y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still
common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by
some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its
fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses,
vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day
pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya'pet," and "Carter," as
"Cyahtah."

In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as
"aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube"
and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and
"noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the
South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it
invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore,"
"sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."

The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners
as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or
over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport
you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he
"carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what
Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what
we call a brook.

This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old
English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing
to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable
provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of
_lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in
this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.

The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a
bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am
informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that
the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the
back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown
in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries,
though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has
some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family,
having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early
English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely America