first said _really_. "What is more indisputable than reality?
But it has come to be a sort of vulcanizer, to make plain English,
irony. Nowadays, when a young lady adds, 'really,' one may know that she
means to cast a doubt over the seriousness of what she says, or to
moderate its significance. 'Really, sir, you must not talk so,' is the
appropriate form for a tone of decided encouragement to continue your
remarks--probably complimentary to herself, or the opposite to some
friend. And so we might go on down, taking every word of the sort from
the dictionary, and comparing its usefulness now, with that of the time
when it had no ambiguity.

_Positively_, _seriously_, _perfectly_, and their synonymes, have been
subtracted, one after another, from our list of absolute words,--Burked,
carried off, and consumed, by people who, if they had each had the
finishing off of one word, instead of each doing a part at the ruin of
all, would deserve to have their names handed down to posterity in
connection with the ruin they had wrought, as much as ever Erostratus or
Martin did; the former, we all know, was he of whom it is said:

'The ambitious youth who fired th' Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that reared it.'

The latter, it is not so well known, did likewise by Yorkminster, for a
similar purpose, and is now, as Mrs. Partington would say, 'Expatiating
his offence' in a lunatic asylum. But their name is legion. How many a
man, perhaps, 'father of a family, member of the church, and doing a
snug business,' hears every day or two 'positively and without joking or
exaggeration, the most perfectly absurd and ridiculous thing, he ever
heard in all his born days!'

_Actually_ was a nice word. We suffered a loss when it died, and it
deserves this obituary notice. It was a pretty word to speak and to
write, and there was a crisp exactness about its very sound that gave it
meaning. _Requiescat in pace._ But last and most to be lamented, comes
_literally_. I could be pathetic about that word. So classic--so
perfect--it crystallized the asseveration honored with its assistance.
And so early dead! Cut off untimely in the green freshness of its
days--and I have not even the Homeric satisfaction of burying it! It
still wanders in the shades of purgatory, _Vox et praeterea nihil_; being
bandied about from mouth to mouth of the profane vulgar. And not even by
them alone is disrespect offered it, for the grave and practical M