estur has been a
good husband to me," said one of the matrons of my flock, "but he can
chime in nasty when he wants to _nag_."

Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred
influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute
the word _no-at_ for nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that
epoch comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to
those expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a
_no-at." "_He's up to _no-at_." One day, years ago, we waited for the
train at, not Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a
weary workman, with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the
bench beside. Presently we were joined by a third person in the
garrulous phase of inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his
_bosh_and _gibberish_ (two words which should have been introduced at an
earlier period of my history) until he provoked the righteous
expostulation, "Oh, don't bother me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of
outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not
wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested
the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the
Midland Districts, he delivered an oration: "Now just you listen to me.
Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the barley to grow, and the
'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak'
'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you know _no-at_!"
Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this--that a Mighty Power never
meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn
yoursen into a be-ast."

_Nobbut_ is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing
but." I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the
doctor, and he said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir--but it's
_nobbut_ th' 'prentice."

My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might
have enlarged upon such words as _palaver_, and _pawling_, and _peart_,
and _prod_, and_romper_, and _ramshackle_, and _rawm_; and I can only
dwell upon one selection from the S's, of which there is a long
Sigmatismus, such as _snag_ ("Billy and Sally's always at _snags_"), and
_scuft_, and _scrawl_ ("he wor' just a glass over the scrawl," _i.e._
the line of sobriety), and _scrawm_, and _slape_, and _snigger_, and
_slive_ ("I see that _shack a-_sliving_ and a_-skulking