the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all cases
the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency; and
that in composition, the chief, if not the sole thing to be done, is to
reduce this friction and inertia to the smallest possible amount.'

_Savan_ and _canaille_ and _noblesse_ may be English words; but they
have not that appearance. They have not rooted themselves in English
earth as _war_ has, for instance, and _cab_ and _wig_. To me, for one,
they increase the friction and the inertia; and yet, of course, the
words themselves are not strange to me; they seem to me merely out of
place and in the way. I can easily understand why Myers and Ruskin
wanted them, even needed them. It was because they carried a meaning not
easily borne by more obvious and more hackneyed nouns. 'The words of our
mother tongue', said Lowell in his presidential address to the Modern
Language Association of America, 'have been worn smooth by so often
rubbing against our lips and our minds, while the alien word has all the
subtle emphasis and beauty of some new-minted coin of ancient Syracuse.
In our critical estimates we should be on our guard against its charm.'

Since I have summoned myself as a witness I take the stand once more to
confess that Alan Seeger's lofty lyric, 'I have a rendezvous with Death'
has a diminished appeal because of the foreign connotations of
'rendezvous'. The French noun was adopted into English more than three
centuries ago; and it was used as a verb nearly three centuries ago; it
does not interfere with the current of sympathy when I find it in the
prose of Scott and of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it appears to me
unfortunate in Seeger's noble poem, where it forces me to taste its
foreign flavour.

Another French word, _bouquet_, is indisputably English; and yet when I