No More Learning

_Them_ was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI. , by Sir P.
Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any
passage adduced where _guess_ was used as the Yankee uses it. The word
was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade
of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like _rather
think_, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he
says, 'I guess I _du! _' There are two examples in Otway, one of which
('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve
our purpose, and Coleridge's

'I guess 'twas fearful there to see'

certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in
Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first
inventor of them (I _guess_ you dislike not the addition) was one
Berthold Swartz. ' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted. '
Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes
Cloth-breeches say, 'but I _gesse_ your maistership never tried what
true honor meant. ' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning
precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as
prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions,
with 'well. ' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do? ' it is commonly
short, and has the sound of it _wul_, but in reply it is deliberative,
and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of
intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt
to describe. I have heard _ooa-ahl_, _wahl_, _ahl_, _wal_ and something
nearly approaching the sound of
the _le_ in _able_. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere _l_, as
''l _I_ dunno.
' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though
I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most
exquisite of humorists, J. H. ? ) told me that he once heard five 'wells,'
like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land.
The first was the ordinary _wul_, in deference to custom; the second,
the long, perpending _ooahl_, with a falling inflection of the voice;
the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a
conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, _wulh_, ending
in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp _wal_,
showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form
in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it
represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the
interjection.

A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so
curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines
to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I
mean the use of _allow_ in the sense of _affirm_, as 'I allow that's a
good horse. ' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in
Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the
Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by
eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same,
_allowing_ theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be
the increase of theyr strength. ' That is, they undervalued our strength,
and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another
passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of
approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration,
said. ' Ducange quotes Bracton _sub voce_ ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to
admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no
means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault _allows_ waterfrogs to be good
meat,' and here the word is equivalent to _affirms_. At the same time,
when we consider some of the meanings of _allow_ in old English, and of
_allouer_ in old French, and also remember that the verbs _prize_ and
_praise_ are from one root, I think we must admit _allaudare_ to a share
in the paternity of _allow_. The sentence from Hakluyt would read
equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, . .