TWO STORIES
483
which took place customarily once or twice a year and always had
the same purpose and the same success or rather lack of it, a feeling
compounded of sympathy and embarrassment. Now the feeling rose
to active discomfort as his caller quietly entered, closing the doors
behind him with meticulous courtesy and absolute soundlessness.
"Sit down, Johannes," the editor-in-chief said in an encourag–
ing tone (almost the same tone he had once employed toward young
writers when he had been editor of the book section and now em–
ployed toward young politicians). "How goes it? Any complaints?"
Johannes regarded
him
timidly and sadly out of eyes that were
surrounded by thousands of tiny wrinkles, child's eyes in the face
of an ancient.
"It's always the same thing," he said in a soft, sad voice. "And
it's getting steadily worse, it's rapidly approaching complete ruin.
I have recently noticed dreadful symptoms. Things that ten years
ago would have made even the average reader's hair stand on end
are not only willingly accepted by today's readers in the news notes
and the sports section, not to mention the advertisements-no, they
have even invaded the book section, even the lead editorials. Even
with good, established authors these mistakes, these monstrosities and
evidences of degeneration have today become a matter of course,
they have become the rule. Even with you, sir, the editor-in-chief,
forgive me, even with you! I have long ago given up mentioning
the fact that our written language is now no better than a beggar's
jargon, destitute and louse-infested, that all beautiful, rich, rare,
highly evolved forms have disappeared, that for years now I have
failed to find a single future perfect in any lead article, let alone
a rich, deep-breathed, nobly constructed, elastic-paced sentence, a
true period, aware of its own structure, beautifully rising and grace–
fully dying away. That, I know, is gone. Just as in Borneo and all
those other islands they have extirpated the bird of paradise, the
elephant and the king tiger, they have destroyed and abolished all
the lovely sentences, all the inversions, all the delicate play and
shading of our dear language. I know there's nothing left to be saved
there. But the absolute errors, the uncorrected slips, the complete
irresponsibility toward even the first principles of grammatical logic!
Alas, Herr Doktor, out of habit they will begin a sentence with
'Although' or with 'On the one hand,' and will forget within two
