_THE PLEONAST._
"This barren verbiage current among men."--TENNYSON.
The habit of this talker is to encumber his ideas with such a plethora
of words as frequently prove fatal to their sense. Some of this class
employ fine words because they are fine, with perfect indifference to
the signification: others do it from "that fastidiousness," as one says,
"which makes some men walk on the highroad as if the whole business of
their life was to keep their boots clean."
Mr. Hill was a man very much accustomed to talk in this way. He had read
little, but had studied the dictionary with considerable diligence. His
ideas were few and far between, but his words were many and diversified,
long and hard, sometimes connected in the most absurd and ludicrous
manner. Most of the illiterate who heard him thought he was highly
educated and intelligent, while men of taste and judgment considered him
greatly deficient in the first rudiments of correct speaking.
Mr. Hill and his friend Mr. Pope made a call one day last spring upon
Squire Foster. As they came to the front door of his house Mr. Hill said
to Mr. Pope,--
"Will you do me the exuberant honour of agitating the communicator of
the ingress door, that the maid may receive the information that some
attendant individuals are leisurely waiting at the exterior of the
mansion to propose their interrogatories after the resident proprietor."
"Did you want me to pull the door bell for you?" asked Mr. Pope.
"If you have that extremely obliging state of mind, which will permit
you to do that deed of exceeding condescension, I shall experience the
deepest emotionals of unprecedented gratitude," replied Mr. Hill.
"Why didn't you say, If you please? and have done with it," replied Mr.
Pope, in a manner which indicated impatience at his gibberish.
The servant appeared and opened the door.
"Will you have the propitiousness, the kindness to stay and communicate
unto me whether Squire Foster is in his residence?" said Mr. Hill.
The girl looked vacant, not knowing what to make of his question.
"What does the gentleman mean?" asked the servant of Mr. Pope.
"He wants to know if Squire Foster is at home."
"Yes, sir, he is. Will you walk in?"
Mr. Hill and his friend were showed into the parlour, where they waited
the coming of the Squire. After a brief interval "the resident
proprietor" made his appearance.
"Ah, ah! how do you do, Mr. Hill? I am very glad to see you," said the
Squire, at the same time shaking him by the hand.
"I am in the highest state of excellent health, extremely obliged,
Squire. I am sanguine to hope, sir, that you live in the felicity of
enjoying, and possessing, and feeling an undistracted state of the
physical constitution. Will you, Squire, give me the pleasure and allow
me the happiness of introducing and bringing to your acquaintance my
friend Mr. Pope? Squire Foster,--Mr. Pope."
"How did you leave Mrs. Hill and family?" asked the Squire.
"It gives me no ordinary pain, and no usual grief, and no common sorrow,
to inform and instruct you that I left Mrs. Hill, my dear wife, my
choice companion, subject to, and suffering from, and enduring under, a
severe and trying affectation of her respiratory organs, superinduced by
an exaggerant cold, received, and taken, and caught by her the other day
of last week, when we were travelling, and riding, and going to the
village of Burnley. My little ones, my children, my offspring, Squire, I
am excussitated to say, are in the finest, the best, the happiest state
of their juvenile physique that I have ever known, remembered, and borne
in mind."
"How is your son John, the little fellow with whom I was so much pleased
when I was at your house last?" enquired Squire Foster.
"He is a unique adolescent--a heavenly cherub. His excessively
prodigious development of juvenile intellectual and religious numerous
tendencies produce within me the largest, the greatest, the richest
exquisite emotions of deep pleasurability, and profoundest sensations of
unparalleled wonderment."
"You are very eloquent this morning," said the Squire, rather
sarcastically.
Mr. Hill, considering himself a little flattered by this encomium, said,
"My eloquence, sir, is the natural, the habitual, the spontaneous, the
unprompted infusions of my own individuality of mental hallucinations,
sparkling out in the scintillations which you do me the honour of
denominating, and calling, and epithetising as eloquence."
Mr. Hill was something of a transcendentalist in his way. The Squire was
aware of his tendency in this direction, and not having a distinct idea
of what his transcendentalism was, he ventured to ask him during the
conversation to give him a definition of it. After a brief pause, as
though Mr. Hill was meditating for a succinct and clear definition, he
said,--
"I would define transcendentalism as the spiritual cognoscence of
psychological irrefragability, connected with concuitant ademption of
encolumnient spirituality, and etherealized contention of subsultory
concretion."
"That _is_ transcendentalism, indeed!" exclaimed the Squire. "It goes
beyond my understanding and comprehension."
"I feel myself in the same predicament," observed Mr. Pope, who up to
this time had been silent during the desultory conversation of the
Squire and Mr. Hill.
"From what stand-point (as the Germans would call it) do you gain that
view of transcendentalism?" asked Mr. Pope.
"I have gained it from the esoteric stand-point of Christian exegetical
analysis; and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous
asceticism, I perceive at once the absolute individuality of this
definition."
"That is perfectly satisfactory," said Mr. Pope, with a look and in a
tone of keen irony.
I will not detain the reader any longer with specimens of the Pleonast
in the person of Mr. Hill; but give a few others of a desultory
character, with which I have met in reading and otherwise.
A certain gentleman was once speaking to a few friends on the subject of
happiness, and in giving his experience as to where it could not be
found, he is said have spoken thus,--
"I sought for happiness where it could not be found; I looked for
felicity where it could not be discovered; I enquired after bliss in
those places, situations, and circumstances which neither bliss, nor
felicity, nor happiness ever visited. Thus it remained with little
change, and continued without much alteration, all through the days of
my youth, the years of my juvenility, and the period of my adolescence."
"Is that really your experience?" said one who was listening; "and do
you intend that as a caution to us against seeking happiness in the same
way?"
"Most positively and assuredly I do. Profoundly impressed with the
veracity of these sentiments, deeply sensible of their correctness, and
heartily persuaded, and assured, and convinced of their consonance with
truth, I urge and press upon your attention what I have above and before
couched and expressed in such simple, and plain, and intelligible
language, and language easily to be understood withal."
A Pleonast, once speaking of a man who was found drowned in a canal in
the neighbourhood where he lived, said,--
"He is supposed to have perpetrated, committed, and done, voluntary,
willing, and of himself, destruction, suicide, and drowning, while in a
mood of mental aberration, superinduced, brought about, and effected, by
long indulgence in and continued habits of inhaling, drinking, and
swallowing, to inebriation and drunkenness, intoxicating liquids."
At one time, complaining of the effect of the air upon his lungs, which
were rather delicate, the Pleonast said,--
"The ponderosity, the pressure of the ethereal elements, the regions of
the atmosphere, the circumambient world, will not give me or allow me
the full, the free, the unrestrained extent of liberty to exercise
myself in the respiratory, functional faculties of my earthly human
existence."
The above illustrations may suffice to show how the Pleonast
transgresses the propriety of speech in his conversation.
A person in talking should endeavour to use such words as will convey
his meaning, and no more. Words are only the clothing of thought, and
when too numerous they encumber instead of adorn. When improperly
connected, as sometimes they are by the Pleonast, they amuse and
entertain rather than instruct and edify. Given thoughts clear and
simple, it will not be difficult to find words which will be simple and
clear also. Language and thought thus harmonised will render the one
that uses them an acceptable talker to be heard, rather than a Pleonast
to be ridiculed.