Words are lighter than the cloud foam

Of the restless ocean spray;
Vainer than the trembling shadow
That the next hour steals away;
By the fall of summer rain-drops
Is the air as deeply stirred;
And the rose leaf that we tread on
Will outlive a word.

Yet on the dull silence breaking
With a lightning flash, a word,
Bearing endless desolation

On its blighting wings, I heard.
Earth can forge no keener weapon,
Dealing surer death and pain,
And the cruel echo answered

Through long years again.

I have known one word hang star-like
O'er a dreary waste of years,

And it only shone the brighter

Looked at through a mist of tears,

While a weary wanderer gathered

Hope and heart on life's dark way. By its faithful promise shining Clearer day by day.

I have known a spirit calmer

Then the calmest lake, and clear As the heavens that gazed upon it, With no wave of hope or fear;

But a storm had swept across it,

And its deepest depths were stirred,

Never, never more to slumber.

Only by a word.

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.-MAX MÜLLER.

A winged word hath struck ineradically in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness.-W. S. LANDOR.

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousand, perhaps millions, think.- BYRON.

A dead language is full of all monumental remembrances of the people who spoke it. Their swords and their shields are in it; their faces are pictured on its walls; and their very voices ring still through its recesses.— B. W. DWIGHT.

Every sentence of the great writer is like an autograph. If Milton had endorsed a bill of exchange with half-a-dozen blank verse lines, it would be as good as his name, and would be accepted as good evidence in court.-ALEXANDER SMITH.

If there be a human talent, let it get into the tongue, and make melody with that organ. The talent that can say nothing for itself, what is it? Nothing; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at best make money by railways.- CARLYLE.

Human language may be polite and powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with warm life and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables.-T. W. HIGGINSON.

Six little words do claim me every day,

Shall, must and can, with will and ought and may.
SHALL is the law within inscribed by heaven,
The goal to which I by myself am driven.
MUST is the bound not to be overpast,
Where by the world and nature I'm held fast.
CAN is the measure of my personal dower
Of deed and art, science and practised power.
WILL is my noblest crown, my brightest, best,
Freedom's my own seal upon my soul imprest;
OUGHT the inscription on the seal set fair
On Freedom's open door, a bolt 'tis there.

And lastly, MAY, 'mong many courses mixed,

The vaguely possible by the moment fixed.

SHALL, MUST and CAN, with WILL and OUGHT and MAY,
These are the six that claim me every day.

Only when God doth teach, do I know what each day,

I shall, I must, I can, I will, I ought, I may.

Translated from the German for the N. Y. School Journal.

PREFACE.

HE origin of this book is as follows: - Some

TH

twenty years ago, the author, having considerable leisure, wrote a lecture on "Words,- their Sig. nificance, Use and Abuse," which he delivered before a number of Literary Societies and Lecture Associations. Being very much interested in the subject, he continued from time to time to make notes of his thoughts and readings upon it, till at length the lecture grew into a volume.

The author is well aware that in his criticisms on the misuses and abuses of words, he has exposed himself to criticism; and it may be that he has been guilty of some of the very sins which he has condemned. If so, he sins in good company, since nearly all of his predecessors, who have written on the same theme, have been found guilty of a similar inconsistency, from Lindley Murray down to Dean Alford, Moon, Marsh, and Fowler. If the public is to hear no philological sermons till the preachers are faultless, it will have to wait forever. "The only impeccable authors," says Hazlitt, "are those that never wrote." Any just, well-meant criticism, however severe, the author will

gratefully welcome; to that which springs from an instinctive love of fault-finding, he is apt to be thickskinned. In the words of Erasmus: "Nos ad utrumque juxta parati sumus, ut vel rationem reddamus, si quid rectè monuimus, vel ingenuè confiteamur errorem, sicubi lapsi deprehendimur."

It is hardly necessary to add that the work is designed for popular reading, rather than for scholars. How much the author is indebted to others, he cannot say. He has been traveling, in his own way, over old and well-worn ground, and has picked up his materials freely from all the sources within his reach. Non nova, sed nové, has been his aim; he regrets that he has not accomplished it more to his satisfaction. The world, it has been truly said, does not need new thoughts so much as it needs that old thoughts be recast. There are some writers, however, to whom he has been particularly indebted; and therefore a list of their names, with the books consulted, has been appended at the end of the volume.