Now this is not accurate.  ‘In the case of John Jenkins deceased,’ for whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he is deceased.  But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and that was the coffin.  The Clerk says he had two,—­a coffin in a case:  but I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us that the coffin was of the usual character:  for coffins have no character, usual or unusual.

For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)—­

In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class.  He might be a stuffed animal:  perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (if any) in which he has passed with special distinction.

’The Section or Sections (if any)’—­But, how, if they are not any, could they be indicated by a mark however convenient?

     The Examiners will have regard to the style and method of the
     candidate’s answers, and will give credit for excellence in these
     respects.

Have you begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon?  The first is that it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech.  It says ’In the case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin’ when it means ’John Jenkins’s coffin’:  and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay:  but its answer is in the affirmative or in the negative, as the foolish and superfluous ‘case’ may be.  The second vice is that it habitually chooses vague woolly abstract nouns rather than concrete ones.  I shall have something to say by-and-by about the concrete noun, and how you should ever be struggling for it whether in prose or in verse.  For the moment I content myself with advising you, if you would write masculine English, never to forget the old tag of your Latin Grammar—­

     Masculine will only be
     Things that you can touch and see.

But since these lectures are meant to be a course in First Aid to writing, I will content myself with one or two extremely rough rules:  yet I shall be disappointed if you do not find them serviceable.

The first is:—­Whenever in your reading you come across one of these words, case, instance, character, nature, condition, persuasion, degree—­whenever in writing your pen betrays you to one or another of them—­pull yourself up and take thought.  If it be ‘case’ (I choose it as Jargon’s dearest child—­’in Heaven yclept Metonomy’) turn to the dictionary, if you will, and seek out what meaning can be derived from casus, its Latin ancestor:  then try how, with a little trouble, you can extricate yourself from that case.  The odds are, you will feel like a butterfly who has discarded his chrysalis.