"realize," in the exact senses in which one sometimes hears them used
colloquially here. Nevertheless such improprieties are of course to be
avoided; but whatever good Americanisms exist, let us hold to them by
all means. The diction of Emerson alone is a sufficient proof, by its
unequalled range and precision, that no people in the world ever had
access to a vocabulary so rich and copious as we are acquiring. To
the previous traditions and associations of the English tongue we add
resources of contemporary life such as England cannot rival. Political
freedom makes every man an individual; a vast industrial activity makes
every man an inventor, not merely of labor-saving machines, but of
labor-saving words; universal schooling popularizes all thought and
sharpens the edge of all language. We unconsciously demand of our
writers the same dash and the same accuracy which we demand in
railroading or dry-goods-jobbing. The mixture of nationalities is
constantly coining and exchanging new felicities of dialect: Ireland,
Scotland, Germany, Africa are present everywhere with their various
contributions of wit and shrewdness, thought and geniality; in New York
and elsewhere one finds whole thoroughfares of France, Italy, Spain,
Portugal; on our Western railways there are placards printed in Swedish;
even China is creeping in. The colonies of England are too far and too
provincial to have had much reflex influence on her literature, but
how our phraseology is already amplified by our relations with
Spanish-America! The life-blood of Mexico flowed into our newspapers
while the war was in progress; and the gold of California glitters in
our primer: Many foreign cities may show a greater variety of mere
national costumes, but the representative value of our immigrant tribes
is far greater from the very fact that they merge their mental costume
in ours. Thus the American writer finds himself among his phrases like
an American sea-captain amid his crew: a medley of all nations, waiting
for the strong organizing New-England mind to mould them into a unit of