_such, brush,
tush, hush, rush, blush_, seldom in _much_, oftener in _trust_ and
_crust_, never in _mush, gust, bust, tumble_, or (?) _flush_, in the
latter case probably to avoid confusion with _flesh_. I have heard
_flush_ with the _e_ sound, however. For the same reason, I suspect,
never in _gush_ (at least, I never heard it), because we have already
one _gesh_ for _gash_. _A_ and _i_ short frequently become _e_ short.
_U_ always becomes _o_ in the prefix _un_ (except _unto_), and _o_ in
return changes to _u_ short in _uv_ for _of_, and in some words
beginning with _om_. _T_ and _d_, _b_ and _p_, _v_ and _w_, remain
intact. So much occurs to me in addition to what I said on this head in
the preface to the former volume.

Of course in what I have said I wish to be understood as keeping in mind
the difference between provincialisms properly so called and _slang_.
_Slang_ is always vulgar, because it is not a natural but an affected
way of talking, and all mere tricks of speech or writing are offensive.
I do not think that Mr. Biglow can be fairly charged with vulgarity, and
I should have entirely failed in my design, if I had not made it appear
that high and even refined sentiment may coexist with the shrewder and
more comic elements of the Yankee character. I believe that what is
essentially vulgar and mean-spirited in politics seldom has its source
in the body of the people, but much rather among those who are made
timid by their wealth or selfish by their love of power. A democracy can
_afford_ much better than an aristocracy to follow out its convictions,
and is perhaps better qualified to build those convictions on plain
principles of right and wrong, rather than on the shifting sands of
expediency. I had always thought 'Sam Slick' a libel on the Yankee
character, and a complete falsification of Yankee modes of speech,
though, for aught I know, it may be true in both respects so far as the
British provinces are concerned. To me the dialect was native, was
spoken all about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish day-laborer was
as rare as an American one now. Since then I have made a study of it so
far as opportunity allowed. But when I write in it, it is as in a mother
tongue, and I am carried back far beyond any studies of it to long-ago
noonings in my father's hay-fields, and to the talk of Sam and Job over
their jug of _blackstrap_ under the shadow of the ash-tree which still
dapples the grass whence they ha