I take this gem with some others from a collection made three years ago,
by the "Oxford Magazine"; and I hope you admire it as one beyond price.
'He was associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit' means 'he
was given the Order of Merit.' If the members of that Order make a
society then he was associated with them; but you cannot associate a man
with a distinction. The inventor of such fine writing would doubtless
have answered Canning's Needy Knife-grinder with:--

I associate thee with sixpence! I will see thee in another
association first!

But let us close our _florilegium_ and attempt to illustrate Jargon by
the converse method of taking a famous piece of English (say Hamlet's
soliloquy) and remoulding a few lines of it in this fashion:--

To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable
would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the
present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character
according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer
the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other
to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually
bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if
not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of
finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so
that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that,
could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the
endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number
of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a
consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature.