(Yes, Mary, you are right to keep the concrete; analysis kills love as well as other things. I once asked a useful-information young lady what her mother was. "Oh, mamma's a biped!" I turned in dismay to her younger sister, and said, "What do you say?" "Oh, my mother's just my mother.")
"But what part of speech is it?"
"It's a substantive or a verb." (Young Horne Tooke didn't ask her if it was an active or passive, an irregular or defective verb; an inceptive, as calesco, I grow warm, or dulcesco, I grow sweet; a frequentative or a desiderative, as nupturio, I desire to marry.)
"I think it is a verb," said John, who was deep in other diversions besides those of Burley; "and I think it must have been originally the Perfect of Live, like thrive, throve, strive, strove."
"Capital, John!" suddenly growled Uncle Oldbuck, who was supposed to be asleep in his arm-chair by the fireside, and who snubbed and supported the entire household. "It was that originally, and it will be our own faults, children, if it is not that at last, as well as, ay, and more than at first. What does Richardson say, John? read him out." John reads—
* They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richardson,
for instance, under the word snail, gives this quotation
from Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons,
"Oh, Master Pompey! how is't, man?
Clown—Snails, I'm almost starved with love and cold, and
one thing or other."
Any one else knows of course that it is 11's nails"—the
contraction of the old oath or interjection—God's nails.
After this, Uncle sent the cousins to their beds. John's mother was in hers, never to rise from it again. She was a widow, and Mary was her husband's niece. The house quiet, Uncle sat down in his chair, put his feet on the fender, and watched the dying fire; it had a rich central glow, but no flame, and no smoke, it was flashing up fitfully, and bit by bit falling in. He fell asleep watching it, and when he slept, he dreamed.
