In full blast—something in the extreme.
“When she came to meeting, with her yellow hat and feathers, wasn’t she in fall blast?”
But for more specimens of genuine Yankee, I must refer the reader to Sam Slick and Major Downing, and shall now proceed to some farther peculiarities.
There are two syllables—um, hu—which are very generally used by the Americans as a sort of reply, intimating that they are attentive, and that the party may proceed with his narrative; but, by inflection and intonation, these two syllables are made to express dissent or assent, surprise, disdain, and (like Lord Burleigh’s nod in the play) a great deal more. The reason why these two syllables have been selected is, that they can be pronounced without the trouble of opening your mouth, and you may be in a state of listlessness and repose while others talk. I myself found them very convenient at times, and gradually got into the habit of using them.
The Americans are very local in their phrases, and borrow their similes very much from the nature of their occupations and pursuits. If you ask a Virginian or Kentuckian where he was born, he will invariably tell you that he was raised in such a county—the term applied to horses, and, in breeding states, to men also.
When a man is tipsy (spirits being made from grain), they generally say he is corned.
In the West, where steam-navigation is so abundant, when they ask you to drink they say, “Stranger, will you take in wood?”—the vessels taking in wood as fuel to keep the steam up, and the person taking in spirits to keep his steam up.
The roads in the country being cut through woods, and the stumps of the trees left standing, the carriages are often brought up by them. Hence the expression of, “Well, I am stumped this time.”
I heard a young man, a farmer in Vermont, say, when talking about another having gained the heart of a pretty girl, “Well, how he contrived to fork into her young affections, I can’t tell; but I’ve a mind to put my whole team on, and see if I can’t run him off the road.”
The old phrase of “straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel,” is, in the Eastern states, rendered “straining at a gate, and swallowing a saw-mill.”