To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies--the man who
searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a
thing above the thing said--there is in writing the constant joy of
sudden discovery, of happy accident. A phrase springs up full blown,
sweet and caressing. But what joy can there be in rolling up sentences
that have no more life and beauty in them, intrinsically, than so many
election bulletins? Where is the thrill in the manufacture of such a
paragraph as that in which Mrs. Althea Jones' sordid habitat is
described with such inexorable particularity? Or in the laborious
confection of such stuff as this, from Book I, Chapter IV, of "The
'Genius'"?:
The city of Chicago--who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life
that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a
lake shore!
Or this from the epilogue to "The Financier":
There is a certain fish whose scientific name is _Mycteroperca
Bonaci_, and whose common name is Black Grouper, which is of
considerable value as an afterthought in this connection, and which
deserves much to be better known.
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