354 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[October 1, 1886. 



petent to discuss Americanisms who has not made rather 

 exceptional acquaintance with the literature of the old 

 country and the dialects of its various parts. 



All this, however, would be useless without an excep- 

 tional acqu.aintance with America. On this point I remark, 

 in the first place, that I have read, I think, everything 

 written by Americans which may be regarded as havmg 

 taken a place in literature. Next as to my personal 

 acquaintance with America and Americans :— I first reached 

 America in October 1873, and stayed there seven months, 

 aiving 104 lectures and visiting most of the chief cities of 

 the Eastern and Northern States, but getting no further 

 west than Missouri. I had all the time exceptional oppor- 

 tunities for hearing Americans talking— from continuous 

 conversations (occasionally even more than I desired) on 

 railway journeys, to most .agreeable converse at the clubs ; 

 at receptions, at entertainments, in special gatherings for 

 discussion, on the cars, in river steamboats, and under 

 abundant varying conditions, I heard and noted Americanisms 

 by the thousand in all classes of society. From October 

 1875 to May 187G, I had similar opportunities, travelling 

 at this visit as far west as Nebraska and as far south as 

 Kentucky, and giving 14G lectures. From October 1876 to 

 May 1880 I gave 138 lectures in America, going overto the 

 extreme west, and closing the tour with a fortnight in San 

 Francisco. Returning from Australasia in January 1881, I 

 gave more lectures, raising my total almost exactly to 500, 

 chiefly in the west, but I ranged over to New York (State), 

 New England, and Can.ada, closing the course at Greencastle, 

 Ind., on April 30. Thence I went to Missouri, where on 

 May' 3 I married a Missourian lady, daughter of a Virginian 

 father and a Kentuckian mother, and related to many of 

 the principal Southern families. Of the five-and-a-half years 

 which have passed since then, about two-and-a-half years 

 have been spent in America, chiefly in my own house at St. 

 Joseph, Mo., on tlie bank of the Missouri— amidst a popu- 

 lation in which almost every variety of American dialect is 

 found, from the true Yankee to the purest Southern, the 

 strongest Western, and the quaintest negro dialect. At my 

 own table we sat down day after day twenty-two in number, 

 four or five English, the rest Virginian, Kentuckian, 

 Missourian, &c., most of us having travelled widely so as to 

 know a good deal about other places than our respective 

 homes. We were waited on by coloured women, two of 

 whom had boon slaves in the household of my wife's uncle. 

 If the opportvmities I then had for learning to distinguish 

 the various cDlloqui.alisms which I deal with as Americanisms 

 have been often matched, I shall hear with interest of the 

 circumstances under which this has happened. But even 

 this is not quite all. From August 1881 to May 1885, I 

 was on a lecture journey again, accompanied by my American 

 wife, and by my brother-in-law (the last, by the way, h.ad 

 had actual experience during many years of the mining life 

 which my critic knows only from the dictionary definition 

 of " Bonanza "). In this journey 1 lectured over a tract 

 extending from Chicago to Houlton, Maine (extreme north- 

 east), thence along New England, New York, and Pennsyl- 

 vania, through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, 

 Louisiana, Texas, so round the Indian territory and Kansas 

 to my home in St. Joseph, Mo. During this journey I gave 

 about 150 lectures, resided many days as a guest in the 

 homes of my wife's relatives in Washington and Charleston, 

 stayed at many of the most important cities of the South — 

 four days in Richmond, Va., three in Wilmington, N.C., a 

 week in Columbia, S.C, another in Mobile, Ala., three 

 weeks in New Orleans, a week in Calveston (Texas), &c., 

 (fee, ifec, — and I had abundant opportunities not only for 

 hearing Americanisms of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, but 

 for discussing them with those who knew all about 



them, and appreciated my interest in the subject. I 

 should liave been a dullard had I not become exception- 

 ally conversant with the Americanisms of the regions then 

 visited. My critic may have been born in America, but 

 assuredly he has never had one-hundredth part of my 

 opportunities of taking and making " Notes on Ameri- 

 canisms." 



In 1881, when I wrote my essay on " English and 

 American English," 1 considered that few had had better 

 opportunities than I to become conversant with the subject; 

 but certainly among the few must be counted myself now 

 as compared with myself in 1881. I may add that while I 

 have a good memory for matters in which I am intere.sted, 

 I beUeve I am observant (in such matters) beyond the 

 average.* 



My " Notes on Americanisms," though thus the fruit of a 

 most exceptional if not (as I think) unique experience, are 

 in no sense ambitious. I leave it to my critic to talk 

 " with delightful self-satisfaction " about " Political Ameri- 

 canisms " and Colonel Norton's glossary thereof, regarding 

 political Americanisms as beneath contempt. (It will be 

 noticed that I have diligently skipped nearly all of them 

 thus far, in Bartlett's Dictionary.) I do not undertake to 

 exhaust even the colloquial Americanisms, which are my 

 chief, almost my only aim. I can, however, tell my critic 

 what a " Horse Fiddle " is — which he puts as a test ques- 

 tion — as understood out here in Missouri, where I am 

 wi-iting. 



Charged with undert,aking to write on a subject which I 

 have not studied at all, I think I have succeeded in showing 

 that it is a subject about which I can claim to know much 

 more than most men, because of the altogether exceptional 

 opportunities I have had for studying it. I certainly 

 know much more about it than my critic. I might almost 

 be tempted to say with dear old Reade, in wrath at the 

 " anonymuncules of the press " (in the same half-jesting tone), 

 " It is a sulijeet about which I know everything, my critic 

 nothing." 



"SATURDAY REVIEW" BLUNDERS. 



HE Saturday Beviewer, who professes to know 

 so much about Americanisms, has brought 

 out an article on the subject simply crowded 

 with blunders. 



My critic's first article — a month late as 

 a criticism of the July number — appeared a 

 week after the August number. Yet this 

 second essay opens with the discovery that in Knowledge 

 for August there are no Americanisms I 



Observe, — five days before the proofs of tlie first article 

 were corrected, the August number, which the writer of that 

 article had not seen, was on every railway st;rll in England. 

 Obviou.sly both articles were written at a distance, and the 

 later one was retouched, but not quite deftly enough, by a 

 friend at headquarters. (The lateness of my own reply, 

 writing as I do in Missouri, will be understood, as also the 

 generosity of the critic who waited till he knew I bad left 

 England before opening an attack on a series begun four 

 months before.) 



This same opening sentence speaks of my " glossary of 



* Inotedsuch moredelicate Americanisms as the" Why, certainly," 

 ot the East, the " I know it," where we would say in England simply 

 " I know," the " won't you ? " where we would say, " will you ? " and 

 so forth, in that earlier paper— years, by the way, before " the 

 Colonel " had suggested the erroneous idea that, " Why, certainly," 

 is a novelty, and "an obtrusive one at that— as Americans say. So 

 far as shown, previous visitors had touched only on the more glaring 

 Americanisms : certainly Dickens had. 



