American Adventures Part 19

I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question.

Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any, thanks."

Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."

"Well, why didn't you say so?"

"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions."

No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's Weekly."

Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words,"

and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding.

Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.

For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue.

That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.

Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:

I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard "you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.

It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that "you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own localisms.

Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?"

she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City, Alabama:

My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited, acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing _y_; annihilated _g_; long-distance _a_, and irresistible drawl.

To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is absod.a.m.nlutely _non est factum_ in Virginia, save, perhaps, among the hill people of the Blue Ridge.

Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your demi-ta.s.se, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.

My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been "you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged woman.

In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken.

I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how he took his after-dinner coffee?

At last, to rea.s.sure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.

"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_.

She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him."

This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from a gentleman in Charleston:

It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way, and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so addressed. To ill.u.s.trate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?"

Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too (as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).

The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression "you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance, last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single exception that one of them _twice_ used the expression "you-all"

where it could not _possibly_ have meant more than one person. And I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is _one_ blossom that never bloomed in Georgia!"

Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I said to myself: "He is a d.a.m.ned Yankee trying to pa.s.s himself off for a Southerner."

Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet--

Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression by applying it in the singular.

That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she _did_ look at me.... She _didn't_ expect an answer from my companion....

And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member--and a worthy one--of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has educated me. He has made me see the light.

"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use 'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.'

"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally; but I would _not_ ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"

And that is the exact truth.

I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can, moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple ill.u.s.tration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my earlier misstatement.

CHAPTER XX

IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY

Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of Virginia.

The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the "vanishing _y_"--a _y_ sound which causes words like "car" and "garden"

to be p.r.o.nounced "cyar" and "gyarden"--or, as Professor Smith prefers to indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by the "vanishing _y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses, vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day p.r.o.nounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya'pet," and "Carter," as "Cyahtah."

In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as "aunt" correctly p.r.o.nounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube"

and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and "noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often p.r.o.nounced "yore,"

"sure" as "sh.o.r.e," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."

The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he "carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what we call a brook.

This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of _lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.

The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries, though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family, having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American word.

Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I will call for you in pa.s.sing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes indeed."

"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian, "there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course, always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia--and indeed in the whole South--there is absolutely no doubt that its softness and its peculiarities in p.r.o.nunciation are due to the influence of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the view--half humorously, of course--that if a Southerner spoke perfect English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised with n.i.g.g.e.rs around him.""