(Whereas he, Queed, had
dealt almost exclusively with abstract principles, rarely taking
cognizance of any event that had happened later than 1850.)
2. That nearly all the Colonel's "best" articles--_i.e._, best-liked,
most popular: the kind that Major Brooke and Mr. Bylash, or even Miss
Miller, were apt to talk about at the supper-table--dealt with topics of
a purely local and ephemeral interest.
3. That the Colonel never went deeply or exhaustively into any group of
facts, but that, taking one broad simple hypothesis as his text, he
hammered that over and over, saying the same thing again and again in
different ways, but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque
phrasing.
4. That the Colonel invariably got his humorous effects by a
good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process of which was to
exaggerate the argument or travesty the cause he was attacking until it
became absurd.
5. That the Colonel, no matter what his theme, always wrote with vigor
and heat and color: so that even if he were dealing with something on
the other side of the world, you might suppose that he, personally, was
intensely gratified or extremely indignant about it, as the case might
be.
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