we had an educated Pap,”—etc.
Obscure, ridiculous—but old words, old phrases, and forgotten sayings—why do they come back to haunt our meaning?
At La Régence:
On quotations—The practice of nineteenth-century “good” writers was to decorate their compositions with neat little patterns of quotations. That practice still persists in a great deal of the correct writing of the present—viz., the essays and leading articles of The Atlantic Monthly, The Spectator, Harper’s, The Century, The London Mercury, etc.—The quotation habit is generally a vicious one, often it has not even so worthy a design as to borrow from stronger and greater people an energy and clearness that we do not have, but rather serves as a sort of diploma to certify culture—said culture consisting in our ability to quote scraps from Lamb, Dickens, John Keats, Browning, Doctor Johnson, and Matthew Arnold. The distortion this works upon the original sinew of the mind is incalculable—writing becomes a meeting of pseudo-courtliness neatly designed to arrive before Lamb with a bow and to be handed by Dickens to Lord Tennyson with a graceful flourish. The phrase “apt quotation” is one of the most misleading phrases ever invented. Most quotations, so far from being apt to any purpose, are distinguished by all the ineptitude a politician displays when, having spoken for twenty minutes on the Nicaraguan question, he says: “That reminds me of a little story I heard the other day. It seems there were two Irishmen whose names were Pat and Mike”—then proceeds to a discussion of the Prohibition issue, after his convulsed audience is somewhat recovered.
Europe and America are still too far apart—the “interminable” day is far too long—six days are far too long—for the intense impression—to compare and observe their essential difference—
Results: We must have them closer together—as the English and the French—as Dover and Calais—things that matter in our life cannot be recalled so easily. I have lived deeply, intensely, vividly, on the whole unhappily, for six months. Some people say that is all that matters. I do not think it is. But things cannot be called up so easily.
I am wondering in a vast vague about her. I love her, I think of seeing her again with a sense of strangeness and wonder; but I have no sort of idea
