Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/111

Rh and make your bargain with 'em now," urged Luke, anxious to strike while the iron was hot.

"Bargain!" shouted John Bassett, with a look of indignation which nearly paralyzed Luke. "I 'm not going to make any bargain. You can tell 'em that a friend of yours is going to do it for you. I don't want any of their money."

"But John," began Luke, "Father won't take it."

"Settle it among you as you like," cried John; "I sha'n't take any money. Let me know when you want me to come," and he gave Tom so sharp a stroke with the whip that Tom reared and plunged forward at a pace that whirled the wagon out of sight in the twinkling of an eye.

"Well, I swanny!" ejaculated Luke as he walked up the hill, "John Bassett is a queer one. I wonder how we 'll fix it!"

"I swanny" does such universal duty as an oath throughout New England that the expression merits some attention as a philological curiosity. No one can sojourn among rural New Englanders for any length of time without being driven to speculate as to the origin of the phrase. Could it have come down through ages of gradual elimination from some highly respectable Pagan formula, such as, "I will swear by any of the gods," for instance? This seems a not wholly incredible supposition, and lifts the seeming vulgarism at once to the level of a "condensed classic." No perplexing considerations of the question of