In the speech of the illiterate, there is usually something of rhythm and cadence. All slang shares a feeling for the balance and nice adjustment of words, and slang phrases are rarely clumsy. The cry of a boy calling his mate has its peculiar crescendo, and pedlers the world over run the scale of human expression in pursuit of odd effects. The drawl of the Southerner and Southwesterner is not unmusical, though it may try the patience of the stranger. Even cultivated Indianians, particularly those of Southern antecedents, have the habit of clinging to their words; they do not bite them off sharply. G performs its office as final consonant in ing under many disadvantages; and it was long ignored, though the school-teachers have struggled nobly to restore it. The blending of words, which begins with childhood, is often carried into maturity by the Indianian; thus by a lazy elision “did you ever” is combined in jever, and “where did you get” becomes wherjuget. Ju is, in fact, usual in the Ohio Valley. The history of the Italian a in this country is in itself interesting. In New England and in Virginia it finds recognition, whereas in the intermediate region the narrower sound of the vowel prevails; and likewise the softening of r is noted in New England and among the Virginians and other Southerners, while in the intermediate territory and at the West r receives its full sound. The shrill nasal tone is still marked in the back country folk of New England, while the Southern and Southwestern farmer’s speech is fuller and more open-mouthed. Whether climatic influences have been potent in such matters remains a matter of speculation, but such theories are to be received with caution.
It is unfortunate that there are so few trustworthy records of the early Southwestern speech, and that first and last bad grammar, reckless spelling, and the indiscriminate distribution of the printer’s apostrophe by writers who had no real knowledge to guide them, have served to create an erroneous impression of the illiteracy of the Indianians and their neighbors. It is likely that during the next quarter of a century the continued fusion of the various elements of Western population will create a dead level of speech, approximating accuracy, so that in a typical American State like Indiana local usages will disappear, and the only oddities discernible will be those of the well-nigh universal slang, which even now reach Colorado and California almost as soon as they are known at the Atlantic seaboard. At the South and in New England, where there is less mingling of elements, the old usages will probably endure much longer; and it is a fair assumption that in the Mississippi Valley and in the Trans-Missouri country, a normal American speech free of local idiosyncrasies will appear first. Our keen sense of humor and our love of the conveniences of speech are likely to continue to be national traits, leading to the creation and adoption of slang from time to time; but where a people imply quotation marks in all their lapses from propriety, they anticipate and destroy criticism.
After all, there is nothing reprehensible in dialect, as we loosely use the word, or even in slang. Flexibility is necessary to the living language; and the word-hunter who really delights in his avocation, and is not limited in his researches to the remoter fields of classical philology, hearing in his daily walks and in the tranquil talk at peaceful inns the pungent or pictorial word that no lexicographer has yet detected, knows a joy that is greater than that of fly fishing or butterfly hunting. “No language,” writes Lowell, “after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips suppled by downright living interests, and by passion in its very throe.” He continues: “Language is the soil of thought, and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green.” And this suggests Horace’s words, in “Ars Poetica”:—
“Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit aetas,
Et juvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.”
As the leaves have fallen through a century in the Wabash country, they have buried words that will never reappear; and the change will continue, old words vanishing and new ones taking their places, so long as tradition and heredity yield to the schoolmaster, that ruthless forester who grafts and trims to make all trees uniform.
CHAPTER III
BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT
In his address to the annual council of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Indiana in 1863, Bishop Upfold spoke with much vigor against the use of flowers in the decoration of churches, and said:—
“There is no sound principle, no true doctrine involved in the practice. It is all poetry, and the very romance of poetry, the conception of romantic and imaginative minds, dictated less by religious sentiment than by a fondness for show and gaudy display. Instead of the decoration concentrating the attention devoutly on the great and glorious fact which flowers are erroneously supposed to symbolize, it is far more likely to divert it, and impair the true spiritual emotions and impressions, which the commemorative services of the day (Easter) are destined to awaken and deepen.... The practice will not be allowed in this diocese; and I now declare and desire it may be distinctly understood and remembered,—and I may as well say it, because I mean to do it—that I will not visit or officiate in any parish, to administer confirmation, or perform any other office on Easter Sunday, or on any other occasion, where this floral display is attempted.”