"Fo' the imagination, suh. Turn yore eye whah you will, you'll see words that need refawmin', words that need our help, words that cry an' clamuh to be relieved of the stigma of their congested and nonsensical appearance; nouns, adjectives, verbs, all stuck in the hopeless mud of antiquity, an' holdin' out their hands for we-all to drag 'em out an' bring 'em up to date." He now gave me a list. "Look, suh, at those pore, sufferin', aged cripples, awaitin' the renewal of their youth."
"You have a magnificent collection," I remarked to him, after a glance at the list.
"Pshaw!" he returned. "I could double that in an hour. I just jotted that down as I came up the valley from Paw-paw in the Chattanooga Limited. Why, just lookin' out of the cyah windo' would give me notions. I saw a thistle. Down she went on the list, an' down went whistle next her, suggested by our locomotive. Thistle. Whistle. Look at those disgraces. Look at the dead wood in 'em. Are not they just congested all up with pitfalls for the young? Once we get to work at Arkansopolis, and they'll be thissl and wissl, or my name is not Jesse Willows."
He paused, and I looked at his list again. The railway journey had given him a number of suggestions; I saw, in hasty writing:—
Freight. That's dopy. Should be frate.
Bridge. Another has-been. Brij.
My perusal was interrupted by his seizing the list away from me. "The po'tuh has turned the gas higher," he said. "That gives me another whole big line of 'em." And he wrote:—
Light should be lite. So also fight, and tight and others on the same plan.
"Po'tuh!" he called out, "what is yore name?"
"Michael, Colonel," the man answered.