," which had once such definite and
narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When
I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that
lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as
I don't hold to'; and she makes answer to me, 'You better hadn't.'"

Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen
who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in
carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling
themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited
to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any
anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go
amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in
cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and
sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman!
There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and
yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and
truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind--who is, in one word, a
Christian!

Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their
patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an _e_
to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his
example; and White spells his with a _y_; and Bob Smith calls his son
and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls
himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried
a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of
silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received
an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip,
"we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable
we calls him _Tow-leure."_

Passing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are
gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from
admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old associations,
would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective
_ask_ is one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the
sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind
is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the
roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are dry and hard