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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XXIII, 27 November 1897, Page 718

In several lunatic asylums journalism has been introduced among the inmates as a curative measure. One demented person refused food, and as obstinately declined to furnish any reason for his action. In a newspaper article, however, he wrote: — T desire to be buried as quickly as possible. It is a. monstrous scandal that I should lie compelled to drag about all over this house a dead and putrefying corpse.' As soon as the bent of his weak-mindedness was discovered he received appropriate treatment and eventually recovered. A gentleman maintains that swearing wastes vitality. He says:—‘The nervous force I would put into half-a-dozen oaths will do me an hour of work. But then I can condone swearing in those with whom it is a result of highly sensitive nerves. In those with whom it is merely bad language, mere vulgar profanity, usually accompanied by a disposition to obscenity, it is unpardonable. The man who wishes to express himself truthfully avoids superlatives of all kinds, and oaths are the worst superlatives it is possible to use. The best educated man is the one who can express himself in the plainest possible language, with the fewest possible expletives or unnecessary words of any kind.’