title: If You Experience Death, Please Call: and Other Fatal Mistakes We Make with Language
author: Lee Barnathan
description: Lee Barnathan is a freelance writer and editor working with individuals and businesses to improve their communication. After a fifteen-year career as a sports journalist and technical writer, Lee has since 2005 brought journalism-related several skills that benefit his clientshe interviews each client to get the information he needs; he writes or edits the copy so its clear, concise, and accurate; he writes attention-grabbing headlines and lead paragraphs, and he meets all deadlines. Lee is based in Southern California and is still active in sports; he referees soccer, volleyball, and softball.
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  James Russell Lowell
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  # James Russell Lowell
  
  
  ### By Henry James
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
      
  
  EText by Ian Hillman
  
  
  After a man's long work is over and the sound of his voice is still,
  
  
  those in whose regard he has held a high place find his image strangely
  
  
  simplified and summarized. The hand of death, in passing over it, has
  
  
  smoothed the folds, has made it more typical and general. The figure
  
  
  retained by the memory is compressed and intensified; accidents have
  
  
  dropped away from it and shades have ceased to count; it stands,
  
  
  sharply, for a few estimated and cherished things, rather than,
  
  
  nebulously, for a swarm of possibilities. We cut the silhouette, in a
  
  
  word, out of the confusion of life, we save and fix the outline, and it
  
  
  is with his eye on this profiled distinction that the critic speaks. It
  
  
  is his function to speak with as