"your raised hand
an ambiguous signature:"
is a distinct shift of manner; it is not an image, but the indication of a fulness of meaning which is unnecessary to pursue.
"blood on the stone floors of French chiteaux, with
regard to which guides are so affirmative:"
is a satirical (consciously or unconsciously it does not matter) refinement of that pleasantry (not flippancy, which is something with a more definite purpose) of speech which characterizes the American language, that pleasantry, uneasy, solemn, or self-conscious, which inspires both the jargon of the laboratory and the slang of the comic strip. Miss Moore works this uneasy language of stereotypes—as of a whole people playing uncomfortably at clenches and clevelandisms—with impeccable skill into her pattern. She uses words like "fractional," "vertical," "infinitesimal," "astringently"; phrases like "excessive popularity," "a liability rather than an asset," "mask of profundity," "vestibule of experience," "diminished vitality," "arrested prosperity." If this were all, Miss Moore would be no different from her imitators. The merit consists in the combination, in the other point of view which Miss Moore possesses at the same time. What her imitators cannot get are the swift dissolving images, like the mussel shell
"opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan"
and phrases like
"the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp
rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.
"Truth is no Apollo
Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over it if it likes."
or a magnificence of phrase like
