Hotfoot_ (provincial also in England), I find in the
old romance of 'Tristan,'

'_Si s'en parti_ CHAUT PAS'

_Like_ for _as_ is never used in New England, but is universal in the
South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (_ego sum
rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam_), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This
were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel.
_Them_ was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P.
Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any
passage adduced where _guess_ was used as the Yankee uses it. The word
was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade
of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like _rather
think_, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he
says, 'I guess I _du!_' There are two examples in Otway, one of which
('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve
our purpose, and Coleridge's

'I guess 'twas fearful there to see'

certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in
Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first
inventor of them (I _guess_ you dislike not the addition) was one
Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.'
Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes
Cloth-breeches say, 'but I _gesse_ your maistership never tried what
true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning
precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as
prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions,
with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do?' it is commonly
short, and has the sound of it _wul_, but in reply it is deliberative,
and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of
intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt
to describe. I have heard _ooa-ahl_, _wahl_, _ahl_, _wal_ and something
nearly approaching the sound of
the _le_ in _able_. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere _l_, as
''l _I_ dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though
I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most
exquisite of humorists, J.H.?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,'
like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land.
The first was the ordinary _wul_, in deference to custom