Appendix

Appendix

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS

[Lowell took occasion, when collecting in a book the several numbers of the second series of 'Biglow Papers,' which had appeared In the 'Atlantic Monthly,' to prefix an essay which not only gave a personal narrative of the origin of the whole scheme, but particularly dwelt upon the use in literature of the homely dialect in which the poems were couched. In this Cabinet Edition it has seemed expedient to print the Introduction here rather than in immediate connection with the poems themselves.]

Though prefaces seem of late to have fallen under some reproach, they have at least this advantage, that they set us again on the feet of our personal consciousness and rescue us from the gregarious mock-modesty or cowardice of that we which shrills feebly throughout modern literature like the shrieking of mice in the walls of a house that has passed its prime. Having a few words to say to the many friends whom the 'Biglow Papers' have won me, I shall accordingly take the freedom of the first person singular of the personal pronoun. Let each of the good-natured unknown who have cheered me by the written communication of their sympathy look upon this Introduction as a private letter to himself.

When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote the first of the series, I had no definite plan and no intention of ever writing another. Thinking the Mexican war, as I think it still, a national crime committed in behoof of Slavery, our common sin, and wishing to put the feeling of those who thought as I did in a way that would tell, I imagined to myself such an up-country man as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings capable of district-school English, but always instinctively falling back into the natural stronghold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of self-forgetfulness. When I began to carry out my conception and to write in my assumed character, I found myself in a strait between two perils. On the one hand, I was in danger of being carried beyond the limit of my own opinions, or at least of that temper with which every man should speak his mind in print, and on the other I feared the risk of seeming to vulgarize a deep and sacred conviction. I needed on occasion to rise above the level of mere patois, and for this purpose conceived the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should express the more cautious element of the New England character and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should serve for its homely common-sense vivified and heated by conscience. The parson was to be the complement rather than the antithesis of his parishioner, and I felt or fancied a certain humorous element in the real identity of the two under a seeming incongruity. Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of Latin, though drawn from the life, I adopted deliberately to heighten the contrast. Finding soon after that I needed some one as a mouth-piece of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never divorced from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little puppet-show. I meant to embody in him that half-conscious _un_morality which I had noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a puritanism that still strove to keep in its creed the intense savor which had long gone out of its faith and life. In the three I thought I should find room enough to express, as it was my plan to do, the popular feeling and opinion of the time. For the names of two of my characters, since I have received some remonstrances from very worthy persons who happen to bear them, I would say that they were purely fortuitous, probably mere unconscious memories of sign-boards or directories. Mr. Sawin's sprang from the accident of a rhyme at the end of his first epistle, and I purposely christened him by the impossible surname of Birdofredum not more to stigmatize him as the incarnation of 'Manifest Destiny,' in other words, of national recklessness as to right and wrong, than to avoid the chance of wounding any private sensitiveness.

The success of my experiment soon began not only to astonish me, but to make me feel the responsibility of knowing that I held in my hand a weapon instead of the mere fencing-stick I had supposed. Very far from being a popular author under my own name, so far, indeed, as to be almost unread, I found the verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere; saw them pinned up in workshops; I heard them quoted and their authorship debated; I once even, when rumor had at length caught up my name in one of its eddies, had the satisfaction of overhearing it demonstrated, in the pauses of a concert, that I was utterly incompetent to have written anything of the kind. I had read too much not to know the utter worthlessness of contemporary reputation, especially as regards satire, but I knew also that by giving a certain amount of influence it also had its worth, if that influence were used on the right side. I had learned, too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and definite purpose, whether æsthetic or moral, and that even good writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of imagination or common-sense. The first of these falls to the lot of scarcely one in several generations; the last is within the reach of many in every one that passes; and of this an author may fairly hope to become in part the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells and made myself one of the court-fools of King Demos, it was less to make his majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal ears for certain serious things which I had deeply at heart. I say this because there is no imputation that could be more galling to any man's self-respect than that of being a mere jester. I endeavored, by generalising my satire, to give it what value I could beyond the passing moment and the immediate application. How far I have succeeded I cannot tell, but I have had better luck than I ever looked for in seeing my verses survive to pass beyond their nonage.

In choosing the Yankee dialect, I did not act without forethought. It had long seemed to me that the great vice of American writing and speaking was a studied want of simplicity, that we were in danger of coming to look on our mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought in the grammar and dictionary rather than in the heart, and that our only chance of escape was by seeking it at its living sources among those who were, as Scottowe says of Major-General Gibbons, 'divinely illiterate.' President Lincoln, the only really great public man whom these latter days have seen, was great also in this, that he was master--witness his speech at Gettysburg--of a truly masculine English, classic, because it was of no special period, and level at once to the highest and lowest of his countrymen. I learn from the highest authority that his favorite reading was in Shakespeare and Milton, to which, of course, the Bible should be added. But whoever should read the debates in Congress might fancy himself present at a meeting of the city council of some city of Southern Gaul in the decline of the Empire, where barbarians with a Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country. We use it like Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word) to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave the minds and memories of his victims to what he esteems the best models of English composition, that is to say, to the writers whose style is faultily correct and has no blood-warmth in it. No language after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips suppled by downright living interests and by passion in its very throe. Language is the soil of thought, and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green. There is death in the dictionary; and, where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also; and we get a potted literature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.

But while the schoolmaster has been busy starching our language and smoothing it flat with the mangle of a supposed classical authority, the newspaper reporter has been doing even more harm by stretching and swelling it to suit his occasions. A dozen years ago I began a list, which I have added to from time to time, of some of the changes which may be fairly laid at his door. I give a few of them as showing their tendency, all the more dangerous that their effect, like that of some poisons, is insensibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last of effect among a people whose chief reading is the daily paper. I give in two columns the old style and its modern equivalent.

Old Style. New Style.

Was hanged. Was launched into eternity.

When the halter When the fatal was put round noose was adjusted his neck. about the neck of the unfortunate victim of his own unbridled passions.

A great crowd A vast concourse came to see. was assembled to witness.

Great fire. Disastrous conflagration.

The fire spread. The conflagration extended its devastating career.

House burned. Edifice consumed.

The fire was got The progress of under. the devouring element was arrested.

Man fell. Individual was precipitated.

A horse and wagon A valuable horse ran against. attached to a vehicle driven by J.S., in the employment of J.B., collided with.

The frightened The infuriated animal. horse.

Sent for the doctor. Called into requisition the services of the family physician.

The mayor of the The chief magistrate city in a short of the metropolis, in well- speech welcomed. chosen and eloquent language, frequently interrupted by the plaudits of the surging multitude, officially tendered the hospitalities.

I shall say a few I shall, with your words. permission, beg leave to offer some brief observations.

Began his answer. Commenced his rejoinder.

Asked him to dine. Tendered him a banquet.

A bystander advised. One of those omnipresent characters who, as if in pursuance of some previous arrangement, are certain to be encountered in the vicinity when an accident occurs, ventured the suggestion.

He died. He deceased, he passed out of existence, his spirit quitted its earthly habitation, winged its way to eternity, shook off its burden, etc.

In one sense this is nothing new. The school of Pope in verse ended by wire-drawing its phrase to such thinness that it could bear no weight of meaning whatever. Nor is fine writing by any means confined to America. All writers without imagination fall into it of necessity whenever they attempt the figurative. I take two examples from Mr. Merivale's 'History of the Romans under the Empire,' which, indeed, is full of such. 'The last years of the age familiarly styled the Augustan were singularly barren of the literary glories from which its celebrity was chiefly derived. One by one the stars in its firmament had been lost to the world; Virgil and Horace, etc., had long since died; the charm which the imagination of Livy had thrown over the earlier annals of Rome had ceased to shine on the details of almost contemporary history; and if the flood of his eloquence still continued flowing, we can hardly suppose that the stream was as rapid, as fresh, and as clear as ever.' I will not waste time in criticising the bad English or the mixture of metaphor in these sentences, but will simply cite another from the same author which is even worse. 'The shadowy phantom of the Republic continued to flit before the eyes of the Cæsar. There was still, he apprehended, a germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of his own house, or even a stranger, might boldly throw himself and raise the standard of patrician independence.' Now a ghost may haunt a murderer, but hardly, I should think, to scare him with the threat of taking a new lease of its old tenement. And fancy the scion of a house in the act of throwing itself upon a germ of sentiment to raise a standard! I am glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea. I would not be supposed to condemn truly imaginative prose. There is a simplicity of splendor, no less than of plainness, and prose would be poor indeed if it could not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind which is behind the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a growing distrust, one might almost say hatred, of whatever is super-material. There is something sad in the scorn with which their journalists treat the notion of there being such a thing as a national ideal, seeming utterly to have forgotten that even in the affairs of this world the imagination is as much matter-of-fact as the understanding. If we were to trust the impression made on us by some of the cleverest and most characteristic of their periodical literature, we should think England hopelessly stranded on the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do middle-age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, doomed to sit forever with its feet under the mahogany in that after-dinner mood which follows conscientious repletion, and which it is ill-manners to disturb with any topics more exciting than the quality of the wines. But there are already symptoms that a large class of Englishmen are getting weary of the dominion of consols and divine common-sense, and to believe that eternal three per cent. is not the chief end of man, nor the highest and only kind of interest to which the powers and opportunities of England are entitled.

The quality of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of American character, and especially o£ American humor. In Dr. Petri's Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter, we are told that the word humbug is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans. To be sure, one would be tempted to think the dream of Columbus half fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West a nearer way to Orientalism, at least in diction. But it seems to me that a great deal of what is set down as mere extravagance is more fitly to be called intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms ol the imaginative faculty in full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw and formless material in which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, the world will see it fashioned into poem and picture, and Europe, which will be hard pushed for originality erelong, may have to thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find Shakespeare exaggerated because he treated English just as our country-folk do when they speak of a 'steep price,' or say that they 'freeze to' a thing. The first postulate of an original literature is that a people should use their language instinctively and unconsciously, as if it were a lively part of their growth and personality, not as the mere torpid boon of education or inheritance. Even Burns contrived to write very poor verse and prose in English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Mr. Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented at some length on the beauty and moral significance ol the French phrase s'orienter and called on his young friends to practise upon it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out what was about east, and to shape his course accordingly. This charm which a familiar expression gains by being commented, as it were, and. set in a new light by a foreign language, is curious and instructive. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Matthew Arnold forgets this a little too much sometimes when he writes of the beauties of French style. It would not be hard to find in the works of French Academicians phrases as coarse as those he cites from Burke, only they are veiled by the unfamiliarity of the language. But, however this may be, it is certain that poets and peasants please us in the same way by translating words back again to their primal freshness, and infusing them with a delightful strangeness which is anything but alienation. What, for example, is Milton's 'edge of battle' but a doing into English of the Latin acies? Was die Gans gedacht das der Schwan vollbracht, what the goose but thought, that the swan full brought (or, to de-Saxonize it a little, what the goose conceived, that the swan achieved), and it may well be that the life, invention, and vigor shown by our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is shaped to the instant want of those who use it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last. The part I have taken on myself is that of the humbler bird.

But it is affirmed that there is something innately vulgar in the Yankee dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: 'Je définis un patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune.' The first part of his definition applies to a dialect like the Provençal, the last to the Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems to me, will quite fit a patois/, which is not properly a dialect, but rather certain archaisms, proverbial phrases, and modes of pronunciation, which maintain themselves among the uneducated side by side with the finished and universally accepted language. Norman French, for example, or Scotch down to the time of James VI., could hardly be called patois, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a lingo rather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen into disuse in the mother country, like to tarry, to progress, fleshy, fall, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some, as in freshet; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the broad Norman pronunciation of e (which Molière puts into the mouth of his rustics) in such words as sarvant, parfect, vartoo, and the like. It maintains something of the French sound of a also in words like chămber, dănger (though the latter had certainly begun to take its present sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes spelt dainger). But in general it may be said that nothing can be found in it which does not still survive in some one or other of the English provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single exception in the verb to sleeve. To sleeve silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. (A.S. sléfan, to cleave=divide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleeveless errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, and therefore bootless?

I am not speaking now of Americanisms properly so called, that is, of words or phrases which have grown into use here either through necessity, invention, or accident, such as a carry, a one-horse affair, a prairie, to vamose. Even these are fewer than is sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between ministerium and métier, or sapiens and sachant, than between druv and drove or agin and against, which last is plainly an arrant superlative. Our rustic coverlid is nearer its French original than the diminutive cover_let_, into which it has been ignorantly corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single word,--cowcumber, coocumber, and cucumber. Of these the first, which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality of concombre. Lord Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and Voltaire tells his countrymen that handkerchief was pronounced hankercher. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for kercher in couverture rather than in couvrechef? And what greater phonetic vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called fegary) in our lingua rustica than this ker for couvre? I copy from the fly-leaves of my books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them every one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose.

I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two words with different meanings, as in genteel and jaunty, which I find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering between genteel and jantee. It is usual in America to drop the u in words ending in our--a very proper change recommended by Howell two centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would allow. This and the corresponding changes in musique, musick, and the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have riches' and counsel', in Bishop Hall comet', chapëlain, in Donne pictures', virtue', presence', mortal', merit', hainous', giant', with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes baptime. The tendency to throw the accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we have creator' and crëature' side by side with the modern creator and creature. E'nvy and e'nvying occur in Campion (1602), and yet envy' survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to the French, as in rev'enue for reven'ue, I had been so used to hearing imbecile pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I was surprised to find imbec'ile in a verse of Wordsworth. The dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and he declared for imbeceel'. In general it may be assumed that accent will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and therefore quickness of utterance. Blas'-phemous, for example, is more rapidly pronounced than blasphem'ous, to which our Yankee clings, following in this the usage of many of the older poets. Amer'ican is easier than Ameri'can, and therefore the false quantity has carried the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft or thin sound of the u in some words, such as rule, truth (sometimes also pronounced trŭth, not trooth), while he says noo for new, and gives to view and few so indescribable a mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce true as if it rhymed with view, and this is the sound our rustics give to it. Spenser writes deow (dew) which can only be pronounced with the Yankee nasality. In rule the least sound of a precedes the u. I find reule in Pecock's 'Repressor.' He probably pronounced it rayoolë, as the old French word from which it is derived was very likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original regula. Tindal has reuler, and the Coventry Plays have preudent. In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find reule. As for noo, may it not claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from nouveau or neuf, the ancient sound of which may very well have been noof, as nearer novus? Beef would seem more like to have come from buffe than from boeuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon few may have caught enough from its French cousin peu to claim the benefit of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase a few (as 'I licked him a few') may well appeal to un peu for sense and authority. Nay, might not lick itself turn out to be the good old word lam in an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he fairly might, from the Latin lambere? The New England ferce for fierce, and perce for pierce (sometimes heard as fairce and pairce), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of verse and pierce in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our pairlous for perilous is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's parlous than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with English lips. Thus for joint, employ, royal, we have jynt, emply, r[)y]le, the last differing only from rile (roil) in a prolongation of the y sound. I find royal so pronounced in the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' In Walter de Biblesworth I find solives Englished by gistes. This, it is true, may have been pronounced jeests, but the pronunciation jystes must have preceded the present spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other words in oi. In the same way after Norman-French influence had softened the l out of would (we already find woud for veut in N.F. poems), should followed the example, and then an l was foisted into could, where it does not belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with eyster for oyster as early as the fourteenth century. I find viage in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, bile for boil in Donne and Chrononhotonthologos, line for loin in Hall, ryall and chyse (for choice) dystrye for destroy, in the Coventry Plays. In Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of employ for imply, fairly inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the elegant Gray said naise for noise just as our rustics still do. Our cornish (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better than cornice does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the g from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending in n. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common, though it may formerly have been more so. Capting, for instance, I never heard save in jest, the habitual form being kepp'n. But at any rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more charming, I find burding, garding, and cousing, and in the State Trials uncerting used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the n better than ng.

Of Yankee preterites I find risse and rize for rose in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, clim in Spenser, chees (chose) in Sir John Mandevil, give (gave) in the Coventry Plays, shet (shut) in Golding's Ovid, het in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs, thriv and smit in Drayton, quit in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and pled in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. Rid for rode was anciently common. So likewise was see for saw, but I find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's seie and Gower's sigh were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded. Shew is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like snew, thew, and even mew, are not without example. I find sew for sewed in 'Piers Ploughman.' Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred flew from flow (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to fly because we had another preterite in fled. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains growed, blowed, for which he has good authority, and less often knowed. His sot is merely a broad sounding of sat, no more inelegant than the common got for gat, which he further degrades into gut. When he says darst, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.

The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the a in such words as axe, wax, pronouncing them exe, wex (shortened from aix, waix). He also says hev and hed (hāve, hād for have and had). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In aix for axle he certainly does. I find wex and aisches (ashes) in Pecock, and exe in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes wax with wexe and spells challenge chelenge. Chaucer wrote hendy. Dryden rhymes can with men, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites hez for hath as peculiar to Lincolnshire. I find hayth in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote belcony. Our fect is only the O.F. faict. Thaim for them was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb thrash, thresh. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say instead for instid (commonly 'stid where not the last word in a sentence), he changes the i into e in red for rid, tell for till, hender for hinder, rense for rinse. I find red in the old interlude of 'Thersytes,' tell in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single verse of the Chester Plays,

'Tell the day of dome, tell the beames blow.'

From the word blow (in another sense) is formed blowth, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it as meaning 'a blossom.' With us a single blossom is a blow, while blowth means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes hinder with slender, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have renched for rinsed. In 'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is sence for since; Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes since with Amiens and patïence, Bishop Hall and Otway with pretence, Chapman with citizens, Dryden with providence. Indeed, why should not sithence take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has tell for till, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes seche for such, and our ef finds authority in the old form yeffe.

E sometimes takes the place of u, as jedge, tredge, bresh. I find tredge in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' bresh in a citation by Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century, and resche for rush (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. Resce is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding has shet. The Yankee always shortens the u in the ending ture, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce Penniless' has ventur, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has tort'rest, which can be contracted only from tortur and not from torcher. Quarles rhymes nature with creator, and Dryden with satire, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of satyr. Quarles has also torture and mortar. Mary Boleyn writes kreatur. I find pikter in Izaak Walton's autograph will.

I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with kiver for cover, and ta, for to. The Yankee pronounces both too and to like ta (like the tou in touch) where they are not emphatic. When they are, both become tu. In old spelling, to is the common (and indeed correct) form of too, which is only to with the sense of in addition. I suspect that the sound of our too has caught something from the French tout, and it is possible that the old too too is not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same word (toute) as anciently pronounced, with the e not yet silenced. Gill gives a Northern origin to geaun for gown and waund for wound (vulnus). Lovelace has waund, but there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who borealised in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of geaun! And yet some delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of ge-ard for guard, and ge-url for girl. Sir Philip Sidney (credite posteri!) wrote furr for far. I would hardly have believed it had I not seen it in facsimile. As some consolation, I find furder in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes far with cur. The Yankee, who omits the final d in many words, as do the Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in geound. The purist does not feel the loss of the d sensibly in lawn and yon, from the former of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in laundry), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we make of git, yit, and yis? I find yis and git in Warner's 'Albion's England,' yet rhyming with wit, admit, and fit in Donne, with wit in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with writ in Dryden, and latest of all with wit in Sir Hanbury Williams. Prior rhymes fitting and begetting. Worse is to come. Among others, Donne rhymes again with sin, and Quarles repeatedly with in. Ben for been, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and many more, though bin seems to have been the common form. Whittier's accenting the first syllable of rom'ance finds an accomplice in Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous with Rom'ans. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes sowdiers (sogers, soudoyers), and Chapman and Gill sodder. This absorption of the l is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes also biyende, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton' yender. The Yankee includes 'yon' in the same catagory, and says 'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro.' (Cf. German jenseits.) Pecock and plenty more have wrastle. Tindal has agynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debyte, and scace. 'Jack Jugler' has scacely (which I have often heard, though skurce is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make great rhyme with set. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find ynd for end, which the Yankee more often makes eend, still using familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously.' His 'stret (straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I find in Pecock. Tindal's debytë for deputy is so perfectly Yankee that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us playsent and sartayne. Dryden rhymes certain with parting, and Chapman and Ben Jonson use certain, as the Yankee always does, for certainly. The 'Coventry Mysteries' have occapied, massage, nateralle, materal (material), and meracles,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is vertus for virtuous. Thomas Fuller called volume vollum, I suspect, for he spells it volumne. However, per contra, Yankees habitually say colume for column. Indeed, to prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need only to cite the words scriptur, Israll, athists, and cherfulness from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes shet in a letter to Winthrop. Purtend (pretend) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty Devices;' purvide, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these carr'ings-on did tend.' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently tried to spell phonetically, makes sorrows into sororz. Herrick writes hollow for halloo, and perhaps pronounced it (horresco suggerens!) holló, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from holà? I find ffelaschyppe (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to write afore, and the former feels no inelegance even in chaw and idee. 'Fore was common till after Herrick. Dryden has do's for does, and his wife spells worse wosce. Afeared was once universal. Warner has ery for ever a; nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English literature. And why not illy? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that ill is itself an adverb, without the termination ly,' and quotes Dr. Mosser, President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you say 'welly?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still remembered that ill was an adjective, the shortened form of evil, out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to make evilly. This slurred evil is 'the dram of eale' in 'Hamlet.' I find, illy in Warner. The objection to illy is not an etymological one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient reason. Ill as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the rustic's when he says, 'I was treated bad.' May not the reason of this exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to say ill-ly, well-ly, and it is to be observed that we have avoided smally[26] and tally in the same way, though we add ish to them without hesitation in smallish and tallish. We have, to be sure, dully and fully, but for the one we prefer stupidly, and the other (though this may have come from eliding the y before _a_s) is giving way to full. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make adverbs when they will by adding like to all manner of adjectives. We have had big charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman would now use great. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish between them, allowing to big a certain contemptuous quality; but as for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the biggest example.' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an Englishman's yes and no, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How many educated men pronounce the t in chestnut? how many say pentise for penthouse, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it boon. This is one of the cases where the d is surreptitious, and has been added in compliment to the verb bind, with which it has nothing to do. If we consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its speech), the d has no more right there than at the end of gone, where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes worle for world. Chapman has wan for wand, and lawn has rightfully displaced laund, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as 'Dear Husban.' The old form expoun', which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a barbarous d tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite to this, like our gownd for gown, and the London cockney's wind for wine, I find drownd for drown in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur' (1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say behīnd and hīnder (comparative) and yet to hĭnder. Shakespeare pronounced kind kĭnd, or what becomes of his play on that word and kin in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop the final d as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the same way on kindred and kindness.

But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes bounds with crowns, grounds with towns, text with sex, worst with crust, interrupts with cups; Drayton, defects with sex; Chapman, amends with cleanse; Webster, defects with checks; Ben Jonson, minds with combines; Marston, trust and obsequious, clothes and shows; Dryden gives the same sound to clothes, and has also minds with designs. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the rhyme first and trust, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady. Swift has stunted and burnt it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of burned. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock after and matter, thus seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to find after and daughter. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old Plays we have onions rhyming with minions,--I have tears in my eyes while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal Misses (Mrs.) for Mistress? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays by Collier),

'To make my young mistress Delighting in kisses,'

is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say Injun for Indian. The tendency to make this change where i follows d is common. The Italian giorno and French jour from diurnus are familiar examples. And yet Injun is one of those depravations which the taste challenges peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes 'Indies' with 'cringes'--and four English lexicographers, beginning with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say invidgeous. Yet after all it is no worse than the debasement which all our terminations in tion and tience have undergone, which yet we hear with resignashun and payshunce, though it might have aroused both impat-i-ence and in-dig-na-ti-on in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon be dull,

'God takes a text and preacheth patience,'

the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in o-ce-an, and Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--

'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder The tumbling ruins of the oceän.'

Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our modern oshun sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison. Some other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. More 'n for more than, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly be called) of the th, making whe'r of whether, where of whither, here of hither, bro'r of brother, smo'r of smother, mo'r of mother, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word rare (which has Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would use underdone. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had ever anything to do with the Icelandic hrar (raw), as it plainly has not in rareripe, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of a precocious boy that 'he was a rareripe.' And I do not believe it, for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover, raredone. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it mean, cannot mean raw-roasted, I find rather as a monosyllable in Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with fair in Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words rather than make a monosyllable;--

'What furie is't to take Death's part And rather than by Nature, die by Art!'

The contraction more'n I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond doubt,--

'A golden crown whose heirs More than half the world subdue.'

It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld.' It is unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--

'It were but folly, Dear soul, to boast of more than I can perform.'

Is our gin for given more violent than mar'l for marvel, which was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has gin (spelling it gen), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us likewise in preferring chimly to chimney.

I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped stitch, in the pronunciation of the word súpreme, which I had thought native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant suddenly cut down by the verb to wilt. It is, of course, own cousin of the German welken, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives welhèn, marcescere, and refers to weih (weak), and conjecturally to A.-S, hvelan. The A.-S. wealwian (to wither) is nearer, but not so near as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its ancestry,--velgi, tepefacere, (and velki, with the derivative) meaning contaminare. Wilt, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is a true Americanism. Wilt occurs in English provincial glossaries, but is explained by wither, which with us it does not mean. We have a few words such as cache, cohog, carry (portage), shoot (chute), timber (forest), bushwhack (to pull a boat along by the bushes on the edge of a stream), buckeye (a picturesque word for the horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant it when he said, 'Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut MAIZ et CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the French, German, Spanish, or Indian.[28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. Bogus, in the sense of worthless, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a corruption of the French bagasse (from low Latin bagasea), which travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of some words. We use freshet in the sense of flood, for which I have not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to mean a current, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. Crick for creek I find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy Warre,' and run, meaning a small stream, in Waymouth's 'Voyage' (1605). Humans for men, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his 'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath lost his Pearl.' Dogs for andirons is still current in New England, and in Walter de Biblesworth I find chiens glossed in the margin by andirons. Gunning for shooting is in Drayton. We once got credit for the poetical word fall for autumn, but Mr. Bartlett and the last edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older, for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has autumn fall. Middleton plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good spring, for thou art like to have many dangerous foul falls.' Daniel does the same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism picked for peaked, and the word smudge (as our backwoodsmen do) for a smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last preux chevalier) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. Loan for lend, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' Fleshy, in the sense of stout, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' Chore is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer it to chare and char, because I think that I see a more natural origin for it in the French jour--whence it might come to mean a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else.[29] At onst for at once I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an erratic and obsolete superlative at onest. To progress was flung in our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth prógress down thy cheeks.' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer, because the accent was different, and because the word might here be reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's 'Broken Heart.' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he 'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not.' It certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the 'Alchemist,' had this verse,

'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,'

and Sir Philip Sidney,

'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place.'

Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were desperately against our having invented any of the Americanisms with which we are faulted and which we are in the habit of voicing, there were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest thing out.' Alas, even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has

'So harde an herte was none oute,'

and

'That such merveile was none oute.'

He also, by the way, says 'a sighte of flowres' as naturally as our up-country folk would say it. Poor for lean, thirds for dower, and dry for thirsty I find in Middleton's plays. Dry is also in Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce thinks it needful to explain the phrase I can't tell (universal in America) by the gloss I could not say. Middleton also uses sneeked, which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of course, only another form of snatch, analogous to theek and thatch (cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), break (brack) and breach, make (still common with us) and match. 'Long on for occasioned by ('who is this 'long on?') occurs constantly in Gower and likewise in Middleton. 'Cause why is in Chaucer. Raising (an English version of the French leaven) for yeast is employed by Gayton in his 'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.' I have never seen an instance of our New England word emptins in the same sense, nor can I divine its original. Gayton has limekill; also shuts for shutters, and the latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson.' Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have chist for chest, and it is certainly nearer cista, as well as to its form in the Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound from cist, but chest is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says wropt for wrapt. 'Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia-musters of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own, but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as 1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had passed with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles.' For slick (which is only a shorter sound of sleek, like crick and the now universal britches for breeches) I will only call Chapman and Jonson. 'That's a sure card!' and 'That's a stinger!' both sound like modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of 'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns up passim in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism right away. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--

'Lyght it and bring it tite away.'

But tite is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but another form of straightway? Cussedness, meaning wickedness, malignity, and cuss, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But neither is our own. Cursydnesse, in the same sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and cuss may perhaps claim to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French. Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbé Dubois, he says, 'Qui étoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais françois appelle un sacre, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement.' 'Not worth a cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption, since 'not worth a cress' is in 'Piers Ploughman.' 'I don't see it,' was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' Green sauce for vegetables I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our rustic pronunciation sahce (for either the diphthong au was anciently pronounced ah, or else we have followed abundant analogy in changing it to the latter sound, as we have in chance, dance, and so many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its ancestor salsa. Warn, in the sense of notify, is, I believe, now peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find primmer (primer, as we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too (compare our 'square meal'), heft for weight, and 'muchness' in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' bankbill in Swift and Fielding, and as for that I might say passim. To cotton to is, I rather think, an Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is cotton together, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To cotton or cotten, in another sense, is old and common. Our word means to cling, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S. cvead, which means mud, clay (both proverbially clinging), or better yet, in the Icelandic qvoda (otherwise kód), meaning resin and glue, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To spit cotton is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to flax for to beat. To the halves still survives among us, though apparently obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land, receiving half the profit in money or in kind (partibus locare). I mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. To put, in the sense of to go, as Put! for Begone! would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the French se mettre à la voie, and the Italian mettersi in via. Indeed, Dante has a verse,

'Io sarei [for mi sarei] già messo per lo sentiero,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have put along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,' Valentine says,

'Will you go drink, And let the world slide?'

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide.'

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction, for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other curës let he slide.'

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' In his tracks for immediately has acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin e vestigio, or at best the Norman French eneslespas, both which have the same meaning? Hotfoot (provincial also in England), I find in the old romance of 'Tristan,'

'Si s'en parti CHAUT PAS'

Like for as is never used in New England, but is universal in the South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (ego sum rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel. Them was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P. Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any passage adduced where guess was used as the Yankee uses it. The word was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like rather think, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he says, 'I guess I du!' There are two examples in Otway, one of which ('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve our purpose, and Coleridge's

'I guess 'twas fearful there to see'

certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first inventor of them (I guess you dislike not the addition) was one Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.' Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes Cloth-breeches say, 'but I gesse your maistership never tried what true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions, with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do?' it is commonly short, and has the sound of it wul, but in reply it is deliberative, and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt to describe. I have heard ooa-ahl, wahl, ahl, wal and something nearly approaching the sound of the le in able. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere l, as ''l I dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most exquisite of humorists, J.H.?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,' like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land. The first was the ordinary wul, in deference to custom; the second, the long, perpending ooahl, with a falling inflection of the voice; the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, wulh, ending in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp wal, showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the interjection.

A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I mean the use of allow in the sense of affirm, as 'I allow that's a good horse.' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same, allowing theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be the increase of theyr strength.' That is, they undervalued our strength, and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration, said.' Ducange quotes Bracton sub voce ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault allows waterfrogs to be good meat,' and here the word is equivalent to affirms. At the same time, when we consider some of the meanings of allow in old English, and of allouer in old French, and also remember that the verbs prize and praise are from one root, I think we must admit allaudare to a share in the paternity of allow. The sentence from Hakluyt would read equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, ... and praising (or valuing) their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.' After all, if we confine ourselves to allocare, it may turn out that the word was somewhere and somewhen used for to bet, analogously to put up, put down, post (cf. Spanish apostar), and the like. I hear boys in the street continually saying, 'I bet that's a good horse,' or what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in the matter.

The word improve, in the sense of to 'occupy, make use of, employ,' as Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He would have done better, I think, had he substituted profit by for employ. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723, except in Dr. Mather's 'Bemarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a 'very old book.' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was mistaken.

Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them should have confined the application of the word to material things, its extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use of it. For surely 'Complete Letter-Writers' have been 'improving this opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little further, because Pickering cites no English authorities. Skelton has a passage in his 'Phyllyp Sparowe,' which I quote the rather as it contains also the word allowed and as it distinguishes improve from employ:--

'His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed, So as it is emprowed For as it is employd, There is no English voyd.'

Here the meaning is to profit by. In Fuller's 'Holy Warre' (1647), we have 'The Egyptians standing on the firm ground, were thereby enabled to improve and enforce their darts to the utmost.' Here the word might certainly mean to make use of. Mrs. Hutchison (Life of Colonel H.) uses the word in the same way: 'And therefore did not emproove his interest to engage the country in the quarrel.' Swift in one of his letters says: 'There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half its advantage; yet it is better improved than the people.' I find it also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's 'Morals'(1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely American sense, and that is 'a very good improvement for a mill' in the 'State Trials' (Speech of the Attorney. General in the Lady Ivy's case, 1864). In the sense of employ, I could cite a dozen old English authorities.

In running over the fly-leaves of those delightful folios for this reference, I find a note which reminds me of another word, for our abuse of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean lady, It is true I might cite the example of the Italian donna[30] (domina), which has been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as lady among us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same reasons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is villainous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting where bonnets preponderated, that 'the ladies were last at the cross and first at the tomb'! But similar sins were committed before our day and in the mother country. In the 'Harleian Miscellany' (vol. v. p. 455) I find 'this lady is my servant; the hedger's daughter Ioan.' in the 'State Trials' I learn of 'a gentlewoman that lives cook with' such a one, and I hear the Lord High Steward speaking of the wife of a waiter at a bagnio as a gentlewoman! From the same authority, by the way, I can state that our vile habit of chewing tobacco had the somewhat unsavory example of Titus Oates, and I know by tradition from an eye-witness that the elegant General Burgoyne partook of the same vice. Howell, in one of his letters (dated 26 August, 1623), speaks thus of another 'institution' which many have thought American: 'They speak much of that boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt (for so they term him here), that, having taken a place where ther were two Monasteries of Nuns and Friers, he caus'd divers feather-beds to be rip'd, and all the feathers to be thrown in a great Hall, whither the Nuns and Friers were thrust naked with their bodies oil'd and pitch'd, and to tumble among the feathers.' Howell speaks as if the thing were new to him, and I know not if the 'boisterous' Bishop was the inventor of it, but I find it practised in England before our Revolution.

Before leaving the subject, I will add a few comments made from time to time on the margin of Mr. Bartlett's excellent 'Dictionary,' to which I am glad thus publicly to acknowledge my many obligations. 'Avails' is good old English, and the vails of Sir Joshua Reynolds's porter are famous. Averse from, averse to, and in connection with them the English vulgarism 'different to;' the corrupt use of to in these cases, as well as in the Yankee 'he lives to Salem,' 'to home,' and others, must be a very old one, for in the one case it plainly arose from confounding the two French prepositions à, (from Latin ad and ab), and in the other from translating the first of them. I once thought 'different to' a modern vulgarism, and Mr. Thackeray, on my pointing it out to him in 'Henry Esmond,' confessed it to be an anachronism. Mr. Bartlett refers to 'the old writers quoted in Richardson's Dictionary' for 'different to,' though in my edition of that work all the examples are with from. But I find to used invariably by Sir R. Hawkins in Hakluyt. Banjo is a negro corruption of O.E. bandore. Bind-weed can hardly be modern, for wood-bind is old and radically right, intertwining itself through bindan and windan with classic stems. Bobolink: is this a contraction for Bob o' Lincoln? I find bobolynes, in one of the poems attributed to Skelton, where it may be rendered giddy-pate, a term very fit for the bird in his ecstasies. Cruel for great is in Hakluyt. Bowling-alley is in Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse.' Curious, meaning nice, occurs continually in old writers, and is as old as Pecock's 'Repressor.' Droger is O.E. drugger. Educational is in Burke. Feeze is only a form of fizz. To fix, in the American sense, I find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675, 'their arms well fixed and fit for service.' To take the foot in the hand is German; so is to go under. Gundalow is old; I find gundelo in Hakluyt, and gundello in Booth's reprint of the folio Shakespeare of 1623. Gonoff is O.E. gnoffe. Heap is in 'Piers Ploughman' ('and other names an heep'), and in Hakluyt ('seeing such a heap of their enemies ready to devour them'). To liquor is in the 'Puritan' ('call 'em in, and liquor 'em a little'). To loaf: this, I think, is unquestionably German. Laufen is pronounced lofen in some parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another, Ich lauf (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrest, and he began accordingly to saunter up and down, in short, to loaf. To mull, Mr. Bartlett says, means 'to soften, to dispirit,' and quotes from 'Margaret,'--'There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors,'--where it surely cannot mean what he says it does. We have always heard mulling used for stirring, bustling, sometimes in an underhand way. It is a metaphor derived probably from mulling wine, and the word itself must be a corruption of mell, from O.F. mesler. Pair of stairs is in Hakluyt. To pull up stakes is in Curwen's Journal, and therefore pre-Revolutionary. I think I have met with it earlier. Raise: under this word Mr. Bartlett omits 'to raise a house,' that is, the frame of a wooden one, and also the substantive formed from it, a raisin'. Retire for go to bed is in Fielding's 'Amelia.' Setting-poles cannot be new, for I find 'some set [the boats] with long poles' in Hakluyt. Shoulder-hitters: I find that shoulder-striker is old, though I have lost the reference to my authority. Snag is no new word, though perhaps the Western application of it is so; but I find in Gill the proverb, 'A bird in the bag is worth two on the snag.' Dryden has swop and to rights. Trail: Hakluyt has 'many wayes traled by the wilde beastes.'

I subjoin a few phrases not in Mr. Bartlett's book which I have heard. Bald-headed: 'to go it bald-beaded;' in great haste, as where one rushes out without his hat. Bogue: 'I don't git much done 'thout I bogue right in along 'th my men.' Carry: a portage. Cat-nap: a short doze. Cat-stick: a small stick. Chowder-head: a muddle-brain. Cling-john: a soft cake of rye. Cocoanut; the head. Cohees: applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the archaic form Quo' he. Dunnow'z I know: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance. Essence-pedler: a skunk. First-rate and a half. Fish flakes, for drying fish: O.E. fleck (cratis). Gander-party: a social gathering of men only. Gawnicus: a dolt. Hawkin's whetstone: rum; in derision of one Hawkins, a well-known temperance-lecturer. Hyper: to bustle: 'I mus' hyper about an' git tea.' Keeler-tub: one in which dishes are washed. ('And Greasy Joan doth keel the pot.') Lap-tea: where the guests are too many to sit at table. Last of pea-time: to be hard-up. Lose-laid (loose-laid): a weaver's term, and probably English; weak-willed. Malahack: to cut up hastily or awkwardly. Moonglade: a beautiful word: for the track of moonlight on the water. Off-ox: an unmanageable, cross-grained fellow. Old Driver, Old Splitfoot: the Devil. On-hitch: to pull trigger (cf. Spanish disparar). Popular: conceited, Rote: sound of surf before a storm. Rot-gut: cheap whiskey; the word occurs in Heywood's 'English Traveller' and Addison's 'Drummer,' for a poor kind of drink. Seem: it is habitual with the New-Englander to put this verb to strange uses, as 'I can't seem to be suited,' 'I couldn't seem to know him.' Sidehill, for hillside. State-house: this seems an Americanism, whether invented or derived from the Dutch Stad-huys, I know not. Strike and string; from the game of ninepins; to make a strike is to knock down all the pins with one ball, hence it has come to mean fortunate, successful. Swampers: men who break out roads for lumberers. Tormented: euphemism for damned, as, 'not a tormented cent.' Virginia fence, to make a: to walk like a drunken man.

It is always worth while to note down the erratic words or phrases which one meets with in any dialect. They may throw light on the meaning of other words, on the relationship of languages, or even on history itself. In so composite a language as ours they often supply a different form to express a different shade of meaning, as in viol and fiddle, thrid and thread, smother and smoulder, where the l has crept in by a false analogy with would. We have given back to England the excellent adjective lengthy, formed honestly like earthy, drouthy, and others, thus enabling their journalists to characterize our President's messages by a word civilly compromising between long and tedious, so as not to endanger the peace of the two countries by wounding our national sensitiveness to British criticism. Let me give two curious examples of the antiseptic property of dialects at which I have already glanced. Dante has dindi as a childish or low word for danari (money), and in Shropshire small Roman coins are still dug up which the peasants call dinders. This can hardly be a chance coincidence, but seems rather to carry the word back to the Roman soldiery. So our farmers say chuk, chuk, to their pigs, and ciacco is one of the Italian words for hog. When a countryman tells us that he 'fell all of a heap,' I cannot help thinking that he unconsciously points to an affinity between our word tumble, and the Latin tumulus, that is older than most others. I believe that words, or even the mere intonation of them, have an astonishing vitality and power of propagation by the root, like the gardener's pest, quitch-grass,[31] while the application or combination of them may be new. It is in these last that my countrymen seem to me full of humor, invention, quickness of wit, and that sense of subtle analogy which needs only refining to become fancy and imagination. Prosaic as American life seems in many of its aspects to a European, bleak and bare as it is on the side of tradition, and utterly orphaned of the solemn inspiration of antiquity, I cannot help thinking that the ordinary talk of unlettered men among us is fuller of metaphor and of phrases that suggest lively images than that of any other people I have seen. Very many such will be found in Mr. Bartlett's book, though his short list of proverbs at the end seem to me, with one or two exceptions, as un-American as possible. Most of them have no character at all but coarseness, and are quite too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always 'takes off its coat to it,' as a Yankee would say. There are plenty that have a more native and puckery flavor, seedlings from the old stock often, and yet new varieties. One hears such not seldom among us Easterners, and the West would yield many more. 'Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog;' 'Cold as the north side of a Jenooary gravestone by starlight;' 'Hungry as a graven image;' 'Pop'lar as a hen with one chicken;' 'A hen's time ain't much;' 'Quicker 'n greased lightnin';' 'Ther's sech a thing ez bein' tu' (our Yankee paraphrase of [Greek: maeden agan]); hence the phrase tooin' round, meaning a supererogatory activity like that of flies; 'Stingy enough to skim his milk at both eends;' 'Hot as the Devil's kitchen;' 'Handy as a pocket in a shirt;' 'He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon;' 'All deacons are good, but there's odds in deacons' (to deacon berries is to put the largest atop); 'So thievish they hev to take in their stone walls nights;'[32] may serve as specimens. 'I take my tea barfoot,' said a backwoodsman when asked if he would have cream and sugar. (I find barfoot, by the way, in the Coventry Plays.) A man speaking to me once of a very rocky clearing said, 'Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that land,' and I overheard a guide in the woods say to his companions who were urging him to sing, 'Wal, I did sing once, but toons gut invented, an' thet spilt my trade.' Whoever has driven over a stream by a bridge made of slabs will feel the picturesque force of the epithet slab-bridged applied to a fellow of shaky character. Almost every county has some good die-sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into the currency of the whole neighborhood. Such a one described the county jail (the one stone building where all the dwellings are of wood) as 'the house whose underpinnin' come up to the eaves,' and called hell 'the place where they didn't rake up their fires nights.' I once asked a stage-driver if the other side of a hill were as steep as the one we were climbing: 'Steep? chain lightnin' couldn' go down it 'thout puttin' the shoe on!' And this brings me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke before. To me there is something very taking in the negro 'so black that charcoal made a chalk-mark on him,' and the wooden shingle 'painted so like marble that it sank in water,' as if its very consciousness or its vanity had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the painter. I heard a man, in order to give a notion of some very cold weather, say to another that a certain Joe, who had been taking mercury, found a lump of quicksilver in each boot, when he went home to dinner. This power of rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into flesh and blood and the vivid conception of Joe as a human thermometer strike me as showing a poetic sense that may be refined into faculty. At any rate there is humor here, and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper and not the shallower quality. The tendency of humor is always towards overplus of expression, while the very essence of wit is its logical precision. Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had any humor, deceived, perhaps, by their gravity of manner. But this very seriousness is often the outward sign of that humorous quality of the mind which delights in finding an element of identity in things seemingly the most incongruous, and then again in forcing an incongruity upon things identical. Perhaps Captain Hall had no humor himself, and if so he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of what was said to himself? I doubt it, because I happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down the veranda of a country tavern in Massachusetts while the coach changed horses. A thunder-storm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty heavy thunder you have here.' The other, who had divined at a glance his feeling of generous concession to a new country, drawled gravely, 'Waal, we du, considerin' the number of inhabitants.' This, the more I analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. The same man was capable of wit also, when he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was once employed to make some commandment-tables for the parish meeting-house. The parson, a very old man, annoyed him by looking into his workshop every morning, and cautioning him to be very sure to pick out 'clear mahogany without any knots in it.' At last, wearied out, he retorted one day: 'Wal, Dr. B., I guess ef I was to leave the nots out o' some o' the c'man'ments, 't'ould soot you full ez wal!'

If I had taken the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very good company. For, as to the jus et norma loquendi, I agree with Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to Gray. I think that a good rule for style is Galiani's definition of sublime oratory,--'l'art de tout dire sans être mis à la Bastille dans un pays où il est defendu de rien dire.' I profess myself a fanatical purist, but with a hearty contempt for the speech-gilders who affect purism without any thorough, or even pedagogic knowledge of the engendure, growth, and affinities of the noble language about whose mésalliances they profess (like Dean Alford) to be so solicitous. If they had their way--! 'Doch es sey,' says Lessing, 'dass jene gotbische Höflichkeit eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Umganges ist. Soll sie darum unsere Schriften eben so schaal und falsch machen als unsern Umgang?' And Drayton was not far wrong in affirming that

'Tis possible to climb, To kindle, or to slake, Although in Skelton's rhyme.'

Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that when, in the midst of Admiral Rodney's great sea-fight, Sir Charles Douglas said to him, 'Behold, Sir George, the Greeks and Trojans contending for the body of Patroclus!' the Admiral answered, peevishly, 'Damn the Greeks and damn the Trojans! I have other things to think of.' After the battle was won, Rodney thus to Sir Charles, 'Now, my dear friend, I am at the service of your Greeks and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as much of it as you please!' I had some such feeling of the impertinence of our pseudo-classicality when I chose our homely dialect to work in. Should we be nothing, because somebody had contrived to be something (and that perhaps in a provincial dialect) ages ago? and to be nothing by our very attempt to be that something, which they had already been, and which therefore nobody could be again without being a bore? Is there no way left, then, I thought, of being natural, of being naïf, which means nothing more than native, of belonging to the age and country in which you are born? The Yankee, at least, is a new phenomenon; let us try to be that. It is perhaps a pis aller, but is not No Thoroughfare written up everywhere else? In the literary world, things seemed to me very much as they were in the latter half of the last century. Pope, skimming the cream of good sense and expression wherever he could find it, had made, not exactly poetry, but an honest, salable butter of worldly wisdom which pleasantly lubricated some of the drier morsels of life's daily bread, and, seeing this, scores of harmlessly insane people went on for the next fifty years coaxing his buttermilk with the regular up and down of the pentameter churn. And in our day do we not scent everywhere, and even carry away in our clothes against our will, that faint perfume of musk which Mr. Tennyson has left behind him, or worse, of Heine's patchouli? And might it not be possible to escape them by turning into one of our narrow New England lanes, shut in though it were by bleak stone walls on either hand, and where no better flowers were to be gathered than goldenrod and hardhack?

Beside the advantage of getting out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten Eigenschaften kommt die behagliche naive Sprache sehr zu statten. Man findet mehrere sinnlich bedeutende and wohlklingende Worte ... von einem, zwei Buchstaben, Abbreviationen, Contractionen, viele kurze, leichte Sylben, neue Reime, welches, mehr als man glaubt, ein Vortheil für den Dichter ist. Diese Elemente werden durch glückliche Constructionen und lebhafte Formen zu einem Styl zusammengedrängt der zu diesem Zwecke vor unserer Büchersprache grosse Vorzüge hat.' Of course I do not mean to imply that I have come near achieving any such success as the great critic here indicates, but I think the success is there, and to be plucked by some more fortunate hand.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged by the approval of many whose opinions I valued. With a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any vanity, I mention as one of these the late A.H. Clough, who more than any one of those I have known (no longer living), except Hawthorne, impressed me with the constant presence of that indefinable thing we call genius. He often suggested that I should try my hand at some Yankee Pastorals, which would admit of more sentiment and a higher tone without foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I have never completed anything of the kind, but, in this Second Series, both my remembrance of his counsel and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests at stake, led me to venture some passages nearer to what is called poetical than could have been admitted without incongruity into the former series. The time seemed calling to me, with the old poet,--

'Leave, then, your wonted prattle, The oaten reed forbear; For I hear a sound of battle, And trumpets rend the air!'

The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident) was in 'The Courtin'.' While the introduction to the First Series was going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was a blank page left which must be filled. I sat down at once and improvised another fictitious 'notice of the press,' in which, because verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled. Presently I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the balance of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a conclusion upon it in a later edition. Those who had only the first continued to importune me. Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I fused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters' and making a connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings.

As I have seen extracts from what purported to be writings of Mr. Biglow, which were not genuine, I may properly take this opportunity to say, that the two volumes now published contain every line I ever printed under that pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as I can remember, written an anonymous article (elsewhere than in the 'North American Review' and the 'Atlantic Monthly,' during my editorship of it) except a review of Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing,' and, some twenty years ago, a sketch of the antislavery movement in America for an English journal.

A word more on pronunciation. I have endeavored to express this so far as I could by the types, taking such pains as, I fear, may sometimes make the reading harder than need be. At the same time, by studying uniformity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice minute exactness. The emphasis often modifies the habitual sound. For example, for is commonly fer (a shorter sound than fur for far), but when emphatic it always becomes for, as 'wut for!' So too is pronounced like to (as it was anciently spelt), and to like ta (the sound as in the tou of touch), but too, when emphatic, changes into tue, and to, sometimes, in similar cases, into toe, as 'I didn' hardly know wut toe du!' Where vowels come together, or one precedes another following an aspirate, the two melt together, as was common with the older poets who formed their versification on French or Italian models. Drayton is thoroughly Yankee when he says 'I 'xpect,' and Pope when he says, 't' inspire.' With becomes sometimes 'ith, 'ŭth, or 'th, or even disappears wholly where it comes before the, as, 'I went along th' Square' (along with the Squire), the are sound being an archaism which I have noticed also in choir, like the old Scottish quhair.[33] (Herrick has, 'Of flowers ne'er sucked by th' theeving bee.') Without becomes athout and 'thout. Afterwards always retains its locative s, and is pronounced always ahterwurds', with a strong accent on the last syllable. This oddity has some support in the erratic towards' instead of to'wards, which we find in the poets and sometimes hear. The sound given to the first syllable of to'wards, I may remark, sustains the Yankee lengthening of the o in to. At the beginning of a sentence, ahterwurds has the accent on the first syllable; at the end of one, on the last; as, 'ah'terwurds he tol' me,' 'he tol' me ahterwurds'.' The Yankee never makes a mistake in his aspirates. U changes in many words to e, always in such, brush, tush, hush, rush, blush, seldom in much, oftener in trust and crust, never in mush, gust, bust, tumble, or (?) flush, in the latter case probably to avoid confusion with flesh. I have heard flush with the e sound, however. For the same reason, I suspect, never in gush (at least, I never heard it), because we have already one gesh for gash. A and i short frequently become e short. U always becomes o in the prefix un (except unto), and o in return changes to u short in uv for of, and in some words beginning with om. T and d, b and p, v and w, remain intact. So much occurs to me in addition to what I said on this head in the preface to the former volume.

Of course in what I have said I wish to be understood as keeping in mind the difference between provincialisms properly so called and slang. Slang is always vulgar, because it is not a natural but an affected way of talking, and all mere tricks of speech or writing are offensive. I do not think that Mr. Biglow can be fairly charged with vulgarity, and I should have entirely failed in my design, if I had not made it appear that high and even refined sentiment may coexist with the shrewder and more comic elements of the Yankee character. I believe that what is essentially vulgar and mean-spirited in politics seldom has its source in the body of the people, but much rather among those who are made timid by their wealth or selfish by their love of power. A democracy can afford much better than an aristocracy to follow out its convictions, and is perhaps better qualified to build those convictions on plain principles of right and wrong, rather than on the shifting sands of expediency. I had always thought 'Sam Slick' a libel on the Yankee character, and a complete falsification of Yankee modes of speech, though, for aught I know, it may be true in both respects so far as the British provinces are concerned. To me the dialect was native, was spoken all about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish day-laborer was as rare as an American one now. Since then I have made a study of it so far as opportunity allowed. But when I write in it, it is as in a mother tongue, and I am carried back far beyond any studies of it to long-ago noonings in my father's hay-fields, and to the talk of Sam and Job over their jug of blackstrap under the shadow of the ash-tree which still dapples the grass whence they have been gone so long.

But life is short, and prefaces should be. And so, my good friends, to whom this introductory epistle is addressed, farewell. Though some of you have remonstrated with me, I shall never write any more 'Biglow Papers,' however great the temptation,--great especially at the present time,--unless it be to complete the original plan of this Series by bringing out Mr. Sawin as an 'original Union man.' The very favor with which they have been received is a hindrance to me, by forcing on me a self-consciousness from which I was entirely free when I wrote the First Series. Moreover, I am no longer the same careless youth, with nothing to do but live to myself, my books, and my friends, that I was then. I always hated politics, in the ordinary sense of the word, and I am not likely to grow, fonder of them, now that I have learned how rare it is to find a man who can keep principle clear from party and personal prejudice, or can conceive the possibility of another's doing so. I feel as if I could in some sort claim to be an emeritus, and I am sure that political satire will have full justice done it by that genuine and delightful humorist, the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby. I regret that I killed off Mr. Wilbur so soon, for he would have enabled me to bring into this preface a number of learned quotations, which must now go a-begging, and also enabled me to dispersonalize myself into a vicarious egotism. He would have helped me likewise in clearing myself from a charge which I shall briefly touch on, because my friend Mr. Hughes has found it needful to defend me in his preface to one of the English editions of the 'Biglow Papers.' I thank Mr. Hughes heartily for his friendly care of my good name, and were his Preface accessible to my readers here (as I am glad it is not, for its partiality makes me blush), I should leave the matter where he left it. The charge is of profanity, brought in by persons who proclaimed African slavery of Divine institution, and is based (so far as I have heard) on two passages in the First Series--

'An' you've gut to git up airly, Ef you want to take in God,'

and,

'God'll send the bill to you,'

and on some Scriptural illustrations by Mr. Sawin.

Now, in the first place, I was writing under an assumed character, and must talk as the person would whose mouthpiece I made myself. Will any one familiar with the New England countryman venture to tell me that he does not speak of sacred things familiarly? that Biblical allusions (allusions, that is, to the single book with whose language, from his church-going habits, he is intimate) are not frequent on his lips? If so, he cannot have pursued his studies of the character on so many long-ago muster-fields and at so many cattle-shows as I. But I scorn any such line of defence, and will confess at once that one of the things I am proud of in my countrymen is (I am not speaking now of such persons as I have assumed Mr. Sawin to be) that they do not put their Maker away far from them, or interpret the fear of God into being afraid of Him. The Talmudists had conceived a deep truth when they said, that 'all things were in the power of God, save the fear of God;' and when people stand in great dread of an invisible power, I suspect they mistake quite another personage for the Deity. I might justify myself for the passages criticised by many parallel ones from Scripture, but I need not. The Reverend Homer Wilbur's note-books supply me with three apposite quotations. The first is from a Father of the Roman Church, the second from a Father of the Anglican, and the third from a Father of Modern English poetry. The Puritan divines would furnish me with many more such. St. Bernard says, Sapiens nummularius est Deus: nummum fictum non recipiet; 'A cunning money-changer is God: he will take in no base coin.' Latimer says, 'You shall perceive that God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses and taketh us by the ears.' Familiar enough, both of them, one would say! But I should think Mr. Biglow had verily stolen the last of the two maligned passages from Dryden's 'Don Sebastian,' where I find

'And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me!'

And there I leave the matter, being willing to believe that the Saint, the Martyr, and even the Poet, were as careful of God's honor as my critics are ever likely to be.

II. GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS

Act'lly, actually. Air, are. Airth, earth. Airy, area. Aree, area. Arter, after. Ax, ask.

Beller, bellow. Bellowses, lungs. Ben, been. Bile, boil. Bimeby, by and by. Blurt out, to speak bluntly. Bust, burst. Buster, a roistering blade; used also as a general superlative.

Caird, carried. Cairn, carrying. Caleb, a turncoat. Cal'late, calculate. Cass, a person with two lives. Close, clothes. Cockerel, a young cock. Cocktail, a kind of drink; also, _an ornament peculiar to soldiers_. Convention, a place where people are imposed on; a juggler's show. Coons, a cant term for a now defunct party; derived, perhaps, from the fact of their being commonly up a tree. Cornwallis, a sort of muster in masquerade; supposed to have had its origin soon after the Revolution, and to commemorate the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. It took the place of the old Guy Fawkes procession. Crooked stick, a perverse, froward person. Cunnle, a colonel. Cus, a curse; also, a pitiful fellow.

Darsn't, used indiscriminately, either in singular or plural number, for dare not, dares not, and dared not. Deacon off, to give the cue to; derived from a custom, once universal, but now extinct, in our New England Congregational churches. An important part of the office of deacon was to read aloud the hymns given out by the minister, one line at a time, the congregation singing each line as soon as read. Demmercrat, leadin', _one in favor of extending slavery; a free-trade lecturer maintained in the custom-house_. Desput, desperate. Dō', don't. Doos, does. Doughface, a contented lick-spittle; a common variety of Northern politician. Dror, draw. Du, do. Dunno, dno, do not or does not know. Dut, dirt.

Eend, end. Ef, if. Emptins, yeast. Env'y, envoy. Everlasting, an intensive, without reference to duration. Ev'y, every. Ez, as.

Fence, on the; said of one who halts between two opinions; a trimmer. Fer, for. Ferfle, ferful, fearful; also an intensive. Fin', find. Fish-skin, used in New England to clarify coffee. Fix, a difficulty, a nonplus. Foller, folly, to follow. Forrerd, forward. Frum, from. Fur, for Furder, farther. Furrer, furrow. Metaphorically, to draw a straight furrow is to live uprightly or decorously. Fust, first.

Gin, gave. Git, get. Gret, great. Grit, spirit, energy, pluck. Grout, to sulk. Grouty, crabbed, surly. Gum, to impose on. Gump, a foolish fellow, a dullard. Gut, got.

Hed, had. Heern, heard. Hellum, helm. Hendy, handy. Het, heated. Hev, have. Hez, has. Holl, whole. Holt, hold. Huf, hoof. Hull, whole. Hum, home. Humbug, General Taylor's antislavery. Hut, hurt.

Idno, I do not know. In'my, enemy. Insines, ensigns; used to designate both the officer who carries the standard, and the standard itself. Inter, intu, into.

Jedge, judge. Jest, just. Jine, join. Jint, joint. Junk, a fragment of any solid substance.

Keer, care. Kep', kept. Killock, a small anchor. Kin', kin' o', kinder, kind, kind of.

Lawth, loath. Less, let's, let us. Let daylight into, to shoot. Let on, to hint, to confess, to own. Lick, to beat, to overcome. Lights, the bowels. Lily-pads, leaves of the water-lily. Long-sweetening, molasses.

Mash, marsh. Mean, stingy, ill-natured. Min', mind.

Nimepunce, ninepence, twelve and a half cents. Nowers, nowhere.

Offen, often. Ole, old. Ollers, olluz, always. On, of; used before it or them, or at the end of a sentence, as on 't, on 'em, nut ez ever I heerd on. On'y, only. Ossifer, officer (seldom heard).

Peaked, pointed. Peek, to peep. Pickerel, the pike, a fish. Pint, point. Pocket full of rocks, plenty of money. Pooty, pretty. Pop'ler, conceited, popular. Pus, purse. Put out, troubled, vexed.

Quarter, a quarter-dollar. Queen's-arm, a musket.

Resh, rush. Revelee, the réveille. Rile, to trouble. Riled, angry; disturbed, as the sediment in any liquid. Riz, risen. Row, a long row to hoe, a difficult task. Rugged, robust.

Sarse, abuse, impertinence. Sartin, certain. Saxon, sacristan, sexton. Scaliest, worst. Scringe, cringe. Scrouge, to crowd. Sech, such. Set by, valued. Shakes, great, of considerable consequence. Shappoes, chapeaux, cocked-hats. Sheer, share. Shet, shut. Shut, shirt. Skeered, scared. Skeeter, mosquito. Skooting, running, or moving swiftly. Slarterin', slaughtering. Slim, contemptible. Snake, crawled like a snake; but to snake any one out is to track him to his hiding-place; to snake a thing out is to snatch it out. Soffies, sofas. Sogerin', soldiering; a barbarous amusement common among men in the savage state. Som'ers, somewhere. So'st, so as that. Sot, set, obstinate, resolute. Spiles, spoils; objects of political ambition. Spry, active. Steddles, stout stakes driven into the salt marshes, on which the hay-ricks are set, and thus raised out of the reach of high tides. Streaked, uncomfortable, discomfited. Suckle, circle. Sutthin', something. Suttin, certain.

Take on, to sorrow. Talents, talons. Taters, potatoes. Tell, till. Tetch, touch. Tetch tu, to be able; used always after a negative in this sense. Tollable, tolerable. Toot, used derisively for playing on any wind instrument. Thru, through. Thundering, a euphemism common in New England for the profane English expression devilish. Perhaps derived from the belief, common formerly, that thunder was caused by the Prince of the Air, for some of whose accomplishments consult Cotton Mather. Tu, to, too; commonly has this sound when used emphatically, or at the end of a sentence. At other times it has the sound of t in tough, as Ware ye gain' tu? Goin' ta Boston.

Ugly, ill-tempered, intractable. Uncle Sam, United States; the largest boaster of liberty and owner of slaves. Unrizzest, applied to dough or bread; _heavy, most unrisen, or most incapable of rising_.

V-spot, a five-dollar bill. Vally, value.

Wake snakes, to get into trouble. Wal, well; spoken with great deliberation, and sometimes with the a very much flattened, sometimes (but more seldom) very much broadened. Wannut, walnut (hickory). Ware, where. Ware, were. Whopper, an uncommonly large lie; as, that General Taylor is in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. Wig, Whig; a party now dissolved. Wunt, will not. Wus, worse. Wut, what. Wuth, worth; _as, Antislavery perfessions 'fore 'lection aint wuth a Bungtown copper_. Wuz, was, sometimes were.

Yaller, yellow. Yeller, yellow. Yellers, a disease of peach-trees.

Zack, Ole, a second Washington, an antislavery slaveholder; a humane buyer and seller of men and women, a Christian hero generally.

III. INDEX TO BIGLOW PAPERS

A.

A. wants his axe ground. A.B., Information wanted concerning. Abraham (Lincoln), his constitutional scruples. Abuse, an, its usefulness. Adam, eldest son of, respected, his fall, how if he had bitten a sweet apple? Adam, Grandfather, forged will of. Æeneas goes to hell. Æeolus, a seller of money, as is supposed by some. Æeschylus, a saying of. Alligator, a decent one conjectured to be, in some sort, humane. Allsmash, the eternal. Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal, tyrannical act of. Ambrose, Saint, excellent (but rationalistic) sentiment of. 'American Citizen,' new compost so called. American Eagle, a source of inspiration, hitherto wrongly classed, long bill of. Americans bebrothered. Amos cited. Anakim, that they formerly existed, shown. Angels providentially speak French, conjectured to be skilled in all tongues. Anglo-Saxondom, its idea, what. Anglo-Saxon mask. Anglo-Saxon race. Anglo-Saxon verse, by whom carried to perfection. Antiquaries, Royal Society of Northern. Antonius, a speech of, by whom best reported. Antony of Padua, Saint, happy in his hearers. Apocalypse, beast in, magnetic to theologians. Apollo, confessed mortal by his own oracle. Apollyon, his tragedies popular. Appian, an Alexandrian, not equal to Shakespeare as an orator. Applause, popular, the summum bonum. Ararat, ignorance of foreign tongues is an. Arcadian background. Ar c'houskezik, an evil spirit. Ardennes, Wild Boar of, an ancestor of Rev. Mr. Wilbur. Aristocracy, British, their natural sympathies. Aristophanes. Arms, profession of, once esteemed, especially that of gentlemen. Arnold. Ashland. Astor, Jacob, a rich man. Astræa, nineteenth century forsaken by. Athenians, ancient, an institution of. Atherton, Senator, envies the loon. 'Atlantic,' editors of. See Neptune. Atropos, a lady skilful with the scissors. Austin, Saint, prayer of. Austrian eagle split. Aye-aye, the, an African animal, America supposed to be settled by.

B., a Congressman, vide A. Babel, probably the first Congress, gabble-mill. Baby, a low-priced one. Bacon, his rebellion. Bacon, Lord, quoted. Bagowind, Hon. Mr., whether to be damned. Balcom, Elder Joash Q., 2d, founds a Baptist society in Jaalam, A.D. 1830. Baldwin apples. Baratarias, real or imaginary, which most pleasant. Barnum, a great natural curiosity recommended to. Barrels, an inference from seeing. Bartlett, Mr., mistaken. Bâton Rouge, strange peculiarities of laborers at. Baxter, R., a saying of, Bay, Mattysqumscot. Bay State, singular effect produced on military officers by leaving it. Beast, in Apocalypse, a loadstone for whom, tenth horn of, applied to recent events. Beaufort. Beauregard real name Toutant. Beaver brook. Beelzebub, his rigadoon. Behmen, his letters not letters. Behn, Mrs. Aphra, quoted. Sellers, a saloon-keeper, inhumanly refuses credit to a presidential candidate. Belmont. See Woods. Bentley, his heroic method with Milton. Bible, not composed for use of colored persons. Biglow, Ezekiel, his letter to Hon. J.T. Buckingham, never heard of any one named Mandishes, nearly fourscore years old, his aunt Keziah, a notable saying of. Biglow, Hosea, Esquire, excited by composition, a poem by, his opinion of war, wanted at home by Nancy, recommends a forcible enlistment of warlike editors, would not wonder, if generally agreed with, versifies letter of Mr. Sawin, a letter from, his opinion of Mr. Sawin, does not deny fun at Cornwallis, his idea of militia glory, a pun of, is uncertain in regard to people of Boston, had never heard of Mr. John P. Robinson, aliquid sufflaminandus, his poems attributed to a Mr. Lowell, is unskilled in Latin, his poetry maligned by some, his disinterestedness, his deep share in commonweal, his claim to the presidency, his mowing, resents being called Whig, opposed to tariff, obstinate, infected with peculiar notions, reports a speech, emulates historians of antiquity, his character sketched from a hostile point of view, a request of his complied with, appointed at a public meeting in Jaalam, confesses ignorance, in one minute particular, of propriety, his opinion of cocked hats, letter to, called 'Dear Sir,' by a general, probably receives same compliment from two hundred and nine, picks his apples, his crop of Baldwins conjecturally large, his labors in writing autographs, visits the Judge and has a pleasant time, born in Middlesex County, his favorite walks, his gifted pen, born and bred in the country, feels his sap start in spring, is at times unsocial, the school-house where he learned his a b c, falls asleep, his ancestor a Cromwellian colonel, finds it harder to make up his mind as he grows older, wishes he could write a song or two, liable to moods, loves nature and is loved in return, describes some favorite haunts of his, his slain kindred, his speech in March meeting, does not reckon on being sent to Congress, has no eloquence, his own reporter, never abused the South, advises Uncle Sam, is not Boston-mad, bids farewell. Billings, Dea. Cephas. Billy, Extra, demagogus. Birch, virtue of, in instilling certain of the dead languages. Bird of our country sings hosanna. Bjarna Grímólfsson invents smoking. Blind, to go it. Blitz pulls ribbons from his mouth. Bluenose potatoes, smell of, eagerly desired. Bobolink, the. Bobtail obtains a cardinal's hat. Boggs, a Norman name. Bogus Four-Corners Weekly Meridian. Bolles, Mr. Secondary, author of prize peace essay, presents sword to Lieutenant-Colonel, a fluent orator, found to be in error. Bonaparte, N., a usurper. Bonds, Confederate, their specie basis cutlery, when payable (attention, British stockholders!). Boot-trees, productive, where. Boston, people of, supposed educated, has a good opinion of itself. Bowers, Mr. Arphaxad, an ingenious photographic artist. Brahmins, navel-contemplating. Brains, poor substitute for. Bread-trees. Bream, their only business. Brigadier-Generals in militia, devotion of. Brigadiers, nursing ones, tendency in, to literary composition. Brigitta, viridis. Britannia, her trident. Brotherhood, subsides after election. Brown, Mr., engages in an unequal contest. Browne, Sir T., a pious and wise sentiment of, cited and commended. Brutus Four-Corners. Buchanan, a wise and honest man. Buckingham, Hon. J.T., editor of the Boston Courier, letters to, not afraid. Buffalo, a plan hatched there, plaster, a prophecy in regard to. Buffaloes, herd of, probable influence of tracts upon. Bull, John, prophetic allusion to, by Horace, his 'Run,' his mortgage, unfortunate dip of, wool pulled over his eyes. Buncombe, in the other world supposed, mutual privilege, in. Bung, the eternal, thought to be loose. Bungtown Fencibles, dinner of. Burke, Mr., his age of chivalry surpassed. Burleigh, Lord, quoted for something said in Latin long before. Burns, Robert, a Scottish poet. Bushy Brook. Butler, Bishop. Butter in Irish bogs.

C., General, commended for parts, for ubiquity, for consistency, for fidelity, is in favor of war, his curious valuation of principle. Cabbage-heads, the, always in majority. Cabinet, English, makes a blunder. Cæsar, tribute to, his veni, vidi, vici, censured for undue prolixity. Cainites, sect of, supposed still extant. Caleb, a monopoly of his denied, curious notions of, as to meaning of 'shelter,' his definition of Anglo-Saxon, charges Mexicans (not with bayonets but) with improprieties. Calhoun, Hon. J.C., his cow-bell curfew, light of the nineteenth century to be extinguished at sound of, cannot let go apron-string of the Past, his unsuccessful tilt at Spirit of the Age, the Sir Kay of modern chivalry, his anchor made of a crooked pin, mentioned. Calyboosus, carcer. Cambridge Platform, use discovered for. Canaan in quarterly instalments. Canary Islands. Candidate, presidential, letter from, smells a rat, against a bank, takes a revolving position, opinion of pledges, is a periwig, fronts south by north, qualifications of, lessening, wooden leg (and head) useful to. Cape Cod clergyman, what, Sabbath-breakers, perhaps, reproved by. Captains, choice of, important. Carolina, foolish act of. Caroline, case of. Carpini, Father John de Piano, among the Tartars. Cartier, Jacques, commendable zeal of. Cass, General, clearness of his merit, limited popularity at 'Bellers's.' Castles, Spanish, comfortable accommodations in. Cato, letters of, so called, suspended naso adunco. C.D., friends of, can hear of him. Century, nineteenth. Chalk egg, we are proud of incubation of. Chamberlayne, Doctor, consolatory citation from. Chance, an apothegm concerning, is impatient. Chaplain, a one-horse, stern-wheeled variety of. Chappelow on Job, a copy of, lost. Charles I., accident to his neck. Charles II., his restoration, how brought about. Cherubusco, news of, its effects on English royalty. Chesterfield no letter-writer. Chief Magistrate, dancing esteemed sinful by. Children naturally speak Hebrew. China-tree. Chinese, whether they invented gunpowder before the Christian era not considered. Choate hired. Christ, shuffled into Apocrypha, conjectured to disapprove of slaughter and pillage, condemns a certain piece of barbarism. Christianity, profession of, plebeian, whether. Christian soldiers, perhaps inconsistent whether. Cicero, an opinion of, disputed. Cilley, Ensign, author of nefarious sentiment. Cimex lectularius. Cincinnati, old, law and order party of. Cincinnatus, a stock character in modern comedy. Civilization, progress of, an alias, rides upon a powder-cart. Clergymen, their ill husbandry, their place in processions, some, cruelly banished for the soundness of their lungs. Clotho, a Grecian lady. Cocked-hat, advantages of being knocked into. College of Cardinals, a strange one. Colman, Dr. Benjamin, anecdote of. Colored folks, curious national diversion of kicking. Colquitt, a remark of, acquainted with some principles of aerostation. Columbia, District of, its peculiar climatic effects, not certain that Martin is for abolishing it. Columbiads, the true fifteen-inch ones. Columbus, a Paul Pry of genius, will perhaps be remembered, thought by some to have discovered America. Columby. Complete Letter-Writer, fatal gift of. Compostella, Saint James of, seen. Compromise system, the, illustrated. Conciliation, its meaning. Congress, singular consequence of getting into, a stumbling-block. Congressional debates found instructive. Constituents, useful for what, 194. Constitution, trampled on, to stand upon what. Convention, what. Convention, Springfield. Coon, old, pleasure in skinning. Co-operation defined. Coppers, caste in picking up of. Copres, a monk, his excellent method of arguing. Corduroy-road, a novel one. Corner-stone, patent safety. Cornwallis, a, acknowledged entertaining. Cotton loan, its imaginary nature. Cotton Mather, summoned as witness. Country, our, its boundaries more exactly defined, right or wrong, nonsense about, exposed, lawyers, sent providentially. Earth's biggest, gets a soul. Courier, The Boston, an unsafe print. Court, General, farmers sometimes attain seats in. Court, Supreme. Courts of law, English, their orthodoxy. Cousins, British, our ci-devant. Cowper, W., his letters commended. Credit defined. Creditors all on Lincoln's side. Creed, a safe kind of. Crockett, a good rule of. Cruden, Alexander, his Concordance. Crusade, first American. Cuneiform script recommended. Curiosity distinguishes man from brutes. Currency, Ethiopian, inconveniences of. Cynthia, her hide as a means of conversion.

Dædalus first taught men to sit on fences. Daniel in the lion's den. Darkies dread freedom. Davis, Captain Isaac, finds out something to his advantage. Davis, Jefferson (a new species of martyr), has the latest ideas on all subjects, superior in financiering to patriarch Jacob, is some, carries Constitution in his hat, knows how to deal with his Congress, astonished at his own piety, packed up for Nashville, tempted to believe his own lies, his snake egg, blood on his hands. Davis, Mr., of Mississippi, a remark of his. Day and Martin, proverbially "on hand." Death, rings down curtain. De Bow (a famous political economist). Delphi, oracle of, surpassed, alluded to. Democracy, false notion of, its privileges. Demosthenes. Destiny, her account. Devil, the, unskilled in certain Indian tongues, letters to and from. Dey of Tripoli. Didymus, a somewhat voluminous grammarian. Dighton rock character might be usefully employed in some emergencies. Dimitry Bruisgins, fresh supply of. Diogenes, his zeal for propagating certain variety of olive. Dioscuri, imps of the pit. District-Attorney, contemptible conduct of one. Ditchwater on brain, a too common ailing. Dixie, the land of. Doctor, the, a proverbial saying of. Doe, Hon. Preserved, speech of. Donatus, profane wish of. Doughface, yeast-proof. Downing Street. Drayton, a martyr, north star, culpable for aiding, whether. Dreams, something about. Dwight, President, a hymn unjustly attributed to. D.Y., letter of.

Eagle, national, the late, his estate administered upon. Earth, Dame, a peep at her housekeeping. Eating words, habit of, convenient in time of famine. Eavesdroppers. Echetlæus. Editor, his position, commanding pulpit of, large congregation of, name derived from what, fondness for mutton, a pious one, his creed, a showman, in danger of sudden arrest, without bail. Editors, certain ones who crow like cockerels. Edwards, Jonathan. Eggs, bad, the worst sort of. Egyptian darkness, phial of, use for. Eldorado, Mr. Sawin sets sail for. Elizabeth, Queen, mistake of her ambassador. Emerson. Emilius, Paulus. Empedocles. Employment, regular, a good thing. Enfield's Speaker, abuse of. England, late Mother-Country, her want of tact, merits as a lecturer, her real greatness not to be forgotten, not contented (unwisely) with her own stock of fools, natural maker of international law, her theory thereof, makes a particularly disagreeable kind of sarse, somewhat given to bullying, has respectable relations, ought to be Columbia's friend, anxious to buy an elephant. Epaulets, perhaps no badge of saintship. Epimenides, the Cretan Rip Van Winkle. Episcopius, his marvellous oratory. Eric, king of Sweden, his cap. Ericsson, his caloric engine. Eriksson, Thorwald, slain by natives. Essence-peddlers. Ethiopian, the, his first need. Evangelists, iron ones. Eyelids, a divine shield against authors. Ezekiel, text taken from. Ezekiel would make a poor figure at a caucus.

Faber, Johannes. Factory-girls, expected rebellion of. Facts, their unamiability, compared to an old-fashioned stage-coach. Falstaffii, legio. Family-trees, fruit of jejune, a primitive forest of. Faneuil Hall, a place where persons tap themselves for a species of hydrocephalus, a bill of fare mendaciously advertised in. Father of country, his shoes. Female Papists, cut off in the midst of idolatry. Fenianorum, rixæ. Fergusson, his 'Mutual Complaint,' etc. F.F., singular power of their looks. Fire, we all like to play with it. Fish, emblematic, but disregarded, where. Fitz, Miss Parthenia Almira, a sheresiarch. Flam, President, untrustworthy. Flirt, Mrs. Flirtilla, elegy on death of. Floyd, a taking character. Floydus, furcifer. Fly-leaves, providential increase of. Fool, a cursed, his inalienable rights. Foote, Mr., his taste for field-sports. Fourier, a squinting toward. Fourth of July ought to know its place. Fourth of Julys, boiling. France, a strange dance begun in, about to put her foot in it. Friar John. Fuller, Dr. Thomas, a wise saying of. Funnel, old, hurraing in. Gabriel, his last trump, its pressing nature. Gardiner, Lieutenant Lion. Gawain, Sir, his amusements. Gay, S.H., Esquire, editor of National Antislavery Standard, letter to. Geese, how infallibly to make swans of. Gentleman, high-toned Southern, scientifically classed. Getting up early. Ghosts, some, presumed fidgety, (but see Stilling's Pneumatology.) Giants formerly stupid. Gideon, his sword needed. Gift of tongues, distressing case of. Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. Globe Theatre, cheap season-ticket to. Glory, a perquisite of officers, her account with B. Sawin, Esq. Goatsnose, the celebrated interview with. God, the only honest dealer. Goings, Mehetable, unfounded claim of, disproved. Gomara, has a vision, his relationship to the Scarlet Woman. Governor, our excellent. Grandfather, Mr. Biglow's, safe advice of. Grandfathers, the, knew something. Grand jurors, Southern, their way of finding a true bill. Grantus, Dux. Gravestones, the evidence of Dissenting ones held doubtful. Gray's letters are letters. Great horn spoon, sworn by. Greeks, ancient, whether they questioned candidates. Green Man, sign of.

Habeas corpus, new mode of suspending it. Hail Columbia, raised. Ham, sandwich, an orthodox (but peculiar) one, his seed, their privilege in the Bible, immoral justification of. Hamlets, machine for making. Hammon. Hampton Roads, disaster in. Hannegan, Mr., something said by. Harrison, General, how preserved. Hat, a leaky one. Hat-trees in full bearing. Hawkins, his whetstone. Hawkins, Sir John, stout, something he saw. Hawthorne. Hay-rick, electrical experiments with. Headlong, General. Hell, the opinion of some concerning, breaks loose. Henry the Fourth of England, a Parliament of, how named. Hens, self-respect attributed to. Herb, the Circean. Herbert, George, next to David. Hercules, his second labor probably what. Hermon, fourth-proof dew of. Herodotus, story from. Hesperides, an inference from. Hessians, native American soldiers. Hickory, Old, his method. Higgses, their natural aristocracy of feeling. Hitchcock, Doctor. Hitchcock, the Rev. Jeduthun, colleague of Mr. Wilbur, letter from, containing notices of Mr. Wilbur, ditto, enclosing macaronic verses, teacher of high-school. Hogs, their dreams. Holden, Mr. Shearjashub, Preceptor of Jaalam Academy, his knowledge of Greek limited, a heresy of his, leaves a fund to propagate it. Holiday, blind man's. Hollis, Ezra, goes to Cornwallis. Hollow, why men providentially so constructed. Holmes, Dr., author of 'Annals of America.,' Homer, a phrase of, cited. Homer, eldest son of Mr. Wilbur. Homers, democratic ones, plums left for. Hotels, big ones, humbugs. House, a strange one described. Howell, James, Esq., story told by, letters of, commended. Huldah, her bonnet. Human rights out of order on the floor of Congress. Humbug, ascription of praise to, generally believed in. Husbandry, instance of bad.

Icarius, Penelope's father. Icelander, a certain uncertain. Idea, the Southern, its natural foes, the true American. Ideas, friction ones unsafe. Idyl defined. Indecision, mole-blind. Infants, prattlings of, curious observation concerning. Information wanted (universally, but especially at page). Ishmael, young.

Jaalam, unjustly neglected by great events. Jaalam Centre, Anglo-Saxons unjustly suspected by the young ladies there "Independent Blunderbuss," strange conduct of editor of, public meeting at, meeting-house ornamented with imaginary clock. Jaalam, East Parish of. Jaalam Point, lighthouse on, charge of, prospectively offered to Mr. H. Biglow. Jacobus, rex. Jakes, Captain, reproved for avarice. Jamaica. James the Fourth, of Scots, experiment by. Jarnagin, Mr., his opinion of the completeness of Northern education. Jefferson, Thomas, well-meaning, but injudicious. Jeremiah, hardly the best guide in modern politics. Jerome, Saint, his list of sacred writers. Jerusha, ex-Mrs. Sawin. Job, Book of, Chappelow on. Johnson, Andrew, as he used to be, as he is: see Arnold, Benedict. Johnson, Mr., communicates some intelligence. Jonah, the inevitable destiny of, probably studied internal economy of the cetacea, his gourd, his unanimity in the whale. Jonathan to John. Jortin, Dr., cited. Journals, British, their brutal tone. Juanito. Judea, everything not known there, not identical with A.D. Judge, the, his garden, his hat covers many things. Juvenal, a saying of.

Kay, Sir, the, of modern chivalry. Key, brazen one. Keziah, Aunt, profound observation of. Kinderhook. Kingdom Come, march to, easy. Königsmark, Count.

Lablache surpassed. Lacedæmonians banish a great talker. Lamb, Charles, his epistolary excellence. Latimer, Bishop, episcopizes Satan. Latin tongue, curious information concerning. Launcelot, Sir, a trusser of giants formerly, perhaps would find less sport therein now. Laura, exploited. Learning, three-story. Letcher, de la vieille roche. Letcherus, nebulo. Letters, classed, their shape, of candidates, often fatal. Lettres Cabalistiques, quoted. Lewis, Dixon H., gives his view of slavery. Lewis Philip, a scourger of young native Americans, commiserated (though not deserving it). Lexington. Liberator, a newspaper, condemned by implication. Liberty, unwholesome for men of certain complexions. Licking, when constitutional. Lignum vitæ, a gift of this valuable wood proposed. Lincoln, too shrewd to hang Mason and Slidell. Literature, Southern, its abundance. Little Big Boosy River. Longinus recommends swearing, note (Fuseli did same thing). Long-sweetening recommended. Lord, inexpensive way of lending to. Lords, Southern, prove pur sang by ablution. Lost arts, one sorrowfully added to list of. Louis the Eleventh of France, some odd trees of his. Lowell, Mr. J.R., unaccountable silence of. Luther, Martin, his first appearance as Europa. Lyæus. Lyttelton, Lord, his letters an imposition.

Macrobii, their diplomacy. Magoffin, a name naturally noble. Mahomet, got nearer Sinai than some. Mahound, his filthy gobbets. Mandeville, Sir John, quoted. Mangum, Mr., speaks to the point. Manichæan, excellently confuted. Man-trees, grow where. Maori chieftains. Mapes, Walter, quoted, paraphrased. Mares'-nests, finders of, benevolent. Marius, quoted. Marshfield. Martin, Mr. Sawin used to vote for him. Mason and Dixon's line, slaves north of. Mason an F.F.V. Mason and Slidell, how they might have been made at once useful and ornamental. Mass, the, its duty defined. Massachusetts, on her knees, something mentioned in connection with, worthy the attention of tailors, citizen of, baked, boiled, and roasted (nefandum!). Masses, the, used as butter by some. Maury, an intellectual giant, twin birth with Simms (which see). Mayday a humbug. M.C., an invertebrate animal. Me, Mister, a queer creature. Mechanics' Fair, reflections suggested at. Medium, ardentispirituale. Mediums, spiritual, dreadful liars. Memminger, old. Mentor, letters of, dreary. Mephistopheles at a nonplus. Mexican blood, its effect in raising price of cloth. Mexican polka. Mexicans, charged with various breaches of etiquette, kind feelings beaten into them. Mexico, no glory in overcoming. Middleton, Thomas, quoted. Military glory spoken disrespectfully of, militia treated still worse. Milk-trees, growing still. Mill, Stuart, his low ideas. Millenniums apt to miscarry. Millspring. Mills for manufacturing gabble, how driven. Mills, Josiah's. Milton, an unconscious plagiary, a Latin verse of, cited, an English poet, his 'Hymn of the Nativity.' Missionaries, useful to alligators, culinary liabilities of. Missions, a profitable kind of. Monarch, a pagan, probably not favored in philosophical experiments. Money-trees, desirable, that they once existed shown to be variously probable. Montaigne. Montaigne, a communicative old Gascon. Monterey, battle of, its singular chromatic effect on a species of two-headed eagle. Montezuma, licked. Moody, Seth, his remarkable gun, his brother Asaph. Moquis Indians, praiseworthy custom of. Moses, held up vainly as an example, construed by Joe Smith, (not, A.J. Moses) prudent way of following. Muse invoked. Myths, how to interpret readily.

Naboths, Popish ones, how distinguished. Nana Sahib. Nancy, presumably Mrs. Biglow. Napoleon III., his new chairs. Nation, rights of, proportionate to size, young, its first needs. National pudding, its effect on the organs of speech, a curious physiological fact. Negroes, their double usefulness, getting too current. Nephelim, not yet extinct. New England, overpoweringly honored, wants no more speakers, done brown by whom, her experience in beans beyond Cicero's. Newspaper, the, wonderful, a strolling theatre, thoughts suggested by tearing wrapper of, a vacant sheet, a sheet in which a vision was let down, wrapper to a bar of soap, a cheap impromptu platter. New World, apostrophe to. New York, letters from, commended. Next life, what. Nicotiana Tabacum, a weed. Niggers, area of abusing, extended, Mr. Sawin's opinions of. Ninepence a day low for murder. No, a monosyllable, hard to utter. Noah enclosed letter in bottle, probably. Noblemen, Nature's. Nornas, Lapland, what. North, the, has no business, bristling, crowded off roost, its mind naturally unprincipled. North Bend, geese inhumanly treated at, mentioned. North star, a proposition to indict. Northern Dagon. Northmen, gens inclytissima. Nôtre Dame de la Haine. Now, its merits. Nowhere, march to.

O'Brien, Smith. Off ox. Officers, miraculous transformation in character of, Anglo-Saxon, come very near being anathematized. Old age, an advantage of. Old One, invoked. Onesimus made to serve the cause of impiety. O'Phace, Increase D., Esq., speech of. Opinion, British, its worth to us. Opinions, certain ones compared to winter flies. Oracle of Fools, still respectfully consulted. Orion becomes commonplace. Orrery, Lord, his letters (lord!). Ostracism, curious species of. Ovidii Nasonis, carmen supposititium.

Palestine. Paley, his Evidences. Palfrey, Hon. J.G., (a worthy representative of Massachusetts). Pantagruel, recommends a popular oracle. Panurge, his interview with Goatsnose. Paper, plausible-looking, wanted. Papists, female, slain by zealous Protestant bomb-shell. Paralipomenon, a man suspected of being. Paris, liberal principles safe as far away as. Parliamentum Indoctorum sitting in permnence. Past, the, a good nurse. Patience, sister, quoted. Patriarchs, the, illiterate. Patricius, brogipotens. Paynims, their throats propagandistically cut. Penelope, her wise choice. People, soft enough, want correct ideas, the, decline to be Mexicanized. Pepin, King. Pepperell General, quoted. Pequash Junction. Periwig. Perley, Mr. Asaph, has charge of bass-viol. Perseus, King, his avarice. Persius, a pithy saying of. Pescara, Marquis, saying of. Peter, Saint, a letter of (post-mortem). Petrarch, exploited Laura. Petronius. Pettibone, Jabez, bursts up. Pettus came over with Wilhelmus Conquistor. Phaon. Pharaoh, his lean kine. Pharisees, opprobriously referred to. Philippe, Louis, in pea-jacket. Phillips, Wendell, catches a Tartar. Phlegyas quoted. Phrygian language, whether Adam spoke it. Pickens, a Norman name. Pilcoxes, genealogy of. Pilgrim Father, apparition of. Pilgrims, the. Pillows, constitutional. Pine-trees, their sympathy. Pinto, Mr., some letters of his commended. Pisgah, an impromptu one. Platform, party, a convenient one. Plato, supped with, his man. Pleiades, the, not enough esteemed. Pliny, his letters not admired. Plotinus, a story of. Plymouth Rock, Old, a Convention wrecked on. Poets apt to become sophisticated. Point Tribulation, Mr. Sawin wrecked on. Poles, exile, whether crop of beans depends on. Polk, nomen gentile. Polk, President, synonymous with our country, censured, in danger of being crushed. Polka, Mexican. Pomp, a runaway slave, his nest, hypocritically groans like white man, blind to Christian privileges, his society valued at fifty dollars, his treachery, takes Mr. Sawin prisoner, cruelly makes him work, puts himself illegally under his tuition, dismisses him with contumelious epithets, a negro. Pontifical bull, a tamed one. Pope, his verse excellent. Pork, refractory in boiling. Portico, the. Portugal, Alphonso the Sixth of, a monster. Post, Boston, shaken visibly, bad guide-post, too swift, edited by a colonel, who is presumed officially in Mexico, referred to. Pot-hooks, death in. Power, a first-class, elements of. Preacher, an ornamental symbol, a breeder of dogmas, earnestness of, important. Present, considered as an annalist, not long wonderful. President, slaveholding natural to, must be a Southern resident, must own a nigger, the, his policy, his resemblance to Jackson. Princes mix cocktails. Principle, exposure spoils it. Principles, bad, when less harmful, when useless. Professor, Latin, in College, Scaliger. Prophecies, fulfilment of. Prophecy, a notable one. Prospect Hill. Providence has a natural life-preserver. Proviso, bitterly spoken of. Prudence, sister, her idiosyncratic teapot. Psammeticus, an experiment of. Psyche, poor. Public opinion, a blind and drunken guide, nudges Mr. Wilbur's elbow, ticklers of. Punkin Falls 'Weekly Parallel.' Putnam, General Israel, his lines. Pythagoras a bean-hater, why. Pythagoreans, fish reverenced by, why.

Quid, ingens nicotianum. Quixote, Don.

Rafn, Professor. Rag, one of sacred college. Rantoul, Mr., talks loudly, pious reason for not enlisting. Recruiting sergeant, Devil supposed the first. Religion, Southern, its commercial advantages. Representatives' Chamber. Rhinothism, society for promoting. Rhyme, whether natural not considered. Rib, an infrangible one. Richard the First of England, his Christian fervor. Riches conjectured to have legs as well as wings. Ricos Hombres. Ringtail Rangers. Roanoke Island. Robinson, Mr. John P., his opinions fully stated. Rocks, pocket full of. Roosters in rainy weather, their misery. Rotation insures mediocrity and inexperience. Rough and ready, a Wig, a kind of scratch. Royal Society, American fellows of. Rum and water combine kindly. Runes resemble bird-tracks. Runic inscriptions, their different grades of unintelligibility and consequent value. Russell, Earl, is good enough to expound our Constitution for us. Russian eagle turns Prussian blue. Ryeus, Bacchi epitheton.

Sabbath, breach of. Sabellianism, one accused of. Sailors, their rights how won. Saltillo, unfavorable view of. Salt-river, in Mexican, what. Samuel, avunculus, 271. Samuel, Uncle, riotous, yet has qualities demanding reverence, a good provider for his family, an exorbitant bill of, makes some shrewd guesses, expects his boots, 245. Sansculottes, draw their wine before drinking. Santa Anna, his expensive leg. Sappho, some human nature in. Sassycus, an impudent Indian. Satan, never wants attorneys, an expert talker by signs, a successful fisherman with little or no bait, cunning fetch of, dislikes ridicule, ought not to have credit of ancient oracles, his worst pitfall. Satirist, incident to certain dangers. Savages, Canadian, chance of redemption offered to. Sawin, B., Esquire, his letter not written in verse, a native of Jaalam not regular attendant on Rev. Mr. Wilbur's preaching, a fool, his statements trustworthy, his ornithological tastes, letters from, his curious discovery in regard to bayonets, displays proper family pride, modestly confesses himself less wise than the Queen of Sheba, the old Adam in, peeps out, a miles emeritus, is made text for a sermon, loses a leg, an eye, left hand, four fingers of right hand, has six or more ribs broken, a rib of his infrangible, allows a certain amount of preterite greenness in himself, his share of spoil limited, his opinion of Mexican climate, acquires property of a certain sort, his experience of glory, stands sentry, and puns thereupon, undergoes martyrdom in some of its most painful forms, enters the candidating business, modestly states the (avail) abilities which qualify him for high political station, has no principles, a peace-man, unpledged, has no objections to owning peculiar property, but would not like to monopolize the truth, his account with glory, a selfish motive hinted in, sails for Eldorado, shipwrecked on a metaphorical promontory, parallel between, and Rev. Mr. Wilbur (not Plutarchian), conjectured to have bathed in river Selemnus, loves plough wisely, but not too well, a foreign mission probably expected by, unanimously nominated for presidency, his country's father-in-law, nobly emulates Cincinnatus, is not a crooked stick, advises his adherents, views of, on present state of politics, popular enthusiasm for, at Bellers's, and its disagreeable consequences, inhuman treatment of, by Bellers, his opinion of the two parties, agrees with Mr. Webster, his antislavery zeal, his proper self respect, his unaffected piety, his not intemperate temperance, a thrilling adventure of, his prudence and economy, bound to Captain Jakes, but regains his freedom, is taken prisoner, ignominiously treated, his consequent resolution. Sawin, Honorable B. O'F., a vein of humor suspected in, gets into an enchanted castle, finds a wooden leg better in some respects than a living one, takes something hot, his experience of Southern hospitality, water-proof internally, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, his liberal-handedness, gets his arrears of pension, marries the widow Shannon, confiscated, finds in himself a natural necessity of income, his missionary zeal, never a stated attendant on Mr. Wilbur's preaching, sang bass in choir, prudently avoided contribution toward bell, abhors a covenant of works, if saved at all, must be saved genteelly, reports a sermon, experiences religion, would consent to a dukedom, converted to unanimity, sound views of, makes himself an extempore marquis, extract of letter from, his opinion of Paddies, of Johnson. Sayres, a martyr. Scaliger, saying of. Scarabæus pilularius. Scott, General, his claims to the presidency. Scrimgour, Rev. Shearjashub. Scythians, their diplomacy commended. Sea, the wormy. Seamen, colored, sold. Secessia, licta. Secession, its legal nature defined. Secret, a great military. Selemnus, a sort of Lethean river. Senate, debate in, made readable. Seneca, saying of, another, overrated by a saint (but see Lord Bolingbroke's opinion of, in a letter to Dean Swift), his letters not commended, a son of Rev. Mr. Wilbur, quoted. Serbonian bog of literature. Sermons, some pitched too high. Seward, Mister, the late, his gift of prophecy, needs stiffening, misunderstands parable of fatted calf. Sextons, demand for, heroic official devotion of one. Seymour, Governor. Shakespeare, a good reporter. Shaking fever, considered as an employment. Sham, President, honest. Shannon, Mrs., a widow, her family and accomplishments, has tantrums, her religious views, her notions of a moral and intellectual being, her maidan name, her blue blood. Sheba, Queen of. Sheep, none of Rev. Mr. Wilbur's turned wolves. Shem, Scriptural curse of. Shiraz Centre, lead-mine at. Shirley, Governor. Shoddy, poor covering for outer or inner man. Shot at sight, privilege of being. Show, natural to love it. Silver spoon born in Democracy's mouth, what. Simms, an intellectual giant, twin-birth with Maury (which see). Sin, wilderness of, modern, what. Sinai suffers outrages. Skim-milk has its own opinions. Skin, hole in, strange taste of some for. Skippers, Yankee, busy in the slave-trade. Slaughter, whether God strengthen us for. Slaughterers and soldiers compared. Slaughtering nowadays is slaughtering. Slavery, of no color, corner-stone of liberty, also keystone, last crumb of Eden, a Jonah, an institution, a private State concern. Slidell, New York trash. Sloanshure, Habakkuk, Esquire, President of Jaalam Bank. Smith, Joe, used as a translation. Smith, John, an interesting character. Smith, Mr., fears entertained for, dined with. Smith, N.B., his magnanimity. Smithius, dux. Soandso, Mr., the great, defines his position. Soft-heartedness, misplaced, is soft-headedness. Sol, the fisherman, soundness of respiratory organs hypothetically attributed to. Soldiers, British, ghosts of, insubordinate. Solomon, Song of, portions of it done into Latin verse by Mr. Wilbur. Solon, a saying of. Soul, injurious properties of. South, its natural eloquence, facts have a mean spite against. South Carolina, futile attempt to anchor, her pedigrees. Southern men, their imperfect notions of labor, of subscriptions, too high pressure, prima facie noble. Spanish, to walk, what. Speech-making, an abuse of gift of speech. Spirit-rapping does not repay the spirits engaged in it. Split-Foot, Old, made to squirm. Spring, described. Star, north, subject to indictment, whether. Statesman, a genuine, defined. Stearns, Othniel, fable by. Stone Spike, the. Store, cheap cash, a wicked fraud. Strong, Governor Caleb, a patriot. Style, the catalogue. Sumter, shame of. Sunday should mind its own business. Swearing commended as a figure of speech. Swett, Jethro C., his fall. Swift, Dean, threadbare saying of.

Tag, elevated to the Cardinalate. Taney, C.J. Tarandfeather, Rev. Mr. Tarbox, Shearjashub, first white child born in Jaalam. Tartars, Mongrel. Taxes, direct, advantages of. Taylor, General, greased by Mr. Choate. Taylor zeal, its origin. Teapots, how made dangerous. Ten, the upper. Tesephone, banished for long-windedness. Thacker, Rev. Preserved, D.D. Thanks get lodged. Thanksgiving, Feejee. Thaumaturgus, Saint Gregory, letter of, to the Devil. Theleme, Abbey of. Theocritus, the inventor of idyllic poetry Theory, defined. Thermopylæs, too many. 'They'll say' a notable bully. Thirty-nine articles might be made serviceable. Thor, a foolish attempt of. Thoreau. Thoughts, live ones characterized. Thumb, General Thomas, a valuable member of society. Thunder, supposed in easy circumstances. Thynne, Mr., murdered. Tibullus. Time, an innocent personage to swear by, a scene-shifter. Tinkham, Deacon Pelatiah, story concerning, not told, alluded to, does a very sensible thing. Toms, Peeping. Toombs, a doleful sound from. Trees, various kinds of extraordinary ones. Trowbridge, William, mariner, adventure of. Truth and falsehood start from same point, truth invulnerable to satire, compared to a river, of fiction sometimes truer than fact, told plainly, passim. Tuileries, exciting scene at, front parlor of. Tully, a saying of. Tunnel, Northwest-Passage, a poor investment. Turkey-Buzzard Boost. Tuscaloosa. Tutchel, Rev. Jonas, a Sadducee. Tweedledee, gospel according to. Tweedledum, great principles of.

_Tylerus, juvenis insignis, porphyrogenitus, Iohanides, flito celeris, bene titus_. Tyrants, European, how made to tremble.

Ulysses, husband of Penelope, borrows money, (for full particulars of, see Homer and Dante) rex. Unanimity, new ways of producing. Union, its hoops off, its good old meaning. Universe, its breeching. University, triennial catalogue of. Us, nobody to be compared with, and see World, passim.

Van Buren, fails of gaining Mr. Sawin's confidence, his son John reproved. Van, Old, plan to set up. Vattel, as likely to fall on your toes as on mine. Venetians invented something once. Vices, cardinal, sacred conclave of. Victoria, Queen, her natural terror, her best carpets. Vinland. Virgin, the, letter of, to Magistrates of Messina. Virginia, descripta. Virginians, their false heraldry. Voltaire, esprit de. Vratz, Captain, a Pomeranian, singular views of.

Wachuset Mountain. Wait, General. Wales, Prince of, calls Brother Jonathan consanguineus noster, but had not, apparently, consulted the Garter King at Arms. Walpole, Horace, classed, his letters praised. Waltham Plain, Cornwallis at. Walton, punctilious in his intercourse with fishes. War, abstract, horrid, its hoppers, grist of, what. Warren, Fort. Warton, Thomas, a story of. Washington, charge brought against. Washington, city of, climatic influence of, on coats, mentioned, grand jury of. Washingtons, two hatched at a time by improved machine. Watchmanus, noctivagus. Water, Taunton, proverbially weak. Water-trees. Weakwash, a name fatally typical. Webster, his unabridged quarto, its deleteriousness. Webster, some sentiments of, commended by Mr. Sawin. Westcott, Mr., his horror. Whig party has a large throat, but query as to swallowing spurs. White-house. Wickliffe, Robert, consequences of his bursting. Wife-trees. Wilbur, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox), an invariable rule of, her profile, tribute to. Wilbur, Rev. Homer, A.M., consulted, his instructions to his flock, a proposition of his for Protestant bomb-shells, his elbow nudged, his notions of satire, some opinions of his quoted with apparent approval by Mr. Biglow, geographical speculations of, a justice of the peace, a letter of, a Latin pun of, runs against a post without injury, does not seek notoriety (whatever some malignants may affirm), fits youths for college, a chaplain during late war with England, a shrewd observation of, some curious speculations of, his Martello-tower, forgets he is not in pulpit, extracts from sermon of, interested in John Smith, his views concerning present state of letters, a stratagem of, ventures two hundred and fourth interpretation of Beast in Apocalypse, christens Hon. B. Sawin, then an infant, an addition to our sylva proposed by, curious and instructive adventure of, his account with an unnatural uncle, his uncomfortable imagination, speculations concerning Cincinnatus, confesses digressive tendency of mind, goes to work on sermon (not without fear that his readers will dub him with a reproachful epithet like that with which Isaac Allerton, a Mayflower man, revenges himself on a delinquent debtor of his, calling him in his will, and thus holding him up to posterity, as 'John Peterson, THE BORE'), his modesty, disclaims sole authorship of Mr. Biglow's writings, his low opinion of prepensive autographs, a chaplain in 1812, cites a heathen comedian, his fondness for the Book of Job, preaches a Fast-Day discourse, is prevented from narrating a singular occurrence, is presented with a pair of new spectacles, his church services indecorously sketched by Mr. Sawin, hopes to decipher a Runic inscription, a fable by, deciphers Runic inscription, his method therein, is ready to reconsider his opinion of tobacco, his opinion of the Puritans, his death, born in Pigsgusset, letter of Rev. Mr. Hitchcock concerning, fond of Milton's Christmas hymn, his monument (proposed), his epitaph, his last letter, his supposed disembodied spirit, table belonging to, sometimes wrote Latin verses, his table-talk, his prejudices, against Baptists, his sweet nature, his views of style, a story of his. Wildbore, a vernacular one, how to escape. Wilkes, Captain, borrows rashly. Wind, the, a good Samaritan. Wingfield, his 'Memorial'. Wooden leg, remarkable for sobriety, never eats pudding. Woods, the. See Belmont. Works, covenants of, condemned. World, this, its unhappy temper. Wright, Colonel, providentially rescued. Writing, dangerous to reputation. Wrong, abstract, safe to oppose.

Yankees, their worst wooden nutmegs.

Zack, Old.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

A beggar through the world am I, A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, A heap of bare and splintery crags, A hundred years! they're quickly fled, A legend that grew in the forest's hush, A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, A poet cannot strive for despotism, A presence both by night and day, A race of nobles may die out, A stranger came one night to Yussouf's tent, About the oak that framed this chair, of old, Alike I hate to be your debtor, Along a river-side, I know not where, Amid these fragments of heroic days, An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale, 'And how could you dream of meeting?' Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be, As a twig trembles, which a bird, As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime, As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches, As life runs on, the road grows strange, As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills, As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, At length arrived, your book I take, At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages, Ay, pale and silent maiden,

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing! Beloved, in the noisy city here, Beneath the trees, Bowing thyself in dust before a Book,

Can this be thou who, lean and pale, Come back before the birds are flown, 'Come forth!' my catbird calls to me, Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm,

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Dear M. ---- By way of saving time, Dear Sir,--You wish to know my notions, Dear Sir,--Your letter come to han', Dear Wendell, why need count the years, Death never came so nigh to me before, Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman? Down 'mid the tangled roots of things,

Ef I a song or two could make, Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud, Ere pales in Heaven the morning star,

Fair as a summer dream was Margaret, Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, Far through the memory shines a happy day, Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, For this true nobleness I seek in vain, Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, From the close-shut windows gleams no spark, Full oft the pathway to her door,

Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown, Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be, God! do not let my loved one die, God makes sech nights, all white an' still, God sends his teachers unto every age, Godminster? Is it Fancy's play? Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown, Gone, gone from us! and shall we see, Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, Great truths are portions of the soul of man, Guvener B. is a sensible man,

He came to Florence long ago, He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough, He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide, He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire, Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, Here once my step was quickened, Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder! Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow, Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear, How strange are the freaks of memory! How struggles with the tempest's swells, How was I worthy so divine a loss, Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap, I call as fly the irrevocable hours, I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away, I christened you in happier days, before, I could not bear to see those eyes, I did not praise thee when the crowd, I do not come to weep above thy pall, I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I du believe in Freedom's cause, I go to the ridge in the forest, I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away, I had a little daughter, I have a fancy: how shall I bring it, I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started, I know a falcon swift and peerless, I love to start out arter night's begun, I need not praise the sweetness of his song, I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, I sat and watched the walls of night, I sat one evening in my room, I saw a Sower walking slow, I saw the twinkle of white feet, I sent you a message, my friens, t'other day, I spose you recollect thet I explained my gennle views, I spose you wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the soul o' me, I swam with undulation soft, I thank ye, my frien's, for the warmth o' your greetin', I thought our love at full, but I did err, I treasure in secret some long, fine hair, I, walking the familiar street, I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell, I watched a moorland torrent run, I went to seek for Christ, I would more natures were like thine, I would not have this perfect love of ours, If he be a nobler lover, take him! If I let fall a word of bitter mirth, If I were the rose at your window, In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, In good old times, which means, you know, In his tower sat the poet, In life's small things be resolute and great, In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, In vain we call old notions fudge, Into the sunshine, It don't seem hardly right, John, It is a mere wild rosebud, It mounts athwart the windy hill, It was past the hour of trysting, It's some consid'ble of a spell sence I hain't writ no letters,

Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle-rhyme, Let others wonder what fair face, Light of triumph in her eyes, Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, Looms there the New Land,

Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, Men say the sullen instrument, Men! whose boast it is that ye, My coachman, in the moonlight there, My day began not till the twilight fell, My heart, I cannot still it, My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die, My name is Water: I have sped, My soul was like the sea, My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott,

Never, surely, was holier man, New England's poet, rich in love as years, Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand, No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? Voted agin him? Nor deemed he lived unto himself alone, Not always unimpeded can I pray, Not as all other women are, Now Biörn, the son of Heriulf, had ill days,

O days endeared to every Muse, 'O Dryad feet,' O dwellers in the valley-land, O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's height, O moonlight deep and tender, O wandering dim on the extremest edge, Of all the myriad moods of mind, Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Old events have modern meanings; only that survives, Old Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again, On this wild waste, where never blossom came, Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, Once hardly in a cycle blossometh, Once on a time there was a pool, One after one the stars have risen and set, One feast, of holy days the crest, One kiss from all others prevents me, Opening one day a book of mine, Our love is not a fading, earthly flower, Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Over his keys the musing organist,

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best, Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see, Punctorum garretos colens et cellara Quinque,

Rabbi Jehosha used to say, Reader! Walk up at once (it will soon be too late), Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine,

Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see, Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree, She gave me all that woman can, Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will, Silencioso por la puerta, Sisters two, all praise to you, Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope, Sleep is Death's image,--poets tell us so, So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away, Some sort of heart I know is hers, Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Somewhere in India, upon a time, Spirit, that rarely comest now, Still thirteen years: 'tis autumn now, Stood the tall Archangel weighing, Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws, Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark?--he borrows a lantern,

Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall, That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, The Bardling came where by a river grew, The century numbers fourscore years, The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, The dandelions and buttercups, The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill, The fire is burning clear and blithely, The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day, The little gate was reached at last, The love of all things springs from love of one, The Maple puts her corals on in May, The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall, The moon shines white and silent, The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew, The next whose fortune 'twas a tale to tell, The night is dark, the stinging sleet, The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end, The path from me to you that led, The pipe came safe, and welcome too, The rich man's son inherits lands, The same good blood that now refills, The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, The snow had begun in the gloaming, The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, The wind is roistering out of doors, The wisest man could ask no more of Fate, The world turns mild; democracy, they say, There are who triumph in a losing cause, There came a youth upon the earth, There lay upon the ocean's shore, There never yet was flower fair in vain, Therefore think not the Past is wise alone, These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast, This is the midnight of the century,--hark! This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin', This little blossom from afar, Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things, Though old the thought and oft exprest, Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle, Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed, Thy love thou sentest oft to me, Thy voice is like a fountain, 'Tis a woodland enchanted! To those who died for her on land and sea, True as the sun's own work but more refined, True Love is a humble, low-born thing, Turbid from London's noise and smoke, 'Twas sung of old in hut and hall, 'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win, Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe,

Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet, Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, Untremulous in the river clear,

Violet! sweet violet!

Wait a little: do we not wait? Walking alone where we walked together, We see but half the causes of our deeds, We, too, have autumns, when our leaves, We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, Weak-winged is song, What boot your houses and your lands? What countless years and wealth of brain were spent, 'What fairings will ye that I bring?' What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his! What hath Love with Thought to do? What know we of the world immense, What man would live coffined with brick and stone, What mean these banners spread, 'What means this glory round our feet,' What Nature makes in any mood, What visionary tints the year puts on, What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee, What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast, When I was a beggarly boy, When oaken woods with buds are pink, When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand, When the down is on the chin, When wise Minerva still was young, Where is the true man's fatherland? 'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful?' Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, Whether the idle prisoner through his grate, While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Whither? Albeit I follow fast, Who cometh over the hills, Who does his duty is a question, Who hath not been a poet? Who hath not, Why should I seek her spell to decompose, With what odorous woods and spices, Woe worth the hour when it is crime, Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done, Worn and footsore was the Prophet,

Ye little think what toil it was to build, Ye who, passing graves by night, Yes, faith is a goodly anchor,

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown,

INDEX OF TITLES

The titles of major works and of general divisions are set in SMALL CAPITALS.

A.C.L., To. Above and Below. Absence. After the Burial. Agassiz. Agro-Dolce. Al Fresco. Aladdin. Alexander, Fanny, To. All-Saints. Allegra. Ambrose. Anti-Apis. Appledore, Pictures from. April Birthday, An--at Sea. Arcadia Rediviva. At the Burns Centennial. At the Commencement Dinner, 1866. Auf Wiedersehen. Auspex.

Bankside. Bartlett, Mr. John, To. Beaver Brook. Beggar, The. Bibliolatres. Biglow, Mr. Hosea, to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Biglow, Mr., Latest Views of. BIGLOW PAPERS, THE. Biglow's, Mr. Hosea, Speech in March Meeting. Birch-Tree, The. Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Biglow. Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Biglow. Birthday Verses. Black Preacher, The. Blondel, Two Scenes from the Life of. Bon Voyage. Boss, The. Boston, Letter from. Bradford, C.F., To. Brakes, The. Brittany, A Legend of. Broken Tryst, The. Burns Centennial, At the.

Captive, The. Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington, On the. Casa sin Alma. CATHEDRAL, THE. Cervantes, Prison of. Changed Perspective. Changeling, The. Channing, Dr., Elegy on the Death of. Chippewa Legend, A. Christmas Carol, A. Cochituate Water, Ode written for the Celebration of the Introduction of the, into the City of Boston. Columbus. Commemoration, Ode recited at the Harvard. Concord Bridge, Ode read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at. Contrast, A. Courtin', The. Credidimus Jovem regnare. Curtis, George William, An Epistle to.

Dancing Bear, The. Dandelion, To the. Dante, On a Portrait of, by Giotto. Dara. Darkened Mind, The. Dead House, The. Death of a Friend's Child, On the. Death of Queen Mercedes. Debate in the Sennit, The. Discovery, The. Dobson's, Mr. Austin, 'Old World Idylls,' Receiving a Copy of.

E.G. de R. EARLIER POEMS. Eleanor makes Macaroons. Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing. Ember Picture, An. Endymion. Epistle to George William Curtis, An. Estrangement. Eurydice. Ewig-Weibliche, Das. Extreme Unction. Eye's Treasury, The.

FABLE FOR CRITICS, A. Fact or Fancy? Falcon, The. Familiar Epistle to a Friend, A. Fancy's Casuistry. Fatherland, The. Festina Lente. Finding of the Lyre, The. First Snow-Fall, The. Fitz Adam's Story. Flying Dutchman, The. Foot-Path, The. For an Autograph. Foreboding, A. Forlorn, The. Fountain, The. Fountain of Youth, The. Fourth of July, 1876, An Ode for the. FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM. France, Ode to. 'Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit.' Freedom. Future, To the.

Garrison, W.L., To. Ghost-Seer, The. Giddings, J.R., To. Glance behind the Curtain, A. Godminster Chimes. Gold Egg: A Dream-Fantasy. Grant, General, On a Bust of. Graves of Two English Soldiers on Concord Battle-Ground, Lines suggested by the. Growth of the Legend, The.

H.W.L., To. Hamburg, An Incident of the Fire at. Happiness, Ode to. Harvard Commemoration, Ode recited at the. HEARTSEASE AND RUE. Hebe. Heritage, The. Holmes, To. Hood, To the Memory of. How I consulted the Oracle of the Goldfishes. Hunger and Cold.

In a Copy of Omar Khayydm. In Absence. In an Album. In the Half-Way House. In the Twilight. Incident in a Railroad Car, An. Incident of the Fire at Hamburg, An. Indian-Summer Reverie, An. Inscriptions. For a Bell at Cornell University. For a Memorial Window to Sir Walter Raleigh, set up in St. Margaret's, Westminster, by American Contributors. Proposed for a Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Boston. International Copyright. Interview with Miles Standish, An. Inveraray, On Planting a Tree at. Invita Minerva. Invitation, An. Irené.

Jonathan to John.

Keats, To the Spirit of. Kettelopotomachia. Kossuth.

Lamartine, To. Landlord, The. LAST POEMS. Latest Views of Mr. Biglow. Leaving the Matter open. Legend of Brittany, A. L'ENVOi (To the Muse). L'Envoi (Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not). Lesson, The. Letter, A, from a candidate for the presidency in answer to suttin questions proposed by Mr. Hosea Biglow, inclosed in a note from Mr. Biglow to S.H. Gay, Esq., editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Letter, A, from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow. Letter, A, from Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Hon. J.T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, covering a letter from Mr. B. Sawin, private in the Massachusetts Regiment. Letter, A Second, from B. Sawin, Esq. Letter, A Third, from B. Sawin, Esq. LETTER FROM BOSTON. Lines (suggested by the Graves of Two English Soldiers on Concord Battle-Ground). Longing. Love. Love and Thought. Love's Clock.

M.O.S., To. Mahmood the Image-Breaker. Maple, The. Masaccio. Mason and Slidell: a Yankee Idyll. Memoriæ Positum. MEMORIAL VERSES. Message of Jeff Davis in Secret Session, A. Midnight. Miner, The. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. Misconception, A. Miss D.T., To. Monna Lisa. Mood, A. Moon, The. My Love. My Portrait Gallery.

Nest, The. New-Year's Eve, 1850. New Year's Greeting, A. Nightingale in the Study, The. Nightwatches. Nobler Lover, The. Nomades, The. Norton, Charles Eliot, To.

Oak, The. Ode, An (for the Fourth of July, 1876). Ode (In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder). Ode (read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge). Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration. Ode to France. Ode to Happiness. Ode (written for the Celebration of the Introduction of the Cochituate Water into the City of Boston). Omar Khayyám, In a Copy of. On a Bust of General Grant. On a Portrait of Dante by Giotto. On an Autumn Sketch of H.G. Wild. On being asked for an Autograph in Venice. On Board the '76. On burning some Old Letters. On hearing a Sonata of Beethoven's played in the Next Room. On planting a Tree at Inveraray. On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment. On receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin Dobson's 'Old World Idylls.' On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington. On the Death of a Friend's Child. On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey. Optimist, The. Oracle of the Goldfishes, How I consulted the. ORIENTAL APOLOGUE, AN. Origin of Didactic Poetry, The.

Palfrey, John Gorham, To. Palinode. Paolo to Francesca. Parable, A (An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale). Parable, A (Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see). Parable, A (Worn and footsore was the Prophet). Parting of the Ways, The. Past, To the. Perdita, singing. To. Pessimoptimism. Petition, The. Phillips, Wendell. Phoebe. Pictures from Appledore. Pine-Tree, To a. Pioneer, The. Pious Editor's Creed, The. POEMS OF THE WAR. Portrait Gallery, My. Portrait of Dante by Giotto, On a. Prayer, A. Pregnant Comment, The. Present Crisis, The. Prison of Cervantes. Prometheus. Protest, The.

Recall, The. Remarks of Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire, at an extrumpery caucus in State Street, reported by Mr. H. Biglow. Remembered Music. Requiem, A. Rhoecus. Rosaline. Rose, The: a Ballad.

St. Michael the Weigher. Sayings. Scherzo. Science and Poetry. Scottish Border. Search, The. Seaweed. Secret, The. Self-Study. Serenade. She came and went. Shepherd of King Admetus, The. Si descendero in Infernum, ades. Singing Leaves, The. Sirens, The. Sixty-Eighth Birthday. Song (O moonlight deep and tender). Song (to M.L.). Song (Violet! sweet violet!). SONNETS. Bankside. 'Beloved, in the noisy city here'. Bon Voyage! Brakes, The. Dancing Bear, The. Death of Queen Mercedes. E.G. de R. Eye's Treasury, The. 'For this true nobleness I seek in vain.' Foreboding, A. 'Great truths are portions of the soul of man.' 'I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap.' 'I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away.' 'I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away.' 'I thought our love at full, but I did err.' 'I would not have this perfect love of ours.' In Absence. Maple, The. 'My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die.' Nightwatches. On an Autumn Sketch of H.G. Wild. On being asked for an Autograph in Venice. On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment. 'Our love is not a fading, earthly flower.' Paolo to Francesca. Pessimoptimism. Phillips, Wendell. Prison of Cervantes. Scottish Border. Street, The. Sub Pondere crescit. 'There never yet was flower fair in vain.' To A.C.L. To a Friend. To a Lady playing on the Cithern. To Fanny Alexander. To J.R. Giddings. To M.O.S. To M.W., on her Birthday. To Miss D.T. To the Spirit of Keats. To Whittier. 'What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee.' Winlock, Joseph. With a copy of Aucassin and Nicolete. With an Armchair. Wyman, Jeffries. Sower, The. Speech of Honourable Preserved Doe in Secret Caucus. Standish, Miles, An Interview with. Stanzas on Freedom. Street, The. Studies for Two Heads. Sub Pondere crescit. Summer Storm. Sun-Worship. Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line.

Telepathy. Tempora Mutantur. THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. Threnodia. To----. To A.C.L. To a Friend. To a Lady playing on the Cithern. To a Pine-Tree. To C.F. Bradford. To Charles Eliot Norton. To H.W.L. To Holmes. To J.R. Giddings. To John Gorham Palfrey. To Lamartine. To M.O.S. To M.W., on her Birthday. To Miss D.T. To Mr. John Bartlett. To Perdita, singing. To the Dandelion. To the Future. To the Memory of Hood. To the Past. To the Spirit of Keats. To W.L. Garrison. To Whittier. Token, The. Torrey, Charles Turner, On the Death of. Trial. Turner's Old Téméraire. Two Gunners, The. Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel.

Under the October Maples. Under the Old Elm. UNDER THE WILLOWS, AND OTHER POEMS. Under the Willows. UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT, THE.

Valentine, A. Verses, intended to go with a Posset Dish. Villa Franca. VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL, THE. Voyage to Vinland, The.

Washers of the Shroud, The. What Mr. Robinson thinks. What Rabbi Jehosha said. Whittier, To. Wild, H.G., On an Autumn Sketch of. Wind-Harp, The. Winlock, Joseph. Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fire, A. With a Copy of Aucassin and Nicolete. With a Pair of Gloves lost in a Wager. With a Pressed Flower. With a Seashell. With an Armchair. Without and Within. Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment, On reading. Wyman, Jeffries.

Youthful Experiment in English Hexameters, A. Yussouf.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they always get into.]

[Footnote 2: To demonstrate quickly and easily how per- -versely absurd 'tis to sound this name Cowper, As people in general call him named super, I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper.]

[Footnote 3: (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks That he's morally certain you're jealous of Snooks.)]

[Footnote 4:(Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)]

[Footnote 5: That is in most cases we do, but not all, Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle, Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.]

[Footnote 6: (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive, That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.)]

[Footnote 7: Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while.]

[Footnote 8: Turn back now to page--goodness only knows what, And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.]

[Footnote 9: The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to A sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day, An Artillery Election Sermon, A Discourse on the Late Eclipse, Dorcas, A Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq., &c., &c.]

[Footnote 10: Aut insanit, aut versos facit. --H.W.]

[Footnote 11: In relation to this expression, I cannot but think that Mr. Biglow has been too hasty in attributing it to me. Though Time be a comparatively innocent personage to swear by, and though Longinus in his discourse [Greek: Peri 'Upsous] have commended timely oaths as not only a useful but sublime figure of speech, yet I have always kept my lips free from that abomination. Odi profanum vulgus, I hate your swearing and hectoring fellows.--H.W.]

[Footnote 12: i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn But their is fun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it.--H.B.]

[Footnote 13: he means Not quite so fur I guess.--H.B.]

[Footnote 14: the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he ollers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile-stone.--H.B.]

[Footnote 15: it must be aloud that thare's a streak of nater in lovin' sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off a chutch maybe) a riggin' himself out in the Weigh they du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef any thin's foolisher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary it is milishy gloary.--H.B.]

[Footnote 16: these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha becum.--H.B.]

[Footnote 17: it wuz 'tumblebug' as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha wouldn't stan' it no how. idnow as tha wood and idnow as tha wood.--H.B.]

[Footnote 18: he means human beins, that's wut he means. i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware the Xisle Poles comes from.--H.B.]

[Footnote 19: The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, in his recently discovered tractate De Republica, tells us, Nec vero habere virtutem satis est, quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare, and from our Milton, who says: 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.'--Areop. He had taken the words out of the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with Donatus (if Saint Jerome's tutor may stand sponsor for a curse), Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint!--H.W.]

[Footnote 20: That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our politicians without a wrinkle,--Magister artis, ingeniique largitor venter.--H.W.]

[Footnote 21: There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,--

'Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.'--H.W.]

[Footnote 22: Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of othere prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Phillippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will suit here:--

'Rapida fortuna ac levis Præcepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit.'

Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of Æschylus,--

[Greek: Apas de trachus hostis han neon kratae.]

--H.W.]

[Footnote 23: A rustic euphemism for the American variety of the Mephitis.--H.W.]

[Footnote 24: Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English.]

[Footnote 25: Cited in Collier. (I give my authority where I do not quote from the original book.)]

[Footnote 26: The word occurs in a letter of Mary Boleyn, in Golding, and Warner. Milton also was fond of the word.]

[Footnote 27: Though I find Worcëster in the Mirror for Magistrates.]

[Footnote 28: This was written twenty years ago, and now (1890) I cannot open an English journal without coming upon an Americanism.]

[Footnote 29: The Rev. A.L. Mayhew of Wadham College, Oxford, has convinced me that I was astray in this.]

[Footnote 30: Dame, in English, is a decayed gentlewoman of the same family.]

[Footnote 31: Which, whether in that form, or under its aliases witch-grass and cooch-grass, points us back to its original Saxon quick.]

[Footnote 32: And, by the way, the Yankee never says 'o'nights,' but uses the older adverbial form, analogous to the German nachts.]

[Footnote 33: Greene in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier says, 'to square it up and downe the streetes before his mistresse.']