Americanisms and Briticisms: With Other Essays on Other Isms |
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Common terms and phrases
Amer Ameri American authors American authorship American books American spelling Andrew Andrew Lang Athenæum authoress books of British BRANDER MATTHEWS Britain Briticism British authors British authorship British criticism Bunner's called century character Colonel Higginson colonial comic Cooper Copyright act delight doubt Douglas Jerrold England English language Englishman essays etymology example feel fiction foreign France French George George Eliot haps Harper & Brothers Huck Finn Huckleberry Finn humor ican ignorant insular Jules Lemaître laugh Leatherstocking Leatherstocking Tales less letters lish literary literature London Lowell Mark Twain Matthew Arnold Messrs Mifflin & Company Miss Repplier's Mohicans mother-tongue never Noah Webster novels once orthography perhaps phrase plays Portrait praise Professor pronunciation reader Repplier rhyme Sainte-Beuve Sawyer side speech story style Thackeray things thor thought tion to-day Tom Sawyer United usage Voces Populi wholly words write York Zola Zola's
Popular passages
Page 53 - On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow ; And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery.
Page 141 - Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison...
Page 162 - I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.
Page 175 - ... is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality.
Page 129 - Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
Page 140 - Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon ; for the auction opened, and they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding all his cautions, and their own fear of taxes.
Page 163 - The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make...
Page 57 - that it is mainly among the class of half-taught dabblers in philology that etymological spelling has found its supporters"; and he goes on to say that "all true philologists and philological bodies have uniformly denounced it as a monstrous absurdity both from a practical and a scientific point of view.
Page 38 - ... beard translated me to hostile French ; So they, desiring guidance in the town, Half condescended to my baser sphere, And, clubbing in one mess their lack of phrase, Set their best man to grapple with the Gaul. " Esker vous ate a nabitang ? " he asked ; " I never ate one ; are they good ? " asked I ; Whereat they stared, then laughed, and.
Page 4 - Look at those phrases which so amuse us in their speech and books ; at their reckless exaggeration, and contempt for congruity ; and then compare the character and history of the nation — its blunted sense of moral obligation and duty to man ; its open disregard of conventional right where aggrandizement is to be obtained, and, I may now say, its reckless and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in the history of the world.