Such common things are words that they will often be mentioned on this program. In our eagerness to enlarge our vocabulary, to get a passing mark on the monthly word quiz in the Reader’s Digest, we may overlook a very important fact. While the new words, the unusual words, sometimes the long words, enrich our speech, it is the short words, the little words, the familiar words that make it possible for us to talk at all.<\/p>\n
Dr. George McKnight of Ohio State University, one of the foremost authorities on the English language, tells us one-fourth of the task of expression in English is accomplished by nine words. In short, if you make a record of any ordinary conversation, not of illiterate, but of educated, persons, you will find these nine words, repeated over and over again, accounting for one-fourth of all the words used. Don’t misunderstand. McKnight does not mean that we use a total of only 36 words. He means that we repeat the nine commonest words so many times that if the total count of words in a conversation is one thousand, approximately 250 of those thousand words will be these nine repeated again and again. Here they are: and, be (or a form of be such as is, are, was, were), have (or some form of have), it, of, the, to, will and you.<\/p>\n
McKnight goes even further. He insists that 43 words form a full half of the total words in any extended conversation of educated persons, and they, too, are common, little words. With the exception of the word “about”, which is certainly common enough, these forty-three words are all of one syllable. What is perhaps even more interesting, although modern English is made up of words from the uttermost ends of the earth — from the old Germanic tongues, from their Scandinavian variants, from French and Italian and Spanish, from Latin and Greek, from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian and American Indian — though English has borrowed from every language spoken by historic man, to make up our present composite vocabulary~ these forty-three little words are all of Anglo-Saxon origin. They come to us from the oldest English speech of which we have record. I shall not bore you with listing the 33 which I have not named. But let us try to remember the commonest nine — those that account for one-fourth of our speech. Here they are again in alphabetical order: and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, you.<\/p>\n
OUr inquiry about old cattle pounds brought immediate and hearty response.<\/p>\n
Before we had been an hour off the air no less than fifteen persons had telephoned information about eight different pounds. One at South Orrington, between Brewer and Bucksport, seems to be especially well known, because it was reported by five persons. We have learned that there is an old pound between Ellsworth and Blue Hill, another in Jefferson, another in Chelsea on the road from Gardiner to Togus, another at Hampden Lower Corners on much-traveled Route One, and still another in the town of Turner. What will most surprise some of our listeners, there are the remains of two ancient pounds less than ten miles from the Waterville Post Office. One, nearly in complete decay and scarcely recognizable for the animal enclosure it once was, is in the town of Winslow, at the junction of the China Road and the Reynolds Hill Road. The other is in the town of Fairfield, a few miles out of Fairfield Center.<\/p>\n
Now that we have located a few cattle pounds, we are encouraged to put out a search for something harder to find. We want to know the origin of two old time sayings. One is “not worth a Hannah cook”. The other is “leaning toward Sawyer’s”. Now, who in the world was Hannah Cook, and how did she ever become associated with the depths of worthlessness? How did the old country folk in parts of Maine come so regularly to say of a dilapidated, tumble-down building, “It’s leaning toward Sawyer’s”? Why not toward Smith’s or Jones’? Does any listener have a\u00b7 clue to the origin of either of these expressions? :t\u00b7f so, send it in to WTVL.<\/p>\n
A very common thing in our generation is the machine. In fact, unless we are a1ready moving into the atomic age, we are still living in what economists have called the machine age. We sometimes curse the machine for the way it seems to have regimented and mechanized the lives of men. Probably, like every other instrument of progress, the machine is a mixed blessing. In common with most things that are the handwork, either of nature or of man, the machine is neither good nor bad of itself; it all depends on how it is used.<\/p>\n
A hundred years ago the worker was economically muscle-bound. The volume of his output was limited by his muscular strength. The precision of his work was limited by his individual dexterity and skill. Since he produced little, he earned little. There was little to buy, and little that he could afford to buy.<\/p>\n
Only 40 years ago, in 1908, it took one man eight hours to shape the top half of an automobile’s gas tank. Today one man, and one machine, does the job in one minute. If a whole automobile were produced by the hand methods of 40 years ago, and that automobile had the intricate parts of a modern car, it would cost $50,000.<\/p>\n
A hundred years ago machines did only six per cent of man’s work. Today they do .85 per cent of it, and do it better, cheaper and faster, while man gets more pay in an hour for running a.machine than he did in a day for exhausting his muscles.<\/p>\n
Now it is true that every Jl1ajor advance in the development of machines has necessitated adjustments .of labor. Temporarily anew machine has thrown men out of jobs. But in the long run each such development creates more jobs. It turns luxuries into necessities, multiplies the demand many fold, makes possible almost unlimited diversity of products in astounding quantities. In 1890, when relatively few machines were in use in the United States, only 29 per cent of the total population was gainfully employed; the figure today is 43 per cent.<\/p>\n
The machine has made possible the standard of living which we Americans enjoy. Things always look greener over in the other fellow’s pasture, but when we get there our own grass looks pretty good to us. In spite of our imperfect social adjustments to the machine age, we Americans certainly have received our share of its benefits.<\/p>\n
Consider the American Negro, for instance. His lot is not a happy one, even in the northern states. Socially ostracized, if not actually subject to Jim Crow, he has small individual chance to achieve economic equality with a\u00b7 white individual. This is a situation that many of us view with abhorrence and shame. Yet American Negroes, with all of their economic and social inequalities, own more automobiles than all the other Negroes in the world, plus all the inhabitants of Russia.<\/p>\n
Machines have indeed created wealth, as well as jobs, in every nation that has used them extensively.<\/p>\n
What a common, yet what a wonderful, thing is memory. As we grow older, alas, the boy’s definition of memory seems no longer funny. He said, “Memory is the thing I forget with.” Perhaps it is fortunate that we are good forgetters as well as good rememberers. We may be saved a lot of grief by just forgetting. And some of the most annoying, if not downright disagreeable, people in the world are those who are always saying, “I knew him when.”<\/p>\n
Yet there are many interesting things about memory, whether one studies it through the \u00b7scientific channels of psychology or by the hit and miss observations of the ordinary man or woman. For instance, how far back does it go in a person’s life? Recently I witnessed a very impressive church service, a dedication service for infant children, brought to the church altar in their parents’ arms. In the course of his remarks to those parents, the clergyman said, “Your children will not remember this day. They will know of it only as you tell them about it.”<\/p>\n
The remark of that minister suggests an\u00b7 interesting question. What is the earliest incident in your life that you really remember, that you can identify surely as having seen yourself, not having heard it told so many times that you merely thought you had seen it? Can anyone surely and distinctly remember something that happened before he or she was four years old? Well — what about it?<\/p>\n
Ever since that evening when we referred to Rufus Jones, native and lifelong resident of China, Maine, as a great man, we have frequently been asked a related question. Whom do we consider the greatest living man in Maine? A question like that depends much, but not entirely, on individual judgment. A lot does indeed depend upon how one defines the word great. Yet we do not intend to dodge the question. No poll, either “Galluped or Ropered” gets in our way. This is just what we think, unhampered by statistics.<\/p>\n
The greatest living man in Maine is not a prominent statesman, not a learned scholar, not a successful industrialist. He never went to college, although he has received honorary degrees from several institutions. Owning almost no land himself, he came to control one of the largest farms in Maine. Apparently destined to be a preacher, a.professional clergyman, he won renown as a practical worker of Christian deeds. Now past his ninetieth birthday, he lives, not merely honored and respected by all Who know him, but also dearly loved by hundreds of me.n Whose lives he has touched and molded. The man is George W. Hinckley of the Good Will Homes and School my choice for the greatest living man in Maine.<\/p>\n
This is the week when we are annually reminded of the angel voices over Bethlehem 2,000 years ago: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will”. In a double sense George Hinckley is a man of Good Will; first, as founder and life-long head of the famous Good Will Homes for boys and girls who have no normal home; second, and more important, because the guiding motive of George Hinckley’s life has been Christian good will. To him faith without works is dead; so he poured his time, his energy, his talents and his money into living for others. Plenty of folks make sacrifices; lots of people do kindly deeds of helpfulness. But it is extremely rare to find a person who makes his whole life unselfish and, in the financial sense, unrewarded devotion to the welfare of others. In short, George Hinckley is one of a very few persons among our 140 million in America who has made a life-long occupation of good will.<\/p>\n
Allover the world are men and women in a hundred different occupations who are thinking of the Christmas story of the Child of Bethlehem in a peculiar sense this week, because they are men and women who, at some time within the past fifty years, came to the cottage homes at Hinckley, Maine, from broken homes, from bereaved homes, from woefully underprivileged homes. And they remember how Mr. Hinckley used to read the old, old story of Bethlehem at Christmas time, but they remember more how, unlike the parents in the story, they did find room at the inn.<\/p>\n
Only it was not an inn; it was a home such as they had never known before. And out from it they went into the wide world to become teachers and preachers, physicians and lawyers, statesmen and ambassadors, leaders of industry. And with one accord they will tell you that for the chance to be what they are, and for the ideals they cherish, they owe an unpayable debt to George Hinckley, the man of good will.<\/p>\n
Year: 1948<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #6, broadcast on December 19, 1948<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35333,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}