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And then, confidentially, with his finger on his nose, "He's a purist!" I was about to withdraw, after having promised that I would inform the Signora Serafina of my friend's condition, when her companion, who had risen from table and girded his loins apparently for the onset, grasped me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of statuettes.
It is as useless to contend against the purist fad as against the holiness fake. Like a plague of army worms or epidemic of epizootic, it must run its course. Preternicety of expression, an affectation of euphemism, has in every age and clime evidenced moral degeneration and mental decay.
Much more valid objection might be made to the word "scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary ideas.
It is interesting to compare the 'Cortegiano' with Della Casa's 'Galateo, published in 1558. The 'Galateo' professes to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the minute rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the present century. In manners and their ethical analysis we have certainly gained nothing during the last three centuries.
"Truthful," for example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted "veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words in the dictionary. The above-quoted writer in the New York Press is a purist in vocabulary, no less than in grammar.
Was it a commercial impropriety? Commercial impropriety is a serious matter, for it aims at one's pocket. Or was he only a purist in conduct who disapproved of Jacobus doing his own touting? It was certainly undignified. I wondered how the merchant brother liked it. But then different countries, different customs.
He found the clearing and his father's hut; fatigue and the common world indeed returned, but with them a permanent memory of things experienced. Every word I have written of him is true. On Cheeses But wait a moment: there was a digression in that first paragraph which to the purist might seem of a complicated kind. But no such luck!
This alleged reformer, this purist in politics, this apostle of honor and truth, was holding him up to contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed.
'But decent people will think the whole speculation shady. How are you to get round that? There is something you have forgotten. 'What? Merton asked. 'Why it stares you in the face. References. Unexceptionable references; people will expect them all round. 'Please don't say "unexceptionable"; say "references beyond the reach of cavil." Merton was a purist.
I don't expect to make a silver-tongued orator out of you, Flopper, and perhaps not even a purist but I hope to eradicate a few minor touches of Bad Land vernacular from your vocabulary." "I've gotcher swipe me!" grinned the Flopper. "Me at school! Say, wouldn't that put a smile on de maps of de harness bulls, an' de dips, an' de lags doin' spaces up de river!"
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