roach to it I have found is _cotton
together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in
another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its
origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S.
_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better
yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and
_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit
cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to
_beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently
obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,
receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I
mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of
Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put!_ for
_Begone!_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide?'

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide.'

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other cures _let he slide_.'

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare
Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' _In his tracks_ for _immediately_ has
acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but
is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin _e
vestigio_, or at best the Norman French _eneslespas_, both which have
the same meaning? _