Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-01-10
BURDETTE RUNS DRY,
But Out of Mere Emptiness Brings
Forth a Crystal Fountain.
THOUGHTS UPON DIALECT TALES.
Why James Whitcomb Riley Writes Into
the Hearts of People.
HOW WATER MANAGES TO GO UP HILL
WRITTEN FOR THE pIspArcH.1

Know Wnat DO, and the complaint Is fast
developing chronic symptoms with me.
When I get that way, which is several
times in the course of a space of time
amounting to more or less, according to
duration, sit and stare over the top of my
typewriter across at the rectory or at the
big oak on my neighbor's place, and at the
church with its battlemented tower and the
quiet resting places of those who sleep, and
in little while forget that I have any
work to do, and indeed am not concerned
whether my head is empty or full, or
whether have head or not.
This is pleasant, but it is neither magnif-
cent, nor is it business. So I turn away
from the view, look my typewriter in the
I-she has two, just like human being,
only one of them has no dot and the other
is lower case, poor thing-and ask her if she
knows anything worth printing. She always
replies in the affirmative when she makes
answer at all, that is, she can say ga, and
"S,' which have an affirmative sound, but
she can't say anything that sounds like
"No;" I think she should have an extra
characteristic has Is or so good characters
she could say "Nawthin'."
The Force of Dialect.
I suppose 'tNothing" might do, but
should prefer "Nawthin'," if it please the
typewriter makers. "Nawthin'" sounds
so much more hopelessly empty than
Nothing" And when 1 do run ashore, I
am beached just that high end dry, just that
lar beyond the reach of anything but q
roaring spring tide at the very turn of the
food, that nothing can express my condi-
tion but dialect. Grammar is good enough
fof dying bed, perhaps, when man has
nothing else to do. but to be correct; but
when a man is painfully alive, getting
across meadow with bull behind him
and barb wire fence before him, and he
has got to lift himself over that fence bv
his boot straps or get lifted over by Taurus
the bully, he thinks in dialect. 1t is his
mother tongue, and it comes without call
ing. And I do think that a typewriter that
has been setting her 26 caps for me, 10 these
four years, might talk dialect for me in
great emergencies.
And speaking of dialect reminds me that
Tread somewhere in newspaper the other
day-that's the way a profound magazine
writer always refers to newspaper article
when he is copying the extract he wishes to
use from the very paper lying on his desk;
it isn't the thing, you know, to recall where
you saw a newspaper article; great man
can't remember the scribblings of re-
porter--that leading publisher-I am not
sure indeed that it was not the leading
publisher-says the dialect story has had its
day; that the public is tired of it; that it
has run its course and will be heard of no
~ r a1- r.
January and read the first story in it, bit
of French Canadian vayageur dialect.
Stories Are Written for Cash.
Now I like the dialect stories; I don't
write them, so can speak as disinterested
witness. And I know that other people
like them as we'll as myself, otherwise the
publishers would not bring them out. Save
only the Baptist Publication Society and
the Methodist book concern, the American
Tract Society and other publishing houses
of that class, I have known very few pub
fishers who bring out books and stories for
love, or for the elevation of the public
taste. Very few indeed. Not more than
none, / should say, and possibly not less
than half that number.
l don't know what would become of the
literature of the world if we should ''cut"
the dialect. Take two such masters of dia-
lect as James Whitcomb Riley and Robert
Browning; how much the world of people
and the smaller planets of superior beings
would lose were the poems of these kings in
the realms of dialect blotted out prefer
Riley's myself, because it is so easy to un-
derstand. We don't have to organize clubs
to find out what Riley means when he says
anything. 1t seems to me, since we must
have dialect literature, the best dialect is
that which the wayfaring man, though not
Highly Cultured may read, and not err
therein. There is a great deal of dialect in
the medical journals that is Greek to me,
and have looked into-merely looked into
and scrambled out with all speed before I
theological works that were
nearly all Hebrew, and what wasn't En-
glish was great deal worse. I confess that
I go clear around, by back lane and
through the woods, sometimes, TO get to the
other side of certain dialect articles in the
Popular Sciencs McntMy.
shop Talk in Dialect.
And vet, dialect is always entertaining,
even when you can understand it but
vaguely. 1t is always pleasant to hear a
man talk the dialect ct his own business.
1t lends charm to the talk of railroad
man and theologian; horse trader and a
a stock broker and school
teacher. And the dialect which we can all
understand is the language of the people,
it seems to me. From Harvard University
to the Mission School at San Diego, people
can understand Riley. The multitude lis
tens and "everv man hear him speak in his
own language" Saying, one to another,
How hear we every man in our own tongue,
wherein we were born?'"
All, that's the secret of the hold that
"dlalect" has upon all people. We didn't
always speak grammatically; we weren't
b born with correct accent and exact enuncia-
tion; we used to fiat the "a, and drop the
final ''g," and drive Jersey matches OF sin
gular noIns and plural verbs, and when we
were rebuked for saying, "Me are, we re-
formed and said 81 is,' except in New Eng
land, where we changed to "I be-" and
stuck TO it until death parted us from our
grammar, maybe; and it required long
years Of instruction, and many books and
great patience and floods of tears to make
us abandon the free. lawless dialect of
childhood and bow our thoughts to the iron
bondage of the dialect of the schools All,
my boy, that's the hold which "our own
tongue, wherein we were born," has
upon US.
Tho Voice OF Sweet Nature.
We love the cradle tongue, the words that
ran in prattling music broken as the song of |
4 brook, babbling and murmuring or the |
very joy of lie, the mirth of the sunshine,
the sweet fancies of the shadows, the gieam |
Of the white pebbles, with no rule and no
guide and no law, save to run the easiest |
way, follow the slope Of the hill, and laugh |
the louder when the way was broken and |
rough and break into brighter sparkles and |
limpling ripples when the rocks buiided a
siny leap from the sunshine into the Sleep |
ing pool in the shadow. 1t is the voice of |