on his boy,--and that ligament,
fine as it was,--was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again,--the film returned to its
place,--the pulse fluttered,--stopt,--went
on,--throbbed,--stopt again,--moved,--stopt,--shall I go on?
No.

This famous passage is neither unintentional sentiment nor unaffected
pathos. The art is apparent even in the punctuation. The writer meant
to be touching and pathetic and to awaken emotions of tenderness and
pity and he succeeded. The description is all he meant it to be. The
extract from the newspaper arouses no emotion, unless it be
resentment at its form and leaves us cold and unmoved. The other is
touching and pitiful. Observe the manner in which Sterne obtains his
effect, the perfect simplicity and good taste of every word, the
reserve, the gentleness, the utter absence of any straining for
effect. The one description died the day it appeared. The other has
held its place for a century and a half. Are not the qualities which
produced such a result worth striving for?

Let me take another haphazard selection from a description of a young
girl entitled as such to every one's kindness, courtesy and respect.
In it occurs this sentence: "The college girl is grammatical in
speech, but she has the jolliest, chummiest jargon of slang that ever
rolled from under a pink tongue." That articulate sounds come from
beneath the tongue is at least novel and few persons are fortunate
enough to be able to talk with that portion of their mouths. But I
have no desire to dwell either upon the anatomical peculiarities of
the sentence or upon its abysmal vulgarity. It is supposed to be
effective, it is what is appropriately called "breezy," it is a form
of words which can be heard nowhere in the speech of men and women.
Why should it be consigned to print? It is possible to describe a
young girl attractively and effectively in much simpler fashion. Let
me give an example, not a famous passage at all, from another writer:

She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping
with herself, and never jarred against surrounding
circumstances. Her figure, to be sure--so small as to be
almost childlike and so elastic that motion seemed as easy
or easier to it than rest--would hardly have suited one's
idea of a countess. Neither did her face--with brown
ringlets on either side and a slightly piquant nose, and the
wholesome bloom, and the