cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike),
cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades,
loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole,
scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came
to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any
one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have
sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject
Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British
English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for
his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy,
cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England?

Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his
catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and
kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always
over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of
language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity
(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion
which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than
instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our
people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be
standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every
reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves
being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of
no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt
with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to
movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers
another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on
Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the
less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for