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Ask them to elucidate this mode of action, and you will see that this talk of skirmishers in large bodies is nothing else but an euphemism for absolute disorder. An attempt has been made to fit the theory to the fact.
Herein Aunt Jane gave utterance to a fact that was beginning to be generally acknowledged. He might have forgotten his own name, and the mother that bore him; but he had learned how to learn, and was for the first time in his life wide awake. This was very much like saying that he was a new boy in the old skin; and this, again, was little better than a euphemism for changeling.
He was writing history, and no milk-and-water euphemism could have expressed Cambronne's defiance and contempt. Of course John Bull pitilessly shot to death that heroic fragment of the Old Guard, which forgot in its supreme hour that while foolhardiness may be magnificent, it is not war.
The happy euphemism of language permits a squint to be described as an ambidexterity of vision; it is even quite possible to omit an ill-regulated feature altogether. Suppose an artist paints a man without a nose the defect sauterait aux yeux: it would be as plain as the nose not upon his face. But it is quite possible for the literary artist to omit a man's nose without attracting any attention.
In the one case, as she knew it, a girl under the urge of poverty had stolen. That thief had been promptly arrested, finally she had been tried, had been convicted, had been sentenced to three years in prison. In the other case, a woman of wealth had stolen. There had been no punishment. A euphemism of kleptomania had been offered and accepted as sufficient excuse for her crime.
"Thomas Jewel is worse, sir, and if you please his missis don't expect he'll last the night; and could you just step up?" "Just stepping up," was a pretty little euphemism for walking three long miles dead in the teeth of a gale of wind, with a fierce rushing tropical rain.
But here it is evident that the word has not this meaning, or at least has a great deal more than this meaning. In this connection it seems to be a euphemism for pleasant. Certainly no one will dispute that an historian of contemporary events would find very difficult even the attempt to make his work pleasant to his contemporaries.
"Then you know of our daughter's strange er departure?" asked Mr. Gilbert, eagerly scanning Kennedy's face and using a euphemism that would fall less harshly on his wife's ears than the truth. "Indeed, yes," nodded Craig with marked sympathy: "that is, I have read most of what the papers have said. Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Jameson.
"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my soul, I think it is all animal spirits." "A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part of us, I have been brought up to believe." The president was a wise man, and took another tack. "He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it.
He left a handsome property, the result of his various piracies, or, according to the usual euphemism, prizes.
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