Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-06-11


T happened that number of an important cleo
tr1cal paper came into the hands of professor
in the English department of one of the leading
American universities not long ago; and one of the
prominent advertisements caught his eye at
The advertiser vaunted the merits of his separately
excited boosters" The professor lowered the
paper for a moment and wondered vaguely what
manner of thing separately excited booster"
might be, First of ALL what booster? Sec
ondly, why should it get excited? And finally,
why need it be excited separately? He was moved
to ask colleague in the electrical department,
who easily explained the meaning of the puzzing
words, and assured him that they would be under
stood at once by all the experts engaged in practical
electrical work, however obscure they might be
to professed student of the language ignorant
of the latest developments in this special art.
Within few days thereafter the professor
CHANGED to hear other phrases drawn from the
rapidly increasing vocabulary of the electricians
He was told by war correspondent who had
Gently been to the front with the Russian army
that vodka live wire" He was informed
that on a certain occasion woman of uncertain
temper off her trolley" He listened to an
indignant friend declaring that an Objectionable
person had been annoying that the speaker was
ready ito throw him down the third rail"
And then he recalled the stirring stanza of the
bard of the British Empire, in which Mr.. Kipling
declared the readiness of the Native Born" on the
shores of the to drink
To the hearth of our peoples people
To her well-ploughed windy sea-
To the hush of our dread high-altar
Where the Abbey makes We;
To the grist of the slow-ground ages,
To the gain that is yours and mine
To the Bank of the Open Credit,
To the PoUer-honse of the Lnei
And when he had assembled these things in his
memory, the professor of English saw their sig
nihcance at last. Here under his hand was new
evidence of the growth of the language of its con-
slant expansion, of its vitality and of it's health
Here was proof again that the English language
was abundantly alive, and that however firmly
rooted it might be in the past it forever stretch
ing out fresh branches for the future. Its work
was not DONE and it was keeping itself fit for the
larger duties that doomed before it. Being alive
and not dead, it was in constant change adjusting
itself to the varying circumstances continually
making itself ready to meet the necessities of the
several peoples that speak it.
The English language is not made; it is a-making
now. 1t is not finished and complete, like Latin;
nor is it dead, like Latin. 1t is alive and growing
and therefore it is not yet fixed and determined;
it is flexible, yielding resourceful, as it has
always been since its earliest beginnings. 1t is
the same tongue that the great King Alfred spoke
and yet it is not the same for it has outgrown it's
swaddling clothes and attained to the stature of
mighty 1t in the infancy of English
that Alfred achieved the marvellous literary feat
OF creating prose style, feat which, SO Frederic
Harrison asserts, be explained only by
Numbering that the language which Alfred spoke