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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...It is only in unnatural, artificial, and perverted conditions that this law of adaptation of means to end, of life to its environment, of creature to the purpose of its creation is violated. In that department of action which is known as the communication of thought in oral address from man to man, from mind to mind, there is unceasing opportunity to fulfil the requirements of this law. Unfortunately there is equal opportunity to transgress it, as is sometimes seen when a number of speakers address the same assembly. Some will observe the unities and proprieties and some will not. Or with both classes there will be a partial success and a partial failure, notably in the speeches, more or less extemporaneous and ill-considered, which follow banquets. But in the carefully written oration the law of adaptation should be the golden rule of the writer: to count those things important which make for harmony. This is a fundamental principle of every kind of composition. It belongs to the poem and the essay, to the historical work and Congruity of the mathematical treatise, to the di-tyie and. subject. gest of laws and the romantic story. To interchange the style of one with another would be like placing the novelist on the bench, and setting the mathematician to write poetry. The laws of necessity and common sense permit no such harlequinade in everyday affairs, and in literature such buffoonery is as short-lived as it is amusing. Meantime each department has its own proprieties to which any of its performances are held, and by which they are judged. None are more exposed to this canon of criticism than the oral address. Any discords are sure to be detected by some listener, who directly becomes the centre from which contagious and rapidly...