The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-07-17

over vast continent, subject to numerous
and subtitle local variations and exposed to
foreign influences by the steady tide of I'M
migration, this is task of difficulties SO
great that they would be even insuperable
if the tendency to local variations and dia-
lectic Emergencies were not, to some extent,
counteracted by our modern facilities for
travel and INSTRUMENTATION
Our teachers are met by corrupt English
arising from two sources-First, the igno-
rance, or, at least, the carelessness which
prevails in so many of our American homes.
The children who come to the public schools
from these homes have never heard from
their parents words correctly pronounced
or sentences correctly framed. They are
placed at disadvantage at the outset; they
have started wrong. At the age, however,
when they first come into the teachers
hands, the linguistic faults contracted at
home are happily not inveterate. But I'M
less our guardian of English is prompt and
faithful, they soon do become so deeply
rooted that no amount of after training can
eradicate them. | have known boys well
up in mathematics and making fair progress
in the classics whom it was almost impos
sible to make understand the difference be-
tween ''this here book" and ''this book
here"
The second source of the corrupt Eng
fish which the teacher has to encounter and
correct is to be found in foreign immigra-
ton. But while the vigilance of the teacher
is at this point often tasked to its utmost,
because the integrity of our language is at
this point most often threatened, there is
still the encouraging fact that the children
of our foreign-born citizens, notably Ger
mans, are often ambitious to learn English
and apt in acquiring it. The pride of cit
izenship is a potent inducement to master,
as soon as possible, the language of the
country of their adoption. Some of you
may have heard of the American-born son
of German immigrant, whose sore lament
at the chastisement inflicted upon him by
his father was occasioned, not by the phys
ical pain which he suffered, but by the hu-
initiating thought that he had been fogged
by "blamed foreigner" l need hardly
say that this occurred in the days of Know
Nothingism.
l would urge, then, upon our teachers,
and especially upon those of them who
meet with children at the very beginning
of their school life, genuine loyalty to the
mother-tongue. Being, first of all, accurate
and correct themselves in the use of Eng
fish, they must be living, constant examples
to their pupils of devotion to pure diction
which never, for moment, relaxes. But
this, 1 fear, they will hardly be, if all the
knowledge they have Of the vernacular is
derived from the study of grammar. In
dispensable for themselves as well as for
their scholars is, of course, a thorough drill
in grammar, but the makers of these useful
textbooks sometimes exceed their proper
functions and assume to dictate laws for the
language instead of merely registering good
usage Our grand old tongue was no more
made by grammarians and photographers
than the weather is made by the thermom-
eter, but ''by the usage of the community,
by the voice and opinion of speakers and
hearers" And it is by these that its char
acter for the future is to be determined; by
these if at all, that its purity is to be main
ldlueu- Lie CcdCicl, lhSl, shouiu SaUui oV0
himself with good English, so that he may
not only write it, speak it, but think it; and
this he can do only by habitual contact with
its best literature-with its best literature
of all periods, if possible; with its best lit
erature of the present and of the past hun
bred years, by all means. In these days of
cheap books, surely the demand is not an
unreasonable one, and no teacher who has
not tried it can appreciate the augmentation
he is thereby making to his happiness, his
culture, and, more than all, to his usefulness
in his profession. Those of you who have
drunk from "the pure well of English I'M
defiled" will never again look upon the
language as a stagnant pool hedged about
by a wire-barbed fence of grammatical
rules; rather, to change the figure, you will
realize that you are learning, using and
teaching liUe language; that you are deal
ing with an organism full Of vigor and with
endless capabilities of growth, and that it
is your part not to cramp its limbs, but to
allow them free play on the line of healthy
development; you will discard the theory,
probably held before, that it is corpse to
be dissected in the classroom by the scalpel
of the grammatical surgeon.
Brother and sister teachers, let your
English be pure; this first and always; but
in your earnest, faithful endeavor to secure
this, avoid that stiff, pedantic style which
has been called, and with some justice,
schoolmaster's English. Remember that
our language is essentially Saxon; do not
let the shorter, older, or, if you will, home
lier words of our vocabulary be crowded
utby the longer, later and more pretentious
foreigners of Latin birth. One of the re-
suits of the July temperature in this crowd
ed room tonight is what, in our modern re-
fnement, we call perspiration. But if any
reviser were bold enough to alter familiar
passage in the third chapter of Genesis in
conformity with this refinement, and read
ain the perspiration of thy face shalt thou
cat bread | am sure that the shock of
disgust experienced at the substitution of
the Latin for the Saxon word would be in
exact proportion to the purity of your taste
and the delicacy of your culture. l retain
from my boyhood vivid recollection Of
the regret expressed by that gentle scholar,
the late Henry Reed, at the threatened dis
appearance from the language of the words
"begin" and beginning" ave commence
everything now,' he would mournfully ex-
claim, 1--WE never begin anything" But
how would you like the Incompatible Eng
fish of our Bible to be subjected to the in
suit of a revision which should give us
sentences such as these; "In the com
mencement God created the heaven and
the earth;" "The fear of the Lord is the
commencement of wisdom" "In the COM
mencement was the Word, &c ?" And the
same wise authority used to caution us
against the grammatical heresy which ig
norantly and stupidity objects to the use of
propositions at the end of a sentence,
usage which, in fact, is peculiarly and char
acteristically English, and he would ask
the wiseacres to improve Bacons words
"Houses are built to live in and not to look
on, or the nervous diction of DIR. Donne,
"Hath God a name to swear by? hath
God a name to curse by? hath God name
Tn hIasnheme nv ? and hath God no name