Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/176



"Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else." The conviction which underlies the Emersonian theory is that everyone has a style. In a sense, of course, the theory is sound, since style, speaking broadly, is only a comprehensive term for the total effect conveyed through all the various means by which a man reveals that he is himself and not someone else. And Providence, with infinite ingenuity, has contrived in some way to distinguish every one of us, if only by our thumb prints. When without resort to these, a man "gives himself away" by everything that he is and says and does, we say that he has a personality, meaning a distinctive personality. When such a personality, happening to be a writer, marks his diction, his images, his speed, breathing intervals, and emphasis, his ideas, point of view, and temper as unmistakably belonging to him, we say that he has style, meaning a distinctive style. Whose "song" is this?

So I finally opened the conversation myself. I said:

"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam."

"You bet!"

"What did I understand you to say, madam?"

Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:

"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers