parlement.’[1] The fact that America speaks of the Fall and not of the Autumn, ought in a Philologer's eyes to atone for a multitude of her sins of the tongue.
As I have made a few strictures upon American vagaries, I ought, in common fairness, to acknowledge that no American fault comes up to the revolting habit, spread over too many English shires, of dropping or wrongly inserting the letter h. Those whom we call ‘self-made men’ are much given to this hideous barbarism; their hopes of Parliamentary renown are too often nipped in the bud by the speaker's unlucky tendency to ‘throw himself upon the ’Ouse.’ An untaught peasant will often speak better English than a man worth half a million. Many a needy scholar might turn an honest penny by offering himself as an instructor of the vulgar rich in the pronunciation of the fatal letter.[2] Our public schools are often railed against as teaching but little; still it is something that they enforce the right use of the h upon any lad who has a mind to lead a quiet life among his mates. Few things will the English youth find in after-life more profitable than the right use of the aforesaid letter.[3] The
- ↑ Paston Letters (Gairdner's edition), i. 331.
- ↑ I make a present of this hint to those whom it may concern; I took it from Thackeray, who introduces a Frenchman, the instructor of Mr. Jeames in the art of garnishing his English talk with French phrases.
- ↑ The following story sets in a strong light the great difference between the speech of the well-bred and of the untaught in England. A servant, who had dropped into a large fortune, asked his master how he was to pass muster in future as a gentleman. The answer was, ‘Dress in black and hold your tongue.’
