rtistic or professional, animates--the practitioners of Jargon,
who are, most of them (I repeat), douce respectable persons. Caution is
its father: the instinct to save everything and especially trouble: its
mother, Indolence. It looks precise, but it is not. It is, in these
times, _safe_: a thousand men have said it before and not one to your
knowledge had been prosecuted for it. And so, like respectability in
Chicago, Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst. It is becoming the
language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of
Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms,
express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so
voice the reason of their being.

Has a Minister to say 'No' in the House of Commons? Some men are
constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it
thus--'The answer to the question is in the negative.' That means 'no.'
Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that
the speaker is a pompous person?--which was no part of the information
demanded.

That is Jargon, and it happens to be accurate. But as a rule Jargon is by
no means accurate, its method being to walk circumspectly around its
target; and its faith, that having done so it has either hit the
bull's-eye or at least achieved something equivalent, and safer.

Thus the Clerk of a Board of Guardians will minute that--

In the case of John Jenkins deceased the coffin provided was of the
usual character.

Now this is not accurate. 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased,' for
whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he
is deceased. But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and
that was the coffin. The Clerk says he had two,--a coffin in a case: but
I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us
that the coffin was of the usual character: for coffins have no
character, usual or unusual.

For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)--

In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you
see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class. He might be
a stuffed animal: perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is
placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient
mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed
in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (i