years; any jury you could get, any dozen men picked at random-'

His brother repeated the words thoughtfully after him. ""Any jury picked at random?" All right we'll pick 'em; enough to show what I mean. Got a telephone book? It won't be a perfectly fair sample, but it'll give us an idea. Here, I'll read the names off."

He turned to the A's under West Brookins. 'ABRAMS, ADAMS, ADAM

SON

"There's a good place to stop,' Boynton interrupted the reading. He spoke good-naturedly with an obvious desire not to insist on his triumph. Any one of those three or all of them. Adams and I have played chess together for years. And Abrams —'

since. He'll be eligible ALSBERG'?

They had turned one page and were half way down the second before Boynton raised his head from above the book. 'I think we need n't go any farther. I think I see your point.'

'Let's see what we've got, then: one odd-jobs man; one truck farmer - he may get off, it's just a chance. if we get him; one garbage man's helper; one you don't know; one delivery-wagon driver What'd you say about him? I've got him checked twice.'

'I said I'd asked Breck to discharge him because of the way he got orders mixed. If he is n't feeble-minded -'

'He won't be too feeble-minded to remember that - you can bank on his having that much mind; nor too feeble

'Yes. He was at the State University when I was, and ever since —' 'Ever serve on a jury yourself?' 'I'm exempt. As a teacher' 'It's ten or twelve years since you did any teaching.'

"Teaching is my profession, though, and naturally -' He saw the application of the question and was silent. 'What does Adams do?' 'He's a doctor.'

"That exempts him. Adamson?' 'He's retired now. He was formerly counsel -'

as he's outside an institution. You see what it comes down to. That's what brought me down as fast as I could travel. I did n't know anything about this town, but I knew what towns full of retired lawyers and bankers and professors and cultured classes generally are always like. Look at Boston! Rottenest city government would n't think now of what I said a while ago about going off for a visit for a while? It's just till we'd have time to get our hands on some clues and get in first with them. When you're up against a combination like this-'

You

Professor Boynton got to his feet. His face was suddenly as old as his gray hair. He swallowed hard before he spoke.

'No,' he said. He stood looking down into the fire. 'It's Helen I'm thinking of, of course. She's just at that age But no! Whatever I've done -' 'But it's what you have n't done! Good God, Ed, if you'd done anything to him

'I don't mean that,' Boynton said. For a little while he resumed his con

templation of the fire. 'What I mean is this: all my life I've prided myself on being a good citizen. If I have n't been-He paused. 'Since I have n't been, to take the consequences of not being '

of your other friends were coming over.' He stopped, waiting for his brother to answer, but Boynton said nothing.

'I think I'll duck out before they come. I've a meeting in town I ought n't to cut if I can help it. . . . But I'm

thing

- not single-handed.'

'I could have helped. In a place as small as this, if I'd set the example —' He stopped: the telephone, which had been quiet longer than at any other time in the day, was ringing again. 'Cara's gone upstairs, I think. I'll answer it.'

'I'll answer it! The less you talk, the better. If it's anybody trying to get a statement out of you -' He went out to the instrument. Inside the study, his brother could hear the quick bark of his responses. 'Hello. Yes... Yes. . . No, . No, he can't come just now. This is his brother. . . . Yes. Yes. What! What's that? . . . Yes, I got

..

you!'

V

There was a long listening silence. Then the receiver crashed down on the hook and Charlie came back into the study. His face was queerly mottled with red and his teeth ate at his unsteady lower lip.

'God's good to you, Ed! The widow got up when they were n't watching her and got hold of something she thought was whiskey. She's just made a statement in expectation of death. She threw the brick herself came round from behind you. He'd been chasing her with a knife the night before and that was her answer. It was a Judge Somebody telephoned. He said he and some

death. I could sit down and cry, just out of plain relief. You'll say good-bye to Cara for me, won't you? And the next time you get accused of murder or arson or kidnapping -'

But Professor Boynton, though he held his brother's hand longer than was usual with him, did not respond to the joking. When he was alone, he went to one of the bookcases and took down from it a little shabby brown-bound volume and turned its familiar leaves. The passage he turned to he could have repeated as well without the book as with it:

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed; nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers.

...

SOME years ago I wrote to a friendly author who also chanced to be a stylista protest against one of the wanton assertions in which his soul delighted: 'It is n't true, and, what is more, you knew it was n't true when you said it.' To which the answer came back prompt and clear: 'Must I explain even to you that it is not a question of what I say, but how I say it?' Yet that man was an American, and should have felt with the rest of his countrymen that what he said was a matter of vital import to a listening or an inattentive-world; but that the fashion of the saying was negligible provided he made his meaning plain. 'A language long employed by a delicate and critical society,' says Walter Bagehot, 'is a treasure of dextrous felicities.' To ask from it nothing but intelligibility is to rob ourselves of delight as well as of distinction. It is to narrow our magnificent heritage of English speech to a bare subsistence, the only form of voluntary poverty which has nothing to recommend it. It is to live our intellectual life, if we have one, and the social life we must all have, upon a rather shabby assortment of necessary words, when we are rich in our own right, and can draw at will upon the inexhaustible funds of our inheritance.

A professor at the University of Chicago, who recently published an 'American translation' of the New Testament, turning it into language 'intelligible to the American ear,' surrendered in the name of scholarship (for

he is a scholar), and in the names of his readers, all claim to this inheritance. When he substituted a bald simplicity for a rich and masterful idiom, he signified his assent to the impoverishment of our national speech. There are some among us who think that if Americans cannot read the King James Bible, they had better learn to read it. Men and women without the tenth part of their schooling have succeeded in doing this. Its heroic wealth of monosyllables, which exceed those of any other English masterpiece, should lighten the reader's task. To understand the precise significance of every word is not essential. To love the sight and the sound and the glory of them is part of a liberal education.

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged. They lack the avenue of approach to the best that has been known and thought in the world, and they lack the means of accurate self-interpretation. A heedless clumsiness of speech denies the proprieties and surrenders the charm of intercourse. Chesterton says that Saint Francis of Assisi clung through all the naked simplicities of his life to one rag of luxury the manners of a court. "The great attainable amenities' lent grace to his mistress, Poverty, and robbed her of no spiritual significance. The attainable amenities of manner and of speech, the delicacy of the chosen word, the subordinated richness of tone and accent these gifts have been bequeathed us by the civilizations of the world.

With a 'treasure of dextrous felicities' always within reach, frugality is misplaced and unbecoming.

Nineteen years ago Mr. Henry James gave as the Commencement address at Bryn Mawr College a matchless paper on "The Question of our Speech.' He did not approach this many-sided subject from all its angles. He did not link the limitations of the ordinary American vocabulary with the slovenliness of the ordinary American pronunciation, and the shrill or nasal sound of the ordinary American voice. He did not seem to be deeply troubled by the fundamental unconcern which makes possible this brutalization of language. If he regretted the contentment of too many American parents with the 'vocal noises,' unmoderated and uncontrolled, of their offspring, he laid no emphasis upon the contentment of the same parents with the fewness and commonness of the words at their command.

But for the vox Americana, 'the poor dear distracted organ itself,' and for 'formed and finished utterance,' he pleaded earnestly with the Bryn Mawr students, and, through them, with the nation at large. It was to him incomprehensible that a people 'abundantly schooled and newspapered, abundantly housed, fed, clothed, salaried and taxed,' should have, in the matter of speech, so little to show for its money. The substitution of 'limp, slack, passive tone for clear, clean, active, tidy tone,' was typical of a general limpness and slackness which nullified the best results of education. "The note of cheapness of the cheap and easy-is especially fatal to any effect of security of intention in the speech of a society; for it is scarce necessary to remind you that there are two very different kinds of ease: the ease that comes from the conquest of a difficulty, and the ease that comes from the vague dodging of

it. In the one case you gain facility, in the other case you get mere looseness.'

--

The phrase 'security of intention' has the shining quality of a searchlight. It clarifies and intensifies Mr. James's argument in behalf of the coherent culture of speech. He probably never heard the American language at its worst. He was by force of circumstance aloof from the more furious assaults upon its dignity and integrity. 'Amurrica' he did hear of course. It is universal. Also 'Philadulphia.' He says he heard 'Cubar,' 'sofar,' 'idear,' ‘tullegram,' and 'twuddy,' for the deciphering of which last word he gives himself much credit. But the compound flowers of speech which bloom on every side of us were lost to him because of his limited acquaintance with the product of our public schools, and with the cultural processes of street, workshop, and office. From this rich array we can cull many blossoms which he must have been happy enough to miss. 'Whaja got?' 'Wherya goin'?' 'Waja say?' 'Hadjer lunch?' 'Don' leggo of it!' "Sall I can say.' 'Na less'n fifty cents.' 'I yusta know 'im.' 'Wanna g'wout?' All of which blendings suggest the fatal 'Dom-scum' of the greedy chaplain in Daudet's story of the Three Christmas Masses.

The overworked American r has intruded itself upon all observers; but some have failed to notice the whimsicalities of the letter g, which absents itself from its post at the end of certain words, as 'goin' and 'talkin,' only to force an entrance into the middle of others, as 'ongvelope.' An Amherst professor has informed us that the word girl may be rendered - according to locality-as gal, göl, gûl, göil, geöl, gyurl, gurrel, girrel and gûrl. All of these variants he heard on the tongues of the native-born. The No Man's Land of the immigrant he has not ventured to invade. That the child of the