letters to Mr. Forster: "The daily difference in (a ship's) rolling, as she burns the coals out, is something absolutely fearful." It need hardly be remarked that the italicized words in these sentences have to be removed before they become intelligible, or at least agreeable to persons appreciating really correct speech. The peculiar misuse of the affix ever, as in asking, "Whatever are you doing?" that one so often notices in the conversation particularly of English ladies, is another instance of the same failing. And who has not been annoyed and disgusted by the innumerable gots with which so many English pages fairly bristle, the ugly word, perhaps the most cacophanous of the language, being constantly stuck in (as in "Endymion," Chap. 50-"I have got some House of Commons men dining with me") where the idea of getting is not intended in the slightest degree to be conveyed, but only that of present possession. The general American dislike of this ugly word, and our practice, where the past participle of the verb get must be used, of employing the old and softer form gotten (now very unfashionable in England), certainly mark tendencies in the reverse direction to that of ruining the language.

A misuse of the progressive form of verbs which is becoming somewhat fashionable in this country but I believe to have originated rather recently in England, may be noted here, a misuse confined chiefly to writing. That is the expression "I am sending you" when

one should say "I send you," or "I am giving a dinner next week" when one should say "I give (or am to give) a dinner." The progressive form indicates either action often repeated, as in the correct phrase "I am sending reports every week," or else continuous action, as one might say "I am writing" when he is actually engaged in writing at the moment. To use that form for other purposes is unidiomatic and inadvisable, as blurring the definite meaning.

To sum up, it appears to me that the chief points of difference between the speech of the United States and that of Great Britain are that (1) we have no dialects, either geographical or social, whereas there are any number of them in Great Britain; (2) that our pronunciation, while sometimes regrettably harsh, is much clearer and more systematic than that of our transatlantic cousins; (3) that our spelling, in every case where there is well established difference, is to be preferred to that of England on any possible basis of comparison; and (4)—a point that will be somewhat elaborately developed in the third chapter of this book-that the mother tongue suffers far less in this country than abroad from freakish changes of fashion, whether in regard to the vocabulary itself or the significance attached to hundreds of words. As a distinguished and eloquent Irishman, the late Rev. Dr. John Hall, wrote in the New York Ledger of Aug. 28, 1880-and it is just as true today:

"English people sometimes speak of Americans as if they had a degenerate variation of the English tongue. The prejudice is less strong than it used to be, but it still lingers in many quarters. The American portion of the family left the mother country when the language was free of many recent and undesirable additions; and it consisted, moreover, in a marked degree, of educated persons. The result is that Ameri/can English contrasts favorably, as a whole, with that spoken in the British Isles; and it is not too much to say that in London, the place of the present writing, there is more barbarous and indefensible English uttered than in all the United States."

CHAPTER TWO

TEN IMPORTANT TREATISES

"Here, it is said, is a dictionary of Americanisms, compiled by an American, a large, closely printed octavo. To what a condition has the English language been brought in America! I have heard such remarks made more than once by intelligent Englishmen; I have seen them more than once in print."Richard Grant White, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1878.

"A collection of unauthorized words and phrases to be found in the pages of respectable English writers of the present day, on the plan of Pickering's Vocabulary, would be a very acceptable service rendered to our literature."-Eclectic Review, London, April, 1820.

Neither the general drift of the preceding chapter nor any allegation or argument it contains is to be taken as evincing the smallest inclination to dispute or minimize the obvious truth that a considerable number of new, and in many cases uncalled for, words and expressions have been invented and now pass current in the United States, or that the meaning of various others has been gradually warped, to the injury of the language, just as has occurred in England. This part of the subject has been laboriously investigated by a line of diligent students, so laboriously that there is little left to say about it except in the way of cor

rections and additions. Not to speak of articles in periodicals, brief essays, and single chapters, no fewer than fifteen books devoted entirely to so-called Americanisms in speech have from time to time appeared-ten of them of special importance-Pickering's "Vocabulary," published in 1816; Webster's "Letter," in 1817; Elwyn's "Glossary," in 1859; De Vere's "Americanisms," in 1872; Bartlett's "Dictionary," first edition in 1848, second in 1859, third in 1860, fourth and last in 1877; Farmer's "Americanisms," in 1889; Norton's "Political Americanisms," in 1890; Clapin's "Dictionary of Americanisms," in 1902; Thornton's "American Glossary," in 1912; and Mencken's "American Language," in 1919. It is worth noting that Norton's little compilation and Mencken's monumental treatise are the only works later than Bartlett's for which the world is indebted to a native American; for Mr. Farmer is an Englishman who had never, I believe, even visited this country before he wrote; Mr. Clapin is a Canadian, though he passed several years in the United States; and Prof. Thornton is English by birth, an American citizen however by naturalization and a resident of this country for half his life, having been a member of the faculty of the Oregon University for nearly twenty years, and being still a member of the Philadelphia bar. The student of language will find much to interest and not a little to amuse him in each of the collections of monstrosities named, for collections of