Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/37

 Danish he added by study; and throughout his working life he was incessantly sharpening, polishing and adding to his tools. Limitless reading refreshed a vast vocabulary; meticulous accuracy refined his meanings and justified his usages. His dictionaries were annotated freely; and the margins of his manuscripts were filled with challenges and suggestions for his friends to consider, until his own exacting fastidiousness had at last been satisfied. Apart from professional lexicographers, it would have been difficult to find a man with more words in current use; it would have been almost impossible to find one who employed them with nicer precision. Learning sat too lightly on his shoulders to make him vain of it, but no one could hear or correspond with him without realizing the presence of a purist; he seldom quoted, mistrusting his memory, confessed himself an amateur in colloquial dialogue and refused with equal obstinacy to venture on English metaphors and English field-sports. "I do not know the difiference between a niblick and a foursome," he would protest. "When you say that your withers are unwrung, I do