ame of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleading
himself. The capital on which he lives is confidence, and nothing equals
the confidence of the people, unless it be their distrust when once they
find themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters of
their artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors
which stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once
attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the
evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and
degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a
calamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, the
abolition of credit:--there is a misfortune greater than these: the loss
of confidence, of that moral credit which honest people give one
another, and which makes speech circulate like an authentic currency.
Away with counterfeiters, speculators, rotten financiers, for they bring
under suspicion even the coin of the realm. Away with the makers of
counterfeit speech, for because of them there is no longer confidence in
anyone or anything, and what they say and write is not worth a
continental.

You see how urgent it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his
pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense,
circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to
complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of
plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than years of
duplicity.

* * * * *

A word now about a national bias, to those who have a veneration for
diction and style. Assuredly there can be no quarrel with the taste for
grace and elegance of speech. I am of opinion that one cannot say too
well what he has to say. But it does not follow that the things best
said and best written are most studied. Words should serve the fact, and
not substitute themselves for it and make it forgotten in its
embellishment. The greatest things are those which gain the most by
being said most simply, since thus they show themselves for what they
are: you do not throw over them the veil, however transparent, of
beautiful discourse, nor that shadow so fatal to truth, called the
writer's vanity. Nothing so strong, nothing so persuasive, as
simplicity! There are sacred emotions, cruel griefs, splendid heroisms,
passionate enthusiasms that a look,