'Lyght it and bring it tite away.'

But tite is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but another form of straightway? Cussedness, meaning wickedness, malignity, and cuss, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But neither is our own. Cursydnesse, in the same sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and cuss may perhaps claim to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French. Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbé Dubois, he says, 'Qui étoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais françois appelle un sacre, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement.' 'Not worth a cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption, since 'not worth a cress' is in 'Piers Ploughman.' 'I don't see it,' was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' Green sauce for vegetables I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our rustic pronunciation sahce (for either the diphthong au was anciently pronounced ah, or else we have followed abundant analogy in changing it to the latter sound, as we have in chance, dance, and so many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its ancestor salsa. Warn, in the sense of notify, is, I believe, now peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find primmer (primer, as we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too (compare our 'square meal'), heft for weight, and 'muchness' in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' bankbill in Swift and Fielding, and as for that I might say passim. To cotton to is, I rather think, an Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is cotton together, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To cotton or cotten, in another sense, is old and common. Our word means to cling, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S. cvead, which means mud, clay (both proverbially clinging), or better yet, in the Icelandic qvoda (otherwise kód), meaning resin and glue, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To spit cotton is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to flax for to beat. To the halves still survives among us, though apparently obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land, receiving half the profit in money or in kind (partibus locare). I mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. To put, in the sense of to go, as Put! for Begone! would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the French se mettre à la voie, and the Italian mettersi in via. Indeed, Dante has a verse,

'Io sarei [for mi sarei] già messo per lo sentiero,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have put along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,' Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide?'

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide.'

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction, for Chaucer writes,