ns and mortises
exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too
many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding,--or, if a single piece
be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared
yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case we find it impossible not to
believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one
another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft
drawn up before the first blow was struck.

On the other hand, there is the danger of being florid or of playing the
clown if you tell too many stories. Whether your style will seem florid
or not depends a good deal on the part of the country you are writing
for. There is no doubt that the taste of the South and of a good deal of
the West is for a style more varied and highly colored than suits the
soberer taste of the East. But whatever part of the country you are
writing for, just so soon as your style seems to those special readers
overloaded with ornament it will seem insincere. In the same way, if you
stop too often to tell a story or to make your readers laugh, you will
produce the impression of trifling with your subject. In both these
respects be careful not to draw the attention of your readers away from
the subject to your style.

The ultimate and least analyzable appeal of style is through that thrill
of the voice which in written style appears as rhythm and harmony.
Certain men are gifted with the capacity of so modulating their voices
and throwing virtue into their tones that whoever hears them feels an
indefinable thrill. So in writing: where sounds follow sounds in
harmonious sequence, and the beat of the accent approaches regularity
without falling into it, language takes on the expressiveness of music.
It is well known that music expresses a range of feeling that lies
beyond the powers of words: who can explain, for example, the thrill
roused in him by a good brass band, or the indefinable melancholy and
gloom created by the minor harmonies of one of the great funeral
marches, or, in another direction, the impulse that sets him to
whistling or singing on a bright morning in summer? There are many such
kinds of feeling, real and potent parts of our consciousness; and if we
can bring them to expression at all, we must do so through the rhythm
and other sensuous qualities of the style which are pure