Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/182

168 the first problem, and the best way to answer it is to think what old friend Solomon would have done and cut th'trouble in half by making your car an 11.9—safe both ways up.

Wal, after you've laid out your cash an' folded its arms on its little chest, there are just two people who are liable to hold you up for ransom; the tax-collector and th'polisman. Per-sonally, I give a polisman just nuthin' and a tax-collector as little as George and Mary will let me. If I'm in the 11.9 h.p. class I can send the kids to school with th'tax balance. Get me?

Then, son, as the principal dooty of an auto is to shift th'scenery along quick without burning too much gas, and without letting little old Experience teach you why "swearing" rhymes with "bearing," y'want to buy something which everybody KNOWS to be the goods. Think of "Imshi" of The Daily Mail, with guts enough for a 20,000-mile trip at any speed over anythin', with a petrol consumption of 35-40 m.p.g. and with no come-back in repairs. Get an "Imshi" of your own, an' you'll love the man who sold it you!

Then y'want a comfortable auto. For though y'head may be solid ivory you are not built that way all over. Why does a hen-sparrow use hay for its nest? Get a Morris, with three-quarter elliptic substantial springs, all dolled up in leather gaiters, an' th'potholes will never cause your hat to sit loose. Get a Morris, with light irrever-sible steering and an adjustable rake to it, an' keep on good terms with your wrists. Get a Morris, with a gear-change that just flips over, an' quit blushing. Get a Morris, with a self-starter that works, and save heart-disease. In other words, friend, get a Morris an' get HAPPY!

Then there's material, bud. Y'can excuse a man buyin' padding with his wife, but I do NOT see haow there's any excuse for getting the wrong stuff in th'right place with an automobile. There's th'Morris people with a Metallurgical Laboratory an' physical an' chemical tests which line up every bar and ingot coming into the factory, and with millimetre gauges that put an O.K. on every car-part before kissing it good-bye to the assembling-shop. Say, if those Morris people didn't come from Oxford they'd come from Missouri, sure.

Then, there's natural beauty: th'Morris is a right handsome car that keeps on looking handsome; it makes less noise than a clam with ball-bearing shell-hinges; it accelerates like a greyhound with ten cawn-beef cans attached to its rudder. It is just too cute for anything.

Various American critics have noted similar and even worse maulings of American in current English books and periodicals, and one of them, Miss Anna Branson Hillyard, once offered publicly in the Athenæum to undertake the revision of English manuscripts for "fees carefully and inversely scaled by the consultant's importance." Miss Hillyard, in this article, cited a curious misunerstanding of American by the late