El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1916-04-15
Blu Grace Darling.
Who Has Won National Recognition
a. n Moving Picture Star.


| Wthat isn't joke. nor i. it
funny. It's a sad fact.
We talk a-plenty. but we use the
same words over and over again un-
til the poor things are all worn out.
and frayed around the edges. and
back-broken. and generally played out.
And half the time the word we are
! using was no more intended to express
/ what we are trying to say than a
! crochet needle was designed to dig the
| Panama canal with. That's the real
reason we take refuge in slang. The
/ only words we know are so pitifully
! inadequate to express what we are
| trying to convey that we seize upon the
first handy crutch that we can lay
! our tongue to.
You never realize how poverty
stricken We are in the matter Of
vocabulary until you listen to the
chatter of a lot of girls and observe
how they overwork some one or two
For instance. I know a girl who
would be stricken absolutely dumb If
she were suddenly deprived Of the
word cute" In one breath she will
tell you that A doll or a baby is cute.
In the next she will say that Niagara
Falls are cute.
IN the park, and she asked me il I
didn't think that the Obelisk was cute.
and that IL was cute OF the Egyptian
government TO have presented it to US,
and the cutest thing that ever was for
the park commissioners to have placed
it Just where they did.
Here's Another Word
Another girl I know pins her con-
versatiOnal faith to the word fierce"
She viii tell you that the fighting in
the trenches in France is fierce, and
that the ice cream at dinner was fierce,
and the price OF chocolate creams has
become something fierce. or that her
new pink evening dress is the fiercest
thing she ever saw.
Still another girl 7 know finds the
word swell" Il life line TO which she
clings desperately in every emergency.
She VIII tell you that they had the
SWEETEST pie for dinner, that her fav-
orite actor is perfectly swell, or that
or that the papers have an account OF
the SWEETEST case OF starvation she
ever heard or or that she is reading
the SWEETEST book.
Now these girls are not stupid. They
are not ignorant They are not lack
~ lacking in words, They have not |
enough vocabulary with which to eT- |
press the things they feel and per- :
ceive.
Il is this same lack Of vocabulary |
that makes people so often say the I
wrong thing to- US. and offend US /
when they mean TO please. For ex- I
ample, did you ever watch the scOwl !
on an artists face when some we'll :
meaning but wordless person told /
him that his picture, in which he had /
tried TO paint the agony Of a soul 4
in torment, was so pretty"
The Value Of Words.
And a woman novelist, who has
written a story that is a great tragic /
epic, told me that she feels like com
hitting murder every time anybody I
tells her that her book is sweet"
The real secret Of flattery is to find /
out the particular adjective that peO-
pie like to have applied to them, and i
then use II where it viii do the most !
good.
But we can't do this unless we have
a large and flexible vocabulary. and |
so 1 urge YOU girls TO make a resolu-
tion now to add a new word each day /
to your store OF words and the best |
way to do this is to follow the advice