exhortation in that particular
matter. Then for "gin-sling" he read "gunning," and "gun sing," and
"grinning," all of course to be abandoned in their turn. Submitted to an
expert, the elegant lines were pronounced to be unmistakably, "Key of
wine closet. Recase pat on gnu eing," not a highly intelligible letter
of instruction. Finally, in his perplexity, he remembered something that
the lady had once said upon the subject of the danger of leaving the
particular key in question lying about loose or even in an accessible
drawer, and then it flashed upon him that the writing was, or was meant
to be, "Key of wine closet. Please put on your ring." Hence it appears
that the elegant English hand is very easily read when you know what the
fair writer means to say. Observe, too, that the perplexity would have
been obviated by the introduction of a much needed pronoun--_it_. If the
lady had written, "Put it," etc., there would have been a guide out of
the labyrinth. No small part of the obscurity found in writing arises
from compression. It is better to take the trouble to write two words,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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