6d.
for that cab fare, owns the soft impeachment.
A slightly fuller examination of a single example may be useful. The
phrase to _leave severely alone_ has two reasonable uses--one in the
original sense of to leave alone as a method of severe treatment, i.e.
to send to Coventry or show contempt for, and the other in contexts
where _severely_ is to be interpreted by contraries--to leave alone by
way not of punishing the object, but of avoiding consequences for the
subject. The straightforward meaning, and the ironical, are both good;
anything between them, in which the real meaning is merely to leave
alone, and _severely_ is no more than an echo, is pointless and vapid
and in print intolerable. Examples follow: (1, straightforward) _You
must show him, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a
moral Coventry, your detestation of the crime_; (2, ironical) _Fish of
prey do not appear to relish the sharp spines of the stickleback, and
usually seem to leave them severely alone_; (3, pointless) _Austria
forbids children to_ _smoke in public places; and in German schools
and military colleges there are laws upon the subject; France, Spain,
Greece, and Portugal leave the matter severely alone_. It is obvious
at once how horrible the faded jocularity of No. 3 is in print; and,
though things like it come crowding upon one another in most
conversation, they are not very easy to find in newspapers and books
of any merit; a small gleaning of them follows:
_The moral_, as Alice would say, _appeared to be that, despite its
difference in degree, an obvious essential in the right kind of
education had been equally lacking to both these girls_ (as Alice, or
indeed as you or I, might say).
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