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Show -148- run splashing through the waves. Drunk or sober, and he was most often drunk, he never used a bad word before them. The Professor was sure this was not always true with his granddaughters when they went to the theater with their parents, either backstage or out front; and he had occasionally heard words in their mouths that he would never have tolerated with his own children. Yet he could not see that they had been harmed by them; he could not see that they were any better or worse than their mother had been at their age. Why? then? did he find himself wincing when his students used duch words in his class? He thought it must be a matter t of tase and habit, but taste was merely a matter of fashion, and whoever thought having a bad habit was sufficient justification for persisting in It? He had finally come to the conclusion that words were good when they Increased the ability of language to express ideas or to render emotions, they were harmful when they were mere substitutes for better, more exact, expression. Occasionally, they could have a shock value, but, overused, the value was lost. His son-in-law appeared at the head of the stairs. He saw that the Professor's glass was empty and asked if he wanted another beer? He thought he would have one himself? he said? The Professor said, yes, he would have another; then he had better be on his way home. When the son-in-law returned from the kitchen, he said he had been listening to the radio downstairs as he worked. |
