You have been ambitious of like skill in the manipulation of words.  Had you not been, you would never have undertaken this study.  You have perceived that when you speak or write, words are your instruments.  You have wished to learn how to use them.  Now for every idea you shall ever have occasion to express await throngs of vocables, each presenting its claims as a fit medium.  These you must pass in instantaneous review, these you must expertly appraise, out of these you must choose the words that will best serve your purpose.  With practice, you will make your selections unconsciously.  You will never, of course, quite attain the infallibility of the dentist; for linguistic instruments are more numerous than dental, and far more complex.  But you will more and more nearly approximate the ideal, will more and more nearly find that right expression has become second nature with you.

All this is conditioned upon labor faithful and steadfast.  Without labor you will never be adept.  At the outset of our study together we warned you that, though we should gather the material and point the way, you yourself must do the work.  This book is not one to glance through.  It is one to dwell with, to toil with.  It exacts much of you-makes you, for each page you turn, pay with the sweat of your brain.

But, assuming that you have done your part, what have you gained?  Without answering this question at all fully, we may at this juncture engage in a brief retrospect.

First of all, you have rid yourself of the notion that words are dead things, unrealities worthy of no more than wooden and mechanical employment.  As much as anything else in the world, words are alive and responsive, are fraught with unmeasured possibilities of good or ill.  You have taken due cognizance of the fact that words must be considered in the aggregate as well as individually, and have reckoned with the pitfalls and dangers as well as with the advantages of their use in combination.  But the basis of everything is a keener knowledge of words severally.  You have therefore come to study words with the zest and insight you exhibit (or should exhibit) in studying men.  Incidentally, you have acquired the habit of looking up dictionary definitions, not merely to satisfy a present need, but also to add permanently to your linguistic resources.

You have carried the study of individuals farther.  You have come to know words inside and out.  Such knowledge not only assists you in your dealings with your contemporaries; it illuminates for you great literature of the past that otherwise would remain obscure.  How much keener, for example, is your understanding of Shakespeare’s passage on the Seven Ages of Man because of your thorough acquaintance with the single word pantaloon!  How quickly does the awe for big words slip from you when you perceive that precocious is in origin the equivalent of half-baked! What intimacy of insight into