The morning call., 1892-11-13
Joaquin Miller Condemns It's
Use.
A CONFUSION OF SPEECH.
The World Wants Ideas, Not Words or Dis
tortions Of Words - Some Advice
TO Young Authors.
Written for THE MORNING CALL


make the seal. the Pope presses the ham
dies Of the mold. and so the bullet is melted
aud the seal is made.
And IL only we could have some such
great mandate against the pernieious use
Of dialect, more especially against the max
ing of dialect! For as ali know dialect is
made by the wholesale and out of whole
cloth by those who wish 10 use il.
Who of us out here on the sunlit edge of
silverland and the land OF gold does not
know that there never was "on sea or land"
any such medley and confusion of speech
Mark Twain puts IN the mouth of his most
popular Buck Fansbaw? Bret Harte has
done little better; at least be did not
make his dialect as he wanted to use Ii, but
went to Dickens for 1t. Take. for example.
such expressions as (which / rise to ex.
plain" and so on through all his dialects or
mlsappllcation OF words. They are directly
and entirely from Dickens. Believe me,
there is no ill-will in these statements. No
one who has followed my work will accuse
me of that These men have never had
more loyal and loving champion. But as
these personal sketches Of former California
writer's, all old friends, and nearly all on
the other side of darkness now, must end
here it seems sort of duty to state a few
facts, and warn young writers against this
The late MIR. Shaw, who died out here
with US. AT Los Angeles, not long since, told
me in the presence of his New York pub
Usher (CartoD) that he was more than sixty
years old before he made a C, mt with his
pen. He had started off in life fairly we'll
being the son of a member of Congress, and
so was not without education and some
money. But he had tramped and tramped
all about over the West, peddling, preach
ing, stump-speaklng and so on, aud at the
end OF threescore he found himself back in
New England village, following the profit
less trade OF town aueiioneer, and without
bread for his children. Yet all the time
almost as far back as be could remember. he
told me he had been writing little bits Of
hum0r, goOd-natured, quaint philosophy,
and the like Having had some lively bust
ness with mule one day while trying to
auction him Of, he wrote a sketch. OF
hands length, about the build, habits,
meditatiye and otherwise, of the mule anu
sent il 10 the Boston Courier, and for the
first time asked for money. The editor
wrote back that he would give him 81 for
his mule sketch. Being in chronic need
of n dollar" said dear old honest Josh
Billings. as he Strengthened uD lis long,
bent frame, with sigh, as IL from painful
memories, Il wrote him TO send along that
dollar at once. And that was the first
money l ever made with my pen." Josh.
now very old aud loquaciOus. proceeded to
tell US how at this point of his life he met
Artemus Ward, who was on his way with
his great moral show and waxwprks" TO
London. Ward liked his work, but told
him co crowd his philosophy and moral re-
ing. as he himself did. Mr.. Shaw, OF Josh
Billings. as you please. protested; but Arte-
mus Ward. or Mr.. Brown, as you please
again insisted upon his taking up the dead
and unnoticed mule sketch and putting it in
dialect. bad spelling. and so on, and senlng
ri a. a N q In H. 81,
same day, and josh Billings fame and for
tune were made. His biggest money cane
from his annual "Almanack." His con-
tract with Smith & Street was 10 the effect
that he should furnish their Weekly one
little sketch, or skit. each week as long as he
lived at $50 each. The vast mass of matter
which he had on hand made him able to
sign this compact with confidence; for all
he had TO do was to pump his quaint and
beautiful conceits fun of slang. dialect and
bad spelling. / remember the childish de-
light of the old philosopher as he came TO
my rooms in New York fOurishing a check
from Cassell a. Hazards for $500, which
was still damp with ink. The check was
for two lines only. These are the lines:
There is one thing In this life that no man
is ever entirely prepared for And theu's
twins" The lines were used on bottles of
patent medicine, with a picture of Josh and
a pair of beautiful twins,
Yes, dialect pays, bad spelling pays, or at
least ii paid Ward. Billings. Nasty and COM
psny at one time. But where is Nasty, and
Ward, and Billings, and company now?
These are names that mark a period, a
queer period, in infantile literature; moth
ing more now. Though the great London Sat-
urday Review did actually and seriously put
several pages of Shaw's book in good reada-
BILE shape, and, deplorlng the mans want of
education, pronounce II far above the aver
eye of American books, even with all its
Disadvantages OF bad spelling and barbarous
dialectI
Take note. my readers, that this bad SPELL
Ing was but fashion. 1t was fashion that
has persisted from sight forever. as its
twin-born and most villsinous brother is
about to perish; as Ii must perish, because
it is sham, an affection ana a falsehood
Let IL be repeated that the dialect laid TO
the door of California never had the ghost
of existence on these shores. The man from
Harvard was on the sluice or long tom:
editors, lawyers, doctors. all sorts OF gentle
men, we're in the mines No doubt there
was deal Of bad grammar and stranger
oaths in the mouths Of some men.from the
West: but the constant intermixture of men
made IL impossible that anything like a
dialect should form or crystalline here in
those swift and stormy days. Ii takes a
long time-generatloDs. you ought to IN
derstand-to form any sort of dialect any
where.
As for slang, or the use of sharp sword
another matter.
A slang phrase or word may establish
itself with US in day or may perish in a
day; or II may remain and finally become a
part Of this mighty language, which is still
growing. 1 make no war on slang further
than 10 say that it is of doubtful use. and
that anybody who has anything to say
ought TO be able to say ii without the use of
slang. What / set out to say was that bad
spelling, merely for the sake of bad SPELL
Ing, is dead, very dead, and that dialect is
dying, and ought TO die at once.
The world wants ideas, not words or the
distortion of words. OF what ear hly prof.
to the world is ali this waste of time aud
energy In creating a Western dialect? For
l repeat, as Western man not without OBJ
servation. that there is no dialect in the
west. there never was any dialect in the West
and we don't propose having any sO-called
Western dialect toisted upon US as product
OF our people. Let IL be repeated, we began
here with preponderanee of cultivated
men. We have kept pace with the culture
OF the age. There perhaps never was q
time since '49 that California did not have
more newspapers and magazines to her
population, two TO one, than any other
State In the Union. And as we did not
teach dialect In our schools. and as you
search through the newspapers in vain for
ii. why 1t is pretty clear that you have TO 90
outside OF California to find that once very
popular form of speech, CaliforLia dialect.
which some authors put into our mouths
For my part, i have published five plays
and more than twenty books during the last
quarter OF century, and everything West
ern, except two OF three books on italy.
And dialect i did not use at all, because
dialect 1 did not find. And few writer's. If
any one st all, know the West as know IT.
True, you hear distortions OF speech in act
ors' mouths when playing "The Danites; or,
'49. and so on, oftentmes. for these things
nearly always create laugh. And the
writer OF plays who has found an actor able
TO resist the temptation to get q laugh ON
that" do not know. So much for the facts
about our dialect out here. IT is either man.
ufactured to order or borrowed from Dickens
and like authors.
Now we can well understand how there is
dialect form OF speech in the untraveled
mountains Of Tennessee and other border