No More Learning

_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV. ;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide? '

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide. '

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other cures _let he slide_. '

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare
Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent. ' _In his tracks_ for _immediately_ has
acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but
is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin _e
vestigio_, or at best the Norman French _eneslespas_, both which have
the same meaning? _Hotfoot_ (provincial also in England), I find in the
old romance of 'Tristan,'

'_Si s'en parti_ CHAUT PAS'

_Like_ for _as_ is never used in New England, but is universal in the
South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (_ego sum
rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam_), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This
were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel.
_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.