The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-08-23
4 LOST LETTER.
Boston Christian Reris,er.l

It is sometimes 2 painful surprise to hear stranger whose face we have been admiring speak It is as if toads and frogs fell from his lips, as from the naughty girls mouth in the old fairy story. Or, if the words are jewels, they are so clipped and maned, % mingled with base alloy, that the ccntsas between the good thought and the impezfecs vehicle for oonveying it is painful A young woman stood last winter beSore . noble painting in an art collsctioa. She, heEself vas no mean artist. Her repu- tation as critic was good With fine lace and 6gure, she vas noticeable even in the crowded gallery. On being pointed out to stranger as Miss Native Genius, he drew near to hear her words of crit. cism to friend beside her. There vas . moments pause. Then, in the silence, the words smote upon his ear: "How
 fine the drorin' is :"
 It is curious to see low certain acci- dents have overtaken the English lan- guase, and how geneEation a1er Rener- alton of those who speak 1t perpesuate these errors rather than repair them. How, for instance, does it happen that < is taken from one word where it be- longs and given to another that would do very well without it! Why is z treated in the same way! By what fatality was kitchen ever converted into hitchinR, garden into garding and mountain into mounting? The conversion is a daily fact in many homes throughout New England. Still, it is not of frequent enough occurrence to account for the missing z in other words. Where is the z that belongs on scores of words that end in ing! It is often missed in Eng land, and in Scotland it is almost un- known; but, some way, in that soft musical tongue, thefe is % much slision that one does not SO much notice the omission of the z. But this side the water, from Maine to Texas, there are everywhere yawning abysses down which the z has dropped and never been found again.
 The child that begins to talk by using such words as goin', doin' seein', eatin, that goes through the primary and gram mar school cipherin' and parsin', and is occupied in the high school with cori- posin' and translatin', will wake up s6me day pezchance to a knowledge of the atrocity Of such pronunciation, only to md himself slave to a habit as firmly fixed and difficult of cure as the opium habit. The Old Man of the sea was easy to shake of in comparison. If he attempts to pick up z and put it where 1t belongs in one case he forgets 1t in the next; and he is at last SO overwhelmed with the number of words with participial ending-or endin's, as he would say- that he gives them all up in despair and lets the gs slide of one by one, dotting the background of his speech at intervals like potatoes laid out upon the ground for potato race. But he will never win the race he will never gather them up into the basket.
 This is no trifing matter. It is un- fortunate to let . child grow up with habits of speech that will submit him to the sensation of inSeziority when he is with cultivated people. At two years old 1t E as easy to say going as goin'. Alter "goin'' has been used for twenty years "going sounds to such a speaker hard and formal, and ninety-nine times out of hundred it will never be acquired. Parents are responsible for this slipshod pronunciation, and they alone can find the missing.g.