re obsolete in England?

Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his
catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and
kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always
over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of
language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity
(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion
which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than
instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our
people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be
standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every
reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves
being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of
no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt
with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to
movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers
another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on
Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the
less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for
the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood
boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion
of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a
"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever
for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men
who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his
treatise--_Our Common Speech_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63,
215.]

[Footnote R: "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires,
"has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at
all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?"
The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _Chimmie
Fadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels.]

[Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare
talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened
offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single,
inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.]

II