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Introduction to Java
Applications; Input/Output
and Operators 2
What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name would
smell as sweet.
—William Shakespeare

The chief merit of language

is clearness.
—Galen

One person can make a

difference and every person
should try.
—John F. Kennedy

Ob je cti v e s
In this chapter you’ll:
■ Write simple Java
applications.
■ Use input and output
statements.
■ Learn about Java’s primitive
types.
■ Understand basic memory
concepts.
■ Use arithmetic operators.
■ Learn the precedence of
arithmetic operators.
■ Write decision-making
statements.
■ Use relational and equality
operators.
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 2 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

Self-Review Exercises 2

Self-Review Exercises
2.1 Fill in the blanks in each of the following statements:
a) A(n) begins the body of every method, and a(n) ends the body of
every method.
ANS: left brace ({), right brace (} ).
b) You can use the statement to make decisions.
ANS: if.
c) begins an end-of-line comment.
ANS: //.
d) , and are called white space.
ANS: Space characters, newlines and tabs.
e) are reserved for use by Java.
ANS: Keywords.
f) Java applications begin execution at method .
ANS: main.
g) Methods , and display information in a command win-
dow.
ANS: System.out.print, System.out.println and System.out.printf.
2.2 State whether each of the following is true or false. If false, explain why.
a) Comments cause the computer to print the text after the // on the screen when the pro-
gram executes.
ANS: False. Comments do not cause any action to be performed when the program exe-
cutes. They’re used to document programs and improve their readability.
b) All variables must be given a type when they’re declared.
ANS: True.
c) Java considers the variables number and NuMbEr to be identical.
ANS: False. Java is case sensitive, so these variables are distinct.
d) The remainder operator (%) can be used only with integer operands.
ANS: False. The remainder operator can also be used with noninteger operands in Java.
e) The arithmetic operators *, /, %, + and - all have the same level of precedence.
ANS: False. The operators *, / and % are higher precedence than operators + and -.
2.3 Write statements to accomplish each of the following tasks:
a) Declare variables c, thisIsAVariable, q76354 and number to be of type int.
ANS: int c, thisIsAVariable, q76354, number;
or
int c;
int thisIsAVariable;
int q76354;
int number;
b) Prompt the user to enter an integer.
ANS: System.out.print("Enter an integer: ");
c) Input an integer and assign the result to int variable value. Assume Scanner variable
input can be used to read a value from the keyboard.
ANS: value = input.nextInt();
d) Print "This is a Java program" on one line in the command window. Use method
System.out.println.
ANS: System.out.println("This is a Java program");
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 3 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

3 Chapter 2 Introduction to Java Applications; Input/Output and Operators

e) Print "This is a Java program" on two lines in the command window. The first line
should end with Java. Use method System.out.printf and two %s format specifiers.
ANS: System.out.printf("%s%n%s%n", "This is a Java", "program");
f) If the variable number is not equal to 7, display "The variable number is not equal to 7".
ANS: if (number != 7)
System.out.println("The variable number is not equal to 7");

2.4 Identify and correct the errors in each of the following statements:
a) if (c < 7);
System.out.println("c is less than 7");
ANS: Error: Semicolon after the right parenthesis of the condition (c < 7) in the if.
Correction: Remove the semicolon after the right parenthesis. [Note: As a result, the
output statement will execute regardless of whether the condition in the if is true.]
b) if (c => 7)
System.out.println("c is equal to or greater than 7");
ANS: Error: The relational operator => is incorrect. Correction: Change => to >=.
2.5 Write declarations, statements or comments that accomplish each of the following tasks:
a) State that a program will calculate the product of three integers.
ANS: // Calculate the product of three integers
b) Create a Scanner called input that reads values from the standard input.
ANS: Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
c) Declare the variables x, y, z and result to be of type int.
ANS: int x, y, z, result;
or
int x;
int y;
int z;
int result;
d) Prompt the user to enter the first integer.
ANS: System.out.print("Enter first integer: ");
e) Read the first integer from the user and store it in the variable x.
ANS: x = input.nextInt();
f) Prompt the user to enter the second integer.
ANS: System.out.print("Enter second integer: ");
g) Read the second integer from the user and store it in the variable y.
ANS: y = input.nextInt();
h) Prompt the user to enter the third integer.
ANS: System.out.print("Enter third integer: ");
i) Read the third integer from the user and store it in the variable z.
ANS: z = input.nextInt();
j) Compute the product of the three integers contained in variables x, y and z, and assign
the result to the variable result.
ANS: result = x * y * z;
k) Use System.out.printf to display the message "Product is" followed by the value of
the variable result.
ANS: System.out.printf("Product is %d%n", result);
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 4 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

Exercises 4

2.6 Using the statements you wrote in Exercise 2.5, write a complete program that calculates
and prints the product of three integers.
ANS:

1 // Ex. 2.6: Product.java

2 // Calculate the product of three integers.
3 import java.util.Scanner; // program uses Scanner
4
5 public class Product
6 {
7 public static void main(String[] args)
8 {
9 // create Scanner to obtain input from command window
10 Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
11
12 int x; // first number input by user
13 int y; // second number input by user
14 int z; // third number input by user
15 int result; // product of numbers
16
17 System.out.print("Enter first integer: "); // prompt for input
18 x = input.nextInt(); // read first integer
19
20 System.out.print("Enter second integer: "); // prompt for input
21 y = input.nextInt(); // read second integer
22
23 System.out.print("Enter third integer: "); // prompt for input
24 z = input.nextInt(); // read third integer
25
26 result = x * y * z; // calculate product of numbers
27
28 System.out.printf("Product is %d%n", result);
29 } // end method main
30 } // end class Product

Enter first integer: 10

Enter second integer: 20
Enter third integer: 30
Product is 6000

Exercises
NOTE: Solutions to the programming exercises are located in the ch02solutions folder.
Each exercise has its own folder named ex02_## where ## is a two-digit number represent-
ing the exercise number. For example, exercise 2.14’s solution is located in the folder
ex02_14.
2.7 Fill in the blanks in each of the following statements:
a) are used to document a program and improve its readability.
ANS: Comments.
b) A decision can be made in a Java program with a(n) .
ANS: if statement.
c) Calculations are normally performed by statements.
ANS: assignment statements.
d) The arithmetic operators with the same precedence as multiplication are and
.
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 5 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

5 Chapter 2 Introduction to Java Applications; Input/Output and Operators

ANS: division (/), remainder (%)

e) When parentheses in an arithmetic expression are nested, the set of paren-
theses is evaluated first.
ANS: innermost.
f) A location in the computer’s memory that may contain different values at various times
throughout the execution of a program is called a(n) .
ANS: variable.
2.8 Write Java statements that accomplish each of the following tasks:
a) Display the message "Enter an integer: ", leaving the cursor on the same line.
ANS: System.out.print( "Enter an integer: " );
b) Assign the product of variables b and c to variable a.
ANS: a = b * c;
c) Use a comment to state that a program performs a sample payroll calculation.
ANS: // This program performs a simple payroll calculation.
2.9 State whether each of the following is true or false. If false, explain why.
a) Java operators are evaluated from left to right.
ANS: False. Some operators (e.g., assignment, =) evaluate from right to left.
b) The following are all valid variable names: _under_bar_, m928134, t5, j7, her_sales$,
his_$account_total, a, b$, c, z and z2.
ANS: True.
c) A valid Java arithmetic expression with no parentheses is evaluated from left to right.
ANS: False. The expression is evaluated according to operator precedence.
d) The following are all invalid variable names: 3g, 87, 67h2, h22 and 2h.
ANS: False. Identifier h22 is a valid variable name.
2.10 Assuming that x = 2 and y = 3, what does each of the following statements display?
a) System.out.printf("x = %d%n", x);
ANS: x = 2
b) System.out.printf("Value of %d + %d is %d%n", x, x, (x + x));
ANS: Value of 2 + 2 is 4
c) System.out.printf("x =");
ANS: x =
d) System.out.printf("%d = %d%n", (x + y), (y + x));
ANS: 5 = 5
2.11 Which of the following Java statements contain variables whose values are modified?
a) p = i + j + k + 7;
b) System.out.println("variables whose values are modified");
c) System.out.println("a = 5");
d) value = input.nextInt();
ANS: (a), (d).
2.12 Given that y = ax3 + 7, which of the following are correct Java statements for this equation?
a) y = a * x * x * x + 7;
b) y = a * x * x * (x + 7);
c) y = (a * x) * x * (x + 7);
d) y = (a * x) * x * x + 7;
e) y = a * (x * x * x) + 7;
f) y = a * x * (x * x + 7);
ANS: (a), (d), (e)
2.13 State the order of evaluation of the operators in each of the following Java statements, and
show the value of x after each statement is performed:
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 6 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

Exercises 6

a) x = 7 + 3 * 6 / 2 - 1;
ANS: *, /, +, -; Value of x is 15.
b) x = 2 % 2 + 2 * 2 - 2 / 2;
ANS: %, *, /, +, -; Value of x is 3.
c) x = (3 * 9 * (3 + (9 * 3 / (3))));
ANS: x = ( 3 * 9 * ( 3 + ( 9 * 3 / ( 3 ) ) ) );
4 5 3 1 2
Value of x is 324.
2.19 What does the following code print?
System.out.printf("*%n**%n***%n****%n*****%n");

ANS:

*
**
***
****
*****

2.20 What does the following code print?

System.out.println("*");
System.out.println("***");
System.out.println("*****");
System.out.println("****");
System.out.println("**");

ANS:

*
***
*****
****
**

2.21 What does the following code print?

System.out.print("*");
System.out.print("***");
System.out.print("*****");
System.out.print("****");
System.out.println("**");

ANS:

***************

2.22 What does the following code print?

System.out.print("*");
System.out.println("***");
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 7 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM
jhtp_02_IntroToApplications.FM Page 8 Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:41 PM

7 Chapter 2 Introduction to Java Applications; Input/Output and Operators

System.out.println("*****");
System.out.print("****");
System.out.println("**");

ANS:

****
*****
******

2.23 What does the following code print?

System.out.printf("%s%n%s%n%s%n", "*", "***", "*****");

ANS:

*
***
*****
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 The author of “Pickwick” tells us that in America the sign vocal for
starting a coach, steamer, railway train, etc., is “Go Ahead!” while
with John Bull the ritual form is “All Right!”—and he adds that these
two expressions are somewhat expressive of the respective moods of
the two nations. The two phrases are, indeed, vivid miniatures of
John Bull and his restless brother, who sits on the safety valve that
he may travel faster, pours oil and rosin into his steam furnaces,
leaps from the cars before they have entered the station, and who
would hardly object to being fired off from a cannon or in a
bombshell, provided there were one chance in fifty of getting sooner
to the end of his journey. Let us hope that the day may yet come
when our “two-forty” people will exchange a little of their fiery
activity for a bit of Bull’s caution, and when our Yankee Herald’s
College, if we ever have one, may declare “All Right!” to be the motto
of our political escutcheon, with as much propriety as it might now
inscribe “Go Ahead!” beneath that fast fowl, the annexing and
screaming eagle, that hovers over the peaks of the Rocky Mountains,
dips its wings in two oceans, and has one eye on Cuba and the other
on Quebec.
A volume might be filled with illustrations of the truth that the
language of nations is a mirror, in which may be seen reflected with
unerring accuracy all the elements of their intellectual as well as of
their moral character. What scholar that is familiar with Greek and
Latin has failed to remark how indelibly the contrariety of character
in the two most civilized nations of antiquity is impressed on their
languages, distinguished as is the one by exuberant originality, the
other by innate poverty of thought? In the Greek, that most flexible
and perfect of all the European tongues,—which surpasses every
other alike in its metaphysical subtlety, its wealth of inflections, and
its capacity for rendering the minutest and most delicate shades of
meaning,—the thought controls and shapes the language; while the
tyrannous objectivity of the Latin, rigid and almost cruel, like the
nation whose voice it is, and whose words are always Sic volo, sic
jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas, coerces rather than simply syllables
the thought. “Greek,” says Henry Nelson Coleridge, “the shrine of the
genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as
ourselves; of infinite flexibility, of indefatigable strength; with the
complication and distinctness of nature herself; to which nothing was
vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like
Italian, speaking to the mind like English; at once the variety and
picturesqueness of Homer, the gloom and intensity of Æschylus; not
compressed to the closest by Thucydides, not fathomed to the
bottom by Plato, not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up with all
its ardors under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes himself. And
Latin,—the voice of Empire and of Law, of War and of the State,—the
best language for the measured research of History, and the
indignant declamation of moral satire; rigid in its constructions,
parsimonious in its synonyms; yet majestic in its bareness,
impressive in its conciseness; the true language of history, instinct
with the spirit of nations, and not with the passions of individuals;
breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the
schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by the
stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by the
reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.”
It is a noteworthy fact that, as the Romans were the most majestic
of nations, so theirs is the only ancient language that contains the
word “majesty,” the Greek having nothing that exactly corresponds to
it; and the Latin language is as majestic as were the Romans
themselves. Cicero, or some other Latin writer, finds an argument to
show that the intellectual character of the Romans was higher than
that of the Greeks, in the fact that the word convivium means “a
living together,” while the corresponding Greek term, συμπόσιον,
means “a drinking together.” While the Romans retained their early
simplicity and nobility of soul, their language was full of power and
truth; but when they became luxurious, sensual, and corrupt, their
words degenerated into miserable and meaningless counters, without
intrinsic value, and serving only as a conventional medium of
exchange. It has been said truly that “in the pedantry of Statius, in
the puerility of Martial, in the conceits of Seneca, in the poets who
would go into emulous raptures on the beauty of a lap-dog and the
apotheosis of a eunuch’s hair, we read the hand-writing of an
empire’s condemnation.”
The climate of a country, as well as the mind and character of its
people, is clearly revealed in its speech. The air men breathe, the
temperature in which they live, and the natural scenery amid which
they pass their lives, acting incessantly upon body and mind, and
especially upon the organs of speech, impart to them a soft or a
harsh expression. The languages of the South, as we should expect
them to be, “are limpid, euphonic, and harmonious, as though they
had received an impress from the transparency of their heaven, and
the soft sweet sounds of the winds that sigh among the woods. On
the other hand, in the hirrients and gutturals, the burr and roughness
of the Northern tongues, we catch an echo of the breakers bursting
on their crags, and the crashing of the pine branch over the
cataract.” The idiom of Sybaris cannot be that of Sparta. The Attic
Greek was softer than the Doric, the dialect of the mountains; the
Ionic, spoken in the voluptuous regions of Asia Minor, was softer and
more sinuous than the Attic. The Anglo-Saxon, the language of a
people conversant chiefly with gloomy forests and stormy seas, and
prone to silence, was naturally harsh and monosyllabic. The roving
sea-king of Scandinavia, cradled on the ocean and rocked by its
storms, could no more speak in the soft and melting accents of a
Southern tongue than the screaming eagle could utter the liquid
melody of a nightingale’s song.
It is said that in the South Sea Islands version of the New
Testament there are whole chapters with no words ending in
consonants, except the proper names of the original. Italian has
been called the love-talk of the Roman without his armor. Fuller,
contrasting the Italians and the Swiss, quaintly remarks that the
former, “whose country is called ‘the country of good words,’ love the
circuits of courtesy, that an ambassador should not, as a sparrow
hawk, fly outright to his prey, and meddle presently with the matter
in hand; but, like the noble falcon, mount in language, soar high,
fetch compasses of compliment, and then in due time stoop to game,
and seize on the business propounded. Clean contrary, the Switzers
(who sent word to the king of France not to send them an
ambassador with stores of words, but a treasurer with plenty of
money) count all words quite out which are not straight on, have an
antipathy against eloquent language, the flowers of rhetoric being as
offensive to them as sweet perfume to such as are troubled with the
mother; yea, generally, great soldiers have their stomachs sharp set
to feed on the matter; loathing long speeches, as wherein they
conceive themselves to lose time, in which they could conquer half a
country; and, counting bluntness their best eloquence, love to be
accosted in their own kind.”
It is in the idioms of a people, its peculiar turns of expression, and
the modifications of meaning which its borrowed words have
undergone, that its distinctive genius is most strikingly seen. The
forms of salutation used by different nations are saturated with their
idiosyncrasies, and of themselves alone essentially reveal their
respective characters. How clearly is the innermost distinction
between the Greek mind and the Hebrew brought out in their
respective salutations, “Rejoice!” and “Peace!” How vividly are
contrasted, in the two salutations, the sunny, world-enjoying temper
of the one people with the profound religious feeling of the other!
The formula of the robust, energetic, valiant Roman,—with whom
virtue was manliness, and whose value was measured by his valor,—
was Salve! Vale! that is, “Be well,” “Be strong.” In the expression, “If
God will it, you are well,” is betrayed the fatalism of the Arab; while
the greeting of the Turk, “May your shadow never be less!” speaks of
a sunny clime. In the hot, oppressive climate of Egypt perspiration is
essential to health, and you are asked, “How do you perspire?” The
Italian asks, Come sta? literally, “How does he stand?” an expression
originally referring to the standing of the Lombard merchants in the
market place, and which seems to indicate that one’s well-being or
health depends on his business prosperity. Some writers, however,
have regarded the word “stand” in this formula as meaning no more
than “exist”; mere life itself, in the land of far niente, being a
blessing. The Genoese, a trading people, and at one time the
bankers of Europe, used in former days to say, Sanita e guadagno, or
“Health and gain!” a phrase in which the ideals of the countrymen of
Columbus are tersely summed up. The dreamy, meditative German,
dwelling amid smoke and abstractions, salutes you with the vague,
impersonal, metaphysical Wie gehts?—“How goes it?” Another
salutation which he uses is, Wie befinden sie sich?—“How do you
find yourself?” A born philosopher, he is so absent-minded, so lost in
thought and clouds of tobacco smoke, that he thinks you cannot tell
him of the state of your health till you have searched for and found
it.
The trading Hollander, who scours the world, asks, Hoe vaart’s-ge?
“How do you go?” an expression eminently characteristic of a
trading, travelling people, devoted to business, and devoid of
sentiment. The thoughtful Swede inquires, “How do you think?” They
also inquire, Hur mär ni?—literally “How can you?” that is, “Are you
strong?” The lively, restless, vivacious Frenchman, who lives in other
people’s eyes, and is more anxious about appearances than about
realities,—who has never to hunt himself up like the German, and
desires less to do, like the Anglo-Saxon, than to be lively, to show
himself,—says frankly, Comment vous portez-vous?—“How do you
carry yourself?” In these few words we have the pith and essence,
the very soul, of the French character. Externals, the shapes and
shows of things,—for what else could we expect a people to be
solicitous, who are born actors, and who live, to a great extent, for
stage effect; who unite so much outward refinement with so much
inward coarseness; who have an exquisite taste for the ornamental,
and an almost savage ignorance of the comfortable; who invented,
as Emerson says, the dickey, but left it to the English to add the
shirt? It has been said that a man would be owl-blind, who in the
“Hoo’s a’ wi’ ye” of the kindly Scot, could not perceive the mixture of
national pawkiness with hospitable cordiality. “One sees, in the
mind’s eye, the canny chield, who would invite you to dinner three
days in the week, but who would look twice at your bill before he
discounted it.” What can be more unmistakably characteristic than
the Irish peasant’s “Long life to your honor; may you make your bed
in glory!” After such a grandiose salute, we need no mouser among
the records of antiquity to certify to us that the Hibernian is of
Oriental origin, nor do we need any other key to his peculiar vivacity
and impressionableness of feeling, his rollicking, daredevil,
hyperbole-loving enthusiasm. Finally, of all the national forms of
salutation, the most signally characteristic,—the one which reveals
the very core, the inmost “heart of heart” of a people,—is the
Englishman’s “How do you do?” In these four little monosyllables the
activity, the intense practicality of the Englishman, the very
quintessence of his character, are revealed as by a lightning’s flash.
To do! Not to think, to stand, to carry yourself, but to do; and this
doing is so universal among the English,—its necessity is so
completely recognized,—that no one dreams of asking whether you
are doing, or what you are doing, but all demand, “How do you do?”
It has been well observed by the learned German writer, J. D.
Michaelis, that “some virtues are more sedulously cultivated by
moralists, when the language has fit names for indicating them;
whereas they are but superficially treated of, or rather neglected, in
nations where such virtues have not so much as a name. Languages
may obviously do injury to morals and religion by their equivocation;
by false accessories, inseparable from the principal idea; and by their
poverty.” It is a striking fact, noted by an English traveller, that the
native language of Van Dieman’s Land has four words to express the
idea of taking life, not one of which indicates the deep-lying
distinction between to kill and to murder; while any word for love is
wanting to it altogether. One of the most formidable obstacles which
Christian missionaries have encountered in teaching the doctrines
and precepts of the Gospel to the heathen, has been the absence
from their languages of a spiritual and ethical nomenclature. It is in
vain that the religious teachers of a people present to them a
doctrinal or ethical system inculcating virtues and addressed to
faculties, whose very existence their language, and consequently the
conscious self-knowledge of the people, do not recognize. Equally
vain is it to reprehend vices which have no name by which they can
be described and denounced, as things to be loathed and shunned.
Hence, in translating the Bible into the languages of savage nations,
the translators have been compelled to employ merely provisional
phrases, until they could develop a dialect fitted to convey moral as
well as intellectual truth. It is said that the Ethiopians, having but
one word for “person” and “nature,” could not apprehend the
doctrine of the union of Christ’s two natures in one single person.
There are languages of considerable cultivation in which it is not easy
to find a term for the Supreme Being. Seneca wrote a treatise on
“Providence,” which had not even a name at Rome in the time of
Cicero. It is a curious fact that the English language, rich as it is in
words to express the most complex religious ideas, as well as in
terms characterizing vices and crimes, had until about two centuries
ago no word for “selfishness,” the root of all vices, nor any single
word for “suicide.” The Greeks and Romans had a clear conception of
a moral ideal, but the Christian idea of “sin” was utterly unknown to
the Pagan mind. Vice they regarded as simply a relaxed energy of
the will, by which it yielded to the allurements of sensual pleasure;
and virtue, literally “manliness,” was the determined spirit, the
courage and vigor with which it resisted such temptations. But the
idea of “holiness” and the antithetic idea of sin were such utter
strangers to the Pagan mind that it would have been impossible to
express them in either of the classical tongues of antiquity. As De
Maistre has strikingly observed, man knew well that he could
“irritate” God or “a god,” but not that he could “offend” him. The
words “crime” and “criminal” belong to all languages: those of “sin”
and “sinner” belong only to the Christian tongue. For a similar
reason, man could always call God “Father,” which expresses only a
relation of creation and of power; but no man, of his own strength,
could say “my Father”! for this is a relation of love, foreign even to
Mount Sinai, and which belongs only to Calvary.
Again, the Greek language, as we have already seen, had no term
for the Christian virtue of “humility”; and when the apostle Paul
coined one for it, he had to employ a root conveying the idea, not of
self-abasement before a just and holy God, but of positive
debasement and meanness of spirit. On the other hand, there is a
word in our own tongue which, as De Quincey observes, cannot be
rendered adequately either by German or Greek, the two richest of
human languages, and without which we should all be disarmed for
one great case, continually recurrent, of social enormity. It is the
word “humbug.” “A vast mass of villany, that cannot otherwise be
reached by legal penalties, or brought within the rhetoric of scorn,
would go at large with absolute impunity, were it not through the
stern Rhadamanthian aid of this virtuous and inexorable word.”
There is no way in which men so often become the victims of error
as by an imperfect understanding of certain words which are artfully
used by their superiors. Cynicism is seldom shallower than when it
sneers at what it contemptuously calls the power of words over the
popular imagination. If men are agreed about things, what, it is
asked, can be more foolish than to dispute about names? But while it
is true that in the physical world things dominate over names, and
are not at the mercy of a shifting vocabulary, yet in the world of
ideas,—of history, philosophy, ethics and poetry,—words triumph
over things, are even equivalent to things, and are as truly the living
organism of thought as the eyes, lips, and entire physiognomy of a
man, are the media of the soul’s expression. Hence words are the
only certain test of thought; so much so that we often stop in the
midst of an assertion, an exclamation, or a request, startled by the
form it assumes in words. Thus, in Shakespeare, King John says to
Hubert, who pleaded his sovereign’s order for putting the young
prince to death, that if, instead of receiving the order in signs,
“Thou
Hadst bid me tell my tale in express words,
Deep shame had struck me dumb.”

Words are often not only the vehicle of thought, but the very mirror
in which we see our ideas, and behold the beauty or ugliness of our
inner selves.
A volume might be written on the mutual influence of language
and opinion, showing that as
“Faults in the life breed errors in the brain,
And these reciprocally those again,”

so the sentiments we cherish mould our language, and our words

react upon our opinions and feelings. Let a man go into a foreign
country, give up his own language, and adopt another, and he will
gradually and unconsciously change his opinions, too. He will neither
be able to express his old ideas adequately in the new words, nor to
prevent the new words of themselves putting new ideas in his brain.
Who has failed to notice that the opinion we entertain of an object
does not more powerfully influence the mind in applying to it a name
or an epithet, than the epithet or name influences the opinion? Call
thunder “the bolt of God’s wrath,” and you awaken a feeling of
terror; call it, with the German peasant, das liebe gewitter, “the dear
thunder,” and you excite a different emotion. As the forms in which
we clothe the outward expression of our feelings react with mighty
force upon the heart, so our speculative opinions are greatly
confirmed or invalidated by the technical terms we employ. Fiery
words, it has been truly said, are the hot blast that inflames the fuel
of our passionate nature; and formulated doctrine, a hedge that
confines the discursive wanderings of the thoughts. In personal
quarrels, it is the stimulus men give themselves by stinging words
that impels them to violent deeds; and in argumentative discussions
it is the positive affirmation and reaffirmation of our views which,
more than the reasons we give, deepen our convictions. The words
that have helped us to conquer the truth often become the very
tyrants of our convictions; and phrases once big with meaning are
repeated till they “ossify the very organs of intelligence.” False or
partial definitions often lead into dangerous errors; an impassioned
polemic falls a victim to his own logic, and a wily advocate becomes
the dupe of his own rhetoric.
Words, in short, are excellent servants, but the most tyrannical of
masters. Some men command them, but a vast majority are
commanded by them. There are words which have exercised a more
iron rule, swayed with a more despotic power, than Cæsar or the
Russian Czar. Often an idle word has conquered a host of facts; and
a mistaken theory, embalmed in a widely received word, has retarded
for centuries the progress of knowledge. Thus the protracted
opposition in France to the Newtonian theory arose chiefly from the
influence of the word “attraction”; the contemptuous misnomer,
“Gothic,” applied to northern mediæval architecture, perpetuated the
dislike with which it was regarded; and the introduction of the term
“landed proprietor” into Bengal caused a disorganization of society
which had never been caused by its most barbarous invaders.
Macaulay, in his “History of England,” mentions a circumstance
strikingly illustrative of the connection between language and
opinion,—that no large society of which the language is not Teutonic
has ever turned Protestant, and that wherever a language derived
from ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this
day prevails. “Men believe,” says Bacon, “that their reason is lord
over their words, but it happens, too, that words exercise a
reciprocal and reactionary power over the intellect.... Words, as a
Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest,
and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.” Not only every
language, but every age, has its charmed words, its necromantic
terms, which give to the cunning speaker who knows how to ring the
changes upon them, instant access to the hearts of men, as at “Open
Sesame!” the doors of the cave flung themselves open to the thieves,
in the Arabian tale. “There are words,” says Balzac, “which, like the
trumpets, cymbals and bass drums of mountebanks, attract the
public; the words ‘beauty,’ ‘glory,’ ‘poetry,’ have witcheries that seduce
the grossest minds.” At the utterance of the magic names of
Austerlitz and Marengo, thousands have rushed to a forlorn hope,
and met death at the cannon’s mouth.
When Haydon’s picture of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem was
exhibited in London in 1820, Mrs. Siddons, the famous actress,
entering the exhibition room, said: “The paleness of your Christ gives
it a supernatural look.” This, says the painter, settled its success.
There is great value in the selection of terms; many a man’s fortune
has been made by a happy phrase. Thousands thronged to see the
great work with “a supernatural look.”
South, in his eloquent sermons on “The Fatal Imposture and Force
of Words,” observes that any one who wishes to manage “the
rabble,” need never inquire, so long as they have ears to hear,
whether they have any understanding whereby to judge. With two or
three popular, empty words, well tuned and humored, he may whistle
them backward and forward, upward and downward, till he is weary;
and get upon their backs when he is so. When Cæsar’s army
mutinied, no argument from interest or reason could persuade them;
but upon his addressing them as Quirites, the tumult was instantly
hushed, and they took that word in payment of all. “In the thirtieth
chapter of Isaiah we find some arrived at that pitch of sottishness,
and so much in love with their own ruin, as to own plainly, and
roundly say, what they would be at. In the tenth verse, ‘Prophesy not
unto us,’ say they, ‘right things, but prophesy to us smooth things.’
As if they had said, ‘Do but oil the razor for us, and let us alone to
cut our own throats.’ Such an enchantment is there in words; and so
fine a thing does it seem to some to be ruined plausibly, and to be
ushered to destruction with panegyric and acclamation; a shameful,
though irrefragable argument of the absurd empire and usurpation of
words over things; and that the greatest affairs and most important
interests of the world are carried on by things, not as they are, but
as they are called.”
The Romans, after the expulsion of Tarquin, could not brook the
idea of being governed by a king; yet they submitted to the most
abject slavery under an emperor. Cromwell was too sagacious to
disgust the republicans by calling himself King, though he doubtless
laughed grimly in his sleeve as, under the title of Lord Protector, he
exercised all the regal functions. We are told by Saint Simon that at
the court of the grand monarch, Louis XIV, gambling was so common
that even the ladies took part in it. The gentlemen did not scruple to
cheat at cards; but the ladies had a peculiar tenderness on the
subject. No lady could for a moment think of retaining such
unrighteous gains; the moment they were touched, they were
religiously given away. But then, we must add, the gift was always
made to some other winner of her own sex. By carefully avoiding the
words “interchange of winnings,” the charming casuists avoided all
self-reproach, and all sharp censure by their discreet and lenient
confessors. There are sects of Christians at the present day that
protest vehemently against a hired ministry; yet their preachers must
be warmed, fed and clothed by “donation parties”; reminding one of
the snob gentleman in Molière, whose father was no shop-keeper,
but kindly “chose goods” for his friends, which he let them have for—
money.
 Party and sectarian leaders know that the great secret of the art of
swaying the people is to invent a good shibboleth or battle cry, to be
dinned continually in their ears. Persons familiar with British history
will remember certain talismanic vocables, such as “Wilkes and
Liberty,” the bare utterance of which has been sufficient at times to
set a whole population in a flame; while the solemn and sepulchral
cadences in which Pitt repeated the cuckoo song of “thrones and
altars,” “anarchy and dissolution of social order,” were more potent
arguments against revolution than the most perfect syllogism that
was ever constructed in mood and figure. So in our own country this
verbal magic has been found more convincing than arguments in
“Barbara” or “Baralipton.” Patriots and demagogues alike have found
that it was only necessary, in South’s phrase, to take any passion of
the people, when it was predominant and just at the critical height of
it, “and nick it with some lucky or unlucky word,” and they might “as
certainly overrule it to their own purpose as a spark of fire, falling
upon gunpowder, will infallibly blow it up.” “Free Trade and Sailors’
Rights,” “No More Compromise,” “The Higher Law,” “The Irrepressible
Conflict,” “Squatter Sovereignty,” and other similar phrases, have
roused and moved the public mind as much as the pulpit and the
press.
Gouverneur Morris, in his Parisian journal of 1789, tells an
anecdote which strikingly illustrates this influence of catch-words
upon the popular mind. A gentleman, in walking, came near to a
knot of people whom a street orator was haranguing on the power of
a qualified veto (veto suspensif), which the constituent assembly had
just granted to the king. “Messieurs,” said the orator, “we have not a
supply of bread. Let me tell you the reason. It has been but three
days since the king obtained this qualified veto, and during that time
the aristocrats have bought up some of these suspensions, and
carried the grain out of the kingdom.” To this profound discourse the
people assented by loud cheers. Not only shibboleths, but epithets,
are often more convincing than syllogisms. The term Utopian or
Quixotic, associated in the minds of the people with any measure,
even the wisest and most practicable, is as fatal to it as what some
one calls the poisonous sting of the American (?) humbug.
So in theology; false doctrines and true doctrines have owed their
currency or non-currency, in a great measure, to the coinage of
happy terms, by which they have been summed up and made
attractive or offensive. Trench observes that “the entire secret of
Buddhism is in the ‘Nirvâna.’ Take away the word, and it is not too
much to say that the keystone to the whole arch is gone.” When the
Roman Catholic Church coined the term “transubstantiation,” the
error which had so long been held in solution was precipitated, and
became henceforth a fixed and influential dogma. What a potent
watchword was the term “Reformation,” in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries! Who can estimate the influence of the phrases “Broad
Church,” “Liberal Church,” “Close Communion,” in advancing or
retarding the growth of certain religious sects at this day? Many of
even the most “advanced thinkers,” who reject the supernatural
element of the Bible, put all religions upon the same level, and deem
Shakespeare as truly inspired as the Apostles, style themselves
“Christians.”
Even in science happy names have had much to do with the
general reception of truth. “Hardly any original thoughts on mental or
social subjects,” says a writer, “ever make their way among mankind,
or assume their proper proportions even in the minds of their
inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases have, as it were,
nailed them down and held them fast.” How much is the study of the
beautiful science of botany hindered by such “lexical superfetations”
as chrysanthemum leukanthemum, Myosotis scorpioeides,
—“scorpion-shaped mouse’s ear”; and how much is that of
astronomy promoted by such popular terms as “the bear,” “the
serpent,” “the milky way”! How much knowledge is gathered up in
the compact and easily remembered phrase, “correlation of forces”;
and to what an extent the wide diffusion of Darwin’s speculations is
owing to two or three felicitous and comprehensive terms, such as
“the struggle for existence,” “survival of the fittest,” “the process of
natural selection”! Who that has felt the painfulness of doubt has not
desired to know something of “the positive philosophy” of Comte? On
the other hand, the well-known anatomist, Professor Owen,
complains with just reason of the embarrassments produced in his
science by having to use a long description instead of a name. Thus
a particular bone is called by Soemmering “pars occipitalis stricte sic
dicta partis occipitalis ossis spheno-occipitalis,” a description so
clumsy that only the direst necessity would lead one to use it.
Even great authors, who are supposed to have “sovereign sway
and masterdom” over words, are often bewitched and led captive by
them. Thus Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth were bent on
establishing their Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna, not
because they knew anything of that locality, but because
Susquehanna was “such a pretty name.” Again, to point an epigram
or give edge to a sarcasm, a writer will stab a rising reputation as
with a poniard; and, even when convicted of misrepresentation, will
sooner stick to the lie than part with a jeu d’esprit, or forego a verbal
felicity. Thus Byron, alluding to Keats’s death, which was supposed to
have been caused by Gifford’s savage criticism in the “Quarterly,”
said:
“Strange that the soul, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article!”

Though he was afterward informed of the untruth of these lines,

Byron, plethoric as he was with poetic wealth and wit, could not
willingly let them die; and so the witticism yet remains to mislead
and provoke the laughter of his readers.
Again, there are authors who, to meet the necessities of rhyme, or
to give music to a period, will pad out their sentences with
meaningless expletives. They employ words as carpenters put false
windows into houses; not to let in light upon their meaning, but for
symmetry. Or, perhaps, they imagine that a certain degree of
distension of the intellectual stomach is required to enable it to act
with its full powers,—just as some of the Russian peasantry mix
sawdust with the train oil they drink, or as hay and straw, as well as
corn, are given to horses, to supply the necessary bulk. Thus Dr.
Johnson, imitating Juvenal, says:
“Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru.”

This, a lynx-eyed critic contended, was equivalent to saying: “Let

observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind
extensively.” If the Spartans, as we are told, fined a citizen because
he used three words where two would have done as well, how would
they have punished such prodigality of language?
It is an impressive truth which has often been noticed by moralists,
that indulgence in verbal vice speedily leads to corresponding vices in
conduct. If a man talk of any mean, sensual, or criminal practice in a
familiar or flippant tone, the delicacy of his moral sense is almost
sure to be lessened, he loses his horror of the vice, and, when
tempted to do the deed, he is far more likely to yield. Many a man,
without dreaming of such a result, has thus talked himself into vice,
into sensuality, and even into ruin. The apostle James was so
impressed with the significance of speech that he regarded it as an
unerring sign of character. “If any man offend not in word,” he
declares, “the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the
whole body.” Again he declares that “the tongue is an unruly evil, full
of deadly poison”; commenting upon which, Rev. F. W. Robertson
observes: “The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is
known; there are poisons so destructive that a single drop insinuated
into the veins produces death in three seconds.... In that drop of
venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the
spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a
poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so
virulent that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution,
and convert night and day into restless misery.” So, he adds, there
are words of calumny and slander, apparently insignificant, yet so
venomous and deadly that they not only inflame hearts and fever
human existence, but poison human society at the very fountain
springs of life. It was said with the deepest feeling of the utterers of
such words, by one who had smarted under their sting: “Adders’
poison is under their lips.”
Who can estimate the amount of misery which has been produced
in society by merely idle words, uttered without malice, and by words
uttered in jest? A poet, whose name is unknown to us, has vividly
painted the effects of such utterances:
“A frivolous word, a sharp retort,
A flash from a passing cloud,
Two hearts are scathed to their inmost core,
Are ashes and dust forevermore;
Two faces turn to the crowd,
Masked by pride with a lifelong lie,
To hide the scars of that agony.
“A frivolous word, a sharp retort,
An arrow at random sped;
It has cut in twain the mystic tie
That had bound two souls in harmony,
Sweet love lies bleeding or dead.
A poisoned shaft, with scarce an aim,
Has done a mischief sad as shame.”

How often have thoughtless words set empires ablaze, and kindled
furious wars among nations! It was one of the virtues of George
Washington that he knew how to be silent. John Adams said he had
the most remarkable mouth he had ever seen; for he had the art of
controlling his lips. One of the rules of conduct to which David Hume
inflexibly adhered, was never to reply to any attack made upon him
or his writings. It was creditable to him that he had no anxiety to
have “the last word,”—that which in family circles has been
pronounced to be “the most dangerous of infernal machines.”
It is not, however, in the realm of literature and morals only that
the power of words is seen. Who is ignorant of their sway in the
world of politics? Is not fluency of speech, in many communities,
more than statesmanship? Are not brains, with a little tongue, often
far less potent than “tongue with a garnish of brains”? Need any one
be told that a talent for speech-making has stood in place of all other
acquirements; that it is this which has made judges without law, and
diplomatists without French; which has sent to the army brigadiers
who knew not a cannon from a mortar, and to the legislature men
who could not tell a bank note from a bill of exchange; which,
according to Macaulay, made a Foreign Minister of Mr. Pitt, who
never opened Vattel, and which was near making a Chancellor of the
Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan, who could not work a sum in long
division? “To be a man of the world,” says Corporal Bunting, a
character in one of Bulwer’s novels, “you must know all the ins and
outs of speechifying. It’s words that make another man’s mare go
your road. Augh! that must have been a clever man as invented
language. It is a marvel to think how much a man does in the way of
cheating, if he only has the gift of the gab; wants a missus,—talks
her over; wants your horse,—talks you out of it; wants a place,—
talks himself into it.... Words make even them ’ere authors, poor
creatures, in every man’s mouth. Augh! sir, take note of the words,
and the things will take care of themselves.”
It is true that “lying words” are not always responsible for the
mischief they do; that they often rebel and growl audibly against the
service into which they are pressed, and testify against their
taskmasters. The latent nature of a man struggles often through his
own words, so that even truth itself comes blasted from his lips, and
vulgarity, malignity, and littleness of soul, however anxiously cloaked,
are betrayed by the very phrases and images of their opposites. “A
satanic drop in the blood,” it has been said, “makes a clergyman
preach diabolism from scriptural texts, and a philanthropist thunder
hate from the rostrum of reform.”[9] But though the truth often leaks
out through the most hypocritical words, it is yet true that they are
successfully employed, as decoy ducks, to deceive, and the dupes
who are cheated by them are legion. There are men fond of
abstractions, whom words seem to enter and take possession of, as
their lords and owners. Blind to every shape but a shadow, deaf to
every sound but an echo, they invert the legitimate order, and regard
things as the symbols of words, not words as the symbols of things.
There is, in short, “a besotting intoxication which this verbal magic, if
I may so call it, brings upon the mind of man.... Words are able to
persuade men out of what they find and feel, to reverse the very
impressions of sense, and to amuse men with fancies and paradoxes,
even in spite of nature and experience.”[10]
All who are familiar with Dickens will recollect the reply of the
shrewd Samuel Weller, when asked the meaning of the word
monomania: “When a poor fellow takes a piece of goods from a
shop, it is called theft; but if a wealthy lady does the same thing, it is
called monomania.” There is biting satire as well as naïveté and dry
humor in the reply, and it strikingly shows the moral power of
language; how the same act may be made to appear in wholly
different lights, according to the phraseology used to describe it. The
same character may be made to look as spotless as an angel, or as
black as “the sooty spirits that troop under Acheron’s flag,” through
the lubricity of language. “Timidus,” says Seneca, “se cantum vocat;
sordidus parcum.” Thousands who would shrink back with disgust or
horror from a vice which has an ugly name, are led “first to endure,
then pity, then embrace,” when men have thrown over it the mantle
of an honorable appellation. A singular but most instructive dictionary
might be compiled by taking one after another the honorable and the
sacred words of a language, and showing for what infamies,
basenesses, crimes, or follies, each has been made a pretext. Is
there no meaning in the fact that, among the ancient Romans, the
same word was employed to designate a crime and a great action,
and that a softened expression for “a thief” was “a man of three
letters” (f. u. r.)? Does it make no difference in our estimate of the
gambler and his profession, whether we call him by the plain,
unvarnished Saxon “blackleg,” or by the French epithet, “industrious
chevalier”? Can any one doubt that in Italy, when poisoning was
rifest, the crime was fearfully increased by the fact that, in place of
this term, not to be breathed in ears polite, the death of some one
was said to be “assisted”? Or can any one doubt the moral effect of a
similar perversion of words in France, when a subtle poison, by
which impatient heirs delivered themselves from persons who stood
between them and the inheritance they coveted, was called
“succession powder”?
Juvenal indignantly denounces the polished Romans for relieving
the consciences of rich criminals by softening the names of their
crimes; and Thucydides, in a well known passage of his history, tells
how the morals of the Greeks of his day were sapped, and how they
concealed the national deterioration, by perversions of the customary
meanings of words. Unreasoning rashness, he says, passed as
“manliness” and esprit de corps, and prudent caution for specious
cowardice; sobermindedness was a mere “cloak for effeminacy,” and
general prudence was “inefficient inertness.” The Athenians, at one
time, were adepts in the art of coining agreeable names for
disagreeable things. “Taxes” they called “subscriptions,” or
“contributions”; the prison was “the house”; the executioner a “public
servant”; and a general abolition of debt was “a disburdening
ordinance.” Devices like these are common to all countries; and in
our own, especially, one is startled to see what an amount of
ingenuity has been expended in perfecting this “devil’s vocabulary,”
and how successful the press has been in its efforts to transmute
acts of wickedness into mere peccadilloes, and to empty words
employed in the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness
of the moral reprobation they convey.
The use of classical names for vices has done no little harm to the
public morals. We may say of these names, what Burke said with
doubtful correctness of vices themselves, that “they lose half their
deformity by losing all their grossness.” If any person is in doubt
about the moral quality of an act, let him characterize it in plain
Saxon, and he will see it in its true colors.
Some time ago a Wisconsin clergyman, being detected in stealing
books from a bookstore, confessed the truth, and added that he left
his former home in New Jersey under disgrace for a similar theft.
This fact a New York paper noted under the head of “A Peculiar
Misfortune.” About the same time a clerk in Richmond, Va., being
sent to deposit several hundreds of dollars in a bank, ran away with
the money to the North. Having been pursued, overtaken, and
compelled to return the money, he was spoken of by “the chivalry” as
the young man “who had lately met with an accident.” Is it not an
alarming sign of the times, when, in the legislature of one of our
largest eastern States, a member declares that he has been asked by
another member for his vote, and told that he would get “five
hundred reasons for giving it”; thus making the highest word in our
language, that which signifies divinely given power of discrimination
and choice, the synonym of bribery?
Perhaps no honorable term in the language has been more
debased than “gentleman.” Originally the word meant a man born of
a noble family, or gens, as the Romans called it; but as such persons
were usually possessed of wealth and leisure, they were generally
distinguished by greater refinement of manners than the working
classes, and a more tasteful dress. As in the course of ages their
riches and legal privileges diminished, and the gulf which separated
them from the citizens of the trading towns was bridged by the
increasing wealth and power of the latter, the term “gentleman”
came at last to denote indiscriminately all persons who kept up the
state and observed the social forms which had once characterized
men of rank. To-day the term has sunk so low that the acutest
lexicographer would be puzzled to tell its meaning. Not only does
every person of decent exterior and deportment assume to be a
gentleman, but the term is applied to the vilest criminals and the
most contemptible miscreants, as well as to the poorest and most
illiterate persons in the community.
In aristocratic England the artificial distinctions of society have so
far disappeared that even the porter who lounges in his big chair,
and condescends to show you out, is the “gentleman in the hall”;
Jeames is the “gentleman in uniform”; while the valet is the
“gentleman’s gentleman.” Even a half a century ago, George IV, who
was so ignorant that he could hardly spell, and who in heart and soul
was a thorough snob, was pronounced, upon the ground of his grand
and suave manners, “the first gentleman of Europe.” But in the
United States the term has been so emptied of its original meaning,
—especially in some of the southern states, where society has hardly
emerged from a feudal state, and where men who shoot each other
in a street fray still babble of being “born gentlemen,” and of “dying
like gentlemen,”—that most persons will think it is quite time for the
abolition of that heartless conventionality, that pretentious cheat and
barbarian, the gentleman. Cowper declared, a hundred years ago, in
regard to duelling:
“A gentleman
Will not insult me, and no other can.”

A southern newspaper stated some years ago that a “gentleman”

was praising the town of Woodville, Mississippi, and remarked that “it
was the most quiet, peaceable place he ever saw; there was no
quarrelling or rowdyism, no fighting about the streets. If a gentleman
insulted another, he was quietly shot down, and there was the last of
it.” The gentle Isaiah Rynders, who acted as marshal at the time the
pirate Hicks was executed in New York, had doubtless similar notions
of gentility; for, after conversing a moment with the culprit, he said
to the bystanders: “I asked the gentlemen if he desired to address
the audience, but he declined.” In a similar spirit Booth, the assassin
of Lincoln, when he was surrounded in the barn, where he was shot
like a beast, offered to pledge his word “as a gentleman,” to come
out and try to shoot one or two of his captors. When the Duke of
Saxe-Weimar visited the United States about fifty years ago, he was
asked by a hackman: “Are you the man that’s going to ride with me;
for I am the gentleman that’s to drive?”
When a young man becomes a reckless spendthrift, how easy it is
to gloss over his folly by talking of his “generosity,” his “big-
heartedness,” and “contempt for trifles”; or, if he runs into the
opposite vice of miserly meanness, how convenient to dignify it by
the terms “economy” and “wise forecast of the future”! Many a man
has blown out another’s brains in “an affair of honor,” who, if accused
of murder, would have started back with horror. Many a person
stakes his all on a public stock, or sells wheat or corn which he does
not possess, in the expectation of a speedy fall, who would be
thunderstruck if told that, while considering himself only a shrewd
speculator, he is, in everything save decency of appearance, on a par
with the haunter of a “hell,” and as much a gambler as if he were
staking his money on rouge-et-noir or roulette. Hundreds of officials
have been tempted to defraud the government by the fact that the
harshest term applied to the offence is the rose-water one,
“defaulting”; and men have plotted without compunction the
downfall of the government, and plundered its treasury, as
“secessionists,” who would have expected to dangle at the rope’s
end, or to be shot down like dogs, had they regarded themselves as
rebels or traitors. So Pistol objected to the odious word
“steal,”—“convey the wise it call.” There are multitudes of persons
who can sit for hours at a festive table, gorging themselves,
Gargantua-like, “with links and chitterlings,” and guzzling whole
bottles of champagne, under the impression that they are “jolly
fellows,” “true epicureans,” and “connoisseurs in good living,” whose
cheeks would tingle with indignation and shame if they were
accused, in point-blank terms, of vices so disgusting as intemperance
or gluttony. “I am not a slut,” boasts Audrey, in “As You Like It,”
“though I thank the gods I am foul.”
Of all classes of men whose callings tempt them to juggle with
words, none better than auctioneers understand how much
significance lies in certain shades of expression. It is told of Robins,
the famous London auctioneer, who in selling his wares revelled in an
oriental luxury of expression, that in puffing an estate he described a
certain ancient gallows as a “hanging wood.” At another time, having
made the beauties of the earthly paradise which he was
commissioned to sell too gorgeously enchanting, and finding it
necessary to blur it by a fault or two, lest it should prove “too good
for human nature’s daily food,” the Hafiz of the mart paused a
moment, and reluctantly added: “But candor compels me to add,
gentlemen, that there are two drawbacks to this splendid property,—
the litter of the rose leaves and the noise of the nightingales.”
It is hardly possible to estimate the mischief which is done to
society by the debasement of its language in the various ways we
have indicated. When the only words we have by which to designate
the personifications of nobleness, manliness, courtesy and truth are
systematically applied to all that is contemptible and vile, who can
doubt that these high qualities themselves will ultimately share in the
debasement to which their proper names are subjected? Who does
not see how vast a difference it must make in our estimate of any
species of wickedness, whether we are wont to designate it, and to
hear it designated, by some word which brings out its hatefulness, or
by one which palliates and glosses over its foulness and deformity?
How much better to characterize an ugly thing by an ugly word, that
expresses moral condemnation and disgust, even at the expense of
some coarseness, than to call evil good and good evil, to put
darkness for light, and light for darkness, by the use of a term that
throws a veil of sentiment over a sin! In reading the literature of
former days, we are shocked occasionally by the bluntness and plain
speaking of our fathers; but even their coarsest terms,—the “naked
words, stript from their shirts,”—in which they denounced libertinism,
were far less hurtful than the ceremonious delicacy which has taught
men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness, to hide the
loathsomeness of vice, and to express the most indecent ideas in the
most modest terms.
It has been justly said that the corrupter of a language stabs
straight at the very heart of his country. He commits a crime against
every individual of a nation, for he poisons a stream from which all
must drink; and the poison is more subtle and more dangerous,
because more likely to escape detection, than the deadliest venom
with which the destructive philosophy of our day is assailing the
moral or the religious interests of humanity. “Let the words of a
country,” says Milton in a letter to an Italian scholar, “be in part
unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear
and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but, by no light
indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly
yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of
servility?”
Sometimes the spirit which governs employers or employed, and
other classes of men, in their mutual relations, is indicated by the
names they give each other. Some years ago the legislature of
Massachusetts made a law requiring that children of a certain age,
employed in the factories of that State, should be sent to school a
certain number of weeks in the year. While visiting the factories to
ascertain whether this wise provision of the State government was
complied with, an officer of the State inquired of the agent of one of
the principal factories at New Bedford, whether it was the custom to
do anything for the physical, intellectual, or moral welfare of the
work people. The reply would not have been inappropriate from the
master of a plantation, or the captain of a coolie ship: “We never do;
as for myself, I regard my work people as I regard my machinery....
They must look out for themselves, as I do for myself. When my
machinery gets old and useless, I reject it and get new: and these
people are a part of my machinery.” Another agent in another part of
the State replied to a similar question, that “he used his mill hands as
he used his horse; as long as the horse was in good condition and
rendered good service, he treated him well; otherwise he got rid of
him as soon as he could, and what became of him afterward was no
affair of his.”
But we need not multiply illustrations to show the moral power of
words. As the eloquent James Martineau says: “Power they certainly
have. They are alive with sweetness, with terror, with pity. They have
eyes to look at you with strangeness or with response. They are even
creative, and can wrap a world in darkness for us, or flood it with
light. But in all this, they are not signs of the weakness of humanity:
they are the very crown and blossom of its supreme strength; and
the poet whom this faith possesses will, to the end of time, be
master of the critic whom it deserts. The whole inner life of men
moulds the forms of language, and is moulded by them in turn; and
as surely pines when they are rudely treated as the plant whose
vessels you bruise or try to replace with artificial tubes. The grouping
of thought, the musical scale of feeling, the shading and harmonies
of color in the spectrum of imagination, have all been building, as it
were, the molecules of speech into their service; and if you
heedlessly alter its dispositions, pulverize its crystals, fix its elastic
media, and turn its transparent into opaque, you not only disturb
expression, you dislodge the very things to be expressed. And in
proportion as the idea or sentiment thus turned adrift is less of a
mere personal characteristic, and has been gathering and shaping its
elements from ages of various affection and experience, does it
become less possible to replace it by any equivalents, or dispense
with its function by any act of will.”
To conclude: there is one startling fact connected with words,
which should make all men ponder what they utter. Not only is every
wise and every idle word recorded in the book of divine
remembrance, but modern science has shown that they produce an
abiding impression on the globe we inhabit. Plunge your hand into
the sea, and you raise its level, however imperceptibly, at the other
side of the globe. In like manner, the pulsations of the air, once set in
motion, never cease; its waves, raised by each sound, travel the
entire round of earth’s and ocean’s surface; and in less than twenty-
four hours, every atom of atmosphere takes up the altered
movement resulting from that sound. The air itself is one vast library,
on whose pages are written in imperishable characters all that man
has spoken, or even whispered. Not a word that goes from the lips
into the air can ever die, until the atmosphere which wraps our huge
globe in its embrace has passed away forever, and the heavens are
no more. There, till the heavens are rolled together as a scroll, will
still live the jests of the profane, the curses of the ungodly, the scoffs
of the atheist, “keeping company with the hours,” and circling the
earth with the song of Miriam, the wailing of Jeremiah, the low
prayer of Stephen, the thunders of Demosthenes, and the
denunciations of Burke.
“Words are mighty, words are living;
Serpents, with their venomous stings,
Or, bright angels, crowding round us
With heaven’s light upon their wings;
Every word has its own spirit,
True or false, that never dies;
Every word man’s lips have uttered
Echoes in God’s skies.”
 F O OT N OT E S :

[7] “Language and the Study of Language,” by W. D. Whitney.

[8] “Lectures on the English Language.”
[9] “Literature and Life,” by Edwin P. Whipple.
[10] South’s Sermons.
 CHAPTER III.

G R A N D W O R D S.

The fool hath planted his memory with an army of words.—Shakespeare.

In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver.... Be profound with
clear terms, and not with obscure terms.—Joubert.
The more you have studied foreign languages, the more you will be disposed to
keep Ollendorff in the background; the proper result of such acquirements is visible
in a finer ear for words.—T. W. Higginson.
Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don’t
whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want to tingle.—H. W. Beecher.

I t is a trite remark that words are the representatives of things and

thoughts, as coin represents wealth. You carry in your pocket a
doubloon or a dollar, stamped by the king or state, and you are the
virtual owner of whatever it will purchase. But who affixes the stamp
upon a word? No prince or potentate was ever strong enough to
make or unmake a single word. Cæsar confessed that with all his
power he could not do it, and Claudius could not introduce even a
new letter. He attempted to introduce the consonant V, as distinct
from U, the Roman alphabet having but one character for both; but
he could not make his subjects accept the new letter, though he
could kill or plunder them at pleasure. Cicero tried his hand at word-
coining; but though he proved a skilful mint-master, and struck some
admirable trial pieces, which were absolutely needed to facilitate
mental exchanges, yet they did not gain circulation, and were thrown
back upon his hands. But that which defied the power of Cæsar and
of Cicero does not transcend the ability of many writers of our own
day, some of whom are adepts in the art of word-coining, and are
daily minting terms and phrases which must make even Noah
Webster, boundless as was his charity for new words, turn in his
grave. It is doubtful, however, whether these persons do so much
damage to our noble English language as those who vulgarize it by
the use of penny-a-liner phrases. There is a large and growing class
of speakers and writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who,
apparently despising the homely but terse and telling words of their
mother tongue, never use a Saxon term, if they can find what Lord
Brougham calls a “long-tailed word in ’osity or ’ation” to do its work.
What is the cause of this? Is it the extraordinary, not to say
excessive, attention now given by persons of all ages to foreign
languages, to the neglect of our own? Is it the comparative
inattention given to correct diction by the teachers in the schools of
to-day; or is it because the favorite books of the young are
sensational stories, made pungent, and, in a sense, natural, through
the lavish use of all the colloquialisms and vulgarisms of low life?
Shall we believe that it is because there is little individuality and
independence in these days, that the words of so few persons are
flavored with their idiosyncrasies; that it is from conscious poverty of
thought that they try to trick out their ideas in glittering words and
phrases, just as, by means of high-heeled boots, a laced coat, and a
long feather, a fellow with a little soul and a weak body might try to
pass muster as a bold grenadier? Or is it because of the prevalent
mania for the sensational,—the craving for novelty and excitement,
which is almost universal in these days,—that so many persons make
sense subservient to sound, and avoid calling things by their proper
names? Or, finally, to take a more charitable view of the case, is it
because it is impossible for inaccurate minds to hit the exact truth,
and describe a thing just as they have seen it,—to express degrees
of feeling, to observe measures and proportions, and define a
sensation as it was felt? Was Talleyrand wrong when he said that
language was given to man to conceal his thought; and was it really
given to hide his want of thought? Is it, indeed, the main object of
expression to convey the smallest possible amount of meaning with
the greatest possible amount of appearance of meaning; and, since
nobody can be “so wise as Thurlow looked,” to look as wise as
Thurlow while uttering the veriest truisms?
Be all this as it may, in nothing else is the lack of simplicity, which
is so characteristic of our times, more marked than in the prevailing
forms of expression. “The curse and the peril of language in our day,
and particularly in this country,” says an American critic, who may,
perhaps, croak at times, but who has done much good service as a
literary policeman in the repression of verbal licentiousness, “is that it
is at the mercy of men who, instead of being content to use it well,
according to their honest ignorance, use it ill, according to their
affected knowledge; who, being vulgar, would seem elegant; who,
being empty, would seem full; who make up in pretence what they
lack in reality; and whose little thoughts, let off in enormous phrases,
sound like fire-crackers in an empty barrel.” In the estimation of
many writers at the present day, the great, crowning vice in the use
of words is, apparently, to employ plain, straightforward English. The
simple Saxon is not good enough for their purposes, and so they
array their ideas in “big, dictionary words,” derived from the Latin,
and load their style with expletives as tasteless as the streamers of
tattered finery that flutter about the person of a dilapidated belle.
The “high polite,” in short, is their favorite style, and the good old
Spartan rule of calling a spade a spade they hold in thorough
contempt. Their great recipe for elegant or powerful writing is to call
the most common things by the most uncommon names. Provided
that a word is out-of-the-way, unusual, or far-fetched,—and
especially if it is one of many syllables,—they care little whether it is
apt and fit or not.
With them a fire is always “the devouring element,” or a
“conflagration”; and the last term is often used where there is no
meeting of flames, as when a town is fired in several places, but
when only one building is burned; the fire never burns a house, but
it always “consumes an edifice,” unless it is got under, in which case
“its progress is arrested.” A railroad accident is always “a holocaust,”
and its victims are named under the “death roll.” A man who is the
first to do a thing “takes the initiative.” Instead of loving a woman, a
man “becomes attached” to her; instead of losing his mother by
death, he “sustains a bereavement of his maternal relative.” A dog’s
tail, in the pages of these writers, is his “caudal appendage”; a dog
breaker, “a kunopædist”; and a fish-pond they call by no less lofty a
title than “piscine preserve.” Ladies, in their classic pages, have
ceased to be married, like those poor, vulgar creatures, their
grandmothers; they are “led to the hymeneal altar.” Of the existence
of such persons as a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl, these writers
are profoundly ignorant; though they often speak of “individuals,”
“gentlemen,” “characters,” and “parties,” and often recognize the
existence of “juveniles” and “juvenile members of the community.”
“Individual” is another piece of pompous inanity which is very current
now. In “Guesses at Truth” mention is made of a celebrated
preacher, who was so destitute of all feeling for decorum in
language, as to call our Saviour “this eminent individual.” “Individual”
is a good Latin word, and serves a good purpose when it
distinguishes a person from a people or class, as it served a good
purpose in the scholastic philosophy; but would Cicero or Duns
Scotus have called a great man an eminens individuum? These
“individuals,” strange to say, are never dressed, but always “attired”;
they never take off their clothes, but “divest themselves of their
habiliments,” which is so much grander.
“In the church,” says St. Paul, “I had rather speak five words with
my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than
ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” Not so think some of
the preachers of the Gospel of the present day, if we may judge
them by the language they use in their discourses. To give their
sermons a philosophical air, or because simple language is not to
their taste, they invest their discourses with the technicalities of
science and philosophy. They never speak of so old-fashioned a thing
as the will, but always of “volition”; duty, with them, is never duty
simply, but always “moral obligation”; and their sermons abound in
“necessary relations,” “moral and physical necessities,” “intellectual
processes,” “laws of nature,” and “arguments a priori and a
posteriori.” It was a preacher of this class, who having occasion to
tell his hearers that there was not one Gospel for the rich and
another for the poor, informed them that, “if they would not be saved
on ‘general principles,’ they could not be saved at all.” Who can doubt
that such language as this is not only poorly understood, if
understood it is, by the ordinary hearer, but is far less effective than
the simple Saxon words which might be used to convey the same
ideas? Some years ago a white minister preached in a plain, direct
style to a church of negroes in the South, whose “colored” pastor
was greatly addicted to the use of high-flown language in his
sermons. In the season of exhortation and prayer that followed, an
old negro thanked the Lord for the various blessings of the Sabbath
and the sanctuary, and especially, he added, “we thank Thee that to-
day we have been fed from a low crib.” Would it not be well for
preachers generally to remember that many of Christ’s flock are
“little ones,” whose necks are short, and that they may consequently
starve, if their food, however nutritious, is placed in too lofty a crib?
But preachers are not the only anti-Saxons of our day; we may
find them in nearly all the classes of society,—persons who never tell
us that a man is asleep, but say that he is “locked in slumber”; who
deem it vulgar, and perhaps cruel, to say that a criminal was hanged,
but very elegant to say that he was “launched into eternity.” A person
of their acquaintance never does so low a thing as to break his leg;
he “fractures his limb.” They never see a man fall; but sometimes see
“an individual precipitated.” Our Latin friends,—fortunate souls,—
never have their feelings hurt, though it must be confessed that their
“sensibilities” are sometimes dreadfully “lacerated.” Above the
necessities of their poor fellow-creatures, they never do so vulgar a
thing as to eat a meal; they always “partake of a repast,” which is so
much more elegant. They never do so commonplace a thing as to
take a walk; they “make a pedestrian excursion.” A conjurer with
them is a “prestidigitator”; a fortune-teller, a “vaticinator.” As Pascal
says, they mask all nature. There is with them no king, but an
“august monarch”; no Paris, but a “capital of a kingdom.” Even our
barbers have got upon stilts. They no longer sell tooth-powder and
shaving-soap, like the old fogies, their fathers, but “odonto,” and
“dentifrice,” and “rypophagon”; and they themselves, from the
barber-ous persons they once were, have been transformed into
“artists in hair.” The medical faculty, too, have caught the spirit of the
age. Who would suspect that “epistaxis” means simply bleeding at
the nose, and “emollient cataplasm” only a poultice? Fancy one
schoolboy doubling up his fist at another, and telling him to look out
for epistaxis! Who would dream that “anheidrohepseterion”
(advertised in the London “Times”) means only a saucepan, or
“taxidermist” a bird-stuffer? Is it not remarkable that tradesmen have
ceased “sending in” their “little bills,” and now only “render their
accounts”?
“There are people,” says Landor, “who think they write and speak
finely, merely because they have forgotten the language in which
their fathers and mothers used to talk to them.” As in dress,
deportment, etc., so in language, the dread of vulgarity, as Whately
has suggested, constantly besetting those who are half conscious
that they are in danger of it, drives them into the opposite extreme
of affected finery. They act upon the advice of Boileau:
“Quoique vous écriviez, évitez la bassesse;
Le style le moins noble a pourtant sa noblesse;”

and, to avoid the undignified, according to them, it is only necessary

not to call things by their right names. Hence the use of “residence”
for house, “electric fluid” for lightning, “recently deceased” for lately
dead, “encomium” for praise, “location” for place, “locate” for put,
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