People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1897 — Style In Literature. [ARTICLE]

Style In Literature.

It Gives a Flavor of Its Own to Every Sentence an Author Writes. “Not only is their thought, but their language is so much better than your average language,” says “Droch,” with reference to standard fiction in the January Ladies Home Journal. “I do not mean,” he adds, “simplycorrectness of speech, but something finer, that is called style. Style has been written about very learnedly by learned men.

In its highest development it is tne very essence of culture, knowledge and artistic temperament that gives a flavor of its own to every sentence that an author writes. But without entering into the subtleties of style it is surely evident to every reader of average intelligence and sensibility that there is a great difference in the manner of telling a story, for instance. It does not require a subtile mind to feel the difference in the telling of Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet Letter’ and Hugh Conway’s ‘Called Back.’ By common consent Hawthorne is acknowledged the best master of style that America has produced. When you have read one of his Stories —no matter

how dark the crime that he has studied in it — you never feel that he has dragged down your thoughts. It is not only because he is a great moralist in his stories, but because he is a great master of style also. His language is elevated, poetic, fascinating. It makes the appeal to what is fine in your nature, rather than to what is gross.”