The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1881-06-22
The Brief and the Diffuse.

Brevity is not only the soul of wit,
says the Galveston Ne,OS, but, ordinarily,
the mark of good common sense. Al
most all good things, however, may he
carried to extremes, and when newspa-
pers not only become scntentious, but
undertake to make single word do duty
for paragraph, they often become rs
unintelIigible, or are liable to be inter
preted IN ms many ways, as the oracles
of the weather prophets. Some of the
papers have fallen into the habit of drop
ping into monosyllables, which are I'M
intelligible except Immediately where
the facts referred to are already known
as "rain, " "wind, dry" "sickness" ="
"a man dead" and the like phrases,
which would barely answer as head lines
in most cases. This is little too much
of the style which logicims call calegor
matte, when a single word is capable of
doing duty for sentence, predicate or
proposition, as distinguished from the
ten catcgories of Aristotle, whore the
substance, quality, quantity, relation,
action, passion, time, place, situation,
and habit of the thing described were
given or understood. But there IS no
style so curt as to he objectionable Ms
the habit some people have Of drawing
everything, under and above the earth,
past and present, into every incident
they undertake to relate until the reader
or listener loses all idea Of the subject
supposed to be in hand, and like tho old
man who was tired of waiting for his
wife to finish counting the beans, calls
on Gabriel to blow his horn and end the
trouble. Widow Bedott gave some adj
mirable specimens of this diflusive
style, and the central City Item adds the
following:
II seen you looking for an item last
week." said u frcckled man with small
watery eyes, dashed with blue, to omr
local. "Do yer want one now?'
He was cordially answered in the affirm
atiye, and gave in the following testi
mony.
Ike Bolivar and me had q narrow
escape from o horrible death, which was
prevented by Joe Moran, who first went
TO Pixies Peak in So and afterward mar
ried into the Runnels family as lived
down by the ford i'll Steuben County,
York State, where Iii Griffin used to
have his blacksmith shop--and oussed
poor man he was to shoe horse-no
better'n saloon hummer anyway, and
his poor wife-married one of the Plat
ter gals-who first gave the sack to Job
Duncan, who run raffs down the Ale
gany, and in winters saved shingles and
tiddled for dances. Yes, and he was a
boss to rassel-seen him stand all day
Fourth of jules in ten-foot ring and
flop the best man that tackled him, but
he never laid up a cent, and seemed to
allus take the world just as easy as lying,
for he was just what Aunt Susan Parker
called shiftless, and liklier old maid n
Susan didn't bind a shoe in North Adj
ans, Mass.-place where she was raised
and smart why her and doc" Ram
say-allus called him "Doc." ever since
he sucked the rattlesnake pizen oute'n |
Jake Biglow's leg-her and doc"
could hoe a rowof taters in one time and |
two motions and lay the last weed on the
left side to wunst. Thar was brother |
Of Susan's who peddled corn shelters,
and afterward growed Injun seed for n
big firm in Sandusky, Ohio-well, his
name was Wash. Parker-married into
the Biles family down in Tioga County, |
Penn.-got into scrape, though, with |
another gal" The local gave the mar
rator Of this lucid and closely connected
sensation one CHASTITY smile and fled.
IN VENICE q man has to get into q
yondola to go and have tooth pulled,
md pays twenty cents an hour for the
,oat; but the gondolier is expected to
hump himself. "