LIFE IN WOODS OF NORTH MICHIGAN 283 



they are responsible for a great deal of bad English. I took 

 up my paper yesterday. The first paragraph that met 

 my eye was to the effect that a club of 'bachelor girls had 

 been started in New York. This is a distinct and a gross 

 abuse of the English language. Girls may be spinsters: 

 they never can be bachelors unless they reverse the sexes 

 as they do with regard to the gentlemen cows, i.e. bulls. 



I have said that Americans are, as a rule, better 

 educated than Englishmen, but this statement requires 

 some modification. In what I term the A, B, C's of 

 education, the bulk of the American people are, un- 

 doubtedly, better grounded than the bulk of the English 

 nation, but you do not often meet with a really well-read 

 American gentleman. I consider extensive reading the 

 most important part of an education, as it is undoubtedly 

 the most mind-expanding. Yet you often meet with 

 Americans who, while they are very fair classical scholars, 

 are ludicrously ignorant of modern history. Science, 

 again, is an American's strong point in his own estima- 

 tion, but as a matter of fact he holds, generally, a very 

 inferior place in any branch of science. In philological 

 learning, again, he considers himself a past-master, and 

 as Mr. Furgesson claimed, declares that a Yankee is the 

 only man on earth who speaks pure English in general 

 conversation. 



Any gentleman who has spent some time in the 

 States, however, knows better than this. Not only do 

 the Yankees interlard their discourse with many foreign 

 words (which is the greatest corruption of a language that 

 can be committed) and much slang, but they also misuse 

 hundreds of words, giving them quite a new meaning. It 

 is no use pointing out these inaccuracies to an American. 

 He will obstinately persist that he is right and you are 

 wrong, and will appeal to any obscure American lexico- 

 grapher rather than to Johnson or Walker, at whom 

 he scoffs. 



But it is to the introduction of slang and foreign 



