The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-17

really genuine pure old English. The
vocabulary of the street Is often more
vigorous and usually quite as pure En-
glish as the Latinized loquacity and YER
bosity of those who pride themselves on
knowing how TO speak properly. The
pedagogue breads his pupils viii remember
only the slang of the daily newspaper.
You might as well refuse your boy
chance 10 witness noble drama, or read
the greatest things in literature from the
fear that he would remember only the
slang he met. as TO depreciate
newspaper because it isn't a model
of grammar. rhetoric, that told
and talked only about proper
people" A newspaper that reflects the
humors and customs Of the time cannot
be tedious, sanctimonious Sunday-school
book or theological tract. 1t must deal
with the wise and the wicked in turn as
they rise upon the scene; it must deal
with people who talk in ''grammarly
manner" and with those who never saw
grammar, or are indifferent to its rules
and admonitions.
A newspaper is prepared in haste and
sometimes repented of at leisure, but it is
at least as wise and accurate as any other
printed record of thought and deed pre-
pared in the same short space of time. It
does not deliver so many whitewashing
obituaries as the pulpit does on funeral oc-
casions. While newspapers are. like the
current life toy picture, full of many
things not worth copying, they could no
more be true TO their true function and
purpose and be smooth-shaven literary
lawns than novelist, poet or dra-
matist, who in the exercise of his
function not seldom deals with people
who speak not wisely but too we'll" The
newspapers are the best popular teachers
OF decent, Ineligible English in America,
for the prospect of one of your so-called
purist schoolmasters writing any vigorous
idiomatic English is very remote. Law
yers, doctors, politicians, civil engineers
and railroad men generally write better
English than schnolmasters, for they learn
1t from the great newspapers of the land;
not from the orthodox grammars
q rule, doesn't vote because ''vul-
gar" people vote too. Slang, so
called, said James Russell Lowell,
is not seldom the leaf mold that
enriches the exhausted soil of our speech
and keeps it from degenerating into what
has been termed potted language and
dollhouse literature. The newspaper is
as sure to be the object of indiscriminate
denunciation by the prigs and prudes of
society as the popular novel, the opera and
the theater.s The prude is nothing but
the prig in skirt and corset, utterlng the
ukase of Mrs. Grundy concerning what is
vulgar or improper in art, literature, man.
ners or dress. Self-consciousness is the
root of priggishness. The prig is nothing
if not critical. The prig is generally a
Bourbon in theology; prohibitionist in
politics, a disciple of HowelIs in fiction
who thinks heroic action morbid growth,
and emotional speech, or moral enthusi-
asm for great principle 'bad form"
The prig stands for the world of clustered
virtue ruled by the social kings and queens
of the Kingdom of Lilliput, as separated
from the mass of robust American life.
The prig Of either sex has read little; is
dilletante in literature or dreamy, shallow
doctrinaire in economies; closet, cock
eyed naturalist in politics, trying to put
human nature under his microscope and
eagerly scrutinizing the moles on her rug
ged cheek and the pimples on her warlike
nose.
The political mugwump or prig de-
nounces the newspaper sometimes because
he is literary, political and social snob. and
sometimes because he smarts under the
lash that the press applies mercilessly to
the back of his folly. Grover Cleveland,
who is the popular idol of the political
prigs of both Republican and Democratic
antecedents, feeds Fat his ancient grudge
against the press by expressing his con-
viction of the inveracity of all newspapers
that ever expressed other than a compli-
mentary estimate of his public career and
political services. Ex-United States Sena-
tor Blair. of New Hampshire, a priggish
statesman, prohibitionist, demagogue,
sectarian bigot. an educational crank, is
another sore-headed statesman with large
grievance against the press because it gen.
orally declined to print his tedious
speeches. Then there is the clerical prig,
who denounces the Sunday newspaper,
which is chiefly prepared on Saturday.
He, too. generally has a grievance. The
press, while it has no word of conterupt
for the moral and spiritual essence of
Christianity, treats medieval theological
metaphysics with no more respect than it
does the medieval art of war or the
medieval code of legal torture, so the
press offends the clerical prig, who is
nothing if not moss-backed theologian.
And yet the vast majority of the news
papers of the country are invariably quite
as true to the cause of good morals, pure
politics, upright and enlightened federal,
state and municipal government as the
eierics, the politicians, the pedagogues and
the lawyers who periodically denounce or
derlde them. The grossest kind of white
washing obituary of rich man, detestable
in public and private life, is not seldom
heard from the pulpit or expressed in the
morturay resolutions of bar associations
and the speeches offered in their support
The newspaper is generally ahead of ag-
gressive public sentiment in its devotion
TO all that makes for peace. order. clean
courts OF justice and upright government;
IL