When I first began to preach I had a cousin who was commencing his
career as a minister at the same time. _He_ was ambitious to shine, and
to astonish his hearers by a show of learning. He knew nothing of Latin
and Greek, but he was fond of great high-sounding words of Greek and
Latin origin. He carried about with him a pocket dictionary, which he
used for the purpose of turning little words into big ones, and common
ones into strange ones. My taste was just the contrary. My desire was to
be as simple as possible. Like my companion, I often carried about with
me a pocket dictionary, but the end for which _I_ used it was, to help
me to turn big words into little ones, and strange and hard ones into
common and easy ones. And whenever I had to consult a dictionary in
translating Latin, or Greek, or any other language, into English, I
always took the simplest and best known words I could find to give the
meaning of the original. My cousin's desire to shine betrayed him at
times into very ridiculous blunders. I once heard him say, after having
spent some time in explaining his text, "But that I may _devil-hope_ the
subject a little more fully, I would observe, that the words are
_mephitical_." He, of course, meant to say, _metaphorical_, figurative,
not _mephitical_ which means of a _bad smell_. My plan secured me
against such mistakes.

To assist me in gaining a knowledge of the true meaning, and of the
right use of words, and to correct and simplify my style as much as
possible, I read whatever came in my way on grammar and philology, on
rhetoric and logic. I also collected a number of the best English
dictionaries, including a beautiful copy of Johnson's great work in two
thick quarto volumes. I read and studied the works of nearly all our
great poets, from Spenser and Shakespeare, down to Cowper and Burns. I
read two or three later ones. I had already committed to memory the
whole, or nearly the whole, of the moral songs of Dr. Watts; and many of