as bricks, and a bitter, searching, piercing wind whistles at your
sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and Jerseys, your foot-warmers and
muffatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as though water were flowing
aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering--dithering (there's
another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount of chilliness in
it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in the _ask_, ungenial day."

Then I like _abear_ (the penultimate _a_ pronounced as _e_)--"I can't
abeer him"; _addled_--"Bill's addled noat a three week"; _agate_--"I see
you've agate on't"; _among-hands_--"Tom schemed to do it among-hands";
_all along of_--"It was all along of them 'osses"; etc.

Of B's there is a swarm: _beleddy_ (a corruption, as most men know, of
"by our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens. _Botch_ is a
word which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors,
is rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great
object seems to be to get quantity in place of quality, and to make as
much display as we can at the price--when so much is done by contract,
and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered
mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be
seen, the verb _to botch_ is only too appropriate to all such scampish
proceedings.

And what do you think of _bofen-yed_? I once heard a farmer, shouting
from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a
labourer at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed,
can ter ear noat?" (_Anglice_, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone
deaf?"); and more frequently the terms, _pudding-yed_ and _noggen-yed_
have been addressed in my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former
requires no comment, and an explanation of the latter--_noggen_, hard,
rough, coarse--may be found in Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a
noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee were a noggen-yed," was a poor
apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And there also, in time-honoured
Lancaster, was made the following illustrative speech. A conceited young
barrister, with a _nez retrousse_ and a new wig, had been bullying for
some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was giving evidence in a
trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his opportunity,
turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a short
time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer,