Page:America Today, Observations and Reflections.djvu/206

 out, and the fittest would survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend "I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for instance, were to say,

American and English critics alike could not but protest against the solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and "ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the advantage, is the substitution of "yep" or "yup" for "yes," and of "nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss"; but one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.