The Direct Appeal

ONE whose years of service to the cause of letters, both as author and as editor, entitles his words to great weight, has recently taken pains to maintain at some length that “the direct appeal” is the characteristic mark of the best literature of to-day, as distinguished from that of the past. If this be true, it would seem to mark a strong trend toward the acceptance of Herbert Spencer’s attempt to reduce the secret of composition to the one principle of economy of the reader’s attention. The thought, the whole thought if need be, but in any case nothing but the thought, is the logical goal of this tendency.

All must admit that at different times, and by some writers in all times, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to the point of serious danger. There are numerous writers to-day who will expand into a long paragraph a statement of fact which might well be expressed by a half dozen lines of type. Sometimes this growth is attained by way of ornament, and sometimes it is mere attenuation; sometimes its genesis is to be charged to inveterate habit, and sometimes, doubtless, to the rate expected per column in case it escapes the blue pencil. Periods of excessive indirectness on the part of writers in general are doubtless due to widely spread and deeply rooted perversions of taste. We may have our opinion of the people of such a period, but they were entitled to have what they liked, and not many of us are under any obligation to read the literature which they left behind them.

Is not “the direct appeal,” however, about as capable of abuse as its opposite ? Beyond a certain point, is it not part and parcel of the over-strenuousness, the strained insistence, of an age which might well inscribe the words “get there” upon its banners, as its all - comprehending motto, if only it were not too busy to put up any banners, or adopt any motto at all ? There are many among us who would save thirty per cent on the expense of printing every book or periodical, as large a portion of each pupil’s time, and perhaps a still larger part of the teacher’s patience, simply by knocking out every useless letter in the English dictionary; may there not be a pretty close relationship between our spelling reformers and those who want us to knock every word out of our sentences that does not come freighted to the sinking point with some absolutely essential portion of the thought to be conveyed ?

Much might be said (I have heard a competent scientist say much) in favor of such exclusion of non-essentials from our physical nutriment that the really essential remainder of a day’s rations could be put up in capsular form, carried in the pocket, and swallowed at the proper moment with no appreciable loss of time; yet most of us will always prefer to linger over the dinner table and eat more or less which does not make “the direct appeal” to our organs of physical nutrition. The man who would reduce our entire complement of clothing to elastic union suits, of varying thicknesses to suit the changes of temperature, has not yet made his way prominently into our magazines and newspapers, but he cannot be far in the rear of the spelling reformer. We are rapidly getting rid of the useless vermiform appendix, and the hair which our hats have rendered unnecessary is going, whether we are willing to part with it or not. Where next must we curtail ?

The little lake by which I spend my summer vacations has some sixteen square miles of surface, but some curious person has figured its shore line as well up toward one hundred miles in length. Doubtless here is a great waste, from the business point of view. If I were making an ice pond, I would not be so lavish of shore line as that; and yet I do not want the shore line of my summer lake reduced to its merely necessary dimensions. It is ten miles down an absolutely straight railroad track to the next town. The wagon road, curving around through the woods and along the winding stream, measures twelve miles between the same points. Notwithstanding the well-known geometrical maxim, if compelled to walk from the one town to the other for any reason except a hasty business errand, I should refuse to accept the monotonously direct railroad track as the shortest distance between those two points. In a literature of fact for fact’s sake, such as a railroad guide or a grocery bill, let the appeal be as direct, as destitute of embellishment, as it can be made. The literature of science, where science and not literature is the primary aim, need not blush to appear in scant linguistic raiment. But are we all in so great a hurry that the thoughts of literature in general must be fired into our minds direct and sharp as the arrow from the bow ? We are perfectly willing to allow upon a fine binding an amount of loving labor far in excess of all that is necessary to protect the book; have we no longer any appreciation of loving labor upon a choice thought, over and above what is necessary to get the thought clearly and directly expressed ? Shall we grant to our great singers such ample freedom in the musical rendering of a thought, and then hold the great writer down to so narrow limits in his expression of the same thought in written words ?

Perhaps, after all, the reading public is not so tired of the metaphors, the allegories, and other conceits and indirections of the past, as of the lack of originality in these features. We do not want “the uplifted orb of day” over and over again, but it is not inconceivable that some really new expression might relieve a pardonable distaste for the monotonous repetition of the word sun. The Western poet who apostrophized it as “Hell wandering up the universe” did not hit the mark, but need all others despair ? The man who cannot call a spade a spade may not be a whit more tiresome than the man who cannot on due occasion call it something else. Let the linguistic stem indulge in some luxury of foliage once in a while; let it even bud and bloom and turn here and there in graceful curves; do not straighten it out into a mere pedagogue’s pointer.