Chapter III: Part 3

“The conversation turned on the subject of a general peace, as to which General Grant had already declared the want of power to treat, but, in speaking of the means by which a general pacification might be effected, General Grant said to General Lee, with great emphasis and strong feeling: ‘General Lee, I want this war to end without the shedding of another drop of American blood’—not Northern blood, not Southern blood, but ‘American blood’—for in his eyes all the men around him, and those who might be then confronting each other on other fields over the wide area of war, were ‘Americans.’

“These words made a great impression upon all who heard them, as they did upon General Lee, who told us, with no little emotion, that he took occasion to express to General Grant his appreciation of the noble and generous sentiments uttered by him, and assured him that he would render all the assistance in his power to bring about the restoration of peace and good-will without shedding another drop of ‘American blood.’ This ‘American blood,’ sacred in the eyes of both these great American soldiers, flows in the veins of all of us, and let it be sacred in our eyes also, henceforth and forever, ready to be poured without stint as a libation upon the altar of our common country, never to be shed again in fratricidal war.

“It is in the light of this noble thought of General Grant that I have always considered the course pursued by him at the moment of his supreme triumph at Appomattox, and, seen in that light, nothing could be grander, nobler, more magnanimous, nor more patriotic than his conduct on that occasion.

“Look at the state of affairs on the morning of the 9th of April, 1865. The bleeding and half-starved remnant of that great army which for four years had baffled all the efforts of the Federal government to reach the Confederate capital, and had twice borne the flag of the Confederacy beyond the Potomac, confronted with undaunted resolution, but without hope save the hope of an honorable death on the battle-field, the overwhelming forces under General Grant.

“At the head of that remnant of a great army was a great soldier, whose name was a name of fear, whose name is recorded in a high place on the roll of great soldiers of history. That remnant of a great army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander at its head, after the long siege at Richmond and Petersburg, had been forced to retreat, and on the 9th of April, 1865, was brought to bay at Appomattox, surrounded by the host of its great enemy.

“There was no reasonable doubt that the destruction of that army would seal the fate of the Confederacy and put an end to further organized resistance to the Federal arms, and no doubt that if that remnant were driven to desperation by the exactness of terms of surrender against which its honor and its valor would revolt, that resistance would have been made, and that General Grant and his army might have been left in the possession of a solitude that they might have called peace, but which would have been the peace of Poland, the peace of Ireland. Under such circumstances, had General Grant been governed by the mere selfish desire of the rewards of military success, had he been content to gather the fruits that grew nearest the earth on the tree of victory, the fruits that Napoleon and all selfish conquerors of his time have gathered, the fruits that our Washington put away from him, what a triumph lay before him!

“What Roman triumph would have approached the triumph of General Grant had he led the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander in chains, up Pennsylvania Avenue, thenceforth to be known as the ‘Way of Triumph!’

“But so simple, so patriotic was the mind of General Grant that the thought of self seems never to have affected his conduct.

“He was no more tempted at Appomattox to forego the true interests of his country for his own advantage than Washington was tempted when the time came for him to lay down his commission at Annapolis. I doubt if the self-abnegation of Washington at Annapolis was greater than that of Grant at Appomattox, and it is the glory of America that her institutions breed men who are equal to the greatest strain that can be put upon their courage and their patriotism.

“On that eventful morning of April 9, 1865, General Grant was called upon to decide the most momentous question that any American soldier or statesman has ever been required to decide. The great question was, How shall the war end? What shall be the relations between the victors and vanquished?

“Upon the decision of that question depended the future of American institutions. If the extreme rights of military success had been insisted upon, and had the vanquished been required to pass under the yoke of defeat and bitter humiliation, the war would have ended as a successful war of conquest—the Southern States would have been conquered States, and the Southern people would have been a conquered people, in whose hearts would have been sown all the enmity and ill-will of the conquered to the conquerors, to be transmitted from sire to son.

“With such an ending of the war there would have been United States without a united people. The power of the Union would then have reposed upon the strength of Grant’s battalions and the thunder of Grant’s artillery. Its bonds would have stood upon the security of its military power, and not upon the honor and good faith and good-will of its people. The federal government would have been compelled to adopt a coercive policy toward the disaffected people of the South, which would soon have established between the government and those States the relations between England and Ireland, and some Northern Gladstone would be demanding for the Southern people the natural right that the English Gladstone claimed for the Irish against their haughty conquerors.

“Does any man desire to exchange the present relations between the people of the Northern and Southern States for the relations of conqueror and conquered? Does any wish to have a union of the States without a union of the people?

“General Grant was called upon to decide this great question on the morning of April 9, 1865. The Southern military power was exhausted. He was in a position to exact the supreme rights of a conqueror, and the unconditional submission of his adversary, unless that adversary should elect to risk all on the event of a desperate battle, in which much ‘American blood’ would certainly be shed.

“The question was gravely considered in Confederate councils whether we should not accept the extreme risk, and cut our way through the hosts of General Grant, or perish in the attempt. This plan had many advocates, but General Lee was not one of them, as will be seen by his farewell order to his army.

“Under these circumstances General Lee and General Grant met to discuss the terms of surrender of General Lee’s army, and, at the request of General Lee, General Grant wrote the terms of surrender he proposed to offer to the Confederate general. They were liberal and honorable, alike to the victor and the vanquished, and General Lee at once accepted them.

“Any one who reads General Grant’s proposal cannot fail to see how careful he is to avoid any unnecessary humiliation to his adversary. As far as it was possible, General Grant took away the sting of defeat from the Confederate army. He triumphed, but he triumphed without exultation, and with a noble respect to his enemy.

“There was never a nobler knight than Grant of Appomattox—no knight more magnanimous or more generous. No statesman ever decided a vital question more wisely—more in the interest of his country and of all mankind—than General Grant decided the great question presented to him when he and General Lee met that morning of April 9, 1865, to consider the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The words of his magnanimous proposal to his enemy were carried by the Confederate soldiers to the furthest borders of the South. They reached ears and hearts that had never quailed at the sound of war. They disarmed and reconciled those who knew not fear, and the noble words of General Grant’s offer of peace brought peace without humiliation, peace with honor.”

_Last Words_

Iconoclasts overshadow with their doubts and questionings the alleged dying words of eminent men, but the following appear to be authentic. George Washington, “It is well.” John Adams, “Independence forever.” Benjamin Franklin, in severe suffering, “A dying man can do nothing easy.” Thomas Jefferson, “I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country.” John Quincy Adams, “It is the last of earth; I am content.” John C. Calhoun, “The South! the South! God knows what will become of her.” William H. Harrison, “I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” Daniel Webster, “I still live.” James Buchanan, “O, Lord Almighty, as Thou wilt.” William McKinley, “It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.” Henry Ward Beecher, “Now comes the great mystery.”

OUR WONDERLANDS

In repeated statements in the consular reports concerning the large extent of tourist travel in Switzerland, we are told that the “money-making asset” of that little republic, the greater portion of whose area is covered with mountains, is “scenery.” We go to Europe to see the accumulated treasures of centuries, to review the lessons of the past in historic localities, to observe social and industrial conditions, to enjoy musical and dramatic art, to study the development of the fine arts, to note the later acquisition of scientific research. But, as our consuls at Geneva and Lucerne and Berne and Zurich tell us, we go to Switzerland for “scenery.”

Switzerland is two hundred and ten miles in length. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in northern Arizona is two hundred and nineteen miles long, twelve to thirteen miles wide, and over a mile deep. If the main ranges of the Helvetian Alps, between the centre and the southern frontiers, running from the Bernese Oberland to the Grisons, could be lifted up and dumped into the colossal chasm of Arizona, there would still be left room in which to bury the Jura of the western border. Thousands of American tourists gaze with awe upon the panoramic displays from the view-points of the passes of the Simplon, the Furca, the St. Gotthard, and the Splügen, and from the ascent of the Rigi, Pilatus, Jungfrau, or Matterhorn. Many of our adventurous fellow-citizens contest the palm for hardihood and endurance with experienced Alpine climbers; but how few there are who are ambitious enough and venturesome enough to incur the hardships and to risk the dangers of scanning at close range, or from points of vantage, the towers, the temples, the terraces, the ramparts, the pyramids, the domes, the pillars, the buttresses, the buttes, the palisades, the white marble walls, the red sandstone steps, the green serpentine cliffs of the Grand Canyon.

Excursion parties go by way of the Williams branch of the Santa Fé to the rim of the Bright Angel trail because of its accessibility and hotel accommodation, and content themselves with descent of the zigzags to the deeply embedded river, or a drive of a few miles along the brink. But the earnest and determined explorers who follow the hazardous footsteps of the early pioneers, or of the later topographical engineers, are few and far between. There is nothing on earth that even remotely approaches this stupendous chasm in startling surprises, in grandeur and sublimity, yet our tourists ignore its indescribable wonders and go to the Alps for scenery that suffers by comparison.

When it comes to the question of orographic magnitude, our own physical geography gives a decisive answer. The great curve of the Alpine chain stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean to the plains of the Danube—a little more than six hundred miles in length. The narrowest width of the Rocky Mountains, from base to base, is three hundred miles, whereas, at their greatest width, between Cape Mendocino and Denver, the space enclosed by the two outer scarps of the plateau is nearly one thousand miles in breadth. If in measuring the area of the Rocky Mountains we include the long Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada and its northern continuation, the Cascade Range, according to the extent of surface they cover, we have a million square miles as the result, more than one-fourth of the territory of the republic.

With such immense differences in view, the vastly greater capabilities of the Rockies for scenic display are apparent. In the endless succession of views from the heights of Pike’s Peak, or Mt. Shasta, or Mt. Lowe, one can forget his most inspiring and exciting experiences in the Alps. Professor J. D. Whitney declares that no such views as those from Pike’s Peak, either for reach or magnificence, can be obtained in Switzerland. Even with the ever-increasing facilities of transcontinental travel, we but dimly realize the majestic proportions of the Rocky Mountain system, which, with its towering snow-capped peaks, its precipitous rock walls, its volcanic vestiges, its abysmal glens and canyons, and its splendid waterfalls, glorifies every landscape, and solves problems, as nowhere else, in chemical, physical, and dynamical geology.

As to comparative altitudes, it may be noted that Mount St. Elias, of the Alaska Coast Range, is three thousand five hundred feet higher than Mont Blanc, “the monarch of mountains,” as Byron calls it, while its namesake, the Sierra Blanca, the monarch of the Rockies, is nearly as lofty with its triple peak. The Rock of Gibraltar towers to the height of twelve hundred feet; its massive counterpart in the Yosemite, El Capitan, is three times as high as Gibraltar, while the great cliff known as Cloud’s Rest, admittedly the finest panoramic stand-point on earth, is more than six thousand feet high and ten thousand above sea level. As to glaciers, while it is worth a trip across the Atlantic to see the ice masses of the Rhone glacier from the Furca Pass, or the motionless billows of the Mer de Glace at Montanvert, they are overmatched in Alaska by the Muir, the Guyot, the Tyndall, and the Agassiz.

As to lakes, every school child knows that Lake Superior is the largest body of fresh water in the world. It is large enough to bury the whole of Scotland in its translucent depths. The area of the Lake of Geneva is greater than that of the Yellowstone Lake; but while the former is only twelve hundred feet above the sea, the latter is seven thousand seven hundred and forty feet—nearly a mile and a half—above the level of the sea. As to salt lakes, the Caspian Sea is not as salt as the ocean, while our American Dead Sea, the Salt Lake of Utah, has six times the saline strength of the waters of the ocean.

There is a lake in Italy—Castiglione—whose turquoise hues, paler than those of the Blue Grotto of Capri, command merited admiration. Yet the prismatic lakes in the Yellowstone Park are numerous, particularly in the Midway Geyser Basin, where they reflect with remarkable brilliancy different colors of the spectrum, prominently among them emerald green, peacock blue, and golden yellow. The most beautiful mirror lakes are in the Sierra Nevada region, and the gem of all mirrors is that of the Yosemite Valley, of which Mr. Hutchings, the historian and geographer of the valley, says,—

“There is one spot of earth known to man, where one mountain four thousand two hundred feet high, Mt. Watkins; another over six thousand feet, Cloud’s Rest; and another five thousand feet, the Half Dome, are all perfectly reflected upon one small lakelet. Here, moreover, the sun can be seen to rise many times on a single morning.”

In the lake district of the north of England there are sixteen lakes, with many attractive features, but largely centres of pilgrimage as the homes of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, and Harriet Martineau. Our Canadian neighbors, in the highlands of Ontario, can point to eight hundred lakes in the Muskoka region, with five hundred islands studded with beautiful villas and summer hotels. Two of the Swiss waterfalls, the Falls of the Rhine at Neuhausen, with a plunge of eighty feet in three leaps, and the falls of the Aar at Handeck, with a broken plunge of two hundred feet, are said to be the largest in Europe. The former is surpassed in picturesque beauty by the Virginia Cascade of the Gibbon River in the Yellowstone Park, and the latter is not worth naming in the same week with the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, as, with a magnificent sweep of three hundred and ten feet, the heavy downpour, with its clouds of snowy spray, enters the canyon which is the culmination of all the bewildering “formations” of the great national reservation.

The cascades of the Reuss, near Andermatt, are justly famous for their tumultuous rush, but the rapids of the Gardiner River in the Yellowstone, and the Merced in the Yosemite, are more boisterous and more beautiful. The much vaunted Giessbach in the Bernese Oberland has a total fall of one thousand one hundred and forty-eight feet, but it is broken into seven sections. Of the various falls in the Yosemite Valley, the highest has a descent of two thousand six hundred feet, with only two interruptions, the upper division having a clear plunge of one thousand six hundred feet. Among great cataracts, as every one knows, Niagara holds the supremacy. In the majesty and sublimity reflected in the overwhelming torrents that are hurled over its precipice, in the resistless energy of its roaring rapids and its turbulent whirlpools, it sets its own standard, and “bears no brother near the throne.”

Caves and grottoes, calcareous and basaltic, are widely spread throughout Europe, but, numerous as they are, if they were all grouped together they could be packed in the heights and depths of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. Of that stupendous cavern, with a main avenue of six miles and branches of more than a hundred miles in extent, Bayard Taylor said,—

“No description can do justice to its sublimity, or present a fair picture of its manifold wonders. It is the greatest natural curiosity I have ever visited, and he whose expectations are not satisfied by its marvellous avenues, domes, and sparry grottoes, must be either a fool or a demigod.”

The historic caves of Europe abound with the remains of ancient cave-dwellers which are of great interest to archæologists, but the lofty and almost inaccessible abodes of the cliff-dwellers in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona present a wider range of curious inquiry to the student of remote antiquity. Scientists propose to make more extended and comprehensive investigation of these hewn-out homes of the cliff-dwellers in the far West than has yet been made by neglectful explorers. In the ruins of the habitations of a long extinct race in Mancos Canyon, Colorado, they will find abundant material for anthropological research. Perched on narrow ledges seven hundred feet above the valley are numerous ancient dwellings, with well built sandstone walls, with rooms in a good state of preservation, and with scattered specimens of fine pottery and fragments of implements of war and peace. Here and there are watch-towers commanding views of the whole valley.

In the Chaco Canyon are ruins of pueblos still more extensive, once the homes of thousands of people who lived thousands of years ago, and, according to Hayden, in the Geological Survey for 1866, “pre-eminently the finest examples of the works of the unknown builders to be found north of the seat of ancient Aztec empire in Mexico.” A few miles southeast of Flagstaff, Arizona, are more of these retreats far up on rocky crags, and within a similar radius northward are many cave dwellings, but they only stimulate conjecture; they have left behind neither history nor tradition.

The pride of Vernayaz in the Rhone Valley is the Gorge du Trient. Very pretty, and very interesting, what there is of it, but a comparison with Watkins Glen reminds one of Hamlet’s “no more like my father than I to Hercules.” In the splendid description of Watkins by Porte Crayon it appears that that enthusiast was so fascinated by its wonderful succession of attractions, especially those between Glen Alpha and the Cathedral Cascade, that he prolonged his stay, climbing its ladders and descending its stairways again and again. Half an hour would have sufficed for a visit to the Trient.

The boast of the Splügen is the gorge of the Heinzenberg range, through which the four-mile Via Mala runs, and which is the outlet of the Hinter Rhine. Yet this narrow defile between ridges twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height is completely overshadowed in the length and height and ruggedness of the rock walls of the Arkansas, Eagle, and Grand River Canyons, through which the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad passes in Colorado. Our natural bridges have no transatlantic rivals. They are distinctly our own, without duplications abroad. For any favorable comparison with the majestic arch over Cedar Creek, in Virginia, two hundred feet from the summit of its wonderful span to the surface of the stream below, we must look to its resemblances in Walker County, Alabama, and Christian County, Kentucky. California abounds with rock bridges, notably those over Lost River, Trinity River, and Coyote Creek, while the arches at Santa Cruz are well known to all visitors.

Travellers over the St. Gotthard Railway, between Goschenen and Altorf, are apt to regard the forward and backward turns of its loops with wonder at the constructive genius which so boldly and skilfully triumphed over formidable natural obstacles. Yet its loops cut a small figure and look tame enough when placed in contrast with the coils and spirals and sharp curves and bends in the dizzy alignment of the Marshall Pass, the Veta Pass, the Ophir Loop, and the Toltec Gorge. Stupendous and awe-inspiring beyond description are these supreme achievements of modern engineering.

The woodlands of England, and prominently among them Sherwood Forest, boast of very old and very large oaks, elms, and yews. Visitors to Stoke Pogis church-yard, the scene of Gray’s Elegy, will remember the Burnham Beeches, near Slough. The Methuselah of the forests is the Greendale Oak of Welbeck, through which, a hundred and fifty years ago, an arch was cut ten feet high and six feet wide. The largest tree, the Swilcar Oak of Needwood Forest, is twenty-one feet in girth. But in age and dimensions they shrink before the giant growths of California. Of the surprises of the far West, few, if any, are as profoundly impressive as the Sequoias of the Mariposa, Calaveras, and South Park groves, more than eighteen hundred in number. Even the stately redwoods of Vera Cruz, of the _sempervirens_ family, on the Coast Range, though inferior in diameter and height to the _gigantea_, or “big tree” group, amaze all beholders. The “Wawona” in the Mariposa Grove, twenty-seven feet in diameter, has been tunnelled to admit the passage of stage coaches. The age of the “Grizzly Giant” is estimated at 4680 years. Still older is the prostrate monarch of the Calaveras Grove, known as the “Father of the Forest,” with a circumference of a hundred and ten feet, and a height when standing of four hundred and thirty-five feet. Hundreds of these time-defying veterans had attained a considerable growth before the siege of Troy.

Next to the big trees in point of popular and scientific interest are the fossil forests, especially those in the northeastern part of the Yellowstone Park. The geological agencies through which the trees were petrified must have extended through periods of many thousand years. It was a tedious process, the percolation of silicious waters until the arboreal vegetation was turned to stone by the substitution of agate and amethyst and jasper and chalcedony. Some of the petrifactions are perfect. The rings of annual growth indicate for the large trees an age of not less than five hundred years.

The monoliths, which in the form of castellated rocks, chimney rocks, and cathedral spires, serve as landmarks of nature’s handiwork, are very imposing. The sugarloaf columns among the fantastic sandstone erosions of Monument Park, and the Tower Rock, prominent in the Garden of the Gods at Manitou, are frequently visited. Not less interesting are the Witches’ Rocks in Weber Canyon, Utah, the Monument Rock in Echo Canyon, the Buttes of Green River, and the Dial Rock and Red Buttes, Wyoming. One pinnacle, in Kanab Canyon, just north of the Arizona line, is eight hundred feet in height.

Among the noteworthy creations of the artist-gardeners of Europe, who have not learned “the art to conceal art,” are the Palmgarten at Frankfort, the Boboli Gardens at Florence, the Pallavicini at Genoa, and the Parterre at Fontainebleau. Their redundant embellishment and sharp-cut box hedges, their long perspective of vistas and alleys, the mathematical precision of their terraces, their ponds and fountains and grottoes and stone carvings become wearisome by familiarity. For landscape gardening that never tires we turn to the floral wealth in the grounds of the Hotel del Monte on the bay of Monterey, a hundred and twenty-six acres of fairy-land. Between the prodigal liberality of nature and the prodigal expenditure of cultivated taste, and in view of its alluring surroundings of ocean, mountain, and forest scenery, it is justly regarded as the loveliest and most favored spot in existence.

The Yellowstone National Park is the crowning wonder of our wonderlands. Within an area of 3312 square miles, exclusive of the additional tract known as the Forest Reserve, it includes several ranges of high mountains, three large rivers with their tributaries, thirty-six lakes, and twenty-five waterfalls. The ancient volcanic energy whose subterranean outpourings disappeared in remote ages, leaving the scars and cones behind, has been replaced by eruptive geysers, or water volcanoes, in frequently described groups or basins, together with thousands of non-eruptive hot springs, and the calcareous terraces with their exquisite incrustations. Champlin says that the geysers at the headwaters of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers are the most wonderful on the globe, those in Iceland and New Zealand sinking into insignificance when compared with them. The usual tour of a week or ten days terminates in a visit to the climax of scenic grandeur, the canyon of the Yellowstone River, with its walls of gorgeous coloring, “all the colors of the land, sea, and sky,” as Talmage said.

No description of this canyon, however complete in its details, no effort of the photographer or the landscape artist, however painstaking and elaborate, can give an adequate idea of its marvellous beauty and impressiveness. Twenty years ago one of the leading landscape painters of Germany went to the Yellowstone Park to sketch the views of the canyon from Point Lookout, below the Falls, and Inspiration Point, three-quarters of a mile beyond. In the fascination of the scene he remained for hours, silenced and bewildered, and finally gave up all attempt to delineate it on canvas. He returned again and again, several summers in succession, but was never able to “screw his courage to the sticking-point.” The artist Moran, with injudicious boldness, attempted what his superior had found beyond his reach, and, as was to be expected, with resultant failure and disappointment.

So with the indescribable beauties of the Yosemite Valley and the wonders of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. No stereoscopic reflex, no moving panorama, no vitagraph can even faintly approach the point of adequate representation. The only way to realize such sublimity is to stand in its presence, awed and abashed by creations whose stupendous character has no rival in the world. “None but itself can be its parallel.”

In the midst of a desolate alkali plain, in the Bad Lands of Arizona, is a formation of rock about an acre in extent, from fissures in which emanate melodious sounds, as though unseen hands were playing upon an instrument underneath, or the wind were sweeping among organ-like stalactites in a subterranean cavern. But while such “shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb.” In the presence of the might and majesty of the marvels and miracles of creation, silence is more eloquent than speech. The still, small voice of nature’s teachings, “from all around, earth and her waters and the depths of air,” speaks to us beyond the power of words.

As to our mineral springs, they are like the stars for multitude, presenting every variety. Some of our thermal springs, for example the hot, vaporous sulphur caves of Glenwood, Colorado, are constantly demonstrating their restorative efficiency. There is no need of resort to the hot waters of Carlsbad or the cold waters of Marienbad, to Aix la Chapelle or Kissingen.

As to ideal retreats for campers and fishers, limitless fields for hunters, and favoring chances for seekers of precious metals, the boundless continent is theirs; they are welcome guests of Lady Bountiful.

OUR LANGUAGE

_Lingua Anglicana_

Apelles, striving to paint Venus’ face,
Before him ranged the Virgins of the place.
Whate’er of good or fair in each was seen,
He thence transferred to make the Paphian Queen;
His work, a paragon we well might call,
Derived from many, but surpassing all.
Such as that Venus, in whose form was found
The gathered graces of the Virgins round,
The English language shows the magic force
Of blended beauties cull’d from every source.

_The Alphabet_

“The Egyptian Origin of our Alphabet” was the subject of a paper read before the New York Academy of Sciences by Dr. Charles E. Moldeuke, the Egyptologist. Two large charts on the wall showed in forty parallel columns the evolution of the various letters of the alphabet from the Egyptian hieroglyph through the Phœnician, Hebrew, and Greek to the Latin forms.

The common opinion, said the lecturer, that the Phœnicians invented the alphabet, is entirely unfounded; they merely adopted twenty-two letters from the Egyptians in 600 B.C. and then spread them as their own alphabet through Greece and Italy. The letters we use now go back to Egypt before the time of Moses and have represented practically the sounds in the same order for six thousand years.

_Phonetic Changes_

No nation keeps the sound of its language unaltered through many centuries; sounds change as well as grammatical forms, though they may endure longer, so that the symbols do not retain their proper values; often, too, several different sounds come to be denoted by the same symbol; and in strictness the alphabet should be changed to correspond to all these changes. But little inconvenience is practically caused by the tacit acceptance of the old symbol to express the new sound; indeed, the change in language is so gradual that the variations in the values of the symbols is imperceptible. It is only when we attempt to reproduce the exact sounds of the English language of less than three centuries ago that we realize the fact that if Shakespeare could now stand on our stage he would seem to us to speak in an unknown tongue; though one of his plays, when written, is as perfectly intelligible now as then.

Professor W. D. Whitney remarks that the intent of the alphabet is to furnish a sign for every articulate sound of the spoken language, whether vowel or consonant; and its ideal is realized when there are practically just as many written characters as sounds, and each has its own unvarying value, so that the written language is an accurate and unambiguous reflection of the spoken. This state of things is not wont to prevail continuously in any given language; for, in the history of a literary language, the words change their mode of utterance, or their spoken form, while their mode of spelling, or their written form, remains unaltered; so that the spelling comes to be historical instead of phonetic, or to represent former instead of present pronunciation. Such is, to a certain extent, the character of our English spelling, but very incompletely and irregularly, and with intermixture of arbitrariness and even blunders of every kind; it is an evil that is tolerated, and by many even clung to and extolled, because it is familiar, and a reform would be attended with great difficulties, and productive for a time of yet greater inconvenience.

_Americanisms_

Richard Grant White classifies so-called Americanisms as follows:

1. Words and phrases of American origin.

2. Perverted English words.

3. Obsolete English words commonly used in America.

4. English words American by inflection or modification.

5. Sayings of American origin.

6. Vulgarisms, cant, and slang.

7. Words brought by colonists from the continent of Europe.

8. Names of American things.

9. Individualisms.

10. Doubtful and miscellaneous.

All words and phrases that could by the largest and most liberal use of the term be called Americanisms may be properly ranked in one of these classes.

_Spelling Exercises_

The following short sentence was dictated by the late Lord Palmerston to eleven Cabinet ministers, not one of whom, it is said, spelled it correctly:

“It is disagreeable to witness the embarrassment of a harassed pedler gauging the symmetry of a peeled potato.”

Lord Cecil, in the House of Commons, quoted the following lines, which he said were given as a dictation exercise by an assistant commissioner to the children of a school in Ipswich:

“While hewing yew Hugh lost his ewe, and put it in the _Hue and Cry_. To name its face’s dusky hues Was all the effort he could use. You brought the ewe back, by-and-bye, And only begged the hewer’s ewer, Your hands to wash in water pure, Lest nice-nosed ladies, not a few, Should cry, on coming near you, ‘Ugh!’”

The absurdity of that Indian grunt in our language, “ugh,” is shown in the following:

H_ugh_ Go_ugh_, of Boro_ugh_bridge, was a ro_ugh_ soldier on furlo_ugh_, but a man of do_ugh_ty deeds in war, tho_ugh_ before he fo_ugh_t for this country he was a thoro_ugh_ do_ugh_-faced plo_ugh_man. His horse having been ho_ugh_ed in an engagement with the enemy, H_ugh_ was taken prisoner, and, I o_ugh_t to add, was kept on a short eno_ugh_ clo_ugh_ of food, and suffered from dro_ugh_t as well as from hunger. Having, on his return home, drank too large a dra_ugh_t of usqueba_ugh_, he became intoxicated, and was la_ugh_ing, co_ugh_ing, and hicco_ugh_ing by a tro_ugh_, against which he so_ugh_t to steady himself. There he was accosted by another ro_ugh_, who showed him a cho_ugh_ which he had ca_ugh_t on a clo_ugh_ near, also the slo_ugh_ of a snake, which he held at the end of a to_ugh_ bo_ugh_ of e_ugh_-tree, and which his shaggy sho_ugh_ had found and had bro_ugh_t to him from the entrance to a so_ugh_ which ran thro_ugh_ and drained a slo_ugh_ that was close to a lo_ugh_ in the ne_igh_borhood.

_A Spelling Lesson_

The most skilful gauger we ever knew was a maligned cobbler, armed with a poniard, who drove a pedler’s wagon, using a mullein-stalk as an instrument of coercion, to tyrannize over his pony shod with calks. He was a Galilean Sadducee, and he had a phthisicky catarrh, diphtheria, and the bilious intermittent erysipelas. A certain Sibyl, with the sobriquet of “Gypsy,” went into ecstasies of cachinnation at seeing him measure a bushel of peas; and separate saccharine tomatoes from a heap of peeled potatoes, without dyeing or singeing the ignitible queue which he wore, or becoming paralyzed with a hemorrhage. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling of the cupola of the Capitol to conceal her unparalleled embarrassment, making a rough courtesy, and not harassing him with mystifying, rarefying, and stupefying innuendoes, she gave him a couch, a bouquet of lilies, mignonette, and fuchsias, a treatise on mnemonics, a copy of the Apocrypha in hieroglyphics, daguerreotypes of Mendelssohn and Kosciusko, a kaleidoscope, a dramphial of ipecacuanha, a teaspoonful of naphtha, for deleble purposes, a ferrule, a clarionet, some licorice, a surcingle, a carnelian of symmetrical proportions, a chronometer with a movable balance-wheel, a box of dominoes, and a catechism. The gauger, who was also a trafficking rectifier and a parishioner of a distinguished ecclesiastic, preferring a woollen surtout (his choice was referable to a vacillating occasionally occurring idiosyncrasy), wofully uttered this apothegm: “Life is checkered; but schism, apostasy, heresy, and villany shall be punished.” The Sibyl apologizingly answered, “There is a ratable and allegeable difference between a conferrable ellipsis and a trisyllabic diæresis.” We replied in trochees, not impugning her suspicion.

_Dream of a Spelling-Bee_

Menageries where sleuth-hounds caracole,
Where jaguar phalanx and phlegmatic gnu
Fright ptarmigan and kestrels cheek by jowl,
With peewit and precocious cockatoo.

Gaunt seneschals, in crotchety cockades,
With seine net trawl for porpoise in lagoons;
While scullions gauge erratic escapades
Of madrepores in water-logged galloons.

Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green,
In reckless fracas with coquettish bream,
Ecstatic gargoyles, with grotesque chagrin,
Garnish the gruesome nightmare of my dream!

_The Longest Words_

The following sentence won a prize offered in England for the longest twelve-word telegram: “Administrator-General’s counter-revolutionary intercommunications uncircumstantiated. Quartermaster-General’s disproportionableness characteristically contra-distinguished unconstitutionalist’s incomprehensibilities.” It is said that the telegraph authorities accepted it as a despatch of twelve words.

The statement, upon the publication of a new English dictionary, that the longest word in the language is “disproportionableness” was met by pointing to a still longer word employed by the Parnellites at the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in 1S71,—“disestablishmentarianism,” which found its way into the House of Commons, and another, quoted from a theological work,—“anthropomorphologically.” These are likely to hold the record, at least outside of the names of chemical compounds and their derivatives, such as trioxymethylanthraquinonic, or dichlorhydroquinonedisulphonic, which outstrip all reckoning.

There is an old farce called “Cryptochonchoidsyphonostomata” which was revived by Mr. Charles Collette, a London actor, several years ago, and was extensively advertised in the London press, to the dismay of the compositors and proof-readers.

One of the funniest long words is necrobioneopaleonthydrockthonanthropopithekology. That, of course, is not an English word, though it is in an English book,—Kingsley’s “Water Babies.” It means the science of life and death of man and monkeys in by-gone times, as well as one can make it out. It is a word invented by Kingsley.

The clown Costard, in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, addressing the schoolmaster, says, “Thou art not so long by the head as _honorificabilitudinitatibus_.”

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s _Mad Lover_, the Fool says,—

“The iron age returned to Erebus,
And Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Thrust out the kingdom by the head and shoulders.”

Referring to Shakespeare’s appropriation of this ponderous word, which first appeared in a volume entitled “The Complaynt of Scotland,” published at St. Andrew’s in 1548, a commentator says,—

“The splendid procession-word _honorificabilitudinitatibus_ has been pressed into the service of the Baconian theory as containing the cipher _initiohi ludi Fr. Bacona_, or some other silly trash. The word was no doubt a stock example of the longest Latin word, as the Aristophanic compound ὀρθοφοιτοσυχοφαντοδιχοταλαιπωροι is of the longest Greek word, and was very probably a reminiscence of Shakespeare’s school-days, as the distich

Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus

is of our own.”

_Trifles_

A smart girl in Vassar claims that Phtholognyrrh should be pronounced Turner, and gives this little table to explain her theory:

First—Pbth (as in phthisis) is T
Second—olo (as in colonel) is UR
Third—gn (as in gnat) is N
Fourth—yrrh (as in myrrh) is ER

An ignorant Yorkshireman, having occasion to go to France, was surprised on his arrival to hear the men speaking French, the women speaking French, and the children jabbering away in the same tongue. In the height of the perplexity which this occasioned he retired to his hotel, and was awakened in the morning by the cock crowing, whereupon he burst into a wild exclamation of astonishment and delight, crying, “Thank goodness, there’s English at last!”

An Irish gentleman writes to _Truth_ to say that he has never found a Frenchman who can pronounce this: “Thimblerig Thristlethwaite thievishly thought to thrive through thick and thin by throwing his thimbles about, but he was thwarted and thwacked and thumped and thrashed with thirty-three thousand thistles and thorns for thievishly thinking to thrive through thick and through thin by throwing the thimbles about.”

Scene at Continental kursaal: English party at card table—“Hello, we are two to two.” English party at opposite table—“We are two to two, to.” German spectator, who “speaks English,” to companion who is acquiring the language—“Vell, now you see how dis is. Off you want to gife expression to yourself in English all you have to do is to blay mit der French horn!”

_A Perplexing Word_

In the “Reminiscences of Holland House” is the following anecdote of Voltaire: “While learning the English language (which he did not love), finding that the word _plague_, with six letters, was monosyllabic, and _ague_, with only the last four letters of _plague_, dissyllabic, he expressed a wish that the _plague_ might take one-half of the English language, and the _ague_ the other.”

_Verbal Conceits_

“Bob,” said Tom, “which is the most dangerous word to pronounce in the English language?”

“Don’t know,” said Bob, “unless it’s a swearing word.”

“Pooh!” said Tom, “it’s _stumbled_, because you are sure to get a tumble between the first and last letter.”

“Ha! ha!” said Bob. “Now I’ve one for you. I found it one day in the paper. Which is the longest word in the English language?”

“Valetudinarianism,” said Tom, promptly.

“No, sir; it’s _smiles_, because there’s a whole mile between the first and the last letter.”

“Ho! ho!” cried Tom, “that’s nothing. I know a word that has over _three_ miles between its beginning and ending.”

“What’s that?” asked Bob, faintly.

“Be_league_red,” said Tom.

_Philological Contrarieties_

A gentleman, having an appointment with another who was habitually unpunctual, to his great surprise found him waiting. He thus addressed him: “Why, I see you are here first at last. You were always behind before, but I am glad to see you have become early of late.”

_The Aspirate_

When Mr. Justice Hawkins of the English Queen’s Bench was a leader at the bar, he appeared in a shipping case before the late Baron Channel, who was a little shaky with his aspirates. The name of the vessel about which the dispute had arisen was Hannah; but Hawkins’s “junior,” in utter desperation, said to him, “Is the ship the Anna or the Hannah, for his lordship says one thing and every one else says another?” “The ship,” said Hawkins, in reply, “was named the Hannah, but the H has been lost in the chops of the Channel!”

In “Much Ado About Nothing,” where _Beatrice_ is touched with her first love longing for _Benedict_, occurs this passage:

“_Beat._ ’Tis almost five o’clock, cousin. ’Tis time you were ready. By my troth I am exceeding ill; heigh ho!

_Margaret._ For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?

_Beat._ For the letter that begins them all, _h_.”

This is supposed to be a poor pun on _ache_, but be that as it may, it seems clear that _Margaret_ must have been supposed to sound the aspirate clearly in each of the words she used. Had she said, “For an ’awk, an ’orse, or an ’usband,” _Beatrice’s_ joke about the letter _h_, which in that case would not have been used at all, would have been absurd. On this single illustration one might build quite an argument to show that Shakespeare did not drop his _h’s_.

_Alliterative Tribute to Swinburne_

Lord of the lyre! of languaged lightning lord!
Master of matchless melting melody!
Philosopher of Freedom! foe of falsity!
Smiter of sin with song’s swift sleepless sword!—
Lo, tyrants tremble as they turn toward
Thee, pearled and panoplied in poesy,
Winged for the warfield, waiting wistfully
Thy ripe Republic of all rights restored.

_Vulcan_

“Lo! from Lemnos limping lamely
Lags the lowly lord of fire.”

Roared the fire before the bellows; glowed the forge’s dazzling crater; Rang the hammers on the anvils, both the lesser and the greater; Fell the sparks around the smithy, keeping rhythm to the clamor, To the ponderous blows and clanging of each unrelenting hammer, While the diamonds of labor, from the curse of Adam borrowed, Glittered like a crown of honor on each iron-beater’s forehead.

_Compressing the Alphabet_

When the following sentence of forty-eight letters first appeared, it was regarded as the shortest in the English language capable of containing all the letters of the alphabet:—

“John P. Brady gave me a black walnut box of quite a small size.”

But this was improved upon by a sentence of thirty-three letters containing the twenty-six letters of the alphabet:

“A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Another sentence of thirty-three letters is the following:

“J. Gray—Pack with my box five dozen quills.”

With a change in construction this is reduced by one letter, making thirty-two:

“Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.”

_Alphabetical Fancies_

A gentleman travelling in a railway carriage was endeavoring, with considerable earnestness, to impress some argument upon a fellow-passenger who was seated opposite to him, and who appeared rather dull of apprehension. At length, being slightly irritated, he exclaimed, in a louder tone, “Why, sir, it’s as plain as A B C!” “That may be,” quietly replied the other, “but I am D E F!”

This alphabetical rhyme on “Naughty Janie” appeared in _Longman’s Magazine_:

Anger, baseness, craft, disdain,
Every fault { God hates } is Janie’s;
{ girls have }
Kind language moves not—only pain
Quite rightly serves—these uppish vain
Worthless Xantippes, yawning zanies.

If an S and an I and an O and a U,
With an X at the end, spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray, what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an H E D spell cide,
There’s nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go and commit siouxeyesighed.

A laughable incident once took place upon a trial in Lancashire, where the Rev. Mr. Wood was examined as a witness. Upon giving his name, Ottiwell Wood, the judge, addressing the reverend parson, said, “Pray, Mr. Wood, how do you spell your name?” The old gentleman replied, “O double T, I double U, E double L, double U, double O, D.” Upon which the astonished lawyer laid down his pen, saying it was the most extraordinary name he had ever met in his life, and after two or three attempts, declared he was unable to record it. The court was convulsed with laughter.

A saloon-keeper, having started business in a place where trunks had been made, asked a friend what he had better do with the old sign, “Trunk Factory.”

“Oh,” said the friend, “just change the T to D, and it will suit you exactly.”

_Palindromes_

A palindrome is a word, sentence, or verse that reads the same, forward and backward, from left to right, or from right to left. The Latin language abounds with palindromes, but there are few good ones in English. The following will serve as specimens.

Madam, I’m Adam. (_Adam to Eve._)
Able was I ere I saw Elba. (_Napoleon loq._)
Name no one man.
Red root put up to order.
Draw pupil’s lip upward.
No, it is opposition.

The last has been extended to: “No, it is opposed; art sees trade’s opposition.” In Yreka, California, is a baker’s sign which maybe called a natural palindrome: “Yreka Bakery.”

_Words Wrong, Pronunciation Right_

The following is an illustration of pronunciation and spelling in the use of wrong words which have the same pronunciation as the right words, and which, properly read, would sound right. A rite suite little buoy, the sun of a grate kernal, with a rough about his neck, flue up the rode swift as eh dear. After a thyme he stopped at a gnu house and wrang the belle. His tow hurt hymn, and he kneaded wrest. He was two tired to raze his fare pail face. A feint mown of pane rows from his lips. The made who herd the belle was about to pair a pare, but she through it down and ran with all her mite, for fear her guessed would not weight. Butt, when she saw the little won, tiers stood in her eyes at the site. “Ewe poor dear! Why, due yew lye hear! Are yew dyeing?” “Know,” he said, “I am feint two thee corps.” She boar him inn her arms, as she aught, too a room where he mite bee quiet, gave him bred and meet, held cent under his knows, tied his choler, rapped him warmly, gave him some suite drachm from a viol, till at last he went fourth hail as a young hoarse. His eyes shown, his cheek was as read as a flour, and he gambled a hole our.

_The Power of Short Words_

Secretary Stanton, while in charge of the War Department during our sectional conflict, had a curt way of doing things and a desire to attain his ends by the shortest possible roads. Hence his fondness for monosyllables. Ex-Governor Letcher, of Virginia, was taken prisoner during the war and confined in prison in Washington. After the lapse of two months and a half, he managed to get released on parole, and this was Stanton’s characteristic order and the whole of it,—

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 25, 1863.—John Letcher is hereby paroled. He
will go home by the same road he came here, and will stay there and
keep quiet.

EDWIN M. STANTON.

Twenty-one words in all, besides the proper names and date, and eighteen of them monosyllables.

During the life of John Bright the _Pall Mall Gazette_ said, “An admirer of Mr. Bright writes to a Manchester paper that he discovered the secret of the power this great speaker possessed of riveting the attention of his audience. This he believes to lie in the fact that he used monosyllables very largely. The grand passage in Mr. Bright’s speech on the Burials bill describing a Quaker funeral begins, ‘I will take the case of my own sect,’ and on counting the words of that remarkable oration it will be found that out of one hundred and ninety words one hundred and forty-nine, more than seventy-five per cent., were monosyllables. On this it is urged that those in charge of youth should teach them the use of monosyllables. An American journal lately mentioned a school where such pains had been taken to instruct the boys in the art of public speaking that if they had learned nothing else they had acquired the greatest contempt for all the devices of stump oratory. The prescribed course of study leaves much to the imagination, but doubtless includes the translation into monosyllables of the ponderous verbiage which passes current in most political assemblies as genuine eloquence. It would, however, be cruel to insist on the introduction of such teaching into any of the ‘standards.’ Many are obliged to speak who have less to say than Mr. Bright, and to them the _sesquipedalia verba_ are indispensable.”

_Legal Verbosity_

An old Missouri deed for forty acres of land is a good illustration of legal verbiage. It conveys “all and singular—appurtenances, appendages, advowsons, benefits, commons, curtilages, cow-houses, corncribs, dairies, dovecotes, easements, emoluments, freeholds, features, furniture, fixtures, gardens, homestalls, improvements, immunities, limekilns, meadows, marshes, mines, minerals, orchards, parks, pleasure grounds, pigeon houses, pigstyes, quarries, remainders, reversions, rents, rights, ways, water courses, windmills, together with every other necessary right, immunity, privilege and advantage of whatsoever name, nature or description.”

_Prayers Constructed with Elaborate Skill_

Dean Goulburn points out that the words employed in the Collects in the Book of Common Prayer are the purest and best English known, “representing to us our language when it was in full vigor and just about reaching its prime;” and that in the arrangement of the words, the balancing of clauses, and the giving unity to the whole composition, the composers and translators have been as happy as in their choice of words. “Let any one,” he adds, “try to write (say) an epitaph with as much unity of design, as much point, as much elegance, and as much brevity as the Collects are written with, and in proportion to the difficulty which he finds in achieving such a task will the elaborate skill with which these prayers have been constructed rise in his estimation.” Dean Goulburn has not exaggerated the rhythmical movement and the singular felicity of expression which mark the Collects; indeed, one has only to compare them with the prayers published on special occasions by modern archbishops, or with any modern forms of prayer, to see their superiority, not only in choice of language, but in compression of thought.

_Its_

The word ITS, the possessive case of the neuter pronoun _it_, originally written _his_, appears neither in Cruden’s nor in Young’s Concordance. It was not known to the translators of King James’ version of the Bible, who had to resort to circumlocution for want of that little pronoun. It has been assumed, therefore, that it is not to be found in the Sacred Scriptures. Nevertheless, it occurs in the fifth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, as follows:

“That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap.”

_Rough_