344 



American English. 



"Ticknor & Co.," on the backs of their books; but the practice has 

 been abandoned by their successors, and I do not know that any other 

 American house ever followed the example. Certain it is that about 

 the longest and most awkward name in the book trade at present, 

 "Cassell, Petter, Oalpin & Co.," is always written in full in this 

 country, though often contracted into Cassell & Co., in England. 



In the construction of many sentences, however, an opposite plan is 

 frequently followed — the insertion of utterly superfluous words. 

 Thus one occasionally hears English ladies ask, Whatever are you 

 doing ?" — meaning, "What are you doing ? " In Herbert Spencer's 

 admirable treatise on Education, chap. 10, we read that **in Eussia 

 the infant mortality is something enormous ; " and in one of Charles 

 Dickens' letters to Mr. Forster, **the daily difference in [a ship's] 

 rolling, as she burns the coals out, is sometJiing absolutely fearful;* 

 few Americans would have put in the "something." And who has 

 not been annoyed and disgusted by the innumerable gofs with which so 

 many English pages fairly bristle? Three good illustrations occur in 

 a single article, ^' A Few Words about the Nineteenth Century," by 

 Frederic Harrison, recently published in the Fortnightly Eeview: " He 

 extolled him for possessing all the good qualities which he had not 

 got; " " for twenty thousand years man has got no better light than 

 what was given by pitch, tallow or oil;" "I don't say but what this 

 work has^o^ to be done." Or glance over Endymion : " He has ^/o^ 

 a champion" (chap. 35); "I have got some House of Commons 

 men dining with me" (chap. 50); " I have (70^ a horse which I should 

 like you to ride " (chap. 52); "Lady Montford maintained they had 

 got nothing " (^^/.); All you have got to do is to make up your mind " 

 (chap. G5); " You have got a great deal of private business to attend 

 to " (chap. 99). So the Marquis of Blandford, in the North American 

 Eeview for November, 1881, p. 459 : " The Irish members are a feature 

 which we have not at present got to deal with" ; Spencer in the book 

 just referred to (Education, chap. 3): "Must not the child judge by 

 such evidence as he has gotH" George Augustus Sala, Illustrated 

 London News, October '2, 1880, p. 423: "To my shame, I have not 

 got a Cowden-Clarke's concordance;" Wilkie Collins, Man and Wife, 

 chap. 9: I have got a letter for you ;" and in Marion Fay, chap. 3: 



* He has got money ; ' * but he is not therefore to be a tyrant ; ' ' Yes, 

 he is, over a daughter who has got none ;'" Charles Eeade, Foul Play, 

 chap. 19 : "I have got something for you " — in none of which cases 

 is the idea of getting intended in the slightest degree to be implied, 



*" A Short Life of Charles Dickens," Appletons' Handy Volume Series, p. 116. 



