"an

This same correspondent, at the close of his letter, says, "It was very good of you to address me as reverend; but I claim only to be,” etc., etc. In the margin of the letter he writes with a reference to the phrase claim to be, Americanism." In this grave imputation upon the Englishhood of his own language he is quite wrong. The use of claim with the infinitive of a verb is American neither in origin nor in peculiar usage. It was known in England long, long before there could have been any Americanisms, and it has the sanction of the best modern usage. For example:

"And a verie great porcion of the same laude and thanke doeth ladie Fortune claime to have, by whose conveighaunce oft' times we se thinges not without high counsaill & wisedome enterprised, to have a verie unluckie ende," etc. (Nicolas Udall's Translation of the Apophthegms of Erasmus, 1542, ed. 1564, preface.)

"The Duke of Suffolk is the first, and claims To be high steward."

(Shakespeare, Henry VIII., Act. IV., Sc. 1.)

"I have disregarded various publications in which facts within my own knowledge have been grossly misrepresented; but I am called upon to notice some of the erroneous statements proceeding from one who claims to be con

1 As to the application of the word divine to any other than an episcopally ordained clergyman, which has been pronounced not current in England, - a point to which I have before referred, -see the following passage in the same article, in which mere religious persons, females as well as males, are called divines.

"We have heard it said of two excellent persons

sidered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorized friend." (Lady Byron, February 19, 1830, Byron's Life by Moore, vol. vi. p. 280.)

"Ormin plainly claims to have completed his self-imposed task." (Craik, English Language and Literature, page 96.)

"If it be true that the defendant had not conceived the intention of coming forward and claiming to be Roger," 2 etc. (Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Charge in Tichborne Trial.)

"Mr. Froude leaves out the fact on which the whole story turns, that William, while one of the king's knights, was also one of the archbishop's knights, and that the archbishops claimed to appoint clerks to all churches on lands held of the see." (Edward Freeman, in Contemporary Review, September, 1878, page 226.)

"In older times the larger right has been asserted to keep out diplomatic representatives who claimed to be something more than diplomatists." (Pall Mall, October 26, 1878.)

"And it appeared at length that the baroness claimed to have been brought over from Bavaria," etc. (Anthony Trollope, Popenjoy, chap. xxvii.)

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'Littlehampton, again, by reason of its fine sands and its mild climate, claims to be a fashionable watering - place." (The Week, January, 1878.)

There is a use of claim in conjunction with that which is, I believe, an Americanism. For example, I read recently, in the police report of a New York newspaper, "The girl claims that she met three men," etc. This absurd and offensive use of the word is quite common in our newspapers, but it is very rarely found in writings of a higher class than police reports, sensational articles, the letter-gossiping and scandal-mongering correspondents, and the

that they ought to marry each other because they are so religious; but a male and a female divine are more likely to quarrel than an author and an authoress."

2 Think of Sir Alexander Cockburn's being told that he had used an Americanism! Be there not prisons standing ready for them that are guilty of contempt of court?

records of interviewers. But claimed to be is English normally and by long usage. The Americanism, if it must be recognized as one, is the use of claim for say

or assert.

It is objected by one correspondent — an American, I believe — that the examples which I gave of the English use of railroad are from articles upon American affairs, and that the phrase might naturally and unconsciously have been adopted from American usage. The objection is futile, and of course does not apply to the use of railroad by Dr. Newman. The word is and has been used in the highest English quarters distinctively in regard to English railway affairs, and by English jurists, and frequently, thirty years ago, by the most eminent English writer of the past or hardly past generation.

"it would be strange indeed were the completion of the most extensive and magnificent railroad in Great Britain to produce no feelings of national exultation," etc. (Thomas Roscoe, The London and Birmingham Railway with the Home and Country Scenes, etc., Preface, page i., Lond. 1837 (?).) "But this gratifying factfactory to the companies and proprietors of railroads who consult their real interests," etc. (The same, page iii.)

- so satis

"The establishment of the Manchester and Liverpool line in this country at once determined the success of the railroad as the chief highway of the future." (Saturday Review, October 28, 1878.)

"But where there is no clause in the act requiring the railroad or canal proprietors to procure immunity from damage by purchasing the minerals, and authorizing them to make the purchase, the mine owner cannot work his mine so as to injure or destroy the railroad or canal." (Addison on Torts, chap. iii., sec. i., p. iii., ed. N. Y. 1876.)

"in the shape of newspaper companies, bitumen companies, galvanizediron companies, railroad companies," etc. (Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, ed. Lond. 1869, page 184.)

"and who ever had pleasure in a

railroad journey? (The same, page 284.)

-" and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately took coach . . . as the most part of the people who now travel on the railroad." (The same, page 285.)

"let us make a few moral and historical remarks upon the town of Versailles, where between railroad and concon we are surely arrived by this time." (The same, page 285.)

It is surely not worth while to waste more time and space in showing that railroad is not in any sense an Americanism; although, as I remarked in Words and their Uses, years ago, railway is more usual in England, and railroad in America.

Two correspondents, one unmistakably J. B., the other of doubtful nationality, are not convinced that grain for corn is not an Americanism. One objects that my citations were meagre, chiefly "names, not examples," and the other that the passages were "obsolete, and not examples of current English." Well, well! the following passages, particularly those from the writing of an English farmer of the day, will probably satisfy both my critics: —

"If any preacher would manifest the resurrection of Christ unto the senses, why doth he not teach them by the grain of the field that is risen out of the

earth?" (Bishop Hooper, A Declaration of Christe and of his Office, 1547, chap. v., ed. 1843.)

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Mr. Macaulay gives a very graphic picture of an epidemic of housebreaking and robbery in the fourth volume of his recent history. After alluding to the scarcity of grain, he says," etc. (Charles Elam, A Physician's Problems, Lond. * 1869, page 192.)

"I will say generally here that it does not answer the settler's purpose to grow any grain crop. . . beyond his own needs." (An English Farmer, in Frazer's Mag., November, 1878, page 624.)

-"there being no grain there, only grass and potatoes." (The same, page 625.)

"If they deposit their eggs when they alight, and a warm winter succeeds, the young hoppers may afflict the young grain." (The same, page 626.)

"No machine has yet been invented which at once threshes the grain and shreds the straw as the bullocks like to have it done. Now, there is no other food for the bullocks except the straw; for to grow hay where I could grow grain was absurd.' (Saturday Review, October 26, 1878.)

"The country between Bussorah and Bagdad is described as literally surfeited with grain, which is simply wasted in districts a little removed from the river. Not only is it allowed to rot in granaries or become a spoil to the rats, but in many parts wheat is used as fuel." (The Week, December 14, 1878.)

"Some grain must wither; why not thy little handful?" (George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy.)

But it is truly shameful that one should be called upon to show that the use of grain to mean corn is well recognized English, past and present; and it is almost ridiculous to do so. The word in that sense is found in Johnson, with illustrative passages; and in Latham's Johnson the following passage from Burke is given in illustration of the definition, "kind of grain." "As to the other grains it is to be observed, as the wheat ripened very late, the barley got the start of it and was ripe first." Bythe-by, do my censors and correspondents ever consult English dictionaries? I confess that I do not, except on some such occasion as the present. But if I were to assume their task, or to undertake the compiling of a dictionary of Americanisms, I should deem it my duty to do so, lest I should set down as peculiarly American in origin or in usage words and phrases which form part of the vocabularies of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Burke,

1 I quote this from memory, and the book is not at hand.

VOL. XLIII. NO. 257.

25

Byron, Thackeray, George Eliot, and the writers in London magazines and newspapers of the highest class.

It is objected by a correspondent, whom I suspect of having been stupefied by the mass of quotations in Recent Exemplications, etc., that as to family I give only my opinion, without citations in its support, and that the Latin familia certainly meant the household without regard to ties of blood. He still inclines to think, with the compiler of the Dictionary of Americanisms, that family, meaning wife and children, is an Americanism. Doubtless familia did mean the household without regard to kindred; but this I mentioned myself. (How strange it is, by the way, that some men, when they set out to censure you, will do so in the very teeth of your own utterances!) We are not, however, concerned with the meaning of the Latin original of the word family, but with the sense in which family is used by modern Englishmen. Now it so happens that a recent sad event has shown this usage with very exact discrimination. death of the Princess Alice (Grand Duchess of Hesse) and her children of diphtheria, while all the servants and other attendants and attachés of the duke escaped, was of course made the occasion of much comment by the London press; and in these comments the princess and the children were called the duke's family, and the servants and other attendants his household.

The

"The illness of the Princess Alice is causing great alarm. The attack is a grave form of the diphtheria from which the whole family have been suffering, and which has already caused the death of one of her children." (London Spectator, December 14, 1878.)

"Bad drainage may be the cause of it; but it cannot be the only cause, for of the sixty persons forming the household of the Grand Duke of Hesse, no one outside his own family has yet been attacked. It is possible that the milk supplied to the children was bad. . . . The circumstances ought to be most carefully inquired into, not only in the interests of the grand duke's family, but

December 21, 1878.)

(The Week,

From the foregoing outline of the natural history of the malady it will be seen that the outbreak now under consideration presents no special or peculiar features, and that its limitation to the members of the grand duke's family, which may or may not continue," etc. (The same, December 17, 1878.)

I give a few other conclusive examples from current English publications:

"On Admiral de Horsey's visit in the Shah, in September last, he found sixteen men, nineteen women, twentyfive boys, and thirty girls, - say a number equivalent to some sixteen families in all." (London Spectator, December 14, 1878.)

"For the very fact of a man's being a traveler is, between ourselves, by no means a good sign. Why does he not stop at home in the bosom of his family, or if he has no family, acquire one?"1 (James Payn, Simpson of Bussora, Belgravia, October, 1878.)

"I want to know, can a young man or a family in London enjoy a few hours of inexpensive, out-of-door, popular music in the summer evenings? . . . But when by degrees the novelty of the thing had worn off, . . when the shopkeeper found that he could safely bring out his wife and family, and for a few pence obtain seats and spend a cheerful hour or two, then," etc. (Contemporary Review, quoted in New York Times, November 10, 1878.)

"The king, who entertained a strong partiality for the homely style and dress of his Quaker subjects, at once accepted the invitation, and in company with his consort walked up into the first floor above the shop, where Barclay's wife and family were assembled to witness the

1 I observe that in this humorous sketch Mr. Payn falls into the general error of attributing the joke about changing a wife of forty for two twenties to Douglas Jerrold. It is quite possible that Jerrold may have uttered it, and finding himself credited with it assumed its paternity. But it be

-

"Pray, Goody, please to moderate The rancour of your tongue." Referring to my memorandums on the fly leaves of Pepys's Diary, I find this name for 66 a simple" woman in the following not very savory record:

"This evening the girle that was brought to me to-day for so good a one, being cleansed of lice by my wife, and good, new clothes put on her back, she ran away from Goody Taylour that was shewing her the way to the bake-house, and we heard no more of her." (August 20, 1663.)

He tells us, too, that "My Lady Batten, walking through the dirty lane with new spicke and span white shoes, she dropped one of her goloshes in the dirt, where it stuck, at which she was horribly vexed, and I led her." (November 15, 1665.) Yet further. Some of my readers may remember that in my last article on this subject (Atlantic, January, 1879) I said as to a good time that I was" sure that there was precedent for the phrase in the books of English writers of repute in past generations," although I then cited no example. I now find a memorandum of a use of it by Pepys, plump and without mitigation, just as it might be used by Daisy Miller herself:

"Up betimes and to St. James's, thinking Mr. Coventry had lain there; but he do not but at Whitehall; so thither I went, and had as good a time as heart could wish." (March 7, 1666.)

Also, apropos of andirons and firedogs, it is not without interest that in one longs to a vastly greater and much better man than Jerrold, Byron; although Byron, I believe, makes the age fifty instead of forty, and the change, of course, two twenty-fives. He had more admiration, because more knowledge, of the charms that may accumulate in forty years.

of the London weekly papers cited above I found a queer, compromising mixture of the two terms, which, being novel, or at least unusual, is quite likely to be set forth, by some governess or some doctor of laws, as an Americanism:

"The chairs are of various kinds, to suit various tastes; the fire-place open, spacious, and fitted with dog-irons,” etc. (The Week, December 21, 1878.)

Another like combination is found in hand-dog, which Dr. Bartlett gives as an Americanism. It may be so; but I never met with it, or heard it. I suspect that like dog-iron it is the bungle or the whim of an individual. I also met with a phrase that as I read it seemed to me to be just the sort of phrase that I should find in the Dictionary of Americanisms, candle-lighting, as a time of the day.

"So many fairy tales are probably being told to children in the hours between early dusk and candle-lighting that older people may naturally ask themselves, Who were the first authors of the nursery lore of the world?" (Saturday Review, December 7, 1878.)

Sure enough, when I turned to the dictionary, there it was: "Candle-lighting. Time of, or near the time of, lighting candles, as at early candle-lighting;' sometimes we hear at early candlelight. New England." Yes, indeed, and Old England too, ever since the time when farthing rush-lights and tallowdips came in; and even from then until now. It should seem that a little reflection would show an intelligent student of language that candle-lighting is a mark of time inevitable when clocks are few; and that even when clocks become common the charm of the hour, its associations, and the mobility of this little feasting time of memories sweet and sad, would preserve it surely in the living embalmment of folk-speech. Indeed, in spite of gas and electric light, you might almost as well attempt to grind folk itself out of English speech as "from early dusk to candle-lighting."1

1 It may be just worth while to mention that in three evenings' reading, last week, I met with seventeen instances of the use of folk or folks by British authors, or in London publications of repute, in

I might feel that I owed my readers some apology for this recurrence to former subjects; but my purpose was not merely to confirm my position in certain particulars, or even to impress those particulars more strongly upon those whom I address. I hoped that it might thus appear that I am not apt to make assertions, or to give judgments, for which there are not good grounds; and that if I do not always support my assertions and my judgment by the production of proof, it is not because they rest upon conjecture or mere opinion, but sometimes because of present convenience, sometimes for the mere sake of saving room; at other times because, saying what I know is true, I think that its truth must be plain with no illustration, or with little, to any intelligent reader. As a general rule, I much prefer the least possible quotation, citation of authority, or annotation. In Words and their Uses I followed this rule, giving only what was needed in the way of mere illustration, and making no attempt at cumulative proof. But that book was one chiefly of opinion. These papers, on the contrary, refer to matter of fact, and I must generally support my assertions by sufficient evidence; indeed, the evidence is the important part of the discussion. When, however, my citations are few, my readers may rest assured that this is not because they are the limits of my knowledge on the point in question, unless I avow that to be the case. In science nothing is so unsafe - indeed, so unscientific-as to build a theory upon the observation of a few, and possibly disconnected, facts; and even in such discussions of language as the present, conclusions from few facts should be warily drawn. This I constantly remember, although I make no pretension to treat language scientifically, and have no desire to do so. Yet I likewise have in mind that one sort of fact has ten times the weight and meaning that a score of facts in regard to the

the sense of " people or persons," which we are told was obsolete in Johnson's time, and is now made by British writers a mark of Yankeeism.