There is a great, a peculiar charm about reading news scraps in a
language which you are not acquainted with—the charm that always goes
with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely sure
of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are
chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns
and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would
soil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a vale of
dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and
practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable
mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for the
benefaction. Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious
word? Would you be properly grateful?
_FROM_ “EVE’S DIARY” (1905)