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For the most part, the absolutely necessary personal references are introduced by honorifics; that is, by honorary or humble expressions. Such is a portion of the latter's duty. They do a great deal of unnecessary work besides.
Not a sentence is uttered by a Japanese but has the characteristic marks of æstheticism woven into its very structure. By means of "honorifics" it is seldom necessary for a speaker to be so pointedly vulgar as even to mention self.
But in works on crime that pretend to seriousness I would eschew, pace Mr Leonard R. Gribble, all `queens' and other honorifics in application to the lost men and women with whom such works must treat. There is no romance in crime. Romance is life gilded, life idealized. Crime is never anything but a sordid business, demonstrably poor in reward to its practitioners.
It is certainly true that a completely strange vocabulary, an utter inversion of grammar, and an elaborate system of honorifics combine to render its acquisition anything but easy. In its fundamental principles, however, it is alluringly simple. In the first place, the Japanese language is pleasingly destitute of personal pronouns.
There were four reasons for joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business, since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor.
It was bound in vellum, pierced by bookworms, and was decorated, in quaint seventeenth- century penmanship, with marginal annotations, and also, on the fly leaves, with repeated honorifics due to a study of the forms of address by some young aspirant for favor. Randolph had rather depended on it to take Cope's interest; but now the little envoi from the Lagoons seemed lesser in its lustre.
It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that we love a title, and that we are not averse to the ornamentation of our names with pseudo and attenuated "Honorables" and "Colonels" and "Judge" and so on; and I am bound to admit the impeachment, for I blush at some of my be-colonelled and becaptained friends, and wonder at their rejoicing over such effeminate honorifics, especially those colonelcies born of clattering behind a civilian governor, on a badly ridden horse, a title which may be compared with that most attenuated title of all, that of a Texan, who when asked why he was called "colonel" replied, that he had married the widow of a colonel!
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