of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't
Sydney Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a
false quantity uttered in early life? OUR public men are in little
danger of this fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of
introducing Latin into their speeches,--for good and sufficient
reasons. But they are bound to speak decent English,--unless,
indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or
General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are
pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a
constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided
they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in
conversation and print. I never find them out until they are
stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no
doubt I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is
over, and remember them all before another. How one does tremble
with rage at his own intense momentary stupidity about things he
knows perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself open to the
impertinences of the captatores verborum, those useful but humble
scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what
might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as
they go! I don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal
critics;--how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and
vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those
clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better,
and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is
unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears silk or
broadcloth.

[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making
this record of the date that nobody may think it was written in
wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the
invasion of any individual scarabaeus grammaticus.]

--I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this
table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be
very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they
did not.

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat
stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found
it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round
it, close to its edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a k