Little people get pleasure and also pain from quite little things, and I have not any respect for supermen who pretend that small things do not count. Yet one has to suffer from a majority or a vogue in favour of sham greatness, from the never-decreasing number of those who muddle greatness into bigness, and at last are found practising grossness, carelessness, recklessness, on the plea that their lives at least are too precious to waste in minding minutiae. Professional writers are constantly saying ‘not as big as,’ instead of ‘not so big as,’ and the subjunctive is a thing of the past even when the meaning is in peril. For instance, on a screw-stoppered beer-bottle one sees the injunction: ‘Observe that

this label is unbroken.’ To keep this grammatical, one should never break the label. And does one really conjugate the past indicative of the verb To Be: I was, Thou wertt In France, imperfectly

educated persons avoid like poison the past subjunctive, and even more commonly in Italy do the natives shirk the preterite, even in writing. I am always puzzled to know if Leo XIII wrote : ‘He has given thee to us that we may hope still more,’ or ‘He gave thee to us that we might’ &c. The English version leaves us in doubt, for it says: ‘He has given thee to us that we might’ &c., which is just wrong enough and careless enough to be the very opposite of style.