It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words. For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The American habitually says "[=a] man" (a as in "game"); the Englishman, unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."^[T] Neither is right, neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and "Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo" is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not constitootional." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said "constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans choose to say,

I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I have learnt to prefer.

It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it.

So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and "tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily" and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says "in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and "exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance, is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an "il-lustrated" book or the "Il-lustrated London News" because we do not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious" statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would "tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous criticism, is simply childish.

Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may have crossed in the Mayflower for aught I know; but the overwhelming preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most" supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend "I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for instance, were to say,

American and English critics alike could not but protest against the solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and "ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of "nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.

Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and "a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon Kellner's Historical English Syntax (p. 119) and find that the Gothic for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative "days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" (HÊliand), "dÆges and nihtes" (BeÓwulf), "dÆies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward" better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all, "somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly jars in England.

An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or "have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in The Albany Depot, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say "in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should say "at" a village, but "in" a city—"at Concord," but "in Boston." I recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different to."

As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the New York Press, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?" Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be," not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.

I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in "program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. Let me only put in a plea for the retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural "stories" and "storeys."

FOOTNOTES:[T]