ENGLISH AND ENGLISH.
Most American boys and girls feel confident that they are tolerably familiar with the English language, and they are right in so feeling; but sometimes one cannot but wonder, in reading over the English newspapers, whether some expressions which are common enough to the English mind would prove puzzling to the American reader or not. For instance, here is a specimen paragraph from the Western Morning News, published in England:
"An Extraordinary Express.—The Cornish corridor express from Paddington, on the morning of the 31st ult., was one of the heaviest fast trains ever sent out of a London terminus. It started with 15 eight-wheel bogie coaches on, reckoned as equal to 22½ ordinary vehicles. But as these corridor carriages weigh about 25 tons each, the coach load must have been over 370 tons, or quite equal to a train of 30 six-wheeled coaches. This for an express run at over 53 miles an hour! There were two engines on of the largest class. West of Swindon the train was split into two parts."
How many of us know what a "corridor express" is? or who can guess the meaning of the term "bogie coach"? and to how many of us, indeed, is the word "coach" a natural expression for car? and, finally, when a train or anything else is "split" into two parts, does not the expression convey to our minds something divided from end to end longitudinally, and not cut in two? After all, the English spoken in one place differs largely from the English spoken elsewhere, and probably ours is as good as that of any one else.