isa-normaladvance-1914-00003

Description:	THE NORMAL ADVANCEHere is sincerity, frank, honest, and un¬ affected in her attitude. Her ancestry on both sides is Roman and she has interesting things to relate about old Rome and the early Roman stage. Sine is the Latin word, without, and ceres means wax. The ridiculously homely masks of early Greek and Roman actors were made of a prepared wax. When a player came out unmasked he was said to be sine cere, and later, when anyone was unaffected and un¬ varnished in disposition, he was said to possess sincerity. Sincerity is yet young, and. it is to be hoped that her period of usefulness will in¬ crease more and more.Some of the characters we are studying do not think much of royal blood and noble an¬ cestry. They are in a sense self-made men. Maize,~ for example, is an American through and through. In the seventeenth century and earlier he dwelt among the Indians of Hayti, and the Indian harvest festivals and war dances even yet constitute the topics of his conversations.Some of the characters of our word horde are of little importance. They are mere ser¬ vants that work for others. Among these are with, and, the, etc. The, for instance, goes along quietly by the side of his master and says little or nothing. Nor does anyone ever pay him much attention.As our characters pass by in review, we note great disparity in their ages. Some are mere children. Aeroplane, for example, has had but a few short years of life, and is undoubtedly destined to have a long, interesting and per¬ haps a perilous life-voyage. We cannot help thinking that some of these characters will move on the stage of current usage for only a short time for in the past many new words have started a brilliant career which came to an early Close, and they are now found only on the tombstones of literary classics.Since our word horde is very variegated in its constituency, it must needs contain homely words and beautiful words. A magazine re¬ cently conducted a contest to determine themost beautiful words in the language. Re¬ sponses were received from various literary people and scholars, and from these the twen¬ ty-five words occurring most frequently were selected. Words of the type of melody, splen¬ dor, adoration, grace, honor, happiness, etc., were selected as the paragons of beauty. But beauty contests are never fair. In the first place, the standard of beauty varies among the different judges. Secondly, a beauty contest is too often a popularity contest in which the judge votes for the contestant for whom he has the highest regard rather than for the one that best conforms to the accepted standards of beauty. As for words, the question remains, What constitutes beauty? If we are to regard external features only, we must examine the composition of the words. Some will say that a word having a large proportion of vowels and a smooth musical sound when spoken is beautiful. Honolulu is an example, since half of its letters are vowels and it has a smooth, musical sound. But this was evidently not the standard used, for liberty, justice faith, and happiness have only a small proportion of vowels and their sounds are really harsh. Yet they were among the successful contestants. In looking over the list one must become aware that the judges decided not from external features alone,—they were influenced by the memories and the hopes which they associated with the words. Therefore, words of the type of sympathy, divine, honor, and heaven gained a place, while others with more beautiful out¬ side features, but with unpleasant associations, such as pandemonium, diabolical, and the like, were left out.Often, writers, bring the individual words together into groups regardless of whether their associations will be congenial or not. When Tennyson wrote the line,The splendor falls on castle walls, he in¬ troduced to each other two Anglo-Saxon, two Romans, a Frenchman, and a Greek, and started them as traveling companions down the pathway of the ages. In spite of their differences they have made good comrades and
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/32439
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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