Year: 1876

In Italics.


"From the Queen.


One of the innumerable characteristics O
women which cause the "inextinguishabl
laughter" of men is the habit cherished by
many of underscoring their words; writing
in italics for the better direction of the read
er, and the more distinct emphasizing of the
sense. Like many other things. the value Oh
worthlessness of this habit depends solely on
its use or abuse. Judiciously employed. those
passages underlined, those words in italics,
are excellent fnger-posts to the mind but
when fnger-posts are put up at every field
gate and foot-wide bridle-path, the attention
gets chopped up into unmeaning fragments,
and the sense is lost by subdivision. With
some people, however, the habit is inyeter-
ate. We have seen letters in which every
line was dashed as regularly as the is was
crossed and the is dotted. Sometimes the
dashes were doubled, and not always in the
right place as iciH you CONE 10 tea tonight?
or, We MISSED yOu yesterday rery much :;
Our music WAS good AND the singing eIcel-
lent. and so on. Editors know the kind of
thing only too well from the amateur con-
trlbutors who overwhelm them with their
attentions. Were they to print as their
untechnical correspondents write their pages
would be typographical harlequins-shape
standing for colour. Italics for all the ad
jectlves and adverhs small capitals to all
the nouns inverted commas bracketing each
well-known phrase and commonplace quota
ton notes of exclamation standing sentinel
at the end ofeyery sentence; unmeaning dashes
carrying the mind into the vast and vague
this is the kind of thing by which amateur
writers would, if they were followed, break
! Up the decent uniformity of bourgeois and
small plea. We question, however, if the
public would like the change, and we are
sure that the printers would not and even
the writers themselves would feel little
surprise, if nothing more, when they saw
their method translated into type, and learnt
practically the need of level handwriting and
more sparing use of what we may call
caligraphic expletiYes. A century ago, and
less, italics and capitals were employed much
more freely than now; as is still the case
with the Germans, every noun was headed
wits ith distinctive letter in large, while the
accent was laid by means of the italicized
running hand which showed the reader what
he was expected to note but the
emphasis given by both is often poor and
misplaced, and the result is one of forcible
leebleness and empty pomposity rather than
anything else


1t is the same with certain speakers
They emphasize their words as if each began
with a capital or was to be written in italics
and their voices infect the inverted commas
and notes of admiration which, writing. they
would have marked down with a broad pen
and in the backest ink If they tell you
that they have Just come in from drive in
the Park where they saw The chesnut team,
they speak with as much emphasis as if they
were acting in a melodrama at the moment
Of supreme danger, or, if in grayer style, as
if they were relating the deliberatiOn of
Cabinet council, dealing with the fall of en-
pres and the creation of future history.
When they shake hands with YOU and in
quire after YOUR health, which Is in the most
uninteresting condition Of tiawless perfee
ton, they wiring your hand for the first part
till you can hardly repress your groans, and
for the second they throw into-their voices
such an array Of italics and capital letters as
would be excessive and exaggerated were
they asking after the condition of an invalid
lowering between life and death, and whose
state carried with it the welfare OF more
existences than his own. They mean
no more than the next conner who
shakes hands without torture, and
speaks without emphasis whose voice has
no italics. and his words no capital letters
it Is simply their way, and they emphasize
by initiation, a. Others emphasize by adjec-
tiyes and BY using the largest words for the
smallest events. Ii is very funny to listen
to these emphatic people. From a distance,
a stranger TO their method might imagine
them IN deep distress. or furious wrath.
They grOwl. they shrek, they hammer out
their words, with urgent stress and swing
ing force they run through their register,
now high, now low, and always powerfully
emphatic but It is all nothing. They are
talking about the weather, or the cattle
plague. yesterdays dinner or to-morrow's
tea. and their italics are Of no more value
than 50 many painted cannon and dummy
gunncrS, things that look formidable, but do
not carry either ueas or pellets.


This habit Of italicizing Insignificant
words and unimportant phrases passes into
the life as well as the voice and the hand
writing ola man, and people who act in
italics and Roman capitals are quite as com
mon as those who speak and write in them.
Who does not know the emphatic self-im-
portance by which the smallest event of
man : life Is as largely acted and as much
dlated on a if his whole career turned on
that one pivot2 Some people lose their for
tunes, their best beloved, their health, and
no one hears word Others part with their
cook. and the world has the fact blown
through a trumpet into its ears. Every ac-
quaintance they possess hears the whole his
tory spoken in capital letters and italics,
from the first cause Of disagreement TO the
last of final severance; and every one is ex-
pected to find the narrative interesting. and
the moral typography suitable to the occasion.
To change house with these lOudly-em-
phasized individuals Is Of more importance
than to others o. weaker kind Is mar
rage or partnership, and dinner Is an
event when has it, arrays of italics. from
the soup to the dessert, and from the guests
to the dresses. One gets tired Of all this
ieryor and force, this making snail-shells
into pearl oysters, and seashOre pebbles into
diamonds and with so much ado about
nothing one welcomes the repose of mono
| tony itself, the rest Of Indifference. Colour
in ones life is all very well; but it is fatigu-
ing to see nothing but scarlet and. purple be-
fore ones eye; and even the very sky is the
better fer haze as veil and few clouds
to cast shadow. But our emphasized
friends who live in italics know nothing Of
haze or cloud, and the sObriety of neutral
tints is grace which they cannot compass,
a beauty which they do not discern. They
have no sympathy with the flowers that are
born to bloom unseen, but prefer to cast
their sweetness very far abroad indeed, and
to make every wandering wind messenger
telling of their whereabouts and manner of
being. The people who do good by stealth
and blush TO find 1t fame. are people whom
they neither envy nor affect, and they not
only let their left hands know all that their
right do, but they let every other person 5
left hand know it also. Each separate act
of their lives is as new chapter, begun
with huge ornamental initial letter and
ended with a tail-piece, embodying the chief
incidents: while the type is printed in italics,
and substantives are made in capitals. Has
my lord spoken to them ciyilly No Persian
manuscript Is more elaborate, more ornate,
no school girls letter TO her bosom friend
more thickly underlined and emphasized
than their narration Of the great event.
Has a crumb fallen from the huge bakery
of fortune into their laps? The world Is
gathered to view the fragments with a
Glamour to which the hens hysterical an
nouncement of her last-laid egg is tame and
subdued. Whatever happens to them has
to be announced in posters to all their friends,
and if they split hairs on the one hand they
make each half into ships cables on the
other.


ToUcHISG TEMPERANCE APPEAL.-Of all
the temperance appeals which are made
few are more touching, in more ways
than one, than the following note addressed
to young man in Rutland. ''Once You
had fat horse and was a nice young man
now your horse is poor. Rum has did it.
Now if you would take the ten cents you
spend for a drink and feed 'em to your
horse, and join the reform club, he would
be fat and you would be nice young man
still" The horse that would grow fat no
ten cents since the resumption of specie