pronunciation. Incredulity on our part is met by lugging the dictionary
into the conflict and we are defeated at once. So victorious has the
little one become that we tremble when we hear, "Mamma, how do you
pronounce so and so," and prepare for another humiliation. My wife's
plaintive, "It was pronounced so when I was a girl," is very touching
to me, but when did the young ever have mercy on the old? The last
conflict had--I hope it will be the last--was over the word "Squalor."
The young one, after setting the usual trap of demanding how we
pronounced it, announced that it was spoken "squaylor." At this my
wife, astonished into resistance, made her last flight, and said with
much dignity, that that pronunciation was silly and there must be a
mistake. In a moment more she was prostrated by the well directed
dictionary. In the evening after the children had gone upstairs, Mrs.
B. locked up her sewing and remarked that a good deal of what is taught
children in these days is nonsense. I did not reply. Had I, I should
have been forced to remind her that she and I put our parents through
the same mill in which the educational gods are now grinding us so
sharply. I take it that pronunciation, I mean that of ordinary
refinement and education, varies pretty much as bonnets do in style
and, like them, is a matter that taste has a good deal to do with; and
locality as well. Forty years ago in the jungles of East Virginia I
spoke glahss, fahst, ahnser; I never heard of papa and mamma, but of
father and mother, and I find they are teaching the children of this
day to say that, too. I was taught to say g-yarden, c-yar, s-yuit,
and, I suppose, that will also be resurrected after a while.
Pronunciation, I take it, is a matter of provincial taste. Reading
Chaucer, I have often wondered what standard of that sparsely educated
day fixed the standard by which he could be read aloud. And by the bye
who, of this more cultivated day, is authority for fixing the standard?
Not the Dictionaries, for they differ. I dare say that after all we