No More Learning

I shall barely lay down a few general rules for the reader's guidance.

1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the _r_ when he can
help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even
before a vowel.

2. He seldom sounds the final _g_, a piece of self-denial, if we
consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final _d_, as _han'_
and _stan'_ for _hand_ and _stand_.

3. The _h_ in such words as _while, when, where,_ he omits altogether.

4. In regard to _a_, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a
close and obscure sound, as _hev_ for _have, hendy_ for _handy, ez_ for
_as, thet_ for _that_, and again giving it the broad sound it has in
_father_, as _hansome_ for _handsome. _

5. To the sound _ou_ he prefixes an _e_ (hard to exemplify otherwise
than orally).

The following passage in Shakespeare he would recite thus:--

'Neow is the winta uv eour discontent
Med glorious summa by this sun o'Yock,
An' all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour heouse
In the deep buzzum o' the oshin buried;
Neow air eour breows beound 'ith victorious wreaths;
Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce;
Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins,
Eour dreffle marches to delighfle masures.
Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled front,
An' neow, instid o' mountin' bare-bid steeds
To fright the souls o' ferfle edverseries,
He capers nimly in a lady's ch[)a]mber,
To the lascivious pleasin' uv a loot. '

6.
_Au_, in such words as _daughter_ and _slaughter_, he pronounces
_ah_.

7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl _ad libitum_.

[Mr. Wilbur's notes here become entirely fragmentary. --C. N. ]


[Greek: a]. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biglow, I thought the
curious reader might be gratified with a sight of the editorial
effigies. And here a choice between two was offered,--the one a profile
(entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native
artist of much promise. The first of these seemed wanting in expression,
and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been
heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the
artist) into too close an approach to actual _strabismus_. This slight
divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model--however I
may have been taught to regard it in the light of a mercy rather than a
cross, since it enabled me to give as much of directness and personal
application to my discourses as met the wants of my congregation,
without risk of offending any by being supposed to have him or her in my
eye (as the saying is)--seemed yet to Mrs. Wilbur a sufficient objection
to the engraving of the aforesaid painting. We read of many who either
absolutely refused to allow the copying of their features, as especially
did Plotinus and Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention the more
modern instances of Scioppius, Palaeottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker,
and others, or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell.

[Greek: b.