THE STICKLER.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17220, 1 October 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE STICKLER.

HtS AIMfiOYSKG WAYS. “\Yc cannot count, tne stickler as a benefit to society. \Ve vole him an intolerable bore. For one thing, he is so hatefully superior; lie can never speak without showing his contempt for our ignorance, and his pride in his own knowledge,” writes “W.G.8.” in the Birmingham Post. “Of course, it is well that people who habitually turn the dictionary inside out and upside down should be sharply pulled up and reminded that the English language was here before they were born, and will be here long after it has suffered Outrage on Their Tombstones; but may we never open-our mouths in friendly conversation unless wc speak with the accuracy of a mathematician and the precision of a schoolmaster correcting a piece of Greek prose composition ? “By all means let the stickler tell us that we have no right to talk about our relations when we mean relatives, and that we might just as well say we are going to see a friendship; but he won’t stop there. He sternly refuses to admit any colloquialisms of any kind, even those without which ordinary conversation is impossible; all speech must sound like a page from a book, carefully written in accordance with all established rules of grammar and syntax, and with every word used in the dictionary sense; “The stickler is rigidly mathematical and logical. He will ask how a third alternative is possible, and insist on our saying a third course instead. If a friend tells him ‘To-mor-row is my sixtieth birthday,’ he will assure him it is his sixty-first, because the day he came into the world was his first birthday. “One feels inclined to ask him how he can reconcile it with his conscience to ask for a third-class ticket by a railway that has only two classes, but probably this wouid lead to a disquisition that only a profund metaphysician could understand. To the stickler etiquette is not a method for making the social machine run smoothly; it is a rigid system of Law for System’s Sake.

. . . . Altogether the etiquette stickler makes life something of a terror to all but those who keep every rule. “There have been sticklers in all ages, for sticklerism is a human infirmity. Two thousand years ago they were called Pharisees, and the typica. stickler of to-day has all the characteristics of the Pharisee in his makeup. He believes that whatever has been must always continue as it once was; he cannot consent to change cf any kind. . . . “His correction is not with judgment, and his anger, though concealed by culture, brings us to nothing.”