rength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure,
rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular,
words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others
which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though
an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive,
it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time.
Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout
the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible
and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America.
Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how
much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had
become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent.

I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary
and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark,
allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and
clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to
all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that
neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with
contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably)
American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally
suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in
America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley
and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily
News_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar
product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding
its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde,"
"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in
his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt
to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend
that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of
science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to
"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that
it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with
equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist,
dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist,
and--purist. Much more valid objection migh