The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-05
FORMER" AND "LATTER."
Two Awkward Words which One
Writer Would Like to Danish
from the English Language.
From the London Speaker.

]
From the London Speaker.
l detest them. should like to ban
ish them from the English language.
/ One of them by itself may be occasion
| ally tolerable, but the two together
are uncomfortable. The writers of comic
verse long ago perceived their absurd
/ ity Arthur Reed Ropes has given
us a good example of it in his lines
/ to the Lost Pleiad:"
She had yielded to a mortal when he
came to fiirt and fiatter
/ She was the Merope or Sterope-the
former or the latter,
/ Calverley also:
One night I saw him squeeze her
hand.
There was no doubt about the mat
ter:
I said he must resign, or stand
My vengeance-and he chose the lat
ter
1t were, perhaps, beside the point
to cite the punning poet who wrote
of Xenophons historic retreat:
When over the land and the sea
1t behooved the ten thousand to scat
ter,
There were some cried the former
for me-"
But the rest cried the latter! the
latter!"
The appreciation of this requires a
little strictly Attic salt But the locus
classicus is. of course, in the War
Song of Dinas Vawr:"
The mountain Sleeps are sweeter,
But the valley Sleeps are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
Seriously. why cannot writer's re-
peat their words instead of using these
unnecessary substitutes? Is it thought
that such a repetition is un
pleasing to the ear? To my thinking,
the very opposite is the truth And
much is gained in the cause of lucid
ity. Take the following sentence, for
instance, which l CHANGED upon in a
daily journal of Feb. II: "A board
which is probab bly, a screen, as some
body said a generation ago-under-
stands, and the great bulk of the or
binary shareholders do not understand,
the workings of company finance.
dom hesitate to put their interests in
the hands Of the former.
Halle la! We must "hark back"
and reconsider the passage. We are
then led to the conclusion that by the
latter" is meant the shareholders, and
by the former" the board But why
not so write it, like an honest man
And when a crisis comes the share
holders seldom hesitate to put their in
terests in the hands of the board"
Surely this is better both to mind and
ear; and if instead of the board" we
read 1.-The directors" we have a clear,
simple. and, in my humble augment,
much improved statement.
IT, now, we turn to the Bible, that
mirror of simple, robust and perspic-
uous English, we shall find that the
old translators were perfectly able to
dispense with these substitutional
nominations We find the words, in
deed, in their proper sense. as denot-
ing temporal succession (e. g, the
former and the latter rain'O, but not
an artificial expedients to avoid the
plain and direct expression of a writ
er's meaning; for this is an affectation
of comparatively recent date.
But what should we say of him who
would employ them in conversation?
What should we think of the
man who preferred whisky to
champagne. because, though the
latter is more celebrating, the for
mer is more salubrious? Can we ina
CINE any decent member of society,"
male or female, giving utterance TO
such a sentence as this: II debated
WuetneT 10 take an the
twopenny tube, but finally decided ION
the latter?" Could any punishment
be too excruciating for such criminal
affectation-unless, indeed. the verdict
were to be mot guilty on the ground
of insanity?"
There is only one man who would
talk so, and he, happily lives only in
the pages of DIR. Conan Doyle's imag-
NATIVE fiction. But l have always
. obi no xrahc a1ryl.a no..
upon the redoubtable Sherlock" to
make him such a portentous prig as to
deliver himself in this fashion to his
familiar Watson.
ut is possible that Stapleton did not
know of the existence of an heir in
Canada. In any case, he would very
soon learn it from his friend DR.. Nor
timer. and he was told by the latter
all details about the arrival of Henry
Baskerville"
But this is b~ no means the worst
Consider this situation. Holmes and
Watson are on the moor at night. Sud
denly, through the darkness come agon-
ICED cries, and then "the deep-muttered
rumble, musical and yet menacing, ris-
ing and falling like the low. constant
murmur of the sea-" which they in
stantly recognize as the distant bay
of the hound" A man, in headlong
night, pIeClplIdleS nlInSelI over a CHI.
They rush to the PROSTATE form, and
find, as they suppose, the dead body of
their friend. Sir Henry Baskerville!
And thus does the great amateur de-
tective give vent to his pent-up feel
ings: Uncle and nephew have been
murdered-the one frightened to death
by the very sight of a beast which he
thought to be supernatural, the other
driven to his end in his wild flight 20
escape from it. But now we have to
prove the connection between the man
and the beast. Save from what we
heard. we cannot even swear to the
existence of the latter since Sir Henry
has evidently died from the fall"
That latter" uttered in these tragi-
cal circumstances, tickles my fancy
immensely 1t is, indeed, immoderate-
~ funny. But it absolutely ruins the
situation. Thank heaven, no man alive
would ever have so spoken. no. not all
though he had been educated at that
ancient seat of pedantry. where" &C
cording to Mr.. Cunninghame Graham,
they manufacture prigs as fast as
butchers in Chicago handle hogs"
HOUR OF DEATH.