Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1892 — THEY SHATTER SYNTAX. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THEY SHATTER SYNTAX.

CONGRESSMEN VIOLATE GRAMMAR AND ITS RULES. ' I Now Bone Speeches Are Corrected—Avtra{« Number of Letters Received Dally by a Member of the House—Rush oi the Seed Season. Grammar In the House.

OUR Washington correspondent says: Grammatically the House is not a failure; that is to say, the grammar of feSv*' the Fifty-second Congress is not as bad as might be exBgSjl pected. The House, as a rule, Is a euriZg&j* ous constructor of IjllwJj' false syntax, and it Tap!* 8 onl Y a Question SW&-T of degree as to how ■■minin- far the rules of ppjrejT-of grammar are to II 1111 be violated and all j order and prece--11 dents shattered.

But in the matter of diction, to the surprise of all mankind, the present House is far in advance of its immediate predecessor, • Strangers in the galleries have watched with wonder the lightning-like speed of the stenographers taking down speeches which are being made for the benefit of the constituents of Buncombe County. They have listened to members whose words lap like shingles on a roof and whose sentences are telescoped worse than a railroad collision, and have marveled at the skill of the stenographers who make such a speech appear verbatim in the Record of the following morning. But all this is as nothing compared with the skill, diplomacy, and discretion whioh has to be exercised by those same itenographers to get these speeches arranged in grammatical form. The supposition the country around may be that Congress, as it furnishes the laws and the precedents in all parliamentary matters, might be accepted as authority on grammatical construction, and that the standard diotion as well as the law of the nation might be found in the House; but as a matter of fact civil service reform, sound currency and ethics of statesmanship (as badly treated as they are) are not as grossly assaulted as is the English language—the currency of speech. Every dialect that the nation knows is exemplified In some member of this assemblage of statesmen. As a general rule the intelligence of a Congress might be estimated by its speech. If this test were to be applied to the present Congress, I have the word of the stenographers for it, this is far above the average. Some of our ablest statesmen, however, have been very rugged in speech, and therefore it will not do in every case to let a Congress be judged by its grammar. The stenographers tell me that the Fiftyfirst Congress was conspicuous for poor grammar. Freely translated, the shorthand reports of the Fifty-first Congress would be a literary curiosity. It may be that this Congress has not gone far enough yet for a fair comparison, but up to the present point a very fair record has been produced In the construction of English sentences. The gift of gab has been bestowed freely upon the gentlemen in whose hands or upon whose tongues rests the fate of this great and glorious country temporarily. Yet should a report of one day’s proceedings in Congress be printed in the very language of the House it would make cu.rious and very interesting reading. Comparatively few even of the most learned and intelligent men in Congress follow a perfect diotion in debate. The stenographers make a report of every Word and almost every sound that occurs upon the floor, though a great deal of editing Is done before that copy is sent to the printer. If in the morning’s Record the grammatical construction is accurate, it Is due to their careful supervision, and it is curious what tact and diplomacy has to be exercised to bring this about. The report of a speech is generally submitted to the member delivering it for revision, if he desires, but corrections of grammatical construction are seldom -made by members themselves, and often it would be impossible to get the consent of a member for a correction of an obvious error. Usually the stenographer makes these corrections in transcribing his notes, and it is not Infrequent for a member to notice the correction and take exceptions to it, insisting upon being correctly report-

ed as to his very language. In order to get good language Into the report the stenographers often have to make a plea of inaccuracy on their part and take the blame for omissions and changes which they are compelled to make. There have been cases where members have corrected proof and restored their own inaccurate expressions for the corrected manuscript of the reporters, and it has been necessary to lose this revised proof and receive some slight censure for it in order to preserve the respectability of the Record. During this Congress the reporters have had comparatively little difficulty upon this score. The new members who have been doing a considerable amount of talking have proven themselves not only speakers of considerable capacity, in force and effectiveness, but to be finished and capable constructors of English sentences. Bailey, the longhaired young Texan, has astonished the stenographers by the delivery of free, off-hand speeches, which, while delivered with great rapidity, have been smooth and well balanced and almost entirely free from errors in construction. The same may be considered of Bryan of Nebraska, who came in with the upheaval which threw the Farmers’ Alliance into Congress. His speeches have been printed in the very language of their delivery without violation of tne canons of good taste. Watson, of Georgia, who was the Farmers’ Alliance candidate for Speaker, is not an educated man, though an exceedingly fluent talker, yet his speeches require very little editing. The ybung members ffom Massachusetts write better than they speak, but the English language does not suffer distortion upon their tongues even while they are embarrassed in their speech before this new and august assemblage. A number of the members have been raised in Ignorance up to manhood and have acquired their information in later years, and it is curious how their earlier training or lack of training exhibits itself in the

heat of debate. Jerry Simpson and Farmer Davis, who are the great literary men of the Alliance party, are very accurate and stroug writers. Davis in particular prides himself upon his literary attainments, yet in their speeches they both fly off the track entirely and shatter syntax in every sentenoe. This Congress has produoed some very rapid speakers, but tko most remarkable In this particular Is Johnson, of Indiana, who almost made the stenographer’s hair rise during his speech on the Craig-Stewart conti sted election case. During a very long argument on that case he spoke at un average rate of 280 words a minute. His words ran Into sentences with merely an undulation of sound, so that each sentence was uttered with almost tho quickness of a single word, and the ear was almost Incapable of detecting any pause even between the paragraphs. Yet the report appeared with sufficient aocuraey to defy detection of error. The only other maii in the present House who can anywhere approach Johnson In rapidity of speech is Catchlngs, of Mississippi, whoso usual rate is about 225 to 230 words a minute. A Con jp-eMni un's Malt. One day’s mail of 1 a Congressman, if well selected, furnish material for a romance. One might naturally conclude that the thousands of letters distributed among members each day dealt only with claims against the Government—pension cases and tho dry details of legislation, with here and there a pathetic appeal from poverty for assistance, but there is a great deal more than this in a Congressman’s mail. An average of about eighty thousand letters per month pass through the House Postofllce into tho hands of the Representatives to be read and answerod. During last month 77,770 letters were received, and nearly as many sent out. One could hardly imagine the curious subjects with relation to which people write to their Representatives in Congress and the confidence which is shown in these letters. A member from tho South showed'•»'letter the other day written' to him by a woman living in the country, the > simplicity of which proves Its sincerity, and the object of which was to seek his aid and ad rice in a matter Of virtue and morality personal to the writer. It is not an uncommon thing for parents who cannot agree upon a suitable name for their young offspring to refer the matter to their member for advioe. Some of tho West Virginia members get a good many letters of this sort. One member got a letter the other day from the mother of a presumably buxom and beautiful country lass JUst

budding into womanhood asking his opinion as to the advisability of allowing the young lady to marry a young man who was paying court to her, and giving a full description of the young man’s character and prospeots in order to enable the member the more readily to come to a conclusion. Another letter came from a young lady whose true love course was running the usual rugged way and who, sought the member’s wisdom for tho solution of problems which she and her lover could not settle. These are but examples of a great many such letters which are received by members who represent remote districts, where tho simplicity of uncultured nature prevails. Some of the questions propounded by these simple people would puzzle a Solomon, and a member experiences no little embarrassment in answering them, though he who has the wisdom to speak like a Delphic oracle Is in a fair way to make himself solid with his people, gotting credit for it where his advice proves good and not running much risk of censure in any event'. The number of letters recelvod by members in the House vary from five or ten a day, which is about tho extent of the mail of Mr. Geissenheimor of New Jersey, to 250 each day, which is about the average numbor of letters received each day by Mr. Harter of Ohio. Mr. Harter having sent anti-silver circulars all over the country, is receiving replies which swell his daily, mails to tho highest notch. But about one other member of the House equals him. That other member is, O’Donnell of Michigan, who being an avowed candidate for the nomination as Governor of Michigan, la writing to and receiving letters from people throughout the State. Dalzell who Is laying his wires to succeed Mr. Quay In the Senate, receives an average of about 200 letters a day. Representatives Huff and Enochs have been getting about 200 letters a day during the session. Lodge of Massachusetts has a steady run during each session oi Congress of about 150 every day, while Wilson of Kentucky, Peel of Arkansas, Pendleton of West Virginia, and Houk of Tennessee run close up to him in their average. As a rule members representing city districts receive less mail than any others in Congress and altogether are very much less troubled by their correspondence.

The seed season is just now beginning and the members from rural districts are overwhelmed with letters from constituents asking for seeds, which are given out by the Agricultural Department, a certain proportion to each district. Each member has about 8,800 packages of seed and 800 agricultural reports to distribute, and most of the country members have already alexhausted their stock. Meredith, of Virginia, whose constituents appear to be breaking a great deal of ground for the spring planting, has for several weeks been getting an average of fifty requests each for seed, and Holman has already responded to letters exhausting his full 8,800 packages. Besides all the letters which members of the House receive, each gets daily a copy of five papers, which are sent free by the publishers, and an average of fifty country weeklies are received by each member whose district lies outside of the large cities. The great burden of this correspondence lies in the fact that those men who get the most letters are usually the representatives of a class of people who insist that replies must be written by the members themselves and not by the secretaries. An exchange describes a perfect marriage as a sublime symphony, where in turn and at the same time vibrate, sing and blend the sensations, the aspirations, the ideas and the tastes of two beings which are completed the one by the other. That sounds well, but it does not strike us as throwing light on the hired girl problem, or to determine in Just whose sphere is included the duty of making the kitchen fire.

SHATTERING SYNTAX.

DURING THE SEED SEASON.