ike, but with different meanings. I shall spin no list of
these either; one example there is which I cannot name, of two words
constantly used in both countries, each word quite proper in one
country, while in the other it is more than improper. Thirty years ago
I explained this one evening to a young Englishman who was here for a
while. Two or three days later, he thanked me fervently for the warning:
it had saved him, during a game of tennis, from a frightful shock, when
his partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell him to cheer up, had used
the word that is so harmless with us and in England so far beyond the
pale of polite society.

Quite as much as words, accent also leads to dissension. I have heard
many an American speak of the English accent as "affected"; and our
accent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American,
ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?
His tongue has a different mother!

I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences should
have come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter
of fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents
literate and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its
notion of the other's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasal
twang, they by their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is
it that not all Americans and not all English do in their enunciation
conform to these types.

One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautiful
cathedral and its serene and gracious close. "Star-scattered on the
grass," and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitary
or in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the
inn I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman
in evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed,
and he returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was
stopping expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to
find a scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about,
he looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that I
explained to him my nationality.

"I shouldn't have known it," he remarked, after an instant's pause.

I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly,
I think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same old
mother-tongue!

"You mean," I said,