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 Grammar,

P h i lo soph y,

and Logic

Bruce silver
Grammar, Philosophy, and Logic
 Bruce Silver

Grammar,
Philosophy, and
Logic
Bruce Silver
Department of Philosophy
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-66256-5    ISBN 978-3-319-66257-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66257-2

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For Sonja
 Acknowledgments

I begin by acknowledging the encouragement that I have received from

so many students who thanked me for correcting errors in their critical
papers and who sometimes requested my help with their writing. I am
encouraged by students who are as eager to learn as they are to receive a
superior grade in the course. Memories of their gratitude, talent, and
good cheer kept me going as I wrote this book.
I am especially grateful to my former student, friend, and colleague
Christopher Hudspeth who pressed me to write a systematic study of
frequently unexpected ties between grammar, philosophy, and logic.
Without his urging and reminder that “own” is frequently a useless adjec-
tive, I would have given only a little thought to crafting these chapters. I
am also grateful to Jennifer Ingle, another former student, colleague, and
friend, who graciously accepted my corrections and criticisms when
many years ago she showed me the initial draft of her doctrinal disserta-
tion. Jennifer thanked me for my remarks and was pleased rather than
unsettled by the assorted changes I urged her to make.
I thank an anonymous reader who agreed to evaluate my manuscript
in its initial stages. His or her comments, complaints, and questions
helped me to bring focus to my task and to remind me that as I go about
the business of correcting errors that others make, I must be sure to avoid
errors in my prose and slippage in my phrasing.

vii
viii Acknowledgments

I must thank Judith Allan, acquisitions editor in linguistics and lan-

guages for Palgrave Macmillan, and her editorial assistant Rebecca Wyde.
Judith encouraged me and told me what I needed to do to enrich my
submission. In accordance with her insights and advice, I refined my
draft, clarified and narrowed my dominant thesis, and took greater
advantage of the available scholarship. Her understanding, kindness, and
patience were evident throughout the process.
After I made the changes that Judith recommended, she and her edito-
rial board agreed to publish the revised version of a monograph that
depends upon philosophers and logicians whose observations unexpect-
edly prompted me to detect and to correct subtle errors in grammar, dic-
tion, use, and style. Judith and the board accepted an idiosyncratic study
that falls within and beyond the categories and conventional lists of what
nearly all other publishers expect or require from their authors. I am
thrilled that Judith and Palgrave Macmillan decided to take a chance on
me and my proposal.
Rebecca guided me through the many steps between acceptance and
preparation for production. She was so very helpful as she patiently
addressed my concerns.
Finally, I thank Jayavel Dhanalakshmi of SPi Global. She oversaw pro-
duction of the manuscript as it became a book. Without her help, ques-
tions, explanations, and gentle reminders, I could not have concluded the
project on schedule. I also thank her superior proof-reading staff who
detected errors and offered suggestions for crafting an improved draft of
Grammar, Philosophy, and Logic.
As always, I repeat what most authors write and all authors mean. Any
errors and shortcomings that remain in this book are my responsibility
alone.
 Contents

1 Is “Interesting” Interesting?   1

2 Possible Worlds, Possible Showers, and Apparent Suicides  43

3 Comparisons That Go Wrong  65

4 We All Die, but None of Us is Dead  93

5 Tautologies and Illogical Questions 111

6 The Impossible and the Implausible 137

7 Simplicity, Economy, and Intensity 159

Epilogue 179

ix
x Contents

S
 elected Bibliography 193

Index 201
 Introduction

William James suggests that the efforts of major philosophers and their
philosophies from at least the seventeenth century into the early twenti-
eth century take a back seat to the sciences where the issue is “practical
power.” The official position is that scientists develop theories, interrogate
nature, and frequently, though not always, arrive at empirically verified
answers that shape the world to human advantage. Not every scientist
sees things in just this way. C.S. Peirce (1831–1914), the most scientifi-
cally minded American pragmatist, insists that “True science is distinc-
tively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied
without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such
work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds.”1
Philosophers frequently deal with looming “Why?” questions that
provoke thought but that provide no concrete solutions to problems
that confront us as we try to get about in the world. No one can rea-
sonably doubt that James and his fellow pragmatists address philo-
sophical debates and tensions that the sciences and common sense
cannot helpfully address: is the world material or spiritual? In what
does self-consciousness or personal identity consist? Does God exist,
and if he does, what difference does his existence make in the lives of
believers? Are we free or determined when we choose? What is the
nature of truth?

xi
xii Introduction

These questions are fine as far as they go, but insofar as each of them
exceeds actual knowledge, we are left with James’s familiar reminder:

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical dis-

putes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many—
fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which
might or may not hold good of the world: and disputes over such notions
are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret
each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences… If no practi-
cal difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically
the same thing, and all dispute is idle.2

Every specialist in American pragmatism or any philosopher or academic

who is familiar with James’s rendering of pragmatism is aware of critics
who complain that this philosophy is empty, that it bears on questions
that only a very few people ask, that it is subjective, and that—to turn
James’s phrase against him—his rendering of pragmatism “bakes no
bread.”
A reader may wonder what these prefatory remarks have to do with
grammar, syntax, word choice, and style. To the same critics who agree or
disagree with James, a recurrent question emerges: what good is philoso-
phy? Philosophers of all kinds and not only pragmatists are immediately
on the defensive. They say such things as the fruits of philosophical
inquiry enable us to think more coherently and more deeply or that
Aristotle and John Henry Newman were correct insofar as studying phi-
losophy need not serve any other end than knowing for its sake, not for
the sake of some useful good. They might add that we can ask the same
question of historians, poets, composers, and novelists. The difference is
that art historians, poets, composers, and novelists help us to produce an
aesthetically appealing world or that historians can in principle help us to
learn from earlier mistakes. Of course one can doubt that we learn any-
thing from the past except how to repeat its mistakes.
My position and my thesis throughout the chapters that follow is
that in an important sense philosophy serves a practical, non-
metaphysical end that it is rarely if ever called upon to serve, namely the
elevation of writing and of speaking correctly, economically, and pre-
 Introduction
   xiii

cisely. This thesis is bolder than it might at first appear. Traditional

grammarians, as well as the revisionists who disagree with traditional-
ists, announce that a certain construction is ungrammatical or that
another construction is more fluid and should replace one that is awk-
ward. They write about correcting some phrase or its alternative; how-
ever, they rarely produce sturdy arguments in favor of what they declare,
and they do not enlist philosophical analyses or principles of logic for
supporting their positions. In a sense, philosophy is ahead of grammar-
ians in its attention to language. This claim is surprising. William
P. Alston, an analytic philosopher, notes:

Thus to the extent that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, it is

always concerned with language. And if it is either all or a large part of a
philosopher’s business to bring about features of the use or misuse of vari-
ous words and forms of statement, it is essential for him to proceed on the
basis of some general conception of the nature of linguistic use and mean-
ing. This becomes especially important when analytical philosophers
become involved in persistent disputes over what a given word means…3

Someone might ask why grammarians should look to philosophy and

logic since their business is different from that of philosophers or logi-
cians. A reply is easy and is close to a restatement of what Alston says.
Philosophy and logic bake bread beyond themselves and are good because,
among other things, they enable academics, professors of philosophy, and
hopeful authors to produce essays, articles, chapters, and books that are
superior to the writings and lectures of people who have no background
in these two ancient disciplines. I believe that the insights of all sorts of
philosophers and the rules of logical inference are almost ideally suited to
craft prose that is correct, economical, and clear.
None of what I say in the previous paragraph applies to every person
who ever took up a pen, sat at a computer or stood behind a lectern. That
most gifted writers and speakers have no philosophical background is
probable. I am making the more modest but emphatic claim that by far
the majority of those people who believe that they have something to
write or say will do far better at their tasks if they strive to be among the
xiv Introduction

philosophically elect. I am trying to make a case for applied philosophy

that as far as I know, no major philosopher has taken the trouble to make.
If my thesis is correct, then we do not need another guide to using cor-
rect grammar, word choice, syntax, and proper diction if it does nothing
more than rehearse familiar terrain. This book is not one of those guides.
I do not restate a list of suggestions and corrections that one finds in ear-
lier books that describe ways to avoid familiar errors. I leave that task to
Ambrose Beirce, William Strunk, E.B. White, Steven Pinker, Rodney
Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum and countless other grammarians and
stylists who comment on spilt infinitives, the correct use of “momen-
tarily,” the failure to make the subject and predicate of a sentence agree,
and the need to avoid defective prepositional phrases such as “between
you and I.”4
The audience I try to reach is like that of Steven Pinker, although my
emphasis differs in some ways from his. Pinker’s book The Sense of Style is
“designed for people who know how to write and want to write better.” I
share his audience, and I also offer suggestions and develop arguments for
readers who wish to improve their writing, but I try to do more.5
I concentrate on only a few errors that most traditional guides to gram-
mar and diction ignore or miss. I summon philosophy insofar as many of
its arguments help readers to avoid infelicitous sentences, poor diction,
and crabbed prose. To the degree that I call on the arguments of world-
class philosophers and the canons of logical rationality, I try to offer a
book that is as philosophically searching as it is a study of English gram-
mar and style.
The result is a book that can be instructive in courses such as English
composition or critical writing, although the classroom is not its sole
focus. Once again, my effort is to exhibit and to defend the irreplaceable
connective tissues between philosophy and one of its neglected functions,
which is to enrich what an author, especially one in an academic disci-
pline, wishes to declare, explain or defend. A partial list of the philoso-
phers to whom I appeal includes Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius,
Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant,
Mill, William James, John Dewey, A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell,
G.E. Moore, and Gilbert Ryle.
 Introduction
   xv

(1)
In a biting review of Pinker’s The Sense of Style, the critic John Preston
holds nothing back and after calling Pinker “a colossal windbag, never
using three words when 35 can be rammed into the breach,” he adds: “As
you hack through endless thickets of Dangling Modifiers and Possessive
Adjectives, it becomes increasingly clear that Pinker doesn’t have any-
thing new to say, and that anyone who follows his example is far more
likely to end up writing waffle and bilge than War and Peace.”6 I believe
that I have something new to say. I also believe Preston’s peevish assess-
ment of Pinker’s book is overstated, even though his complaint has led
me to reassess a good deal that Pinker and other grammarians and lin-
guists say about subpar English.
Preston objects to Pinker’s bias and criticizes him for approvingly
quoting the prose of his wife’s Betraying Spinoza (2009) and his friend
Richard Dawkins’s Unweaving the Rainbow (2006).7 Preston does not
gratuitously indulge in ad hominems or object to the style, syntax, and
grammar of these authors. He merely points out that Pinker is not entirely
even-handed in his treatment of authors who are his good friends, his
notable colleagues or his wife. I agree with Preston that when it comes to
detecting and correcting errors in speech and writing, being unusually
kind to friends, colleagues, and kin is inappropriate.
Readers of these chapters will find an analysis of overworked words,
constructions, and phrases that usually pass unnoticed but that are out of
place in fine prose. Pinker and I occasionally travel the same road, but I
strive to achieve the simplicity that I defend in good philosophical writ-
ing while Pinker’s arguments and justifications strike me as sometimes
more labored than they should be. This fact is surprising insofar as Pinker
frequently defends a phrase for its economy or criticizes a sentence that is
wordy and cumbersome. I try hard to issue my brief for simplicity and
economy in all the chapters that follow and deal almost exclusively with
these values in Chap. 7. And once more, my principal weapon is the
value of applied philosophy and Aristotle’s laws of thought to eliminate
constructions that miscarry in grammatical prose and word choice.
xvi Introduction

(2)
Many writers worry with just cause about the first sentence or page of their
manuscripts. What if that sentence is not intriguing? What if it immedi-
ately fails to capture the attention of acquisitions editors? What becomes of
these writers and their proposals? The answers are common and disap-
pointing. Competition for a place on every publisher’s list is fierce.
If authors are unknown, they fret that an editor will ignore their drafts
or will not read beyond the title or first paragraph of their proposal. They
worry nearly as much that an editor who looks beyond the opening page
will be unimpressed. They fear receiving a formulaic letter in a thin envelop,
a letter that politely begins “Thank you for submitting your proposal.
Unfortunately, your project does not fit our publishing list. We wish you all
the best in your search for another publisher.” This polite rejection leads the
author to the painful belief that an editor does not think much of her sub-
mission. The author believes correctly or incorrectly that editors, including
those whose budgets are tight, cannot find room for a manuscript that
strikes them as good, that earns favorable pre-publication peer reviews but
that has little chance of selling even a few hundred copies.
Established authors are somewhat less apprehensive that editors will
reject their proposals, but they have different worries. These authors
might have agents and notable publications. Their concern is different
from that of unknown authors but is serious. They wonder whether their
published essays will attract readers, whether their books will have favor-
able reviews in major journals, newspapers and online sites or, worse,
whether they will draw the attention of any reviewers. They belong to the
set of authors who, in the celebrated words of the David Hume (“My
Own Life,” April 1776), are apprehensive that their writing will fall
“dead-born from the press.”
What does my fretful prolog have to do with this book? Is it a digres-
sion? No. I am an academically trained professor of philosophy and pri-
marily a self-taught student of English language and literature. My
specialties are the history of modern philosophy, American philosophy
and formal logic, yet I have chosen to write about grammar, syntax, and
diction as they intersect with what we learn from philosophers and logi-
cians. I have suggested that what I have learned over many years of teach-
 Introduction
   xvii

ing and writing is that a background in philosophy and logic helps a

writer become a better writer. The reasons for my belief will be explicit
throughout the book insofar as every chapter draws arguments from one
or more of the philosophical insights or arguments that are well-known
to professors of philosophy, even if these insights and arguments are not
expressed to improve scholarly writing and formal speaking.
Will readers, principally those who have reservations about interdisci-
plinary studies, be patient with me as I argue for the objections that I
raise? Will they discount what I write on the grounds that I am not a
professor of English composition and that I have moved beyond my aca-
demic specialties? I cannot say, but I hope that my analysis will receive an
impartial hearing even though it comes from someone outside a depart-
ment in which Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton—not Plato, Aristotle,
and Kant—are i primi lumi.

(3)
My secondary worry is unsurprising and is one that I share with gram-
marians. Can I persuade readers that what passes for acceptable prose and
speech is too often unacceptable? Will they think that yet another book
about grammar, syntax, and diction enriches them in any way that mat-
ters? Will they agree that knowing what critical philosophers and logi-
cians demand in their fields of inquiry serves to develop their talents as
authors and lecturers?
If I am guilty of hubris in writing this book, I offer a partial defense by
recalling my high school and undergraduate college education. I belong to
a generation that had to master English and Latin grammar, learn how to
parse sentences, know how to identify parts of speech and distinguish them
from parts of a sentence. I learned the difference between the jussive and
potential subjunctive mood.8 My contemporaries and I were also required
to master at least one modern language and, preferably, two. The assump-
tion was that undergraduate students, graduate students and educators
who knew French, German, or Spanish were better equipped to grasp the
rules and subtitles of English. Today, in our multicultural world, there are
much better reasons to acquire fluency in languages other than English.
xviii Introduction

These anecdotes in which I star are consequential if and only if I can

use them to make a case for the claim that this book does what authors of
available manuals of style and handbooks on grammar miss or ignore.
Henry W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), The
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), and the most recent
edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (2017) are nearly Biblical in their
reputations for assisting established authors whose English profits from
some revisions, for aspiring authors whose work is not quite ready for
publication, and for college students who worry about how they go about
writing a critical paper.
Authors who are eager to secure an audience for their books turn for
help to these magisterial guides and to numerous less familiar manuals.
Once more the problem and opportunity for me is that these guides and
manuals have little or nothing to say about the errors and lapses that are
the woof and warp of my chapters.9 I reject the position that a subtle
mistake does not deserve attention. Subtlety is frequently characteristic of
philosophical analysis. If we accept the conclusions of Kant’s searching
arguments as he develops antinomies and paralogisms, we do not com-
plain that his analyses are subtle, but we might wish that they were clearer.
Perhaps grammarians assume that there are enough gross errors in
writing and that these errors demand their attention far more than errors
that almost no one notices. I have encountered this attitude but insist
that every error is worth correcting. I also insist that concentrating on less
glaring, unfamiliar errors illuminates the extent to which applied philos-
ophy and formal logic are the best tools for spotting and correcting a class
of infelicities that are rarely or never included in conventional texts on
grammar, syntax, diction, and style.
I do not restate objections and suggestions that first-year college students
find in the margins of papers graded by their graduate-student instructors.
I do not impose on readers my prepossessions and impressions about what
counts as excellent, acceptable, and unacceptable use. I say here what I will
emphasize repeatedly: biases and subjective preferences are private and
unimpressive and are therefore far from persuasive; hence, they are out of
place in this kind of book. My suggestions are products of careful observa-
tion and the kind of analysis that ordinary-language philosophers under-
take. (Finally, with apologies to Fowler, Pinker and other critics whom I
 Introduction
   xix

quote or to whom I refer, I favor “use” over “usage” and will not refer in this
book to “usage” in my attempt to do more than complain about the current
state of the English language.)

(4)
I think that Stanford Pritchard makes a compelling point in his updated
appendix to Strunk and White: “As I said..., grammar and usage are not
God-given and immutable; they go through changes and metamorpho-
ses. I just happen to think that if something works well, and has worked
well for a long time, there ought to be a good, convincing and logical
reason to change it.”10 I try hard to follow his lead.
I believe with Pinker that talking about fixed rules of grammar rou-
tinely involves appealing to the past and that what was regarded as fine
speech and writing in the mists of history sometimes seems arbitrary and
stylized to our twenty-first-century eyes, ears, and brains. His impatience
with dwelling on what once served well is unambiguous:

Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any
level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several
hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since. For as long
as they have existed, speakers have flouted them, spawning identical plaints
about the imminent decline of the language century after century. All the
best writers in English at all periods, including Shakespeare and most of
the mavens themselves, have been among the flagrant flouters.11

Still, agreeing with Pinker does not entail supporting all that he says. For
example, he writes in the Guardian (August 15, 2014), page 1:

Presciptivists prescribe how language ought to be used. They uphold stan-

dards of excellence and a respect for the best of our civilization, and are a
bulwark against relativism, vulgar populism and the dumbing down of
literate culture. Descriptivists describe how language actually is used. They
believe that the rules of correct usage are nothing more than the secret
handshake of the ruling class, designed to keep the masses in their place.
Language is an organic product of human creativity, say the Descriptivists,
and people should be allowed to write however they please.
xx Introduction

Pinker develops the distinction more fully in The Sense of Style.12 .

In The Economist, January 30, 2016 (page 78), the unnamed author of
“The Johnson Column of Language,” writes:

The two schools of thought, known as “prescriptivism” (which sets down

how the language should be) and “descriptivism” (which tells how it is),
have often been at daggers drawn... In the caricature, prescriptivists are
authoritarians with their heads in the sand insisting on Victorian-era non-
rules. The descriptivists are mocked as “anything is correct,” embracing
every fad, even that Shakespeare should be taught in text-message speak.
To take one example, some prescriptivists say “like” cannot be a conjunc-
tion... Descriptivists point to its continuous use since Chaucer.13

Genuine descriptivists are like capable social scientists, and “should” falls
outside the scope of their proper concerns. They have no business admon-
ishing people to write or to speak in a specific manner. Their job is to
describe and to explain the facts. But urging people to speak and to write
“however they please” or as Chaucer wrote is not descriptivism. In fact,
urging or persuasion of any kind is not the business of descriptivists. They
must not play the role of descendants of the French Renaissance human-
ist Rabelais whose fraternal Thelemites’ motto was “Do What You Wish.
Do as You Will.”14
That the rules of English grammar and phrasing as well as declarations
about proper diction and syntax do not enjoy the status of immutable
truths or the fixity of mathematical equations is indisputable, but one
should not conclude that these grammatical rules are uniformly arbitrary.
Philosophers of science are fond of pointing out what scientists them-
selves have known for a long time: inductive generalities are the marrow
of the physical sciences, the life sciences, and the social sciences, but nei-
ther Charles’s law of the expansion of gases nor Newton’s inverse-square
law is a necessary truth that enjoys the same level of certainty as “The
interior angles of a Euclidean triangle equal 180 degrees.” If only one
exception to either of these scientific laws emerges and is objectively vali-
dated, the law must be modified or the law must die. What bearing does
this fact have on an analysis of English use?
 Introduction
   xxi

Leibniz provides the preliminary basis for an answer in his Monadology

(1714): “There are two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of
fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossi-
ble; the truths of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible.”15
Whether we accept or reject the Leibnizian distinction that many phi-
losophers draw between necessary truths in geometry or contingent truths
in the sciences is unimportant to antinomians who have doubts that gram-
matical conventions enjoy the status of either kind of truth. Linguistic lib-
ertarians or antinomians will say, and have said, that rules of the game are
not laws, that the rules are nothing more that stipulations that evolve as the
game changes. This evolutionary fact does not apply to the scope and con-
tent of established laws such as those that we discover in mathematics or
others that we apply in chemistry, physics, and biology.
Changes in the rules of a game are especially conspicuous in sports
such as hockey, soccer, and football where teams sometimes decide out-
comes of a match with shootouts, in baseball where American League
pitchers, unlike their National League counterparts, do not bat against
opposing American League teams and in football where rules for a legal
forward pass emerged in 1905 only after passing had accidentally become
part of the sport. None of these changes was a feature of these games in
the beginning.
Non-traditional scholars, sociologists, and linguists will insist that what
holds for sporting games also holds for the language game. They can main-
tain whatever they wish, but are they right? Can they defend what they so
easily declare? These questions are among those that I attempt to answer.
If these libertarians mean that some rule in grammar commands less
attention than it once did, they are on firm ground and are also correct
about what happens to a great many words. We know that almost no one
today uses “symposium” to designate an all-male drinking party, and
although “depends” originally meant “to hang from,” who can recall any-
one outside of Victorian literature saying “Madam, the pendant depends
beautifully from your neck.” And who today would praise or copy the
mannered and pretentious prose of the Victorian field-marshal Garnet
Wolseley, who in advance of the Zulu wars (1878–1879) characterized
himself as “a Jingo in the best acceptation of that sobriquet”?16
xxii Introduction

We also have a cordial letter from Thomas Jefferson to Secretary of

War Henry Knox, a letter that today strikes many of us as amusing or
as sexually charged (July 1791): “Any day and every day...you would
make me supremely happy by messing with me...”17 To most of us this
invitation sounds like the kind of slang that almost no one praises.
Would anyone today who is outside the military services understand
“messing with me” as it refers to a request to have someone join him for
dinner? Examples such as this one allow Pinker to go as far as to main-
tain that “a glance at any page of a historical reference book, such as the
Oxford English Dictionary...will show that very few words retain their
original senses.”18

(5)
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the grammarian and mathema-
tician John Wallis declared, naturally in Latin (Grammatica Linguae
Anglicanae, 1653), that the first person singular and plural in English
requires us to express the future as “I shall” and “We shall” and that in the
second and third person future, “will” replaces “shall.”19 Somehow, this
entirely arbitrary pattern became Wallis’s rule. This rule acquired the sta-
tus of a law that many grammarians and fine writers still support. The
rule was unquestioned doctrine in my salad days.
Generations of British and American educators insist that Wallis’s rule
is binding and is an example of cultivated English. Those of us who vio-
late the rule are often penalized for our word choice. Apart from Wallis’s
authority as an influential man of letters in his day, there is no basis for
the rule, and for more than three centuries some stylists as well as sticklers
for correct grammar have been divided. Some of them have ignored
Wallis’s imperative while others have demanded that writers defer to
Wallis, presumably because his rule was binding for excellent writers of
the Enlightenment in England.
Twenty-first-century authors who disregard the rule are not always
contrarians. They ignore the rule because they believe that the basis for
Wallis’s imperative is arbitrary and elective. Other examples of what
 Introduction
   xxiii

appear to be arbitrary conventions are more familiar. For instance, we are

endlessly reminded that double negatives are proscribed even as we also
know that they occasionally find a place in Shakespeare’s plays. If anyone
is entitled to poetic license, it is the greatest author who ever wrote an
English sentence. But double negatives are not rejected arbitrarily.
Solecisms that we find in plays, poetry, and novels can be products of
a novelist’s, poet’s or playwright’s fecund imagination. Understood as sty-
listic devices or as important to developing a fictional character, double
negatives that are at home in Twelfth Night and in other plays are not
really errors.20 It makes as little sense to say that John Falstaff errs as it
does to say that the impossibly muscular female bodies of Michelangelo’s
sculpted Dawn and Night (1524–1534) are a mistake. Michelangelo was
not mistaken. He was a careful student of human anatomy, and he was a
magnificent sculptor. We rarely have reasonable complaints about the
imaginative pieces of great masters working at the height of their
talents.21
Double negatives in world-class literature are suspected of being
banned because of Robert Lowth’s rejection of their use in nonfiction and
historical prose (1762): “Lowth stated the rule that we are now bound by:
‘Two Negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an
Affirmative’. Thus a useful idiom was banished from polite speech.”22
If we wish, we can maintain that what became Lowth’s principle is
gratuitous and therefore baselessly stipulated, but we should be cau-
tious about this claim and should do well not to make it. Here logic
comes to our aid and to Lowth’s. His principle is independently affirmed
both by grammarians and by the logical Law of Double Negation;
hence, there is a non-arbitrary basis for rejecting the use of double neg-
atives. And a very good way to justify this rule is not so much in a class
in English composition, in which rules are to be followed and not to be
rejected, but from a course in introductory logic in which we prove “‘p’
and ‘~p’” expresses an equivalence that a logician’s truth table estab-
lishes. Because the grammarian’s objection to double negation is con-
gruent with Lowth’s objections, but is also supported by truth tables,
we must not complain that this law is one among a set of arbitrary rules
that govern and shape fluent English.23
xxiv Introduction

(6)
The status of the rules of grammar is markedly different from that of
words. The contrast is stark between the principles that govern how we
ought to speak and write on the one hand and the vocabulary with which
we express ourselves on the other hand. Neologisms pop up constantly;
they always have. Purists and traditionalists dislike the quartet of “impact,”
“access,” “parent,” and “reference” as verbs. They maintain impatiently
but impotently that if these words are verbs, they should not be. They
wonder when, how, and why these nouns retain their substantive status
even as they lead a double life as verbs, and they dislike what they read
and hear. They object to “parenting” but might not be aware that before
men and women “parented” (“The horror! The horror!”) and “raised”
children, they “grew” wheat and “reared” their offspring. Just as “There is
no new thing under the sun,” nothing is remarkable about the constant
appearance of neologisms in English.
Purists or traditionalists deplore the use of “hopefully” as parenthetic
rather than as adverbial or modal but seem to be much less disturbed or
entirely undisturbed by the non-adverbial, parenthetic use of adverbs such
as “happily,” “sadly,” “luckily,” “regrettably,” “incidentally,” “honestly,”
“frankly,” and “thankfully.”24 Jason Gay misuses “Thankfully” when he
writes on the first page of The Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2014, “End of
an Era—Thankfully.” Is this headline any worse than “End of an Era—
Hopefully”? No. Neither of them improves the phase to which it is attached.
The list of selective corrections and objections to many words is long,
but I do not wish to end it just yet; therefore, I include a few additional
observations now and will not to return to them, except in passing, in
subsequent chapters.
Years ago an obscure linguist and political philosopher spoke elo-
quently on NPR about the entrenched racial divisions in the United
States and then closed his commentary by objecting to the slogan of the
United Negro College Fund: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” He
insisted that the correct slogan should have been “To waste and mind is a
terrible thing.” Was his plea for revision justified? Yes and no.
 Introduction
   xxv

Grammarians could make this observation: if we consider the common

meaning of “terrible” in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries, he was
justified, but if we understand “terrible” in its Biblical sense, as Nehemiah
used it to describe God, the linguist’s complaint was unjustified: “O Lord
God of heaven, the great and terrible God who keeps covenant and stead-
fast love with those who love him and keep his commandments...” (Neh
1:5; my emphasis). Here a terrible and loving God are the same being, and
by extension, a person’s mind, especially if it is “well-furnished,” might well
be a terrible thing to waste. That “terrible” has more than one meaning is a
fact, and what is true for “terrible” is obviously true for many other words
that have assorted meanings in English. Some of these meanings are at odds
with other meanings of the same word.
What do traditionalists say about “mindset,” “skill set,” and “lifestyle”?
They say that these words are unnecessary and that they carry no more
weight or specificity than the words “mind,” “skills,” or “way of life.” They
object with their spleens rather than with arguments. They dislike these
words and again insist that if “mindset” and “lifestyle” are words, then
English is too malleable, but their insistent prescriptivism—even for
those of us who side with them—is fruitless. These words are here, and
they will not disappear unless other neologisms displace them. The best
that we who dislike “mindset” and “lifestyle” can do is omit them from
our writing and speaking.
I have tried unsuccessfully in lectures to make a case against using
phrases that are more often heard than read. Among them I am especially
turned aside by “As it were,” “If you will,” “So to speak” and, more com-
mon in British and Australian English, “If you like.” I regard them as the
annoying cousins of an athlete’s “You know” as in “I threw him a curve
ball that was barely off the plate but, you know, he somehow drove if for
a homerun over the right field wall, you know.”
Critics might reply that my preferences are irrelevant and have no place
in this book. I have already said that I agree. They ask as Latinists and his-
torians of medieval philosophy whether I am aware that Thomas Aquinas
wrote in the thirteenth century “Intellectus autem humanus…est sicut tabula
rasa in qua nihil est scriptum.” (“But the human intellect is as it were a blank
tablet on which nothing is written.”) They urge me to recall that in classical
and medieval Latin and in my translation, “sicut” means “as it were.” I am
xxvi Introduction

familiar with their reminder and dislike “as it were” wherever and whenever
I encounter it. Aquinas was the greatest medieval philosopher. His influ-
ence in philosophy, Catholic theology, and literature is difficult to exagger-
ate. Dante’s Divine Comedy is underpinned by Aquinas’s Summae and so
too are portions of Milton’s Protestant Paradise Lost, but Aquinas’s Latin
has no bearing on my distaste for “as it were.” We do not have to be
reminded how important Aquinas was in shaping the philosophical con-
tent of the high Middle Ages and beyond. This reminder of Aquinas’s influ-
ence is irrelevant insofar as his philosophical talents and queries have no
bearing on my objection to “as it were.”
My riposte will leave critics unimpressed insofar as they believe the
most I can say is that I dislike empty phrases that add nothing to the
meaning of a sentence or statement in which they are written or spoken.
That these phrases are empty will not be enough. We know from contem-
porary philosophers and linguists, and before them from Bishop George
Berkeley (1685–1753), that language has many functions and that artic-
ulating meaningful propositions is only one of them. Expressing emo-
tions and venting passions is another function.

There are other ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to or
deferring from an action, the putting the mind in some particular disposi-
tion; to which the former is in many cases barely subservient, and some-
times entirely omitted, when these can be obtained without it, as I think
doth not infrequently happen in the familiar use of language. I entreat the
reader to reflect with himself, and see if it doth not happen, either in hear-
ing or reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love hatred imagina-
tion, and disdain, and the like, arise immediately in his mind upon the
perception of certain words…25

Some of us can dislike words that are invented or phrases that leave us,
as Hume puts it, “discomposed and much ruffled,” but democracy trumps
what we dislike. Later in the book I will establish, not simply affirm, that
some phrases are a poor fit in refined English speech and writing. For
now I hope that readers will be open to my view that many phrases are
meaningless and add nothing but extra words and clutter to the sentences
in which we find them. No phrase is made more appealing merely because
 Introduction
   xxvii

it appears in the writings of great thinkers and authors or because most

English speakers use and approve it.
That many words and phrases come from audio test kitchens and from
computer laboratories where they were once safely confined is old news.
The escapees include “feedback,” “input” and “to interface.” I stay with
“opinion,” advice,” “suggestion,” and “to connect.” In taking this stand, I
confess that in some cases, I agree with the traditionalists. And when the
jargon of social media governs users of Facebook so that they “friend” but
no longer “befriend” those whom they wish to add to their online com-
munity, I am displeased.
But this book is not my confessional. Mere lamentations about the
current state of English have no purchase, and apologists for the transfer
of a word from one domain to another remind us that for decades we
have borrowed “home run” and “can’t get to first base” to designate suc-
cess and failure. Most of us have been doing this sort of thing without
much thought, and the guardians of proper grammar, correct syntax, dic-
tion, and use have rarely complained.
A colleague whose specialty in ancient philosophy told me that stewards
of proper English who protest about arrogating words and phrases from a
game or laboratory into the public domain inevitably misuse “tragedy.” He
said all well-trained classicists know that a tragedy is a play of a certain kind
and does not refer to any extra-literary catastrophic event. He adds that no
tragedy is horrifying beyond the stage, the movie screen or a book since
tragedies do not exist beyond the proscenium, outside the screen or apart
from a printed page or a computer monitor. That he spoke for the minority,
even among experts in grammar and diction, is undeniable.
On the other side, the stewards and self-appointed governors of use
and diction pay almost no attention to words and phrases that have fallen
out of favor and out of use, perhaps because the Oxford English Dictionary
does not yet label them “obsolete.” These words find a place among what
I think of as shades that populate a linguistic netherworld. They are barely
alive but still have a faint pulse, and a dwindling number of purists occa-
sionally use them. A few examples include “vouchsafe,” “peradventure,”
“wrought,” “perforce,” “betimes,” “oftimes,” “athwart,” and “passing
strange.”
xxviii Introduction

Should we revive these words in the interest of elegant speech or should

we treat them as filigree and as a kind of rococo embellishments that have
no place in twenty-first-century English? Who makes this decision, and
who will eventually decide that their disuse makes them unacceptable as
well as archaic? No good answer comes to mind because there is no good
answer, and there might not be one unless the next edition of the O.E.D.
designates them “obsolete.”
Just as unaccountable is that other antique phrases hang on even when
grammarians and linguists are pressed to spell out their meaning. An
obvious case is the odd expression “Be that as it may.” We know the con-
texts and the subjunctive mood that justify using this expression but are
pressed to explain why we continue to use it. For what word or phrase is
it a synonym or a stand-in? I am uncertain and suspect that the people
who say or write it are also uncertain.
Another construction that comes off as more Elizabethan and
Spenserian than contemporary is “Would that I could” where “If I could”
will work just fine as a stand-in. This observation and those that precede
it simply reinforce what everyone recognizes or suspects. Once more we
are left with the truism that even as language changes, it sometimes
remains the same. Suggestions that we alter or to omit a longstanding
phrase are ignored, and those of us who study its mutations are too often
stymied when we try to discover the reasons that in English change and
fixity stand side by side.
Traditionalists who reject many changes have no unchallenged board of
experts, no final authority, no unassailable rulebook to explain alteration
“when it alteration finds.” They must live with change even if they stub-
bornly refuse to adapt to it and cannot defend their addiction to stasis.
We notice that purists treat neologisms, unlike words and phrases that
are simply mannered, as a threat and variety of change that they cannot
ignore. Their position is like that of Plato: “Indeed, it isn’t even reason-
able to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things
are passing and none remain.”26 John Dewey and Henri Bergson, two
philosophers who promote the reality of change, indict Plato and his
Neo-Platonic followers who insist that what is immutable and what is
real are interchangeable and who blindly maintain that change in the
meaning of words is undesirable.27
 Introduction
   xxix

Good words, whatever they are and however they have acquired their
credentials, are the ones that we keep even when they fall into disuse.
Liberal protests that language and its changes are inseparable and that
every word began its life as a newcomer are not enough to gain impartial
attention and agreement from the conservative literati. What William
James says about competing philosophies applies just as well to the vis-
ceral clash that separates grammatical conservatives from revisionists or
liberals: “In manners we find formalists and free-and-easy persons. In
government, authoritarians and anarchists. In literature, purists or aca-
demicals, and realists, In art, classics and romantics.”28
Temperamental preferences can never qualify as entry-level credentials
for debates. That we prefer what appeals to our tastes or sense of refinement
is beyond question, but arguing about preferences and tastes is no more
productive than the attempts by friendly combatants who try hopelessly to
persuade each other that Pepsi-Cola is better tasting than Coca-Cola or the
converse. The philosopher G.E. Moore established convincingly, and did
not merely affirm, that there really is no disputing tastes.29
Those of us who have the temerity to write and to lecture about gram-
mar, syntax, and style frequently wish that we had the authority to ignore
the vox populi and to proscribe the use of words and phrases that we do not
like. Since we do not have that authority, I will simply list some of the
words and phrases that I dislike so that they do not infect any of the argu-
ments to come. Again, nothing else that I say in the next seven chapters and
epilogue is simply an expression of my impatience. In them I disparage
taste as a guide to fine writing. Here I do nothing more than give my read-
ers a hint where I am coming from even as I dislike “I know where you’re
coming from.” None of these words, phrases or questions is at home in
what I write or say: “It is what it is,” “worse-case scenario,” “icon,” “surreal,”
“incentivize,” “behaviors,” “harms,” “ongoing,” “insightful,” “physicality,”
“presently” (for “currently”), “begs the question,” “hard copy,” “prioritize,”
“disambiguation,” “flunk,” “going forward,” “at the end of the day,” “the
bottom line,” “lack thereof,” “part of the equation,” “do the math,” “crunch
the numbers,” “on the same page,” “to gift,” “boots on the ground,” “inter-
national community,” “backs against the wall” (the cry of every baseball
player whose team faces elimination from the playoffs), “level playing
field,” “game changer,” “since day one,” “vocabulary words,” “What have
xxx Introduction

you got?” (What would television detective shows do without “got”?), “The
reality is,” “part of the puzzle,” “The reason is because,” “I would hope
that,” “vehicle” (When did dealers stop selling automobiles and trucks?), “a
disconnect,” “to dialogue,” “to task,” “quote/unquote,” “to interface,” “pub-
lic persona,” “talk with” instead of the stronger “talk to,” “conversation” (a
fine word until panelists on television and radio declare that an alternative
to armed attacks between nations and sects is for the combatants to have a
conversation), “the new normal,” “as of late,” “The thing of it is,” and “the
fact that.” Strunk insists “the expression the fact that should be revised out
of every sentence in which it occurs.”30 What has become of “lately”? When
did the adjective “late” come to be an object of the preposition “of”? I say
more about “as of late” in Chap. 7.
I add “partner” as another word with which I am impatient when it
refers to a couple who may or may not be married but who presumably
love each other. I find something cold and detached about the word for
such “entangling alliances” and think immediately of partners in a law or
accounting firm or a medical practice. Far from being in love, these part-
ners might dislike each other. They remain together only for the money.
Why do speakers and journalists who refer to “part of the equation”
rarely have in mind anything close to a mathematical equivalence? “Rising
grocery and prescription drug prices cause concern, but economists
maintain that in evaluating the GDP, retail sales are only part of the equa-
tion.”31 Why do writers who identify “part of the puzzle” almost never
mean a portion of a challenging newspaper crossword puzzle or a mounted
picture cut with a jigsaw into 500 interlocking pieces?
Respondents will answer that my list is too literal and that I have no
eye nor ear nor brain for metaphors, similes, and the colorful expansion
of English. I disagree. My best response, which is not enough to satisfy
critics, is that I welcome metaphors and similes that enrich language and
are far from numbing. I have no desire to deprive English of its color or
to behave as a strict traditionalist with respect to change. I hold, however,
that refusing to call an expression an “equation” when it fails to designate
a mathematical equivalence or some other expression a puzzle when it is
not a “puzzle” does nothing to diminish opportunities to craft appealing
sentences and declarations.
 Introduction
   xxxi

“Medication,” “wellness,” and “empower” are not any better than other
words on my list. Not long ago we took medicine, not medication. We
spoke of good health, not of wellness. Some of us had the power to chart
a course and to make our way through life. We had no need to be empow-
ered. Physicians prescribed medicine for their patients. New patients
listed the medicines that they take for pain, hypertension, elevated cho-
lesterol, and allergies, but a switch from “medicine” to “medication” took
hold and then took over. “Medication” once applied only to a course of
treatment such as an insulin regimen or 16 weeks of chemotherapy. Even
swallowing a pill now and then for a headache amounts to taking medica-
tion far more often than taking medicine. How does the shift from taking
medicine to taking medication enrich English? The answer is that it does
not do anything for English nor does taking medication rather than med-
icine augment the curative power of the people who swallow it.

(7)
Readers who have stayed with me so far might share some of my prefer-
ences as well as my discontent and will name other candidates that they
include on their Index verborum prohibitorum. A few of them might
improbably wish that my examples were more numerous. Other readers
will disagree and insist that I make too much of too little and that I have
dwelt too long on “a trifle light as air.” They hope but wonder whether I
have anything more substantial to offer, and they ask, echoing the lyrics
of Peggy Lee’s existential hit, “Is That All There Is?” I reply to both classes
of readers that I have more to say and that the balance of the book takes
up where their wishes and their complaints end.
Up to this stage in the introduction, it might seem that, contrary to
my earlier complaint, my splenetic objections have taken precedence over
my thinking and penchant for arguments. Readers expect more than a
screed and a collection of my objections, and they can remind me that I
have promised to defend my complaints. I have written and repeated that
my visceral and impressionistic reactions to words and phrases are not
reasons for anyone else to stop using them. They will add that what holds
xxxii Introduction

for me holds for many grammarians and that they have no good reasons
to agree with me or with professional grammarians simply because we
dislike a word or construction.
I stand accused of pontificating about words and expressions that I dis-
approve. Fine, but do I do anything more? Do I work hard in the balance
of the book to sustain objections to what disappoints me and to what com-
pels me to make demands on authors and lecturers? I have written this
book in order to assure readers that its pages are not just another march
down well-traveled paths. In the chapters that come, I stand by my belief
that nothing significant emerges from merely chiding people for their lapses
in what they say and write. I must therefore do more than complain.
A good deal of our language is arbitrary and I agree with Pinker some
of it “rules conform neither to logic or tradition,” I make the case for each
of the claims that I announce and investigate and offer no additional lists
of words or phrases that are not accompanied by analysis and reasons for
omitting them from English that deserves the epithets “well-crafted,”
“well-said,” and “well-written.” Wherever I can, which is frequent, I call
on philosophy and logic to transform simple objections into arguments.
That these arguments were not designed to improve English or any other
language is an accidental fact. That their arguments explain and establish
lapses in grammar and use, and that they enable us to allow us to improve
our writing, is what counts. That applied philosophy is at the center of
my task and challenge counts as much or more.
I employ a method of analysis that is available to anyone who is eager
to write articles or monographs that are very good and not that are merely
good enough.32 I employ it for the ends that I have laid out in the previ-
ous pages. Philosophical questions are often important and are some-
times urgent or seem urgent to those who raise them. Can grammarians
who lay bare the foundations for proper language really find help from
philosophers and their method? Yes. Am I overly optimistic? No.
Concrete examples of this method are often more helpful than a gen-
eral description so as one example of what I have in mind, I urge sympa-
thetic readers as well as combatants to think of the innumerable times
they have heard political liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and inde-
pendents debate these questions: what right did the courts have to inter-
fere with a woman’s reproductive choices? What gave the government the
 Introduction
   xxxiii

right to legislate against same-sex marriage? What right does Congress

have to restrict the personal or medical use of marijuana? Each of these
questions is what social, political, and moral philosophers ask. We tend
most often to characterize them as liberals or as conservatives depending
on the side that they take and that they attempt to defend.
At the outset these questions need to be refined. Disputants should be
careful to distinguish the federal government from state and local govern-
ments. More important, in each of these examples, the questions that
emphasize rights are incorrect. Governments have powers or lose powers
that they once had. Citizens and legal residents have rights. The correct
use of two ordinary words turns the debate in a more productive direc-
tion. Anxiety about behavior that is sanctioned or proscribed remains,
but the answers are not those that occupy the terrain of disputants about
moral rights and the limits of government.
Powers are different from rights. Philosophers have stressed the signifi-
cance of this difference at least since Hobbes wrote the Leviathan (1651).33
The House and Senate have legislative powers spelled out by delegates to
the Constitutional Convention (summer 1787). The judicial powers of
the government are listed in the Constitution as it was ratified in the
summer of 1788. These powers are broadened by the Judiciary Act of
1789 and by the unwritten power of judicial review (Marbury v. Madison).
The president has the limited power of a veto, which is not a right, that
he can exercise if he believes that a legislative bill is noxious to the public
good or to provisions of the Constitution.
Rights never enter the picture so if the debaters ask the proper ques-
tion, namely “What gives the government the power to...?”, a much less
complicated answer emerges. The Constitution and the Founders who
drafted it spelled out governmental powers as well as their limits, and
enough states ratified the Constitution to make it the foundational docu-
ment of the federal government and the source of its powers. This answer
is surgical, economic, sound, and factual. It need not please either side in
the debate, but it is the answer for which the disputing parties have been
looking, and it is the answer that shows one of the ways in which using
proper language sometimes has extra-grammatical purchase.
And so a little more about my method. I will address difficulties in
speech and writing without miming the literary and journalistic mem-
bers of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel or becoming some-
xxxiv Introduction

one such as a member of the French literary elect who preside over the
Académie Française. My purpose is neither to defend recalcitrant tradi-
tionalists nor to commend progressives who value change more than fix-
ity. The former often cling to the past because it is the past. The latter are
members of the group who often misunderstand, misrepresent, and slav-
ishly promote what they think is Einstein’s message. They maintain that
in language as in morals, politics, and aesthetic assessments, everything is
relative, and therefore nothing is constant, but they are wrong. They do
not seem to know that the speed of light, far from being relative, is con-
stant and that there is no need to celebrate relativity wherever they think
they find it. As Pinker says, “Contrary to the common misunderstanding
in which Einstein proved that everything is relative and Heisenberg
proved that observers always affect what they observe, most scientists
believe that there are objective truths about the world and that they can
be discovered by a disinterested observer.”34
I have promised that I will not deny that language is mutable, and I
make clear that the way we employ English is often irrelevant to the way
we ought to employ it. Neither of these declarations is shocking. A ratio-
nally grounded commitment to improvements and corrections is far from
demanding an upheaval in the way that we use English.
With the single exception of what I say about the novelist Wallace
Stegner and the television shows House and Law and Order: SVU (Chap.
1), I do not address the language we find in novels, poetry, utopian fan-
tasies or science fiction. Why not? Sometimes dialectical English, poor
grammar, and inappropriate word choice shape and develop the charac-
ters who appear in masterpieces of these genres. The most stubborn and
demanding literary critics do not expect us to agree that Fielding, Dickens,
Trollop, Hardy, Mark Twain, Faulkner, and Steinbeck would have been
better novelists if their heroes, heroines, and villains had used correct
grammar and had spoken fluently. As George P. Elliott puts it in his com-
ments about Huckleberry Finn: “Yet how beautifully the restrictions of
Huck’s language serve the ends of the story: they prevent Mark Twain
from lapsing into the highfalutin talk which he was tempted by, they
preserve him from lapsing in to his own voice at the expense of the char-
acters and the story, they make possible a gay surface beneath which his
satire may damage to its full power.”35
 Introduction
   xxxv

How much less would we think of Oliver Twist if Fagan and Oliver
spoke the King’s English? I would also be surprised to hear about people
who discount T.S. Eliot’s great simile—one of the finest similes in our
language—in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (“Let us go then, you
and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient ether-
ized upon a table…”) because they claim that the phrase “you and me,”
not “you and I,” is apposite to “Let us go then...”
Theodore Dreiser speaks for himself and for other novelists when he
chides critics for objecting that they give us so many lower class characters
who speak unimpressively and much too commonly: “To sit up and criti-
cise me for saying ‘vest,’ instead of ‘waistcoat’; to talk about my splitting the
infinite and using vulgar commonplaces here and there, when the tragedy
of man’s life is being displayed, is silly. More, it is ridiculous.”36

(8)
Knowing how and when to complete an introduction is almost as chal-
lenging as concluding an entire book; nonetheless, it is time to move
beyond preliminary obiter dicta and to close this introduction. Again, I
hope that readers will evaluate my arguments, will decide whether my
approach to improving conventional English is convincing, and will
determine whether these chapters provide helpful suggestions and guid-
ance for writing and speaking skillfully, forcefully, and economically. At
the same time, I hope that they gain an appreciation for the service and
value of applied philosophy
What comes next is a look at and grammarians, linguists, logicians,
and philosophers who, when they are most helpful, avoid the stereotypi-
cal philosophical “regions of cloud and fiction” to which F.H. Bradley
refers and confront the ways that we must deal with this world in which
we move, speak, set goals, read, and write.37 If I discharge my intended
mission, I will have pressed hard for a few philosophical and logical strat-
egies to encourage students, authors, educators, and curious readers to
use English that is rich and grammatical rather than English that is styl-
ized, ungrammatical and awkward.
xxxvi Introduction

Notes
1. Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. and intro. Justus Buchler (New York:
Dover Publications, 1940), page 23.
2. William James, Pragmatism, page 43. Emphasis added.
3. William Alston, Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1964), page 7.
4. William Strunk, The Elements of Style (1920), updated and annotated for
present-day use by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White (London:
Longman, 1999). Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
5. Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in
the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2014). References and quotations
from Pinker’s book are keyed to the Kindle E-book edition in which
“Loc” stands in for “page.” The citation here is to Loc 147.
6. John Preston, “The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker, review: ‘waffle and
bilge,’” The Telegraph, September 16, 2014.
7. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who
Gave Us Modernity (New York: Schoken Books, 2009) and Richard
Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for
Wonder (New York: Mariner Books, 2000).
8. Pinker, The Sense of Style, Loc 3897–3934.
9. Henry Watson Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, intro.
David Crystal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). The Chicago
Manual of Style, sixteenth edition (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Rodney Huddleston and Geoffry Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of
the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
10. Strunk, The Elements of Style, Loc 2235.
11. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New
York: Harper Collins, 1994), page 373. The Sense of Style, Loc 3175–3234.
12. Pinker, “10 ‘grammar rules’ it’s OK to break (Sometimes),”Guardian,
August 15, 2014,
13. Emphasis added.
14. François Rabelais, Oeuvres Complètes (1546), ed. Pierre Jourda (Paris:
Garnier, 1962), page 204. My translation. For an abbreviated discussion
of the differences between descriptivism and prescriptivism is morals, see
Kant’s Preface to his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785),
trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pages 1–5.
 Introduction
   xxxvii

15. G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), page 217.
16. Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars (New York: W.W. Norton,
1972), page 219.
17. Quoted by Jon Meacham in Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New
York: Random House, 2012), page 238.
18. Pinker, The Sense of Style, Loc 3257.
19. Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, second edition (New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), pages 337–38.
20. In this regard, see A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, second edition,
reprint (New York: Dover, 1952), pages 44–45.
21. Frederick Hartt and David G. Wallis, History of Renaissance Art, fifth
edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003), pages 585–86.
22. Baugh, A History of the English Language, page 336.
23. Robert Baum, Logic, fourth edition (Orlando: Harcourt Brace &
Company, 1996), page 238.
24. “The modal use of hopefully...was quite rare until around the 1960s,
when it acquired considerable popularity, but also aroused strong (in
some cases quite intemperate) opposition from conservative speakers.”
Huddleston and Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language, page 768, note 33.
25. George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, para-
graph 20. See also David, Berman, George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pages 144–46.
26. Plato, Cratylus, 440b, in Plato, Complete Works, ed. and intro. John
M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), page 155.
27. See Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York: Capricorn Books, 1929),
chapter 1, Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), trans.
T.E. Hulme (Indianapolis, 1955) and Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1962), pages 93–4. For one among many
classic statements of the position that what is real is unchanging, see
Socrates’s Platonic pronouncement in the Phaedo, 78c-d.
28. William James, Pragmatism, page 20.
29. For the classic argument that we cannot usefully argue about matters of
preference and taste, see Moore, Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1912), pages 50–82.
30. Strunk, The Elements of Style, Loc 661.
31. Tampa Bay Times, Sunday, May 24, 2015, page 1A. Emphasis added.
xxxviii Introduction

32. For examples of this approach and method at work, see G.E. Moore,
Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier Books, 1962) and Ryle in every
chapter of Dilemmas.
33. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I, chapters 14, 20, and 21.
34. Pinker, The Sense of Style, Loc 590.
35. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Afterword George
P. Elliott (New York: Signet, 1984), page 285.
36. New York Times, January 20, 1901.
37. See F.H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, second edition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1927), page 86.
 1
Is “Interesting” Interesting?

The emphasis of this chapter is the emptiness of “interesting,” one of the

most commonly used adjectives in English. Before concentrating exclu-
sively on this nearly meaningless, overworked adjective, some prefatory
remarks are appropriate.
John Dewey never grew tired of remarking that philosophers from
Plato forward have been obsessed with finding certitude or, on the other
side, with denying that certitude is possible. In most cases, as Platonically
minded searchers looked to mathematics and formal logic for models,
they sought intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of a truth. Dewey was
confident that the search for certainty in this world is futile: “It is to the
conception of philosophy that we come back. No mode of action can, as
we have insisted, give anything approaching absolute certitude; it pro-
vides insurance but no assurance. Doing is always subject to peril, to the
danger of frustration.”1 The searchers whom Dewey characterizes never
doubt that they can find certainty in mathematics, geometry, and logic,
but they seek more. They desire the comfort and security of certainty in
areas and endeavors that have nothing to do with quantitative truths and
logical first principles.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

B. Silver, Grammar, Philosophy, and Logic,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66257-2_1
2 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting?

Fallibilists such as John Stuart Mill, C.S. Peirce, C.I. Lewis, and
Dewey had no illusions about arriving at any other kind of certainties
and were convinced that the most scientists can manage is to uncover
probabilities and that about the best philosophers can do is to produce
intriguing arguments. Neither scientists nor philosophers can reveal
necessary truths about the universe. For fallibilists and for most conven-
tional empiricists, no such truths exist.2 Here Bishop Berkeley comes to
mind as he defends a world of sensible things (ideas in God’s mind) that
depend for every moment of their existence on God’s support, but
divine support and benevolence provide no certainty about laws that
govern this world:

…by a diligent observation of the phenomena within our view, we may

discover the general laws of nature, and from them deduce other phenom-
ena. I do not say demonstrate; for all deductions of that kind depend on the
supposition that the Author of Nature always operates uniformly, and in a
constant observance of those rules we take for principles, which we cannot
evidently know.3

That the laws of nature are not “principles,” which means for Berkeley
that they are neither intuitive truths nor demonstrable theorems, is
Berkeley’s way of affirming that the laws that characterize nature’s unifor-
mity are highly confirmed generalities that hold only because a generous,
benevolent God freely chooses to fashion and to sustain a world that
conforms to them. But since God is free, these truths of nature are inde-
monstrable generalities that inevitably fall short of certainty. God could
at any time change these laws, but Berkeley is confident that he will not.
His confidence rests upon the presumption that the God he worships
would not toy with human beings and that changing the laws would
leave us, like Milton’s fallen angels, “in wandering mazes lost.”
Fine, but what do these prefatory remarks or Berkeley’s observation
have to do with grammar and, more restrictively, with the limits of “inter-
esting” as an instructive or descriptive adjective? An answer is available
and is part of the emphasis throughout the sections that follow.
 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting? 3

(1)
The question about using “interesting” and the misguided assumption
that it does its job serve as a reminder that grammarians and linguists are
wrong if they believe that the search for certain, unchanging grammatical
rules and lexical definitions can be satisfied. No less important, especially
insofar as this book deals with faulty grammar, improper syntax, poor
diction, and defective word choice, we learn why what these grammari-
ans tell us about assorted words and rules is not certain. In short, good
arguments are available that “interesting,” among other words, fails as
descriptive adjective about whose meaning we can be clear.
In the same context, revisionists and fallibilists agree that trying to find
what is unchanging in language amounts to pursuing the wrong goal
with the wrong expectations. Be assured that this observation is not a
“straw man” and that despite the evolution of English and its rules, there
are true believers who hold tight to the position that we can be certain
about the meanings of words and about familiar rules of grammar. They
announce that because we have ourselves determined or stipulated the
meanings of words and the rules of grammar, there can be no doubt
about the certainty of their meanings and application.
The method and fruits of philosophical reasoning can help to exhibit
persistent lapses in grammar, meaning, and use, but one should be careful
not to misunderstand the scope and limits of such reasoning. Does philo-
sophical reasoning exhibit the legitimate use of “interesting” in order to
expand or to clarify the meaning of the noun it is supposed to modify?
No. What philosophical reasoning can do is to show that “interesting”
fails to do the job that it is supposed to do even though almost everyone
whose primary language is English acts on the unreflective assumption
that it fits seamlessly not only into English but into cultivated English.
Why else would we use “interesting” to describe so much that we experi-
ence and so many people whom we encounter? Why is “interesting”
often the first choice of English speakers and writers who wish to com-
ment positively on an event, a book, a painting, an architectural monu-
ment, or a theatrical performance?
4 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting?

An attempt to find instructive meaning in “interesting” is as misdi-

rected as looking to reason as a tool for answering trans-rational ques-
tions. What the Princeton University philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote
years ago helps to point out the adjectival poverty of “interesting” even
though his emphasis has nothing to do with the judicious choice of adjec-
tives: “So far as I know…, there is not one really cogent and definitive
argument of any consequence in the entire history of philosophy.”4 Later
in the same essay Frankfurt advances what he regards as an intriguing
argument in defense of Descartes’s willingness to “continue to rely upon
reason” and to disregard skeptics’s belief that reasoning is insolvent.
What are we to make of Frankfurt’s apology for Descartes’s appeal to
reason and to the Cartesian argument that seems to diminish his prelimi-
nary reservations about philosophical reasoning? Perhaps we ought to
return once more to Berkeley and to accept his witty observation early in
his Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge and say that
Frankfurt, like so many other philosophers, “first raised a dust and then
complain…[he] cannot see.” We can agree with Berkeley, “but finding a
germ of truth in his witticism takes us no closer to the shortcomings of
‘interesting.’”
We might also hold that Frankfurt and the thinkers about whom he
complains are hedonistic as well as Sisyphean. These characteristics are
another “gift” from philosophers to the rest of us. Even traditionalists
sometimes have reservations about their arguments and about those of
their predecessors, but like Socrates, they cannot resist the appeal of
inquiry and criticism. This penchant for criticism, even if it leads nowhere,
amounts to the unremarkable thesis that philosophers, no less than poets
and novelists, do what they do because they enjoy the challenge, because
taking up the challenge is almost addictive, or because they believe they
are good at their task. Most of them probably sleep well enough after they
ask ever-looming “Why?” questions and probably do not worry to dis-
traction about the failure to find necessarily true, unchanging answers.
With only a few notable exceptions, philosophers tend to belong to
Aristotle’s set of beings who “by nature desire to know” but who have at
least the faint hope, unlike Aristotle himself, that reasoning well helps
them to satisfy their desire for non-quantitative, certain knowledge.5
Descartes, unlike Berkeley, thought that certainties about the world were
 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting? 5

discoverable as long as one employs a proper method of inquiry and dis-

covery. His most forceful and famous statement of this kind of optimism
is from The Discourse on the Method (1637), Part II:

Those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which
geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations,
had given me occasion to suppose that all things which can fall under human
knowledge are interconnected in the same way. And I thought that, pro-
vided we refrain from accepting anything as true which is not, and always
keep to the order of deducing one thing from another, there can be nothing
to remote to be reached in the end or to well hidden to be discovered.6

Descartes’s optimism was groundless. Neither in The Principles of

Philosophy (1644) nor in his Description of the Human Body (1664) nor in his
philosophical correspondence was he up to the challenge of developing the
underpinnings of a demonstrative science of physics, vision, or physiology.
Grammarians and Descartes are bedfellows when the issue is satisfying
what they wish to accomplish. Prescriptive grammarians would like their
objections to flawed writing and their prescriptions for its improvement
to be persuasive and might be disappointed when they attract few con-
verts and fail to validate their version of the quest for certainty. They do
not have unrealistic expectations that they can, if they work long enough,
convince people to follow their lead. One must be clear. The issue is not
that these grammarians dislike “interesting.” They may be all for it. The
larger point is again that revisionist grammarians, like traditionalists,
have no lasting illusions that they can persuade speakers and writers to
appeal to reasoning that will turn them away from employing infelicitous
words and phrases. These grammarians who urge us to correct our English
rarely, if ever, fret that “interesting” is in most cases an empty adjective.
The dominant thesis of this chapter is that they should care, that vener-
able philosophical reasoning shows why they should care, and that “inter-
esting” is vacant and descriptively meaningless.
Of course masters of the language know that if people scrupulously fol-
lowed their advice, they as professional grammarians would be out of work.
Whom would they criticize if as a consequence of their ­pronouncements,
analyses, examples, and arguments, all of us learned to speak and to write
6 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting?

grammatical, jargon-free, appealing English? The improbable success of

these stewards of the language would please them even as it would lead to
their increasing uselessness and to the gradual disappearance of a market for
their books.

(2)
Again, readers who have been patient up to now will wonder how
extended comparisons between philosophers and grammarians, as well as
remarks about fallibilism and certainty, bear on objections to using
“interesting” in superior or in at least the more formal English that tal-
ented journalists, speech-writers, jurists, essayists, and historians pro-
duce. Be assured that the comparison addresses their curiosity, but how
does such a comparison promote their understanding of sturdy grammar
and their choice of words that is in its way congruent with that grammar?
I can provide a few answers and establish that this extended comparison
is not a digression.
“Interesting” lacks any firm provenance or genealogy. The Oxford
English Dictionary, which includes a dense page and a half on the assorted
meanings of “interest” as a noun and verb, offers almost nothing except
circularity about its adjectival rendering: “Interesting” = df. “Adapted to
excite interest; having the qualities which rouse curiosity, engage atten-
tion, or appeal to the emotions.” The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language is a comprehensive and scrupulous guide to grammar, syntax,
diction, and use, but it says nothing about “interesting” as a modifier and
is not helpful if we search for understanding of its shortcomings as an
adjective.
“Interesting” has no clear antecedent in classical Latin and probably
comes to us by way of France, but unlike aged cheese, fine wine, and
Descartes’s Meditations, “intéressant” is an import that we had no need to
welcome. Why should anyone agree with this comment?
The short answer is that “interesting” does nothing to enrich English
and, worse, too often has the opposite effect. This fuller answer is that
authors and speakers can become better at using fine English if they cease
to describe a book, a painting, a film, an activity, a person, a machine, a
 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting? 7

plant, or an animal as interesting. In fact, calling anyone, anything, or

any event interesting is too frequently to fail to provide a description or
characterization that is even minimally instructive or evocative.

(3)
A longer, more surprising claim that we can live very nicely without
“interesting” derives from a specific return to philosophy by restating the
ontological proof for the existence of God and for comparing its failure
with misconceived attempts to speak for the presence of “interesting” in
superior English. Once more, then, we return to a search for certainty,
this time in theological philosophy. This famous proof, which is supposed
to establish the certainty that God exists, is one of the most familiar and
troublesome arguments in Western philosophy. The central defect in this
argument for the certainty that there is a God helps by extension to estab-
lish the solvency of good arguments against the use of “interesting.” Here,
then, we have a test case to sustain the fallibilists’ doubts that we can be
certain of non-mathematical truths. We need to do nothing more than to
show that “God exists” is not a necessary truth.
That the ontological argument for the existence of God can shed light
on the status of “interesting” might seem to be a stretch for those who
know the proof, but it is not. In order to see whether this argument helps
to illustrate what is troublesome about “interesting,” I begin with a state-
ment of the demonstration that first appears in St. Anselm’s (1033–1109)
Proslogion, Chapter III. Apart from his attempted proof, philosophers
would have very little interest in Anselm, and Church historians remind
us that his principal vocation was serving as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Chapter III is little more than two compact paragraphs, but its brevity
falls short of its influence:

It is a greater thing to exist both in the understanding and in reality than to

be in the understanding alone. And if this being is in the understanding
alone, whatever has even in the past existed in reality will be greater than this
being. And so that which was greater than all beings will be less than some
being, and will not be greater than all: which is a manifest contradiction.
8 1 Is “Interesting” Interesting?

And hence, that which is greater than all, already proved to be in the
understanding, must exist not only in the understanding, but also in real-
ity; for otherwise it will not be greater than all other beings.7

Thomas Aquinas accepts Anselm’s faith and God but rejects his argu-
ment. The argument is restated, modified, and endorsed by the philo-
sophical rationalists Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.8 Although there are
some differences among the versions that these philosophers offer, the
rendering of the proof below captures the premises and the conclusion
that are at the center of its variations. The proof is intended to be a ratio-
nal argument, not one that calls on Anselm’s or Descartes’s faith, that the
proposition “God exists” is a certain, necessary truth whose denial is a
contradiction:

1. God is by definition the greatest conceivable being (GCB).

2. The GCB exists at least as an idea in the mind.
3. Either the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind or it is not true
that the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind (by the principle of
the excluded middle, a proposition of the form “p or not-p” is neces-
sarily true).
4. If it is not true that the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind, then
it is true that the GCB exists outside the mind (by 3).
5. But if the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind, then it is true that
there is another and greater conceivable being, greater than the GCB,
namely a being that possesses extra-mental existence.
6. By definition there can be no being greater than the GCB.
7. Hence it is not true that the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind
(by 5 and 6).
8. If it is not true that the GCB exists only as an idea in the mind, then
it must be true that the GCB also exists outside the mind and is not
merely an idea (by 3 and 4).
9. God is the GCB (by 1).
10. Therefore God, the greatest conceivable being (GCB), exists outside
the mind as an extra-mental being. Q.E.D.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
appearance, and with the king’s money in his pocket. The grief and
agony of Jeanie, and of her affectionate parents, were past all
description; and the consideration of her rashness and imprudence
having been the occasion of so much distress to herself and others,
rendered her almost desperate.
Henry was not long in the hands of the drill sergeant till he became
nearly as penitent and full of regrets as his lovely young wife, and he
willingly would, had he been permitted, have returned to a faithful
discharge of the duties of a husband; but the country was at that time
in too great need of men such as Henry, to part with him either for
money or interest. When he began to reap the bitter fruits of his own
folly, his affection for Jeanie, if it ever deserved so sacred a name,
returned with redoubled intensity; and that object, for the
abandonment of which he had plunged himself into the hardships of
which he complained, he thought he could not now live without. He
was shortly to be marched off to his regiment, and poor Jeanie,
whose attachment remained unshaken amidst the severe treatment
she had suffered, determined to follow him through all the casualties
of the military life; and at any rate preferred hardship to the disgrace
which she thought she had brought upon herself by her own
imprudence. She had at this time been a mother for little more than
two months; but even this could not change her resolution to follow
the father of her child, exposed as she must be to all the privations
and hardships of the soldier’s wife. She saw her father and mother on
the morning of her departure, but neither she nor they were able to
exchange words, so full were their hearts; save that the old man said,
“God help and bless you, Jeanie!” Scarcely a dry eye was to be seen in
the village that morning, and a crowd of youths, amidst silent
dejection, saw her far on her way, carrying her baby and her bundle
by turns. The toils through which she passed in following her
husband were too many and too severe to be here related. He was
ultimately one of those who assisted to decide the dreadful conflict at
Waterloo, and received a severe wound when the day was just about
won. In a foreign hospital, though he suffered much, he at length
recovered; but upon returning home, his wounds broke forth afresh,
and at last carried him off. Jeanie was now left quite unfriended. She
had seen her two eldest children laid in the dust, the one in a distant
clime, and the other, though on British soil, yet far from the tomb of
her fathers. She still had three surviving, and her parents being gone
to their long home, her only resource at the time I met her was
dependence on public charity.—“The Athenæum,”—Glasgow
University Annual, 1830.
 THE VILLAGERS OF AUCHINCRAIG.

By Daniel Gorrie.

In one of the eastern counties of Scotland, there is a pleasant

secluded valley, known by the name of Strathkirtle. It is well
cultivated, growing good grain crops, abounding in rich pasture-
land, and beautified by the water of Kirtle, which winds smoothly
along between its fertile banks, and loses itself at last in the German
Ocean. Strips and roundels of woodland, snug farm steadings, and
the sheltering hills on either side, impart an air of peace and an
aspect of comfort to this secluded Scottish strath, such as may rarely
be witnessed in other countries. Spring nurses there her sweetest
wild-flowers, on the meadows, in the woods, and by the water-
courses; summer comes early with choirs of singing-birds, and the
voice of the cuckoo; autumn adorns the fields with the mellowest
beauty, and touches the green leaves into gold; and winter ever
spares some gladsome relics of the sister seasons, to cheer the hearts
of the inhabitants at Strathkirtle.
In the centre of the valley, and close beside the stream, there
formerly stood the ancient village of Auchincraig; but the progress of
improvement has, I am told, almost swept its last vestiges away. It
was, without exception, the oddest, old-fashioned place in which I
ever resided for any length of time. The dwelling-houses were of all
shapes and sizes, and they had been built, whether solitary, in rows,
or in batches, in utter contempt of all order and regularity. One
might almost have imagined that they had fallen down in dire
confusion from the clouds, and been allowed to stand peaceably
where they fell. Some had their gables to the street, some were
planted back to back, some frowned front to front. The roofs of not a
few rose in ridges like the back of a dromedary, while the appearance
of others betokened a perilous collapse and sudden downfall.
Auchincraig could boast of styles of architecture unknown to Grecian
and Roman fame. The primitive builders had not been particular
regarding the situation of the doors, and evidently considered
windows as useless breaks in the walls. Houses two storeys high,
with weather-worn and weather-stained slate roofs, stood beside
humbler dwellings, low and long, and covered with thatch. The
parish church was situated in the burial ground at the east end of the
village. It was an old edifice, with ivy-mantled spire, which seemed
ready to sink down and mingle with the dust of the many generations
who slept around. Jackdaws congregated on its summit, and
swallows, unmolested, built their nests in all the windows of the
hoary pile. The parish manse, which appeared scarcely less ancient
than the church, stood about a stone’s cast from the place of graves.
Primeval trees hung their foliage over it in summer, shading its roof
and windows from the sunrays, and groaned mournfully throughout
all their bare bulk when the bitter blast of winter swept over the
exposed churchyard. A beechen hedge encircled the manse and the
garden attached. The residence of the minister was by far the
pleasantest abode in Auchincraig.
Queer and old-fashioned as the village was, it was far surpassed in
these respects by the villagers. I could scarcely have believed that it
was possible to find so many odd characters and strange mortals
collected together in one locality. Nothing astonished me more than
the number of old people, male and female, who, “daunered” about
the village streets, or sat dozing on three-legged stools at the doors of
their dwellings. It seemed as if the promise, “Thou shalt live long
upon the land,” had been specially vouchsafed to them. The old men
wore knee-breeches, home-made stockings, blue coats with metal
buttons, and red Kilmarnocks; while the old women looked the very
picture of sedate, sagacious, and decent eld, with their white coifs
and black ribbons, and bone spectacles bestriding their attenuated
noses. The village children had an “auld-farrant” appearance; and
the young men and women, whose principal employment was
weaving and spinning, partook somewhat of the gravity of their
elders with whom they associated so much. It was only at such festive
seasons as Hallowe’en, Hansel Monday, and the annual summer
Fair, that the natural hilarity of youth displayed itself in any
remarkable degree.
 One of the odd characters of this venerable village was the minister
himself. He belonged to that quaint, homely class of Scottish rural
pastors, the last remnants of which have now altogether vanished. A
strange, eccentric old man was the Rev. Thomas Watson—more
generally and familiarly known by the name of “Tammy”—parish
minister of Auchincraig. He was a grayhaired man, but stout of body
and ruddy of countenance, hale and hearty as an old farmer, and
fond of his own creature comfort, while he imparted to others
spiritual consolation. He was generally attired, at home and abroad,
in a broad-brimmed hat, knee breeches, and a loose coat, cut in the
shape of a jockey’s jacket. He had a habit of screwing his face and
shrugging his shoulders, both in the pulpit and out of it, when
anything unpleasant occurred. It was amusing to see him engaged in
conversation with one of his aged parishioners on the streets of the
village. He applied vigorously to his snuff-box, and a hearty slap on
the shoulder of his auditor was the invariable prelude to a humorous
remark. One day, while he was thus enjoying a “twa-handed crack”
with an aged member of his congregation, he administered a heavier
slap than was desirable, upon which the parishioner exclaimed, with
more familiarity than reverence, “Tammy, Tammy! my banes are no
made o’ brass—dinna hit sae sair!” Tammy, notwithstanding his
slapping propensities, was a great favourite amongst the people, and
I have heard the villagers repeating with great glee some of his witty
remarks, and telling anecdotes regarding his eccentricities. He
always addressed the people in broad Scotch from the pulpit. Indeed
it is more than probable that they would have accused him of
preaching heresy if he had ever attempted English. He felt himself as
much at home, and said as homely things, in the church and before
the congregation, as when sitting in social converse beside the manse
hearth. Several instances of this I distinctly remember. One Sabbath
forenoon, his own servant-girl entered the church rather late—in
fact, the first psalm had been sung, and the Rev. Thomas was in the
midst of his lengthy opening prayer. Janet, flurried no doubt by
disturbing the devotions of the congregation, omitted to shut the
door behind her, and a breeze blew up the passage and waved the
gray locks of the minister. This was more than the reverend
gentleman could endure. He opened his eyes, saw the culprit, and
said with his own broad peculiar accent, “Janet, woman, Janet! can
ye no steek the door ahint ye, an’ keep the wund oot!” Ludicrous as
this remark might have appeared in the circumstances to a stranger,
it was listened to by his hearers as devoutly as if it had been an
ordinary part of the service.
On another occasion “Tammy” was holding an evening diet of
worship in the church. This, it must be confessed, was with him a
rare event indeed. It was the winter season, and, at the close of the
first devotional exercise, the candles were emitting a light faint, and
feeble as that of the waning crescent-moon. “Tammy” took up the
psalmbook and adjusted his spectacles, but it was of no avail. The
solitary “dips” at each side of the pulpit showed long wicks but little
flame. The minister fumbled about for a time, but could not find the
object of his search. At last, screwing his face, and shrugging his
shoulders, he exclaimed, addressing the beadle (who was also the
grave-digger), “Pate, I say, Pate! what’s come ower ye?—whaur’s the
snuffers, man?”
Numerous anecdotes of a similar kind are recorded of the eccentric
divine of Auchincraig. Once, however, on a baptismal occasion in the
church, he committed what was regarded as a sacrilegious act by
many of his parishioners. It set the tongues of all the mothers and
grandmothers a-wagging for a month, and “Tammy” narrowly
escaped a presbyterial investigation. The affair was innocent enough,
allowing a margin for oddity of character, and he would, in all
probability, have come off triumphant from a trial, unless the
members of the presbytery had been rigid disciplinarians. The
circumstances of the case may briefly be told. At the conclusion of
the forenoon’s discourse, a child was brought up for baptism. The
father received the customary exhortations and took his vows, and
“Tammy” had just folded up his sleeve preparatory to sprinkling the
baptismal water on the infant’s face, when he found to his surprise
that Peter, otherwise Pate, the beadle, had stinted somewhat the
necessary supply of liquid, perhaps in deference to the wishes of the
child’s mother. The eccentric minister had conscientious objections
at performing the sacred rite in a perfunctory manner, and he
accordingly lifted the large pewter basin from its place, much to the
amazement of the congregation, and sprinkled the whole contents to
the last drop over the face and white attire of the squalling babe! He
then coolly continued the service, in his own peculiar style, as if
nothing extraordinary had occurred.
 The Reverend Thomas Watson made himself at home wherever he
was. When breakfasting with any of his parishioners, or in the
neighbouring manses of brother clergymen, he invariably took
possession of the largest egg, giving as his excuse and speaking from
his experience, that “the biggest were aye the maist caller!” He was
very fond of porter, and could drink as much toddy as any laird in all
Strathkirtle, without showing the slightest symptoms that he had
imbibed more than was good for the health of his body and brain.
“Tammy,” it must be confessed, with all his good qualities, was
rather lazy and self indulgent. To have spent more than an hour or
two in the preparation of a discourse he would have regarded as a
culpable waste of precious time. A clergyman in the neighbourhood
once narrated to me a ludicrous instance of the manner in which the
Auchincraig minister rolled the burden of duty upon the shoulders of
others, and managed to escape himself.
“Tammy,” on a certain occasion, was assisting at the dispensation
of the sacrament in another part of the county. The good cheer
provided for clergymen in the manses at communion seasons he
relished with infinite zest, and he generally contrived to coax the
younger “hands” into undertaking a large share of his allotted
spiritual work. When he could not succeed by coaxing, he adopted
more effective means. On the special occasion referred to, he had
taken as little part as he possibly could in the Saturday and Sunday
services. It was his duty on Monday to preach one of two sermons;
but that was with him the great day of the feast; a good winding-up
dinner was expected in the afternoon, and he felt little inclination for
ministerial work. Accordingly, as soon as breakfast was finished, and
an hour before the commencement of public worship, he
mysteriously disappeared. When the bell began to toll, the Rev.
Thomas was searched for through every room of the house, and in
every nook of the manse garden, but he could not be discovered, and
another clergyman present was compelled, at a moment’s notice, to
undertake the duty of the renegade. Meanwhile, “Tammy” was
stretched at full length in an adjoining corn-field, quietly sunning
himself, with much self-complacent composure, and listening to the
voice of psalms floating upwards to the summer heavens from the
lips of the assembled worshippers. He did not leave his lair until the
guests were assembled for dinner, and then he returned to the
manse, and heartily thanked the “dear brother” who had officiated in
his stead. His ready wit, his contagious laugh, his fund of racy
anecdotes, would doubtless be regarded by the company as some
compensation for the sin he had committed in failing to discharge his
ministerial duty. Many years have elapsed since old Tammy Watson
was gathered to his fathers; and of the ancient kirk of Auchincraig in
which he preached not one stone now stands upon another.
Requiescat in pace!
The parish dominie was another of the eccentric characters in the
village. He inhabited a house that had once seen better days, and he
appeared also to have seen them himself. He was a tall, thin, silent,
swarthy man, past middle age, abstemious and even miserly in his
habits. Dominie Dawson was a bachelor, and few people ever crossed
his threshold. He disliked old “Tammy,” who took a malicious
pleasure in plaguing and bantering him upon the spareness of his
body. Never were two men, occupying the highest posts in a parish,
more utterly opposed to each other in appearance, tastes, and habits.
“Tammy” was always ready with his joke; dominie Dawson had never
even perpetrated a pun all his life. “Tammy” laughed immoderately
when anything tickled his fancy; dominie Dawson was seldom seen
to relax his grim countenance by a smile. Some men seem to have all
things in common, but these two had absolutely nothing. The
dominie never dined at the manse, and the minister never supped
with the dominie. Still there was room in the parish for them both,
and each held on the tenor of his way, independent of the other. The
dominie, it could not be denied, was by far a more learned man than
the minister. He was a capital linguist, as had been proved on more
than one occasion, although his knowledge of languages was of little
practical avail in the village of Auchincraig. He was also an
enthusiastic naturalist. He returned from solitary rambles among the
woods, and along the banks of the Kirtle, with his hat full of wild
flowers and “weeds of glorious feature.” The old wives of the village
used to say, “the man mun be crazed, for he’s aye houkin’ among
divots!” On Saturday afternoons he sent bands of the school children
away in search of beetles, moths, butterflies, and all varieties of
insects; and these, after much study and careful examination, he
pinned carefully on squares of pasteboard. Dominie Dawson was, in
fact, an unrecognised genius. He seemed quite out of place in that
secluded village, and yet it was almost impossible that he could have
existed anywhere else. He was neither very much beloved, nor
particularly disliked by his scholars. He flourished the birch pretty
vigorously at times, and it was universally allowed that he made an
excellent teacher. He opened his school each day with a prayer,
which he had repeated so often that he could think on other matters
during the time of its delivery. He always kept his eyes wide open
when engaged in the act of devotion, watching intently the behaviour
of his scholars, and no sooner was the prayer finished than he
proceeded to apply the birchen rod as a corrective to misconduct,
and an incitement to devotional feeling. “Tammy,” alluding to this
circumstance, said to him one day—“Skelpin’ may mak gude
scholars, dominie, but it’s sure to mak bad Christians.” After school-
hours, the dominie either kept within doors, or walked forth alone.
He had not a single companion in the whole village, nor did he
cultivate any one’s society. He returned a salutation with civility, but
appeared to have no desire for further intercourse. He was still
parish teacher when I left the village; but it is more than probable
that the loneliness of his life has now merged into the solitude of the
grave.
After the minister and dominie, the village crier must not be
forgotten. He used a large hand-bell instead of the kettle-drum which
is employed in most country places to herald important public
announcements. “Pob Jamie” was the name by which the bellman, as
he was called, was generally known throughout the district. A
squalid, ragged, cadaverous, miserable-looking object he was. He
wore a hat “which was not all a hat,” part of the rim being gone, and
the rain and sunshine finding a free passage through its rents of ruin.
A long gaberlunzie’s gaberdine, formed, like Joseph’s coat, of many
colours, and adorned with many streamers, descended from his neck
to his heels. His feet were strapped over the soles of old shoes that
served the purpose of sandals. Thus arrayed, he shuffled with his bell
through the streets of Auchincraig, like the presiding genius of the
place. It was no use attempting to clothe him in better attire. If he
had been presented over night with a royal mantle, he would have
appeared at his vocation next day in his many-coloured and tattered
gaberdine. “Pob Jamie” was “cracked,” and public pity alone kept
him in his responsible office. It was one of the most ludicrous sights
in the world to see him actively engaged in the discharge of his duty,
for which he seemed to think he had special calling. After tingling his
bell for a time, he planted his staff behind him, and leant upon it in a
half-sitting posture, and then drawing a long breath, commenced
thus, in drawling tones, to give the world the benefit of his
announcement:—“Go-od faa-aat bee-eef to be so-old at Mustruss
Ma-act-avushes sho-op at sa-axpence the pund.” Poor Pob made a
sad mess of long roup-bills and documents of a similar kind. The
villagers, accustomed to his voice and manner, could make some
meaning out of his words; but to strangers it sounded like a language
never spoken before on earth since the dispersion at the Tower of
Babel. The village boys annoyed the bellman greatly by mimicking
his attitude and voice when he was in the act of “crying” through the
streets. It invariably excited his somewhat irascible temper, and he
prolonged and intensified his tones to an amusing extent. Jamie had
a withered, ill-natured, half-crazed old woman for a wife, and a
wretched cat-and-dog life they led together in their tottering hovel.
The union of these two miserable beings was a melancholy caricature
of the matrimonial alliance. They were never known to exchange a
single word of affection. In fact, they were apparently bound to each
other by mutual hatred. It was strange to think for what purpose they
had been created, or why they should exist in the world so long. One
winter day, after going his customary round, Pob fell sick, and
rapidly declined. In the course of a day or two it was apparent that he
was on the very verge of death. His old wife contemplated with
evident pleasure the prospect of his speedy dissolution, and within
five minutes of his death the half-crazed hag hissed these words into
his ear, “Dee, ye deevil, dee!”
Space would fail me to describe minutely all the oddities of
Auchincraig. There was the keeper of the post-office—a dwarfish
man, with elfin locks, and a notorious squint, who knew all the
secrets of the village, and seemed to possess the power of reading the
contents of letters without breaking the seals. There was
“burnewin,”—a man of huge stature and gigantic strength,—whose
“smiddy” after nightfall, when the furnace blazed, was the favourite
resort of all the cockfighters, poachers, and blackguards throughout
Strathkirtle. There were the “souter” and the tailor, politicians both,
and hard drinkers to boot. Nor did the village want its due
complement of “innocents.” It had greatly more than the average
number; and throughout all my wanderings, and during all my
residences in towns and remote villages, I have never met so many
odd characters gathered together as in old Auchincraig. It seemed to
me strange that in a valley so beautiful,—where nature is prodigal of
her richest gifts, where flowers bloom, birds sing, and corn-fields
rustle in the summer breeze,—humanity should have appeared in
such strange shapes and eccentric manifestations. But the old village
is gone, and the old villagers have departed, and the sun now shines
upon new homes and fresher hearts.
 PERLING JOAN.

By John Gibson Lockhart, LL.D.

Our Laird was a very young man when his father died, and he gaed
awa to France, and Italy, and Flanders, and Germany, immediately,
and we saw naething o’ him for three years; and my brother, John
Baird, went wi’ him as his own body-servant. When that time was
gane by, our Johnny cam hame and tauld us that Sir Claud wad be
here the next day, an’ that he was bringing hame a foreign lady wi’
him—but they were not married. This news was a sair heart, as ye
may suppose, to a’ that were about the house; and we were just glad
that the auld lady was dead and buried, not to hear of sic doings. But
what could we do? To be sure, the rooms were a’ put in order, and
the best chamber in the hale house was got ready for Sir Claud and
her. John tauld me, when we were alane together that night, that I
wad be surprised wi’ her beauty when she came.
But I never could have believed, till I saw her, that she was sae very
young—such a mere bairn, I may say; I’m sure she was not more than
fifteen. Such a dancing, gleesome bit bird of a lassie was never seen;
and ane could not but pity her mair than blame her for what she had
done, she was sae visibly in the daftness and light-headedness of
youth. Oh, how she sang, and played, and galloped about on the
wildest horses in the stable, as fearlessly as if she had been a man!
The house was full of fun and glee; and Sir Claud and she were both
so young and so comely, that it was enough to break ane’s very heart
to behold their thoughtlessness. She was aye sitting on his knee, wi’
her arm about his neck; and for weeks and months this love and
merriment lasted. The poor body had no airs wi’ her; she was just as
humble in her speech to the like of us, as if she had been a cottar’s
lassie. I believe there was not one of us that could help liking her, for
a’ her faults. She was a glaiket creature; but gentle and tender-
hearted as a perfect lamb, and sae bonny! I never sat eyes upon her
match. She had never any colour but black for her gown, and it was
commonly satin, and aye made in the same fashion; and a’ the
perling about her bosom, and a great gowden chain stuck full of
precious rubies and diamonds. She never put powder on her head
neither; oh proud, proud was she of her hair! I’ve often known her
comb and comb at it for an hour on end; and when it was out of the
buckle, the bonny black curls fell as low as her knee. You never saw
such a head of hair since ye were born. She was the daughter of a rich
auld Jew in Flanders, and ran awa frae the house wi’ Sir Claud, ae
night when there was a great feast gaun on,—the Passover supper, as
John thought,—and out she came by the back-door to Sir Claud,
dressed for supper wi’ a’ her braws.
Weel, this lasted for the maist feck of a year; and Perling Joan (for
that was what the servants used to ca’ her, frae the laces about her
bosom), Mrs Joan lay in and had a lassie.
Sir Claud’s auld uncle, the colonel, was come hame from America
about this time, and he wrote for the laird to gang in to Edinburgh to
see him, and he behoved to do this; and away he went ere the bairn
was mair than a fortnight auld, leaving the lady wi’ us.
I was the maist experienced body about the house, and it was me
that got chief charge of being with her in her recovery. The poor
young thing was quite changed now. Often and often did she greet
herself blind, lamenting to me about Sir Claud’s no marrying her; for
she said she did not take muckle thought about thae things afore; but
that now she had a bairn to Sir Claud, and she could not bear to look
the wee thing in the face, and think a’ body would ca’ it a bastard.
And then she said she was come of as decent folk as any lady in
Scotland, and moaned and sobbit about her auld father and her
sisters.
But the colonel, ye see, had gotten Sir Claud into the town; and we
soon began to hear reports that the colonel had been terribly angry
about Perling Joan, and threatened Sir Claud to leave every penny he
had past him, if he did not put Joan away, and marry a lady like
himself. And what wi’ fleeching, and what wi’ flyting, sae it was that
Sir Claud went away to the north wi’ the colonel, and the marriage
between him and lady Juliana was agreed upon, and everything
settled.
Everybody about the house had heard mair or less about a’ this, or
ever a word of it came her length. But at last, Sir Claud himself writes
a long letter, telling her what a’ was to be; and offering to gie her a
heap o’ siller, and send our John ower the sea wi’ her, to see her safe
back to her friends—her and her baby, if she liked best to take it with
her; but if not, the colonel was to take the bairn hame, and bring her
up a lady, away from the house here, not to breed any dispeace.
This was what our Johnny said was to be proposed; for as to the
letter itself, I saw her get it, and she read it twice ower, and flung it
into the fire before my face. She read it, whatever it was, with a
wonderful composure; but the moment after it was in the fire she
gaed clean aff into a fit, and she was out of one and into anither for
maist part of the forenoon. Oh, what a sight she was! It would have
melted the heart of stone to see her.
The first thing that brought her to herself was the sight of her
bairn. I brought it, and laid it on her knee, thinking it would do her
good if she could give it a suck; and the poor trembling thing did as I
bade her; and the moment the bairn’s mouth was at the breast, she
turned as calm as the baby itsel—the tears rapping ower her cheeks,
to be sure, but not one word more. I never heard her either greet or
sob again a’ that day.
I put her and the bairn to bed that night—but nae combing and
curling o’ the bonnie black hair did I see then. However, she seemed
very calm and composed, and I left them, and gaed to my ain bed,
which was in a little room within hers.
Next morning, the bed was found cauld and empty, and the front
door of the house standing wide open. We dragged the waters, and
sent man and horse every gate, but ne’er a trace of her could we ever
light on, till a letter came twa or three weeks after, addressed to me,
frae hersel. It was just a line or twa, to say that she was well, and
thanking me, poor thing, for having been attentive about her in her
down-lying. It was dated frae London. And she charged me to say
nothing to anybody of having received it. But this was what I could
not do; for everybody had set it down for a certain thing, that the
poor lassie had made away baith wi’ hersel and the bairn.
 I dinna weel ken whether it was owing to this or not, but Sir
Claud’s marriage was put aff for twa or three years, and he never cam
near us a’ that while. At length word came that the wedding was to be
put over directly; and painters, and upholsterers, and I know not
what all, came and turned the hale house upside down, to prepare for
my lady’s hame-coming. The only room that they never meddled wi’
was that that had been Mrs Joan’s: and no doubt they had been
ordered what to do.
Weel, the day came, and a braw sunny spring day it was, that Sir
Claud and the bride were to come hame to the Mains. The grass was
a’ new mawn about the policy, and the walks sweepit, and the cloth
laid for dinner, and everybody in their best to give them their
welcoming. John Baird came galloping up the avenue like mad, to
tell us that the coach was amaist within sight, and gar us put oursels
in order afore the ha’ steps. We were a’ standing there in our ranks,
and up came the coach rattling and driving, wi’ I dinna ken how
mony servants riding behind it; and Sir Claud lookit out at the
window, and was waving his handkerchief to us, when, just as fast as
fire ever flew frae flint, a woman in a red cloak rushed out from
among the auld shrubbery at the west end of the house, and flung
herself in among the horses’ feet, and the wheels gaed clean out ower
her breast, and crushed her dead in a single moment. She never
stirred. Poor thing! she was nae Perling Joan then. She was in rags—
perfect rags all below the bit cloak; and we found the bairn, rowed in
a checked apron, lying just behind the hedge. A braw heartsome
welcoming for a pair of young married folk!—The History of
Matthew Wald.
 JANET SMITH.

By Professor Thomas Gillespie.

Old Janet Smith lived in a cottage overshadowed by an ash-tree,

and flanked by a hawthorn, called Lasscairn,—so named, in all
probability, from a cairn of stones, almost in the centre of which this
simple habitation was placed, in which, even within the period of my
remembrance, three maiden veterans kept “rock and reel, bleezing
hearth and reeking lum.” They were uniformly mentioned in the
neighbourhood as “the lasses o’ Lasscairn,” though their united ages
might have amounted to something considerably above three-score
thrice told. Janet, however, of whom I am now speaking, had been
married in her teens, and her husband having lost his life in a lime-
quarry, she had been left with an only child, a daughter, whom, by
the help of God’s blessing, and her wee wheel, she had reared and
educated as far as the Proofs and Willison’s. This daughter having
attained to a suitable age, had been induced one fine summer
evening, whilst her mother was engaged in her evening devotion
under the shadow of the ash-tree, to take a pleasure walk with Rob
Paton, a neighbouring ploughman, but then recently enlisted, and to
share his name and his fortunes for twenty-four months to come. At
the end of this period, she found her mother nearly in the same
position in which she had left her, praying earnestly to her God to
protect, direct, and return her “bairn.” There were, however, two
bairns for the good old woman to bless, instead of one, and the young
Jessie Paton was said to be the very picture of her mother. Be that as
it may, old Janet, now a grannie, loved the bairn, forgave the mother,
and by the help of an additional wheel, which, in contradistinction to
her own, was designated “muckle,” she, and her “broken-hearted,
deserted” daughter, contrived for years to earn such a subsistence as
their very moderate wants required. At last a severe fever cut off the
mother, and left a somewhat sickly child at about nine years of age,
under the sole protection of an aged and enfeebled grandmother. It
was at this stage of old Janet’s earthly travail that, in the character of
a schoolboy, I became acquainted with her and her daughter,—for
ever after the mother’s death, the child knew her grandmother by no
other name, and under no other relation.
Janet had a particular way—still the practice in Dumfriesshire—of
dressing or preparing her meal of potatoes. They were scraped, well-
dried, salted, beetled, buttered, milked, and ultimately rumbled into
the most beautiful and palatable consistency. In short, they became
that first, and—beyond the limits of the south country—least known
of all delicacies, “champit potatoes.” As I returned often hungry and
weary from school, Janet’s pot presented itself to me, hanging in the
reek, and at a considerable elevation above the fire, as the most
tempting of all objects. In fact, Janet, knowing that my hour of
return from school was full two hours later than hers of repast, took
this method of reserving for me a full heaped spoonful of the residue
of her and her Jessie’s meal. Never whilst I live, and live by food,
shall I forget the exquisite feelings of eager delight with which that
single overloaded spoonful of beat or “champit” potatoes was
devoured. There are pleasures of sentiment and imagination of
which I have occasionally partaken, and others connected with what
is called the heart and affections; all these are beautiful and
engrossing in their way and in their season, but to a hungry
schoolboy, who has devoured his dinner “piece” ere ten o’clock a.m.,
and is returning to his home at a quarter before five, the
presentiment, the sight, and, above all, the taste and reflection
connected with the swallowing of a spoonful—and such a spoonful!—
of Janet Smith’s potatoes, is, to say nothing flighty or extravagant,
not less seasonable than exquisite. As my tongue walked slowly and
cautiously round and round the lower and upper boundaries of the
delicious load, as if loath rapidly to diminish that bulk, which the
craving stomach would have wished to have been increased had it
been tenfold, my whole soul was wrapped in Elysium; it tumbled
about, and rioted in an excess of delight—a kind of feather-bed of
downy softness. Drinking is good enough in its season, particularly
when one is thirsty; but the pleasures attendant on the satisfying of
the appetite for me!—this is assuredly the great, the master
gratification.
But Janet did not only deal in potatoes; she had likewise a cheese,
and, on pressing occasions, a bottle of beer besides. The one stood in
a kind of corner press or cupboard, whilst the other occupied a still
less dignified position beneath old Janet’s bed. To say the truth of
Janet’s cheese, it was not much beholden to the maker. It might have
been advantageously cut into bullets or marbles, such was its
hardness and solidity; but then, in those days, my teeth were good;
and, with a keen stomach and a willing mind, much may be effected
even on a “three times skimmed sky-blue!” The beer—for which I
have often adventured into the terra incognita already mentioned,
even at the price of a prostrate person and a dusty jacket—was
excellent, brisk, frothy, and nippy;—my breath still goes when I think
of it. And then Janet wore such long strings of tape, blue and red,
white and yellow, all striped and variegated like a gardener’s garter! I
shall never be such a beau again, as when my stockings on Sabbath
were ornamented with a new pair of Janet’s well-known, much-
prized, and admired garters.
It was, however, after all, on Sabbath that Janet appeared to move
in her native element. It was on Sabbath that her face brightened,
and her step became accelerated—that her spectacles were carefully
wiped with the corner of a clean neck-napkin, and her Bible was
called into early and almost uninterrupted use. It was on Sabbath
that her devotions were poured forth—both in a family and private
capacity—with an earnestness and a fervency which I have never
seen surpassed in manse or mansion, in desk or pulpit. There is,
indeed, nothing in nature so beautiful and elevating as sincere and
heartfelt, heart-warming devotion. There is a poor, frail creature,
verging on three-score and ten years, with an attendant lassie, white-
faced, and every way “shilpy” in appearance. Around them are
nothing more elevating or exciting than a few old sticks of furniture,
sooty rafters, and a smoky atmosphere. Surely imbecility has here
clothed herself in the forbidding garb of dependence and squalid
poverty! The worm that crawls into light through the dried mole-hill,
all powdered over with the dust from which it is escaping, is a fit
emblem of such an object and such a condition. But over all this let
us pour the warm and glowing radiance of genuine devotion! The
roots of that consecrated ash can bear witness to those half-
articulated breathings, which connect the weakness of man with the
power of God,—the squalidness of poverty with the radiant richness
of divine grace. Do those two hearts, which under one covering now
breathe forth their evening sacrifice in hope and reliance—do they
feel, do they acknowledge any alliance with the world’s opinions, the
world’s artificial and cruel distinctions? If there be one object more
pleasing to God and to the holy ministers of His will than another, it
is this—age uniting with youth, and youth with age, in the giving
forth into audible, if not articulate expression, the fulness of the
devout heart!
Lord W——, whose splendid residence stands about fifteen miles
distant from Lasscairn, happened to be engaged in a hunting
expedition in the neighbourhood of this humble and solitary abode,
and having separated from his attendants and companions, he
bethought himself of resting for a little under a roof, however
humble, from which he saw smoke issuing. But when he put his
thumb to the latch it would not move; and after an effort or two, he
applied first his eye, and lastly his ear, to the keyhole, to ascertain the
presence of the inhabitants. The solemn voice of fervent prayer met
his ear, uttered by a person evidently not in a kneeling, but in an
erect position; he could, in short, distinctly gather the nature and
tendency of Janet’s address to her Maker.
She was manifestly engaged in asking a blessing on her daily meal,
and was proceeding to enumerate, with the voice of thanksgiving, the
many mercies with which, under God’s good providence, she and
hers had been visited. After an extensive enumeration, she came at
last to speak of that ample provision on which she was now
imploring a blessing. In this part of her address she dwelt with
peculiar cheerfulness, as well as earnestness of tone, on that
goodness which had provided so bountifully for her, whilst many
better deserving than she were worse circumstanced. The whole
tenor of her prayer tended to impress the listener with the belief that
Janet’s board, though spread in a humble hut, must be at least amply
supplied with the necessaries of life. But what was Lord W——’s
surprise, on entrance, to find that a round oaten bannock, toasting
before a brick at a peat fire, with a basin of whey,—the gift of a kind
neighbour,—composed that ample and bountiful provision for which
this humble, but contented and pious woman expressed so much
gratitude! Lord W—— was struck with the contrast between his own
condition and feelings and those of this humble pair; and, in settling
upon Janet and her inmate £6 a-year for life, he enabled her to
accommodate herself with a new plaid and black silk hood, in which
she appeared, with her granddaughter, every Sabbath, occupying her
well-known and acknowledged position on the lowest step of the
pulpit stair, and paying the same respect to the minister in passing as
if she had been entirely dependent on her own industry and the good
will of her neighbours as formerly.