Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1889 — YANKEEISMS. [ARTICLE]

YANKEEISMS.

Characteristics of New England ' tlfe and Speech with Some Examples. Clarence Deming contributes to the Christian Union some characteristics of rural New England life and speech taken from a notebook of twenty-five years’ standing. When, many years ago, I asked a rustic citizen of the town, after his first visit to New York, his opinion of the great city, his reply was: “Waal, I never!' Why, there on Broadway it alters seemed’s though meetin’s just out." The note book abounds in miscellaneous Yankeeisms gleamed from the whimsical characters to be found in every back town of Yankeedom. Among the oddest of this odd species was Mr. D , a rugged and antique resident of a western Connecticut village. While driving his cows to pasture Mr. D- used to address them in most emphatic terms. One day, while the animals were in uncommonly frolicsome mood, he was overheard to bay: “Yes, scatter, will ye! Blast ye! if there warn’t but one of ye ye’d scatter!” On a dark night as Erebus, Mr. D- rushed out excitedly on boys pilfering his favorite pear tree, exulaiming: “I see ye! I know ye! Where be ye? Who are ye?” His profanity was often most voluble and redundant; but it never reached a loftier climax than on an occasion when he missed the backboard of his wagon after a five-mile drive, and, pn going back for it, found that he ... had been using it as a seat One _of his near neighbors was a good old dame, the Mrs. Malaprop of the village, who once remarked at our dinner table: knew a person who calls the cornish of a roof the tarnish.” She was matched by one of my old Yankee friends, now gone to his reward, who corrected an acquaintance reading aloud an account of President Lincoln’s funeral, saying that the word “corpse” was French, and ought to be prononced f’cbre.” It was not long before, at a local sword presentation during the eivil war, that I heard one of the orators exhort the ladies not to forget the sdldiers in the hospital as well as on the field. “For,” added he, “there’s more what is not slewed on the field of battle than what is killed by ball.” At court in that village I was present when a witness testified that “there was some-wheres between 'leven and twelve eggs in the basket.” Among the good Yankee stories of the neighborhood are the following: “Mr. B——, before driving from his farm to town, used to delay long delivering what he called his “last words.’* His vexed hired man at last broke out: “Mr. B , you’d be an awful bad man to die; you’d have so many last words that the undertaker’s bill would come in before yer was dead.” One of the oddest native characters was Mr. B , an ardent defender of the doctrine of election. One day, while “argyfying” with a neighboiyat dinner, he lifted a morsel of beef on his fork, asserting: “I hive no more doubt, sir, of the doctrine of election than that I shall eat that meat” With the emphasis of his gesture the meat flew off and was instantly devoured by the family dog. Here are a few Yankeeisms, drawn for the most part from the same locality; “He butters sausages”—i. e., lives too extravagantly; “Back up your •cart,” for pass your plate; “Waal, that’s a huckleberry too much;” “He ■died of plexy;” “Can’ c let yer have no eggs to-d ,y. we’re a settin’;” “1 have written a receipt for my husband’s tombstone:” “Draw a long scythe” (sigh); “These corns hurt me so I most want to walk backwards;” “Newark, New Jersey, is in New York state, isn’t it?” “We had a fine ball last night! the T. Ostrich (orchestra) played for us.” Let me close with this rural telegram which, many years ago, I was permitted to copy, and which I pen literally, <ave the substitution of a spurious name: “John Smith has broken his lags badley. AU well.”