for man's edification, for if Liberty is exiled, the
intellect is robbed and man knows not himself. It matters not,
though nature opens her generous purse and pours forth melodies
of her myriad-tongued voices for man's delectation, for, if the
shackles of wage slavery are not loosed, the mind is stultified
and ambition destroyed by the long hours of toil's monotony in
the factory, the machine shop, in the mines, at the desk, and on
the farm. It matters not, though the fireside of the home sheds
forth a radiance in which is blended paternal love, health and
happiness, for, if woman is denied equal suffrage, then this
queen of the household, perforce, becomes a moral slave.

Man, therefore, is not the sovereign citizen as pictured by the
flashing phrases of the orator and soothsayer.

Liberty exiled, we have heard of before, but economic equality
ostracised, is new. The idea that the multiplicity of living forms exist
for man's edification, is ancient to the point of being moldy, but we
must concede originality to "myriad tongued voices" issuing from a
"purse." The concluding remarks about the "flashing phrases of the
orator" are peculiarly well taken--unless that gentleman should be mean
enough to say, "you're another."

* * * * *

Of course there is no objection to real eloquence and one's sentences
should always be smooth and rhythmical. One great source of smoothness
and rhythm is alliteration. Tennyson says:

"The distant dearness of the hill
The sacred sweetness of the stream."

Here the smooth movement comes from the alliteration on d in the first
line and the tripling of the initial s in the second.

"With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe."

gets its music from the alliteration on f. In revising the MS. of my
lecture on "Weismann's Theory of Heredity" for publication, I found the
following sentence, referring to Johannes Mueller.

"He failed to fill the gap his destructive criticism had
created."

This sentence gives to the ear a sense of rhythm that is somewhere
interrupted and disturbed. Examination shows that the rhythm comes from
the alliterations "failed to fill" and "criticism had created," and the
disturbance arises from the interjection between them of the word
"destructive." Destructive is a good word here, but not essential to the
sense and not worth the interruption it makes in the sm