rrected; but this requires memory,
inclination, time, continuity of purpose, possession of dictionaries
or access to them--circumstances that are seldom found combined. It
will doubtless be useless to rehearse any of the arguments commonly
employed to prove the necessity of having some sovereign standard, to
the guidance of which we must be willing to submit. Those for whom
this work is intended will be willing to admit that. Nor is it
necessary to assert that as far as the English speakers of the United
States are interested, the only works that lay claim to such a
position are the dictionaries of Webster and Worcester. If the right
of the opinions of the majority of scholars throughout the land were
alone considered, the former would certainly be entitled to the
preference; but the work of the latter is too full of merit and has
too many adherents in the ranks of the educated to permit any one to
say that it is not worthy of high esteem.

With my own preference for the former and with my willingness to
acknowledge the worth of the latter, I have consulted both authorities
concerning every word in the following vocabulary--that is, every word
requiring reference to either. It will be seen that there is much less
difference between the decisions of the two dictionaries than is
commonly supposed. By this reference to each, I have not only
corrected errors in an impartial manner, but have also stopped up that
loop-hole through which so many try to escape by saying, when they are
called to account according to one dictionary, that they do not accept
that as their standard. As far as the people of this country are
concerned, there is no escape from the conclusion that a person is
considered a correct or an incorrect speaker of English, according to
whether or not he conforms his discourse to one of the above mentioned
authorities. At first glance it will appear that the size of this
volume is not at all commensurate to the task of correcting the many
errors that are heard in our communication with all classes that
pretend to speak the English language. It is not intended to instruct
those whose education has been so neglected that they are guilty of
the grossest violation of syntax and orthoepy, nor to cultivate the
taste of those whose selection of words and cant and slang phrases
betrays the low grade of the associations by which they have been
surrounded. It is designed rather as a collection of the more common
of those