and this meddling any
better than you, Sir. But we have a great deal to be proud of in the
lifelong labors of that old lexicographer, and we must n't be ungrateful.
Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves,--the war of the dictionaries is
only a disguised rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of
publishers. After all, it is likely that the language will shape itself
by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade
up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you
can,--but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form
their surface.

--Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the
divinity-student.

Haow?--said the divinity-student.--He colored, as he noticed on my face a
twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth,
(zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from making a little
movement on its own account.

It was too late.--A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown colt.
Just as good as a city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps, better,--but
caught a little too old not to carry some marks of his earlier ways of
life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives,
return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours.
Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by
surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they
knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,--but it lay
there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the
country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the
odd old family names, particularly those of the Hebrew prophets, which
the good old people have saddled them with.

--Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English
dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as
sitting at the right upper corner of the table.

I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly
intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of
character.--I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the
matter of voice.--Hear this.

Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in her
father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston. She overheard a
little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken with the tones of
her voice. Nothing would satisfy her but she must have that little girl
come and live in