Evening star., 1933-12-20

into q store and say. merely. and sue
cinctly:
Gimme one o. them things"
Not those things"-heavens, no!
The tang Of the soil Is the tang Of
the ungrammatical
Another way of putting It Is that the
ungrammatical somehow fits the soil.
Those who do not feel this instinc-
lively have something to learn, 1t would
seem.
We will never forget the idiot boy
who pointed to the swarm of ants on
the sidewalk and vouchsafed the fol-
lowing observation:
There's lot of them things in the
world, amt they, mister?"
NOW there are almost as many mis-
takes In that sentence as there are
words, but somehow, given the ants and
the boy, and the time and the place,
they were much better than If the lad
had said, There are large numbers Of
those creatures In existence, are there
not, sir?"
So 1t would be fun, let us insist, to
be able to walk into a seed store, all on
some bright Spring day, select flower
totally unknown, and say to the sales
man, Gimme one Of them things"
Surely he would not refuse to take
our money.
Still, we could better it.
Gimme one Of them there things
All, perfection
The polite world stands in awe OF
such combinations, especially the use
OF there" in front of a noun, but
actually 1t Is nearer correct than many
realize.
II one saws "Iook at +bosa +bars
things" he is set down as grammati-
cally incompetent, but the truth is that
II he says, Look at those things there" "
1t Is not quite SO bad But what is the
real difference? Custom, mostly, and
custom Is hard taskmaster.
One thing We have noticed, that the
real workers with and in the soil. actu-
ally OF the soil, never bother much about
their grammatical constructions.
Many OF these men are as well edu-
Gated as the next person, but somehow
phrase their thought as common as
an old shoe. They know what they
want to say, and they say 1t; the exact
correspondence with rules and regula-
tions does not interest them.
Therefore the purist finds that much
Of the real flavor of language Is due
entirely to these solid men who work
with plants, in all their forms, and
who talk as they might be supposed to
think their beloved plants would talk II
God had given them the gift Of speech.
Il \
II an onion, an honest onion, could
give its thoughts to the world, granting
| that it had any, surely it would not
seek out lexicon and grammar, but
would speak right out what 1t thought
as 1t thought It,
A sweet potato, rising in meeting.
would use the brisk, keen words of the
great outdoors, as we call the habitat
Of the vegetable kingdom, and it would
not be worried much whether its talk
struck some one else as correct or in
correct.
While we may think that this plan
would not be so good for human beings,
we must recognize at the same time
that there Is limit to which our fair
for grammatical purity should be car
ried.
Every one goes through a cycle, in
which grammar, as such, occupies an
exalted place, to give way at last to
its more proper position in the every
day economy Of the human being.
When this last change occurs the
home gardener will feel that the mere
name Of a plant, however desirable In
itself, Is not as important as the plant
He will keep this in mind when trying
to fnd out, as he must from time to
time, the scientific name of some beauty
which grows for him in all its glory
whether he knows its name or not.