The Press., 1885-04-16
Issued Every Thursday Evening.
[For The Press.l CHRISTEN NAMES.

eral school enactments as belonging to Stafford. My lists extend over long pe- riod of time, and contain the names of many who are now parents with we'll grown
 children occupying their old places in the
 school-room, and of not few now active and prominent in business affairs who at 1 their first examination were bribed with
 candy to exhibit their proficiency in the
 alphabet I am fond of looking over these lists, for they afford food for sober refec- tion and touch tender springs in my heart as I notice how thick have grown the crosses that I have marked over against the names of the dead On the present occasion am moved to consider the muta- bility of christen names, and take for my text very recent list because it is longer than than the others. It contains the names of five hundred and nine boys and of five hundred and sixteen girls, of which the boys have ninety-tive different chris ten names and the girls one hundred and thirteen. Though local the list may be fairly considered as reflex of the gradual and general change that is going on in the use and quality of chrsten names and an indirect reflex of the more gradual change that is going on in the structure and fiber of our language, for not only names but words that are not names are changing or dropping away to make room for others of more recent importation or coinage. While the old Saxon idioms, quaint and homely, but terse and full of racy vigor, the glory of our mother tongue are disappearing, provincialisms, words peculiar to sections, and many struck out in the heat and in- spiration of sudden emergencies, and still others, quartered from modern dialects and the dead languages and recoined into forms hard to be spelled or pronounced by average men, are creeping in to mingle with the old familiar current, and the lex icographer who would keep his dictionary abreast of the times must give to it as of- ten as every semi-decade the enlargement of fresh addendum. Our tongue was at it's best when Shakespeare and Milton used it and King James translation of the Holy Word was given to the world New trans lations of that word we have and shall continue to have probably, but never one like the old with its marvellous pith and simple grandeur of diction; nor yet an- other great drama so true in its mimic art to human life in action in every age the world over, or a second Paradise Lost I deem that l am not extravagant in the statement that the verbal swash of this lat ter era, while it increases the volume of our speech and gives to it certain flu ency and fiippancy, is weakening and driv- ing out the sturdy normal dialect that Hengist and Thorsa brought from their northern seas to the English Isles.
 Many christen names that were common and highly prized within the remembrance of aged people of to-day, are now, SO fE1 younger generations are concerned, nearly or quite obsolete, while a few hold, and perhaps more than hold, their own. The cause of this discrimination, this dropping of names that are in every respect as good as those still retained in use is not appar- ent. Of the Hebrew names Jacob is as more substantial than John, for it repre- sents the rock on which great church is founded, although I believe no pope has borne the name, unless. we admit that the impetuous apostle held the keys as first of the papal line. But with every decade the use of Peter and Jacob as names be- comes more rare. In Puritan times, and long after, scriptural names were ill whole some fashion. Our grandfathers and grandmothers, with the holy fire of Grael in their hearts, thought they honored God when out of the Hebrew word they christ ened their boys to be known through the journey of life and its vale of tears as Abel and Aaron, Abram and Abijah, Daniel and David, Ephraim and Eliab, Elijah and Ebenezer, Jacob and Joseph, Joel and Jo- siah, Samson and Saul, Solomon and Thomas and Zebadiah and their girls as Debora and Dinah, Elizabeth and Esther, Hannah aud Huldah, Mary and Martha, Rachel and Rebecca, Ruth and Sarah and Susan. Of these thirty two Hebrew names only five are any longer current at the baptismal font, while twenty three of them do not appear in my list of more than a thousand names. Some of them, however, are represented by abbreviation or change in form, of which Lizzie for Elizabeth and Eliza is the most. common. Of other He- brew names Betsey leaves no trace, while 1 Nagdalene re-bloons in Maud. Sarah, properly Sara in the old way, gives way for Sallie, and Susan for Susie but with barren result, for neither name has be- come common in it's changed form. The first is not in my list, and the second ap- pears but once. Why Sallie and Susie should not have kept pace with Hattie and Nellie ill the race for permanenct' is a mystery difficult to solve, for men now grown old remember the time when they were borne by many blithsome maiden whose silvery voice and laughter still stir at times the pensive air in the wales of memory. This fact IS clothed with ten der sadness that becomes more profound ill the contemplation of kindred facts of which the most pathetic is, that among the names of the girls of large New Eng land town, Rebecca, Ruth and Rachel are not to be found; the dear old pastoral names, redolent with the breath of the worlds morning bowers, and sweet with associations of all that is true and pure in
 the fresh and saintly womanhood of the race But of all names, Hebrew or oth- CTS, given to women, Mary is the most il
 lustrious, and it leads all the others. It will be high and sacred forever as the name of the Christ Mother; and it will live al- ways in history, romance and poetry as borne by women, who have touched the heights and depths of mortal passion, or have walked the earth with gentle and yet commanding grace and virtue that made all life about them beautiful, as it. lustrated in the lives of Mary, Queen of of Scots, Mary, the mother of Washing ton, and that humber Highland Mary, inn mortal ill the verse of him who sang of Bonnie Doon. But in my list almost all of the little girls that bear the name are dubbed Mamie, which, like Totty, is we'll enough for a pet name, but care should be taken that 1t does not stick after the little one gets into her long dresses. The same