ir faces with their
well-brushed hats: with each nation the observance is the same, it is in
the manner of the observing that we differ.

Much is said about our "common language," and its being a reason for our
understanding each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much a cause
for our misunderstanding each other. It is both a help and a trap. If we
Americans spoke something so wholly different from English as French is,
comparisons couldn't be made; and somebody has remarked that comparisons
are odious.

"Why do you call your luggage baggage?" says the Englishman--or used to
say.

"Why do you call your baggage luggage?" says the American--or used to
say.

"Why don't you say treacle?" inquires the Englishman.

"Because we call it molasses," answers the American.

"How absurd to speak of a car when you mean a carriage!" exclaims the
Englishman.

"We don't mean a carriage, we mean a car," retorts the American.

You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolish
conversations like that; and you will readily perceive that if we didn't
say "car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board a
train, but called it a voiture, or something else quite "foreign," the
Englishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with his
mother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world is
divided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; and
for most of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, and
English. Now a "foreigner" can call molasses whatever he pleases; we
do not feel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue;
his tongue has a different mother; he can't help that; he's not to be
criticized for that. But we and the English speak a tongue that has
the same mother. This identity in pedigree has led and still leads
to countless family discords. I've not a doubt that divergences in
vocabulary and in accent were the fount and origin of some swollen
noses, some battered eyes, when our Yankees mixed with the Tommies. Each
would be certain to think that the other couldn't "talk straight"--and
each would be certain to say so. I shall not here spin out a list of
different names for the same things now current in English and American
usage: molasses and treacle will suffice for an example; you will be
able easily to think of others, and there are many such that occur in
everyday speech. Almost more tricky are those words which both peoples
use al