|NOAH Webster probably had the best command of language of any author
of our time. Those who have read his great work entitled Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary, or How One Word Led to Another, will agree with
me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express
himself. He was a brainy man and a good speller.
We were speaking of Mr. Webster on the way up here this afternoon, and a
gentleman from Ashland told me of his death. Those of you who have read
Mr. Webster's works will be pained to learn of this. One by one our
eminent men are passing away. Mr. Webster has passed away; Napoleon
Bonaparte is no more, and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away. This has been
a severe winter on Sitting Bull, and I have to guard against the night
air a good deal myself.
It would ill become me at this late date to criticise Mr. Webster's
work, a work that is now I may say in nearly every office, home,
school-room and counting-room in the land. It is a great book. I only
hope that had Mr. Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his
criticism of my books.
I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks
egotistical in me; but although Noah's book is larger than mine and has
more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at the table, it
does not hold the interest of the reader all the way through.
He has tried to introduce too many characters into his book at the
expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a
leisure hour, perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your
interest till midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer went
down to 47 below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether
Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster didn't seem to care
whether he married the girl or not.
Therein consists the great difference between Noah and myself. He don't
keep up the interest. A friend of mine at Sing Sing who secured one of
my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He said
he seemed chained to the spot, and if you can't believe a convict who is
entirely ont of politics, who in the name of George Washington can you
believe?
Mr. Webster was certainly a most brilliant writer, but a little
inclined, perhaps, to be wrong. I have discovered in some of his later
books 118,000 words no two of which are alike. This shows great fluency
and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader
waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful word-painting.
There is not a thrill in the whole tome. Noah wasn't much of a thriller.
I am free to confess that when I read this book, of which I had heard
so much, I was bitterly disappointed. It is a larger book than mine and
costs more, and has more pictures in it than mine, but is it a work that
will make a man lead a different life? What does he say of the tariff?
What does he say of the roller skating rink? He is silent. He is full
of cold, hard words and dry definitions, but what does he say of the
Mormons and female suffrage, and how to cure the pip? Nothing. He evades
everything, just as a man does when he writes a letter accepting the
nomination for President.
As I said before, however, it is a good book to pickup for a few moments
or to read on the train. I could never think of taking a long r. r.
journey without Mr. Webster's tale in my pocket. I would just as quick
think of traveling without my bottle of cough medicine as to start out
without Mr. Webster's book.
Mr. Webster's Speller was a work of less pretensions, perhaps, but it
had an immense sale. Eight years ago 40,000,000 of these books had been
sold, and yet it had the same grave defect. It was disconnected, cold,
prosy and dull. I read it for years, and at last became a very close
student of Mr. Webster's style. Still I never found but one thing in
the book for which there was such a stampede, which was even ordinarily
interesting, and that was a perfect gem. It was so thrilling in detail
and so different from Mr. Webster's general style that I have often
wondered who he got to write it for him. Perhaps it was the author of
the _Bread Winners_. It related to the discovery of a boy in the
crotch of an old apple tree by an elderly gentleman, and the feeling of
bitterness and animosity that sprang up between the two, and how the old
man told the boy at first that he had better come down out of that tree,
because he was afraid the limb would break with him and let him fall.
Then, as the boy still remained, he told him that those were not
eating-apples, that they were just common cooking-apples, and that there
were worms in them. But the boy said he didn't mind a little thing like
that. So then the old gentleman got irritated and called the dog and
threw turf at the boy, and at last saluted him with pieces of turf
and decayed cabbages; and after he had gone away the old man pried the
bulldog's jaws open and found a mouthful of pantaloons and a freckle.
I do not tell this, of course, in Mr. Webster's language but I give the
main points as they recur now to my mind.
Though I have been a close student of Mr. Webster for years and examined
his style closely, I am free to say that his ideas about writing a book
are not the same as mine. Of course it is a great temptation for a young
author to write a book that will have a large sale, but that should not
be all. We should have a higher object than that, and strive to interest
those who read our books. It should not be jerky and scattering in its
statements.
I do not wish to do an injustice to a great man who I learn is now no
more, a man who has done so much for the world and who could spell the
longest word without hesitation, but I speak of these things just as I
would expect others to criticise nay work. If one aspire to monkey with
the _literati_ of our day we must expect to be criticised. I have been
criticised myself. When I was in public life--as a justice of the peace
in the Rocky Mountains--a man came in one day and criticised me so that
I did not get over it for two weeks.
I might add, though I dislike to speak of it now, that Mr. Webster was
at one time a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts. I believe that
was the only time he ever stepped aside from the straight and narrow
way. A good many people do not know this, but it is true. It only shows
how a good man may at one time in his life go wrong.