There's "virtue"
for you if you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. The
right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering
or the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever.
He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination.
Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give
me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too.
Yes! Let me only find the right word! Surely it must be lying somewhere
among the wreckage of all the plaints and all the exultations poured out
aloud since the first day when hope, the undying, came down on earth. It
may be there, close by, disregarded, invisible, quite at hand. But
it's no good. I believe there are men who can lay hold of a needle in a
pottle of hay at the first try. For myself, I have never had such luck.
And then there is that accent. Another difficulty. For who is going to
tell whether the accent is right or wrong till the word is shouted,
and fails to be heard, perhaps, and goes down-wind, leaving the world
unmoved? Once upon a time there lived an emperor who was a sage and
something of a literary man.
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