o the end of the stories they tell to
children. And as a rule the children will listen to the moral for the
sake of the story. And so even the stories which words tell us have
their lessons for us too, and, let us hope, the stories are
sufficiently interesting to pay for the moral.

One thing that these stories must have shown us is that the English
language is a very ancient and wonderful thing. We have only been able
to get mere glimpses of its wonderful development since the days when
the ancestors of the peoples of Europe and many of the peoples of
India spoke the one Aryan tongue. All the history of Europe and of
India--we might almost say of the world--is contained in the languages
which have descended from that Aryan tongue.

Another point which these stories have impressed upon us is that
language is a kind of mirror to thought. For every new idea people
must find a word, and as ideas change words change with them. These
stories have given us some idea of the wonderful growth of ideas in
the minds of men in the past; they have shown us men daring all
dangers for the sake of adventure and discovery and for pride of
country; they have shown us the growth of new ideas of religion and
kindness, new notions about science and learning: in fact, they have
given us glimpses of the whole story of human progress.

The great lesson which these stories ought to teach us is respect for
words. Seeing as we do what a beautiful and wonderful thing the
English language has become, it ought to be the resolution of each one
of us never to do anything to spoil that beauty. Every writer ought to
choose his words carefully, neither inventing nor copying ugly forms
of speech. We have seen also from these stories, especially in the
chapter on "Slang," how people have misused certain words, until
speakers and writers of good taste can no longer use them in their
original sense, and therefore do not use them at all.

There are many other faults in speaking and in writing which take away
from the beauty and dignity of the language. We shall see what some of
these faults are; but one golden rule can be laid down which, if
people keep it, will help them to avoid all these faults. No one
should ever try to write in a fine style. The chief aim which all
young writers should keep before them is to say exactly what they
mean, and in as few and simple words as possible. If on reading what
they have written they find that it is not perfectly