from both sisters was inexhaustible.
The somewhat unusual names of Semolina and Tapioca had been adopted for
the heroine and confidante on account of their rhythmical advantages,
and a certain pleasant Shakespearean ring about them.

I know another family who from long practice have acquired the habit of
addressing each other in flowing periods of Johnsonian English. They
never hesitate for an epithet, and manage to round off all their
sentences in Dr. Johnson's best manner. I was following the hounds on
foot one day, with the eldest daughter of this family, when, as we
struggled through a particularly sticky and heavy ploughed field, she
panted out, "Pray let us hasten to the summit of yonder commanding
eminence, whence we can with greater comfort to ourselves witness the
further progress of the chase," and all this without the tiniest
hesitation; a most enviable gift! A son of this family was once riding
in the same steeplechase as a nephew of mine. The youth had lost his
cap, and turning round in his saddle, he shouted to my nephew in the
middle of the race, between two fences, "You will perceive that I have
already sacrificed my cap, and laid it as a votive offering on the
altar of Diana." One would hardly have anticipated that a youthful
cavalry subaltern, in the middle of a steeplechase, would have been
able to lay his hands on such choice flowers of speech. Unfortunately,
owing to the time lost by these well-turned periods, both the speaker
and my nephew merely figured as "also ran."

In the "seventies" some of the curious tricks of pronunciation of the
eighteenth century still survived. My aunts, who had been born with, or
before the nineteenth century, invariably pronounced "yellow" as
"yaller." "Lilac" and "cucumber" became "laylock" and "cowcumber," and
a gold bracelet was referred to as a "goold brasslet." They always
spoke of "Proosia" and "Roosia," drank tea out of a "chaney" cup, and
the eldest of them was still "much obleeged" for any little service
rendered to her, played at "cyards," and took a stroll in the
"gyarden." My grandfather, who was born in 1766, insisted to the end of
his life on terming the capital of these islands "Lunnon," in
eighteenth-century fashion.

Possibly people were more cultured in those days, or, at all events,
more in the habit of using their brains. Imbecility, whether real or
simulated, had not come into fashion. My mother told me that in her
young days a very favourite a