One of this class, a young lady at school, considering that the word "eat" was too vulgar for refined ears, is said to have substituted the following: "To insert nutritious pabulum into the denticulated orifice below the nasal protuberance, which, being masticated, peregrinates through the cartilaginous cavities of the larynx, and is finally domiciliated in the receptacle for digestible particles."
"It is impossible," says a recent writer, "not to deplore so pernicious a tendency to high-flown language, because all classes of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, from insincerity and dissimulation, and from an effeminate proneness to use up in speaking the energy we should turn to doing and apply to life and conduct. Without a substratum of sincerity, no man can speak right on, but runs astray into a kind of phraseology which bears the same relation to elegant language that the hollyhock does to the rose."
The altiloquent talker may be called a _word-fancier_, searching for all the fine words discoverable, and then putting them together in a sort of mosaic-pavement style or artificial-flower order, making something to be considered _pretty_, or _fascinating_, or _profound_.
"Was it not beautiful?" asked Miss Bunting of Mr. Crump, after hearing one of these talkers. "Did you ever hear anything like it?"
"No, I did not," answered Mr. Crump, "and I do not wish to hear anything like it again. Too much like a flourishing penman, Miss Bunting, who makes more of his flourishes than of his sense, and which attract the reader more than his communication."
"No, Miss Bunting, he was not deep. You remind me of an occasion some time past when reading a book of an altiloquent style. A friend of mine asked, 'Is it not deep?' I answered, 'Not deep, but drumlie.' The drumlie often looks deep, and is liable to deceive; but it is shallow, as shallow as a babbling brook, as shallow as the beauty of the rose or the human countenance. Sometimes you may think you have a pearl; but it is only a dewdrop into which a ray of light has happened to fall. Such kind of talk, wherever it may be, is only like the aurora-borealis, or like dissolving views which for the moment please. But you know, Miss Bunting, it is the light of the sun that makes the day, and it is substantial food that feeds and strengthens.