the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are you
doing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to
treat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What
ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the
"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very
useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple
curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the
devil are you doing?" expresses anger--we need not run farther up the
scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise.
"Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after
the interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For
instance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), "I shall desire him to
consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests."

One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in
which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American
speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through
Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking
out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America
are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.)
Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in
England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze,
affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie
order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker,
blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious,
cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon,
cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike),
cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades,
loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole,
scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came
to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any
one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have
sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject
Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British
English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for
his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy,
cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole a