It is said that we excel in moral patience, but that when we approach anything intellectual this enduring virtue disappears, and we must "reach the goal in a bound or never arrive there at all." The sustained search for the perfect word would do much to correct this impatience, and if the search is aided by a knowledge of several modern languages so that comparative meanings and uses may be balanced against one another, it will be found not only to open rich veins of thought, but to give an ever-increasing power of working the mines and extracting the gold..