alike could not but protest against the
solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly
indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism
is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from
localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and
"ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the
advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of
"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but
one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some
other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary
alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.

Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains
to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and
"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial
genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so
severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon
Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic
for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative
"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle
English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Heliand)_, "daeges and
nihtes" _(Beowulf)_, "daeies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day
and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the
genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be
retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward"
better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see
that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent
practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become
irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful
concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all,
"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly
jars in England.

An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is
taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or
"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's
Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany
Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago
clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "