INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER IV BY GENERAL O. O. HOWARD "Maintain your rank, vulgarity despise, Ο NE moonlight night I was passing near a sentinel's post. It was during the winter of 1861-2, in front of Alexandria, Virginia, at Camp California. The sentinel, in some trouble, used rough, coarse language, closing with an oath. Approaching him, till I could see his face, think of my astonishment to find him, instead of a burly man of low life, a handsome boy of seventeen. I said to him pleasantly: "How could your mother have taught you to swear?" Dropping his head with a sudden shame, he answered, "She didn't, General. I learned it here." And indeed, it came from the influence of his associates. One's language always gauges him. Sincenty ye Oliver O. How as F CHAPTER IV BE CHOICE Of Language EW things are more important and far-reaching than the use of words. If good, they -"have power to 'suage The tumults of a troubled mind And are as balm to fester'd wounds." If bad, they corrupt and may flourish, as Carlyle said: "Like a hemlock forest after a thousand years." "Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense." One of the most historic structures in the world was the Campanile, or the bell-tower of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Not long since it fell. One aged Lugui Vendrasco knew its danger. For ten years he had not ceased to beg the government to allow him to put the Campanile in better order. But his warnings were unheeded. One Sunday morning he took his son to see it. As the young man looked upon the crack he said, "That's nothing. A small crack like that can really do no harm to such a building." Replying, the father said, "Son, it is not the crack. It is that of which the crack is the effect and symbol. Our Campanile is doomed." The next morning it fell with an awful crash. In like manner many a man has come tumbling down. His character was not safe because of some flaw in it. Improper words prove its great defect as the crack did the weakness of the Campanile. Stephen Price, once Mayor of New York, and a warm friend to boys, lost his life in a steamboat disaster. When his body was recovered, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket-book. It was so worn with oft reading that the words were scarcely legible, but two paragraphs were finally made out, one of which was: "Good company and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue." In fact, these are inseparable. Conversation is a reflex of character, and no boy can associate with another who delights in slangy, smutty talk without being more or less contaminated. IMPROPER WORDS. A very common and bad habit of some boys is the attachment of improper words to a sentence, as if it made it more binding. These in no sense give grace or beauty to language. They do not round out a period or enrich a metaphor. They define nothing, bound nothing, measure nothing, mean nothing, accomplish nothing, and he who uses them should be shunned. Vulgar expressions are never in order. "They help," as South says, "no one's education or manners. They are disgusting to the refined, abominable to the good, insulting to those with whom one associates, degrading to the mind, unprofitable, needless and injurious to society," and beneath the dignity of any self-respecting person. "Are there any ladies around?" said a young officer to a group of others, "I've a splendid story to tell." "There are no ladies present," said General Ulysses S. Grant, who overheard the remark, "but there are gentlemen here, sir, and what is not fit for a lady to hear, is unfit for a gentleman." When Coleridge Patterson, the martyred bishop of Melanesia, was a boy at Eton, he was enthusiastically fond of cricket, at which he was an unusually good player. At the cricket suppers at Eton, it was the custom to give toasts followed by songs, and these songs were often of a very questionable sort. Before one of these suppers, "Coley" told the captain that he would protest against the introduction of anything that was vulgar or indecent. His protest apparently had no effect, for during the evening, one of the boys arose and began to sing a song which "Coley" thought was not fit for decent boys to hear. Whereupon, rising from his seat, he said, "If this sort of thing continues, I shall leave the room." It was continued and he left. The next day he wrote to the captain of the eleven, saying unless he received an apology, he should withdraw from the club. The apology was sent and Patterson remained. By that stand he showed his character, which won the admiration of the rest and brought about a new state of affairs. No boy need answer another who addresses him in unbecoming language. He might say as Stephen A. Douglas, when denounced in the Senate in improper language, "What no gentleman should say, no gentleman need answer." And as to keeping the company of anyone who is inclined to be vulgar, there is no law to compel it. Far better be a Coleridge Patterson in shunning such company. AVOID PROFANITY. The true gentlemanly boy has a sense of honor, scrupulously avoiding profane words as he would profane actions. No habit is more unbecoming, useless and contagious than swearing. It is the fool's impulse and the coward's fortification. It neither helps one's manners nor education, and no boy with the least personal pride will be guilty of indulging in it. Louis IX of France punished everyone who was convicted of swearing by searing his lips with a hot iron. |