The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1890-09-12
Words That Laugh and Cry.

Did it ever strike you that there was any
thing queer about The capacity of written
words to absorb and convey feelings
Taken separately they are mere symbols with
no more feeling to them than so many bricks,
but string them along in a row under certain
mysterious conditions and you find yourself
laughing or crying as your eyes run over
them. That words should convey mere ideas
is not so remarkable. "rhe boy is fat," "the
Cat has nine tails, are statements that seem
obviously enough within the power of writ
ten language. But it is different with feel
ings. They are no more visible in the SYM
bols that hold them than electricity is visible
on the wire; and yet they are always ready
to respond when the right test is applied by
theright person. That spoken words, charged
with human tones and lighted by human eyes,
should carry feelings, is not so astonishing.
The magnetic sympathy of the orator one
understands he might affect his audience,
possibly, if he spoke in language they did
not know. But written words: How can
they do it Suppose, for example, that you
possess reasonable facility in grouping Ian
guage, and that you have strong feelings
upon some subject, which finally you deter
mine to commit to paper. Your pen runs
along the proper words present themselves,
or are dragged out, and fall into their places.
You are a good deal moved here you chuckle
to yourself, and half a dozen of lines further
down lump comes into your throat. and
perhaps you have to wipe your eyes. You
finish and the copy goes to the printer.
When it gets into print reader sees it.
His eye runs along the lines and down the
page until it comes to the place where you
chuckled as you wrote; then he smiles, and
six lines below he has to swallow several times
Ill bod 70
hibition of weakness. And then some one
else comes along who is not so good word
juggler as you are, or who has no feelings,
and swaps the words about little, and twists
the sentences and behold, the spell is gone,
and YOU have left parcel of written language
duly charged with facts, but without single
feeling.
No one can juggle with words with any de-
gree of success without getting vast respect
for their independent ability. They will
catch the best idea a man ever had as it
flashes through his brain, and hold on to it,
to surprise him with it long after, and make
him wonder that he was ever man enough to
have such an idea. And often they will catch
an idea on its way from the brain to the pen
point, turn, twist, and improve on it as the
eve winks, and in an instant there they are,
strung in hand across the page and grinning
back at the writer "rhis is our idea, old
man not yours p
AS for poetry, every word that expects to
earn its result in poetry should have head
and pair of legs of its own, to go and find
its place, carrying another word if necessary
on its back. The most that should be eX-
pected of any competent poet in regular prac-
tice is to serve general summons and notice
of action on the language. If the words
won't do the rest for him it indicates that he
is out of sympathy with his tools.
But you don't find feelings in written
words unless there were feelings in the man
who used them. With all their apparent
independence they seem to- be little vessels
that hold in some puzzing fashion exactly
what is put into them. You can put tears
into them, as though they were so many little
buckets; and you can hang smiles along them
like Mondays clothes on the line, or you can
starch them with facts and stand them up
like picket fence; but you won't get the
tears out unless you first put them in. Art
won't put them there. 1t is like the faculty
of getting the quality of interest into pictures.
If the quality exists IN the artists mind he is
likely to find means to get it into his pictures,
but if it isn't in the man no technical skill
will supply it. So, if the feelings are in the
writer and he knows his business, they will
get into the words; but they must be in him
first. 1t isn't the way the words are strung
together that makes LINCoLN's Gettysburg
speech immortal, but the feelings that were in
the man. But how do such little, plain words
manage to keep their grip on such feelings?
That ia the miracle