he stream divided
which flowed from that original well of English are drawing
together--are, indeed, already so close that it will be but a very short
time when the word "Americanism" as applied to a peculiarity in language
will have ceased to be used in England. The "Yankee twang" and the
"strong English accent" will survive in the two countries respectively
for some time yet; but the written and spoken language of the two
nations will be--already almost is--the same, and English visitors to
the United States will have lost one fruitful source of impressions.

The process has been going on in both countries, but in widely different
forms. And this seems to me a peculiarly significant fact. In America
the language of the people is constantly and steadily tending to
improve; and this tendency is, Englishmen should note, the result of a
deliberate and conscious effort at improvement on the part of the
people. This can hardly be insisted upon too strongly.

The majority of "Americanisms" in speech were in their origin mere
provincialisms--modes of expression and pronunciation which had sprung
up unchecked in the isolated communities of a scattered people. They
grew with the growth of the communities, until they threatened to graft
themselves permanently on the speech of the nation. The United States is
no longer a country of isolated and scattered communities. After the
Civil War, and partly as a result thereof, but still more as a result of
the knitting together of the whole country by the building of the
American railway system, with the consequent sudden increase in
intimacy of communication between all parts, there developed in the
people a new sense of national unity. England saw a revolution in her
means of communication when railways superseded stage-coaches and when
the penny post was established; but no revolution comparable to that
which has taken place in the United States in the present generation.
Prior to 1880--really until 1883--Portland, Oregon, was hardly less
removed from Portland, Maine, than Capetown is from Liverpool to-day,
and the discomforts of travel from one to the other were incomparably
greater. Now they are morally closer together than London and Aberdeen,
in as much as nowhere between the Atlantic and Pacific is there any such
consciousness of racial difference as separates the Scots from the
English.

The work of federation begun by the original thirteen colonies is not
yet completed, for