Mr. Russell stated this, there was a great outcry,
and at Boston it was mentioned to me as a
glaring instance of Bull-Run Russell's
inaccuracy and malevolence.

There are some few peculiarities, which are
so well known here that I pass over them
rapidly. Almost every one has some title, prefix,
or handle to his name; and as they expect it
themselves, so they lavishly confer it on others.
I was introduced to a major-general at Frederick
City, who turned out to be a very intelligent
gentleman, who had travelled in Europe, and
was celebrated as a scientific farmer, and
somewhat scientific toper, in his own neighbourhood,
but was a general in the State Militia. Every
man is either "the Honourable," or a General
or Colonel. I was usually addressed as Colonel
(or "Cunnel") when with the army, as "Doctor"
when with some of the staff of the Sanitary
Commission. My acquaintances also insisted on
imputing to me senatorial honours, to which I had
no right whatever. I was several times
introduced as "a Member of the British Parliament,"
though I as often accepted "the Chiltern
Hundreds,'' and modestly denied the soft impeachment.
I have letters in the desk at which I
write, in which I am always introduced as "the
Honourable P. Q. Z."

There must be some acknowledged points of
difference between our tongue and theirs, for
the Emperor Nicholas, during the Crimean war,
issued a proclamation or edict of some kind,
expressing his high and supreme desire and
command that "the American language should be
studied throughout his wide dominions." These
are to be found in conversation, or in colloquial
and humorous writings, like those of
Haliburton, James Russell Lowell, and Artemus
Ward. But Our Cousins have no need to be
"thin-skinned" about their written style, when
they can point proudly to the purity of
Washington Irving, the sustained elevation and
dignity of Prescott, and even the florid eloquence
of Bancroft, to say nothing of ex-Professor and
Poet Longfellow's charming Hyperion, or those
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Oliver Wendell
Holmes.

I am writing rather of vulgarities and
peculiarities to be found mainly among the lower
middle classes and the lower orders in America;
and do not let us forget that we have our
vulgarities and peculiarities, and that Our Cousins
are just as severe upon us as we are upon Our
Cousins. They may assuredly, with perfect
truth, boast of the fact that the English (or, for
the sake of concession, let us call it the American)
language is far more purely spoken on "the
boundless continent" than in its native home.
There is nothing among the wildest prairie
inhabitants of the West to answer to such odious
and unintelligible dialects as are spoken by the
agricultural labourers of Yorkshire, Somersetshire,
and Wiltshire. The roughest private soldier
in the army, the noisiest rowdie in
New York, the humblest ostler, or porter, or
stage-driver, long-shore man, or dustman, or
scavenger, speaks the language used here by
tolerably educated tradespeople. The Irish
keep their brogue almost in full vigour; but
an educated Irishman usually speaks exemplary
English; and even Irishmen are educated in
America.

The ''vulgarities" are, perhaps, confined to
the lower orders; but the higher and better
educated have their "peculiarities." A lawyer
in New England, who was a man of varied and
extensive reading, remonstrated with me for
breakfasting in the room only frequented by my
own sex. I had done so for the very simple
reason that I thought my appearance in the
ladies' coffee-room would be an intrusion, as I
had no ladies with me. It was not the result
of misgiving. "Why don't you take your
meals in the ladies' apartment," he said,
"instead of in the midst of a parcel of hawking and
spitting cusses?"

I heard another gentleman of the same
culture and social status use the word "a human"
as an equivalent for "a man." Speaking of
some stranger to whom he had been introduced,
he said, "I never saw such a queer human in all
my life." I was surprised to find how many
phrases that were familiar to my ear in the
West Indies a quarter of a century ago, were in
constant use both in New England and in the
Border States. For example, the Barbadians
and the Americans invariably use the word
"mad" for angry. "Don't make me mad."
"I was so mad this morning, because papa won't
take us to the theatre to-night." Then, again,
in both places, "mash" is equivalent to our
"smash." I heard a small boy at Washington,
beneath my window, telling a little girl, " I'll
hit Tom with a rock-stone, I will. I'll hit him
till he's a fool. I guess I'll mash his nose, so
that it won't want mashing again."

To conclude is to determine. I remember a
despatch from Rear-Admiral D. D. Porter, who
was successful at Grand Gulf, April 29th, 1863,
to the Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy, in which he wrote that he had "concluded
to land the troops." An impious old banker
in the North, who was called upon by some
devout emissaries of a missionary society and
asked to contribute, is reported to have replied
that his view of the case was that, as things
stood, not half the people who deserved met
their merited fate hereafter, and that, as far as
he was personally concerned, he "had concluded
to go to—" the rest here understood.
To "skedaddle" is now a fashionable word,
signifying to "run away." When it was first
used, a noble lord wrote to the Times to say
that it was an old word in Scotland meaning
"to spill," as applied especially to milk. Some
pedantic correspondent forthwith suggested
that "skedaddle" was derived from the Greek
verb ?????????, "to scatter." To be " gobbled
up" is a still more recent phrase, and first
rose on the vocabular horizon when I was in
America. It means, "to be captured or seized"
in war. "Some of our ammunition waggons
and our teamsters were 'gobbled up' by the
rebel cavalry."