“Had him” is a colloquial phrase common in England, just as it is here; and although colloquial phrases do not get into print, even in newspapers, so easily and so commonly there as they do here, I am sure that it might be found in English journals by any one who would take the trouble to look for it; and a bet might safely be made that it could be found in English novels.

Heft. Weight, ponderousness. This an Americanism! It is living English, centuries old. Here are two examples nearly three hundred years apart:— "Poor little babe, full long in cradell left, Where crown and scepter hurt him with the heft." (Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587, II. 94. v. 15.) "Public opinion was much divided, some holding that it would go hard with a man of his age and heft." (Tom Brown at Oxford, page 208.)

To heft, hefted, and hefty are in the same category with heft.

Help, for house servant, is a Northern Americanism; but applied to outdoor servants it is not. It may be often heard so used in England: just as Mr. Hughes uses it in the following passage, and in many others:

"I found Murdock's ostler very drunk, but sober compared with that rascally help we had been fools enough to take with us." (Tom Brown at Oxford, page 63.)

Hern and hisn. These vulgarisms are in use in England among people exactly in the condition of life of those who use them here. They are to be found in Pegge's list of London vulgarisms. The latter even appears in an Ellesmere's epitaph on himself in Sir Arthur Helps's Realmah:

"The Grand Maxim

Never Mind the Outside
Which has improved the art of building
Throughout the World

And which has tended to dignify and purify
All other departments in Human Life

Was his'n."

(Chap. xvii.)

What peculiarity, then, gives them a proper place in a dictionary of Americanisms?

High jinks, meaning "a great frolic," appears for the first time in the last edi

tion of the dictionary. Why? It is of English origin, and is in common use in England after its kind. For example, see the following confession of an English burglar: —

"I have taken part in a very paying burglary, wherein the house was cleared of every valuable in it worth taking, while one of our set was at high jinks (he standing treat) with the servants downstairs, the family being out of town." (Pall Mall Budget, October 12, 1878.)

Ho, "a word used by teamsters to stop their teams." Does Mr. Bartlett really mean to imply that this word is not so used by English teamsters, and that it has not been so used by them from time immemorial? Hardly; and indeed he seems to confine his charge of Americanism to the use of the word, colloquially, figuratively, and jocosely, as a noun, thus: "he has no ho in him.” But the word ho existing in English, such a use of it is open to all Englishspeaking persons, and is as English as can be, whether the person who shappened first to use it was born in England. Canada, Australia, or "America." it might be said that a man has "no letup in him," or "no avast in him," and so forth. Gascoigne has this somewhat not worthy use of the word in connection with one, equally ancient, which has long passed out of ordinary ken:

So

"But out, alas, his weake and weary sprite
Forbad his tongue in furder termes to go;
His thoughts said Haight, his sillie speache cried
Ho."

(Dan Bartholomew of Bathe, Poems, 1575, ed. Roxburghe, page 136.)

Haight was used to urge, as ho was used to check. Now if haight were found in use here at all, it would be an Americanism of a certain kind, an Americanism by survival; for Gascoigne's use of it as an imperative verb, although three hundred years old, is very late. And yet it is probable that in the " Hey come up" of the lower order of English drivers to their horses and donkeys, the first word is a remnant of haight, just as ma'am is a remnant of madam.

To hound appears for the first time in the fourth edition of the dictionary,

apparently because an instance of its use has been met with in the New York Tribune. I remark upon it as an example of a word which could not be an Americanism. The use of a noun like hound as a verb is so inherently English that, no matter where it happened to be first used, it would be English, understood and recognized by every Englishspeaking person. Compare to dog, to hawk, to ferret, to mouse, to rat, etc.

House. This, we are told, is “used to form compounds, such as meat-house, wash-house, milk-house, where an Englishman would say, respectively, larder, laundry, dairy." Dear, dear! and this when he whom Mr. Samuel Weller calls the young grampus was sent to eat his dinner "in the wash-'us," because his hard breathing was too much for the nerves of the pretty housemaid! But perhaps both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Weller were Yankees. The truth is that wash-house, brew-house, bake-house, fish-house, hen-house, ale-house, and like compounds are much commoner in England than they are here.

Housen. This old plural of house is used by some a very few - of the illiterate in the rural parts of New England, New York, and New Jersey. It is used much more frequently by the same sort of people in various rural parts of England. What, then, is its Americanism?

Huckleberry is merely whortleberry pronounced with the old English inter

change of and t. Brickle and brittle are the same word, and both spellings are sometimes found within a few lines of each other in old English books. Hugger-mugger. The appearance of this word in a dictionary of Americanisms can be explained only by the use of the adage so interesting to schoolboys, lucus a non lucendo. It appears in every dictionary of the English language, from Bailey down, the compilers of which quote in illustration of it passages from Ascham, Udal, Bale, Spenser, North, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Harrington, Fuller, and Sir Roger L'Estrange, which, by the way, is rather at variance with the "colloquial and low"

applied to it in Webster's Dictionary. It is not a common word; but the reader of the literature of the Elizabethan period meets with it not unfrequently. It means hurried secrecy. Polonius was buried in hugger-mugger, as the king confesses. (Hamlet, Act. iv., Sc. 5.) Its etymology is uncertain, and its form very changing. In Golding's translation of Ovid, 1587, I met with it in this shape:

"But let Ulysses tell you his [acts] doone all in hudther-multher,

And whereunto the onlie right is privie, and none other." (Fol. 160.)

It appears now and then in English literature of the present day; but the remarkable circumstance for us in connection with it is that in the writings of Americans it is almost (I believe quite) unknown. It appears for the first time in the last edition of the dictionary, with two examples of its use taken from the New York Tribune, the writer of which, I will venture to say, adopted it from English books in which he had met with it, and used it with a full consciousness of its rarity; but we may be sure that he hardly supposed that he was going to get for this old English word, still used in England, a place in the Dictionary of Americanisms.

Human. This word, used by Western backwoodsmen for human being, is one of those which are regarded as peculiarIt is ly American in origin and use. thus grouped with guess, notion, and a few others, upon which I have heretofore remarked. But it was known in English literature of the highest order long before there were, or could have been, any Americanisms. It appears again and again in Chapman's Homer,

ier of human as a noun is an interesting illustration of the way in which a word will crop out unexpectedly in one place in a language after having disappeared from another. In the former editions of the dictionary human was designated as Western; in the last, "sometimes Eastern" is added, - through misapprehension, I am sure. The word is never used eastward of the line of civilization, except jocosely and with a subaudition of reference to the frontiersman's use of it. For example, "Lean, lank men he looked upon as the most fortunate of humans, and envied their superior condition.' (Round Table, May 21, 1864.) In all such cases there is a mild jest intended. To italicize the word or to quote it, or to emphasize it in speech, would mar the intention of the user. American speech and writing is full of such pitfalls for the ignorant and the un

wary.

ONE of the most exciting questions that one girl can ask of another is that concerning the number and manner of the offers of marriage she has received. Through such questionings a few general conclusions have been reached, namely, that every female human has one, every ordinarily agreeable female human has from two to four, every extraordinarily agreeable female human from four to eight; also, under rarely favoring conditions of wealth, beauty, esprit, etc., female humans may average twelve; under normal conditions beauty is a slight factor compared with manner. The following fragments of a conversa

tion between three girls, who met together for the purpose of relating some of their experiences, may substantiate these

averages:

"We must begin," said Graceanna, pathetically. You, Lou, were twentyfive first. Make your story ten minutes long at least, while I am consoling myself with this bonne bouche.' A new piece of candy can be taken every ten minutes, allowing five minutes for consumption and five for rest. How many offers have you had? Why are you not married, Lou Parker?”

"Because I never had an offer."
The other girls gave a low whistle of

astonishment, driven by this unexpected avowal into masculine demonstration. Lou blushed and looked extremely guilty, and the tears almost came, as she exclaimed, halting between the words, "Ireally-could-not-help-it," and then animated by a sudden impulse of self-respect, added, "I don't think it is nice to have offers. I should not want any man to come near enough to me to love me, unless I loved him."

"How can you ever tell that you should like any one until he has told you, right up and down?" asked Maggie, the other friend.

"We both should feel it, if we did like each other; it would somehow betray itself. My husband must be my only lover."

"I don't believe you'll ever have one, and such lofty ideas make ordinary people seem wicked. I feel personally insulted. Why, I have had Oh, beg pardon, it is not my turn."

Yes, it is," said Lou, thankful for a chance of escape; "tell all you can.

"I have had two whole and two half ones. It seemed too bad to let two of the men make guys of themselves, because one was the brother of a friend at whose house I have capital times; so it would have been very inconvenient. And the other was a minister, and I thought if he got discouraged early, it might affect his preaching; now he takes so many texts from Solomon's Song that his sermons are poetical, and don't make people feel that they are miserable sinners. Individual love and universal love get mixed up in them, and you can't tell which is best; if you love an individual you are just as saintly as if you loved the Cosmos alone. So I told them both that I was prejudiced against marrying and hated love-making, and that when I liked a man I would let him know it plainly. Then you don't like me?' said my little minister. No, I don't,' I told him. And then we both laughed, and he looked as if he had saved himself from jumping off a precipice. The other - he is a real splendid man - looked me square in the eye, saying, in such a grave way, If you mean what you say,

Miss Jones, I thank you.' 'I do,' said I, as solemnly as an old saint. But now I wish I had let it come to the point, because he is the best of the whole, and it is disgraceful to be twenty-five and not even engaged. He went out to India soon after, so I am sure he did like me." She drew a long breath, and took the biggest piece of candy.

"What did the other two do?" questioned the two girls eagerly.

"Oh, they were every-day kind of affairs. One was in walking: my gentleman plucked some white-weed and talked nonsense all the way about his peculiar nature, and how mine suited his; and pulled the flower to pieces, counting, 'Sie liebt mich, sie liebt mich nicht,' and held it to me as he came to the last petal. "Nicht, nicht!' shouted I, and off I ran, and he after me, asking if I were in earnest, saying he liebte mich sehr. I told him I was, and then he declared he would kill himself, and in six months he was engaged to some one else; and I found out that three months before that walk he had offered himself to two girls, to one two or three weeks after the first had refused him, and had told both that he should commit suicide. Another offer was by letter, and instead of keeping it as cordial for a despondent mood, I burnt it as a surety for a good time in the next world. If I am never married, the reason will not be want of offers."

"And if some one should come back from India?" asked Graceanna.

"Oh, I might indicate the state of my mind, if I had not grown too old to look sentimental. Now it is your turn."

66

Well, this is fun, but I wish we had not made such a compact. For my part, I could not help it, the offers, I mean. I was always surprised. I liked the men, too, but they would provoke me by saying they had misunderstood me, when of course they had, and very much. It made me feel like a naughty child, who don't know why she is naughty."

"Don't moralize," said Maggie. "How many? - that is the point."

"Ten. Four came the first winter I was in society; the men were fools to think I liked them, because I enjoyed