"David Harum"; it is not even in the pre-fable stories of George Ade, perhaps the most acute observer of average, undistinguished American types, urban and rustic, that American literature has yet produced. The business of reducing it to print had to wait for Ring W. Lardner, a Chicago newspaper reporter. In his grotesque tales of base-ball players, so immediately and so deservedly successful and now so widely imitated,[1] Lardner reports the common speech not only with humor, but also with the utmost accuracy. The observations of Charters and his associates are here reinforced by the sharp ear of one specially competent, and the result is a mine of authentic American.
In a single story by Lardner, in truth, it is usually possible to discover examples of almost every logical and grammatical peculiarity of the emerging language, and he always resists very stoutly the temptation to overdo the thing. Here, for example, are a few typical sentences from "The Busher's Honeymoon": [2]
I and Florrie was married the day before yesterday just like I told you we was going to be. … You was wise to get married in Bedford, where not nothing is nearly half so dear.…The sum of what I have wrote down is $29.40.…Allen told me I should ought to give the priest $5.… I never seen him before.… I didn't used to eat no lunch in the playing season except when I knowed I was not going to work.… I guess the meals has cost me all together about $1.50, and I have eat very little myself.…
I was willing to tell her all about them two poor girls.… They must not be no mistake about who is the boss in my house. Some men lets their wife run all over them.…Allen has went to a college foot-ball game. One of the reporters give him a pass.…He called up and said he hadn't only the one pass, but he was not hurting my feelings none.…The flat across the hall from this here one is for rent.…If we should of boughten furniture it would cost us in the neighborhood of $100, even without no piano.…I consider myself lucky to of found out about this before it was too late and somebody else had of gotten the tip.…It will always be ourn, even when we move away.…Maybe you could of did better if you had of went at it in a
different way.…Both her and you is welcome at my house.…I never seen so much wine drank in my life.…
