f
it ought to shriek. It did not,--but he sat as if watching it.

--Language is a solemn thing,--I said.--It grows out of life,--out of
its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language
is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.
Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its
cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you
what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.--A
friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,--a "bull's
eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from
its contents; you know them,--the cases that you hang on your thumb,
while the core, or the real watch, lies in your hand as naked as a
peeled apple. Well, he began with taking off the case, and so on from
one liberty to another, until he got it fairly open, and there were the
works, as good as if they were alive,--crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and
all the rest. All right except one thing,--there was a confounded little
hair had got tangled round the balance-wheel. So my young Solomon got a
pair of tweezers, and caught hold of the hair very nicely, and pulled it
right out, without touching any of the wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and
the watch had done up twenty-four hours in double magnetic-telegraph
time!--The English language was wound up to run some thousands of years,
I trust; but if everybody is to be pulling at everything he thinks is
a hair, our grandchildren will have to make the discovery that it is a
hair-spring, and the old Anglo-Norman soul's-timekeeper will run down,
as so many other dialects have done before it. I can't stand 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 whi