Another thing to avoid is triteness.  The English language teems with phrases once strikingly original but now smooth-worn and vulgarized by incessant repetition.  It can scarcely be said that you are to shun these altogether.  Now and then you will find one of them coming happily as well as handily into your speech.  But you must not use them too often.  Above all, you must rid yourself of any dependence upon them.  The scope of this book permits only a few illustrations of the kinds of words and phrases meant.  But the person who speaks of “lurid flames,” or “untiring efforts,” or “specimens of humanity”—­who “views with alarm,” or has a “native heath,” or is “to the manner born”—­does more than advertise the scantness of his verbal resources.  He brands himself mentally indolent; he deprives his thought itself of all sharpness, exactness, and power.

EXERCISE — Slovenliness III

Replace with more original expressions the trite phrases (italicized) in the following sentences: 

Last but not least, we have in our midst one who began life poor but honest.

After we had done justice to a dinner and gathered in the drawing room, we listened with bated breath while she favored us with a selection.

A goodly number of the fair sex, perceiving that the psychological moment had come, applauded him to the echo.

We were doomed to disappointment; the grim reaper had already gathered unto himself all that was mortal of our comrade.

No sooner said than done.  I soon found myself the proud possessor of that for which I had acknowledged a long-felt want.

After the last sad rites were over and her body was consigned to earth, we began talking along these lines.

With a few well-chosen words he brought order out of chaos.

The way my efforts were nipped in the bud simply beggars description.  I am somewhat the worse for wear.  Hoping you are the same, I remain Yours sincerely, Ned Burke.

Finally, to the extent that you use slang at all, be its master instead of its slave.  You have many times been told that the overuse of slang disfigures one’s speech and hampers his standing with cultivated people.  You have also been told that slang constantly changes, so that one’s accumulations of it today will be a profitless clutter tomorrow.  These things are true, but an even more cogent objection remains.  Slang is detrimental to the formation of good intellectual habits.  From its very nature it cannot be precise, cannot discriminate closely.  It is a vehicle for loose-thinking people, it is fraught with unconsidered general meanings, it moves in a region of mental mists.  It could not flourish as it does were fewer of us content to express vague