e inclinations, its repugnances, its latent
potentialities. There is no precise duplicate for it in all the wide
domain of language. To know it intimately and thoroughly, to be on
entirely free terms with it, to depend upon it just so far as dependence
is safe, to have a sure understanding of what it can do and what it
cannot, you must arduously cultivate it. Words, like people, yield
themselves to the worthy. They hunger for friendship--and lack the last
barrier of reserve which hedges all human communion. Thus, linguistically
speaking, you must search out the individuals. You must step aside from
your way for the sake of a new acquaintance; in conversations, in sermons,
in addresses, in letters, in journalistic columns, in standard literature
you must grasp the stranger by the hand and look him straight in the eye.
Nor must you treat cavalierly the words you know already. You must study
them afresh; you must learn them over and learn them better; you must come
to understand them, not only for what they are, but for what they will do.

<What Words to Learn First>

What, then, is your first task? Somebody has laid down the injunction--
and, as always when anything is enjoined, others have given it currency--
that each day you should learn two new words. So be it,--but which two?
The first two in the dictionary, or hitherto left untouched in your
systematic conquest of the dictionary? The first two you hear spoken? The
first two that stare at you from casual, everyday print? The first two you
can ferret from some technical jargon, some special department of human
interest or endeavor? In any of these ways you may obey the behest of
these mentors. But are not such ways arbitrary, haphazard? And suppose,
after doing your daily stint, you should encounter a word it behooves you
to know. What then? Are you to sulk, to withhold yourself from further
exertion on the plea of a vocabulary-builder's eight-hour day?

To adopt any of the methods designated would be like resolving to invest
in city lots and then buying properties as you encountered them, with no
regard for expenditure, for value in general, or for special
serviceability to you. Surely such procedure would be unbusinesslike. If
you pay out good money, you meditate well whether that which you receive
for it shall compensate you. Likewise if you devote time and effort to
gaining ownership of words, you should exercise foresight in determining
whether they will yield