Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/162

148 say "fall" for autumn; "fall" is the usual American term for that season, and fall is most appropriate for the downward curve of time, the descent of the leaf A slender slip of womanhood in the undeveloped period is alluded to in the villages as a "slickit" of a girl. "Slickit" means thin, slender, a piece that might be whittled off a stick with a knife, not a shaving, for a shaving curls, but a "slickit," a long thin slice. If any one be carving awkwardly with the left wrist doubled under, the right arm angularly extended, and the knife sawing at a joint, our village miners and country Californians call it "cack-" or "cag-handed." Cag-handed is worse than back-handed; it means awkward, twisted, and clumsy. You may see many a cag-handed person hacking at a fowl. Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the bough, and straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it down. "Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa, indicates the action of stretching and pulling downwards. Though somewhat similar in sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people scramble for things which have been thrown on the ground. In getting-through hedges the thorns are apt to "limm" one's