Omaha daily bee., 1916-04-01
Grace DarZing's TaJks to Girls
ny GRACE DARLING.

Who Has Won National Recognition as
Moving Picture Star.
| We girls need more words No. that
isn't joke. nor is It funny. Its a sad
. fact.
| We talk s-plenty. but We use the same
words over and over again until the poor
things are all worn out, and frsycd
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 arc trying to say than crochet
needle was designed TO dis the Panama
canal with. That's the real reason We
take refuge in slang. The only words we
know are 80 pitifully inadequate to ex-
press 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-strioken
we are in the matter OF vocabulary un-
I'll you listen to the chatter Of lot girls
and observe how they overwork some one
or two words
For instance, ] know a girl who would
be stricken ABSOLUTELY dumb II she were
suddenly deprived Of the word cute" In
one breath she will tell you that doll,
or baby is cute In tho next she will
say that Nigara Falls are cute
Last summer was riding with her I'm
the park. and she asked me IL / didn't
think that the obelisk was cute. and that
It was cute of the Egyptian government
to have presented II to us. and the cutest
thing that ever was for the park com
missioners TO have placed It just where
they did.
Another girl know pins her conversa-
tional faith to the word fierce" She
will 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 g.rl know finds the word
swell" a life line to which she clings
desperately in every emergency. She will
tell you that they had the swellest pie
for dinner, that her favorite actor Ia
perfectly swell, or that she has just been
to the swellest play, or that the papers
have an account OF the swellest case Of
starvation she ever heard OF, or that she
Is reading the SWEETEST book.
Now these girls are not stupid They
are not ignorant. They are not lacking
in discernment. They are merely lacking
in words They have not enough vocabu-
larry with which to express the things
they feel and perceive.
, II Is this same lack Of vocabulary that
makes people so often say the wrong
thing to us. and offend us when they
mean TO please. For example. did you
ever watch the scowl on an artists face
when some well-meaning but wordless
person told him that his picture, in which
he had tried to paint the agony OF soul
! in torment was 80 pretty?"
And a woman novelist who has written
a story that is a great tragic epic. told
me that she feels like cummtting murder
every time anybody tells her that her
book Is sweet"
The real secret OF flattery is TO find
out the particular adjective that people
like TO have applied TO them and then
use 1t where IL will do the most good.
But we can't do this unless we have a
large and flexible vocabulary, and so
urge you girls to make a resolution now
to add a new word each day to your