The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-03-29

HOciA l principal ones are all that are em l ployed or remembered. As the roya !. person bearing a name that fills the f space of a paragraph is born uistin- r guished he will remain so, whatever } name he may assume or have thrust , upon him; but with the ordinary mor-
 tai the case is different If he tries tC , scale the heights of renoWn, the simple and more striking his name is the more indelibly if will be fixed in a flclle pub lies memory.
 'ApropoS of this preamble, has any one ever noted the fact to the extent of
 giving 1t much emphasis that our American authors, for the most part,
 affect long drawn out names? To the
 young and aspiring author especially a
 tripartite name seems to have partic-
 ular fascination. This fashion is per- haps partly of collegiate origin. At any
 rate, whether it was done to make fu-
 ture identity sure or as an affectation the college catalogues from time imme-
 morial have recorded the whole name
 of the student even when it was from
 four to six parts. On that account
 perhaps, we had William Cullen Bry- ant, Henry WadsWorth Longfellow.
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo
 Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe and James
 Russell Lowell; but, uncollegiately,
 Washington Irving John c. Whittier
 (the middle name rarely spelled ouD,
 Herman Melville and Fitz-Greene Hal | leck--the first two parts being one
 name There were eXceptions-Geor
 Bancroft, for instance, who won dis
 tinction at Harvard, James Fenimore Cooper supports the rule, for he was at Yale before he went to sea.
 "Of course an extremely horizontal ized name is not actually college mat
 ter but our second generation of au- thors, finding the literary Dil MaJores
 triply named, and feeling that no two
 named writer can so easily catch the
 certificate of fame, soon began to use
 names of three sections, even when it
 was found necessary to invent or bor-
 row one to fill out the number Au-
 thors of the very minor sort, therefore,
 as well as a few of excellent quality,
 usually take great pains to write them 1 selves John Mortimer Jones, Thomas Evergreen Robinson and James Icha- bod Smith to make sure of their litera- ry importance.
 "One would suppose, though, that the more successful approach to remem- brance or high regard would be com passed by short appellation rather than by a long one. Alexander Caesar | and Hannibal as well as Homer, Dante | and Goethe, made no parade of multi | piled names, even where more than one | was actually possessed and they seem | to be fairly well remembered. Would | Napoleon Bonaparte and Oliver Crom- well have had larger recognition by | the generations that have followed tham Or by the one in which they were domi- nant if they had affected a somewhat eonorously syllable middle name?
 Certainly George Washington, Benja- min Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Horace Cree ley are pretty we'll imbedded in public memory with only two name divisions Their names are famous because of qualities inherent in the owners of tnem Not one of them climbed up to notice by his name, but each made the name debtor to it's wearer.
 ITO take another line of examples, there are our presidents Out of the twenty-five only two had more than two names spelled out and they are John Quincy Adams and William Hen ny Harrison-the Van in Van Buren not being an independent name. Polk, Grant Hayes and Arthur had simply middle initials, and 1t is safe to say there is not one person in a hundred who can give the middle name of Polk, which is a legacy from Scottish history. I
 While an author or a citizen Of any sort cannot legally control his name as to it's length or quality without apply ing to the legislature for permission to do so, yet many changes have been made within official sanction. An un- desirable part of a name may readily be dropped For example Bayard Fay Tor for some years after he began to write for the magazines was really J. Bayard Taylor and so signed himself. Very soon, however, he felt the J.'- James-was burden, and for ever after habitually dropped it.
 Tt may be noted here that while the fashion has stood for length and triple parts in our authors real names, the contrary rule seems mostly to prevail in their pen names. Mark Twain, 'Artemus Ward Josh Billings Bill Nye,' Bill Arp M. Quad and : sam Slick are among the examples that occur to me. In fact. single word, like Warrington or 'Richelieu' often makes an effective pen name, and, when a vigorous writer is behind 1t, it gains very quotable currency. If short article is more impressive than a ong one why Is it not the same with a short signature?
 ''The irresistible conclusion is that ong name may be considered really i'm ,edimental to memory's embalming. { As the busy world has little time, now, o remember anything long, it is not | air to conclude-other things being | qual--that the short-nar1ed author will ,e spoken of longer and kept in mind 7 nore easily than he will who Is - quipped with a name needlessly tretched out? But there is another affectation to e spoken of which is, perhaps, worse han the tripartite and elongated name. md this is the habit of initiating the rst of three names and spelling at full & ength the last two-as J. Jenkinson @ .evy, D. Robinson Smith and the like 3 would be curious to know who in-