the children caught their parents' malady.1

Mr. Grant White considers that he has found evidence showing that the h was suppressed in England by all classes seventy-five years ago. "This h breathing," he says, "is a fashion in speech which, I venture to say, is, among the 'best people' in modern England, hardly more than seventy-five years old." Now, apart from the circumstance that the contrary is known, I myself can vouch strongly for this, because I have heard the conversation of hundreds of persons who were past middle life at the time Mr. Grant White mentions, and know that they were as careful and correct about their h's as I was taught from my childhood upwards to be, apart, I say, from this, Mr. Grant White's idea, even if accepted, would give no explanation of the suppression of the h, still less of its forcible and wrongful introduction. So far from that, it would leave us two problems of immense difficulty to deal with.

First, it would be very much harder to explain the difference between England, on the one hand, and Ireland, America, and Australia, on the other; for how could correctness of speech have been derived from a people who all spoke incorrectly in this respect? Secondly, we should have to explain how it is that, although the h malady is incurable when once fairly established, there are, nevertheless, thousands of Englishmen, using their h's correctly, who were lads at the time when Mr. Grant White says all Englishmen, even the best bred, dropped their h's. To this must be added the truly surprising circumstance that we should have amended a fault thus universal without

1 I have had occasion to notice (1) how English-born children (my own) catch the h malady from nurses and servants, eventually losing it; (2) how American-born children (step-children of my own) are affected by it; and (3) how children of mixed American and English parentage (my own, again) are affected. On the first point I need not speak, nor specially on the third, except

even a passing note in our general literature or in the press that so widespread an evil existed.

These considerations should suffice to overthrow Mr. Grant White's theory, which every well-bred Englishman of middle age and beyond knows to be entirely erroneous. (Men of over eighty in England can tell Mr. White-I know it, because they have told me that at good schools in England, seventyfive years ago, the same care was taken in teaching the correct use of the has at the present day.) I need not, therefore, occupy much time to consider the evidence which he regards as establishing his position. Still it may be interesting to touch on his chief points.

He notes that no English writer of novels, tales, or humorous sketches, seventy-five years ago, makes fun of the h peculiarity. This proves, if it proves anything, that the suppression of the h was less common then in England than it is now; and this is well known (in England) to have been the case. The h malady has spread as the v-andw malady has died out,—why, I cannot say, but the fact is certain. The h malady existed, of course, but was not common enough to attract the attention of humorists, as it does now. (Nor were humorists such close observers then as now.)

Mr. Grant White's attempt to prove that the h malady was common, because in the Bible "an" is often written before h, fails, when we consider that the distinctive use of an and a is a comparatively modern rule. Many still regard it as an unsatisfactory rule, at least in its present general form. Any one who will repeat aloud, and with full voice, the sentence "I stayed at a hotel comto say that my youngest boy, with an American mother and a father who uses the h correctly, said a "'orse" and a "'ouse" in England quite naturally; but my American daughter (actually stepdaughter) of five, took the worst form of the h malady in a business-like way. "Mamma," she said one day, "you say oven, don't you? Well, I say hoven!"

manding a horizon eighty miles away' will see that the Englishman who writes "an hotel," as I often do, or "an horizon," as I almost always do, does not necessarily suppress the h. (I have often to use the word horizon, in lecturing, preceded by a or an, and nearly always I find that to give the h softly and correctly it is far easier to say "an horizon than " a horizon.") He considers Miss Burney must have said an 'osier, because she wrote "an hosier;" on the contrary, we may recognize in her use of an instead of a her care to avoid a gasping utterance of the aspirate. As As for the Bible writers, the very exist

ence of the letter h in the words Mr. Grant White quotes as preceded by an shows, when we consider the practical origin of spelling in English, that the h was sounded. It was probably sounded originally even in the words hour, humble, honest, etc.

I think, however, it has been sufficiently shown that the suppression of the h was a fault of slurring, a liberty arising from what may be called undue familiarity with the language, while the converse fault arose from a reaction against the other, and showed itself (as it still shows itself) only where an attempt was made at undue emphasis.

Richard A. Proctor.

IX.

AMOS and his steed made their way along a narrow passage, growing wider, however, and taller, but darker and with many short turns, an embarrassment to the resisting brute's physical conformation.

Suddenly there was a vague red haze in the dark, the sound of voices, and an abrupt turn brought man and horse into a great subterranean vault, where dusky distorted figures, wreathing smoke, and a flare of red fire suggested Tartarus.

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incident to being out of one's element. Even after he had seated himself he noted a far, faint voice crying, "Hy 're, Amos!" in abysmal depths explored only by the sound of his name.

And here it was that old Groundhog Cayce evaded the law, and ran his still, and defied the revenue department, and maintained his right to do as he would with his own.

"Lord A'mighty, air the corn mine, or no? he would argue. "Air the orchard mine or the raiders'? An' what ails me ez I can't make whisky an' apple-jack same ez in my dad's time, when

A weird tone repeated the words with precipitate promptness. Again and again the abrupt echoes spoke; far down the unseen blackness of the cave a hollow whisper announced his entrance, and he seemed mysteriously welcomed by the unseen powers of the earth. He was not an imaginative man nor observant, but the upper regions were his sphere, and he had all the acute sensitiveness

top o' the mounting in the light o' day, up'ards o' twenty year, an' never hearn o' no raider. Tell me that's agin the law, nowadays! Waal, now, who made that law? I never; an' I ain't a-goin' ter abide by it, nuther. Ez sure ez ye air born, it air jes' a Yankee trick fotched down hyar by the Fed'ral army. An' ef I hed knowed they war goin' ter gin tharse'fs ter sech persecutions arter the war, I dunno how I'd hev got my con

sent ter fit alongside of 'em like I done fower year fur the Union."

A rude furnace made of fire-rock was the prominent feature of the place, and on it glimmered the pleasing rotundities of a small copper still. The neck curved away into the obscurity. There was the sound of gurgling water, with vague babbling echoes; for the never-failing rill of an underground spring, which rose among the rocks, was diverted to the unexpected purpose of flowing through the tub where the worm was coiled, and of condensing the precious vapors, which dripped monotonously into their rude receiver at the extremity of the primitive fixtures. The iron door of the furnace was open now as Ab Cayce replenished the fire. It sent out a red glare, revealing the dark walls; the black distances; the wreaths of smoke, that were given a start by a short chimney, and left to wander away and dissipate themselves in the wide subterranean spaces; and the uncouth, slouching figures and illuminated faces of the distillers. They lounged upon the rocks or sat on inverted baskets and tubs, and one stalwart fellow lay at length upon the ground. The shadows were all grotesquely elongated, almost divested of the semblance of humanity, as they stretched in unnatural proportions upon the rocks. Amos James's horse cast on the wall an image so gigantic that it seemed as if the past and the present were mysteriously united, and he stood stabled beside the grim mastodon whom the cave had sheltered from the rigors of his day long before Groundhog Cayce was moved to seek a refuge. The furnace door clashed; the scene faded; only a glittering line of vivid white light, emitted between the ill-fitting door and the unhewn rock, enlivened the gloom. Now and then, as one of the distillers moved, it fell upon him, and gave his face an abnormal distinctness in the surrounding blackness, like some curiously

cut onyx.

"Waal, Amos," said a voice from out the darkness, "I'm middlin' glad ter see you-uns. Hev a drink."

A hand came out into the gleaming line of light, extending with a flourish of invitation a jug of jovial aspect.

"Don't keer ef I do," said Amos politely. He lifted the jug, and drank without stint. The hand received it back again, shook it as if to judge of the quantity of its contents, and then, with a gesture of relish, raised it to an unseen mouth.

"Enny news 'round the mill, Amos? " demanded his invisible pot companion. "None ez I knows on," drawled Amos.

"Grind some fur we-uns ter-morrer? asked Ab.

"I'll grind yer bones, ef ye'll send 'em down," said Amos, accommodatingly. "All's grist ez goes ter the hopper. How kem you-uns ter git the nightmare 'bout'n the raiders? I waited fur Sol an' the corn right sharp time Wednesday mornin'; jes' hed nuthin' ter do but ter sot an' suck my paws, like a b'ar in winter, till 't war time ter put out an' go ter the gaynder-pullin'."

"Waal" there was embarrassment in the tones of the burly shadow, and all the echoes were hesitant as Groundhog Cayce replied in Ab's stead: "Mirandy Jane 'lowed ez she hed seen a strange man bout'n the spring, an' thought it war a raider, though he'd hev been in a mighty ticklish place fur a raider, all by himself. Mirandy Jane hev fairly got the jim-jams, seein' raiders stiddier snakes; we-uns can't put no dependence in the gal. An' mam, she drempt the raiders hed camped on Chilhowee Mounting. An' D'rindy, she turned fool: fust she 'lowed ez we-uns would all be ruined ef we went ter the gaynder-pullin', an' then she war powerful interrupted when we 'lowed we would n't go, like ez ef she wanted us ter go most awful. I axed this hyar Pa'son Kelsey, ez rid by that mornin', ef he treed enny raiders in his

mind. An' he 'lowed, none, 'ceptin' the devil a-raidin' 'roun' his own soul. But 'mongst 'em we-uns jest bided away that day. I would n't hev done it, 'ceptin' D'rindy tuk ter talkin' six ways fur Sunday, an' she got me plumb catawampus, so ez I did n't rightly know what I wanted ter do myself."

mam's

tention, subordination, and acquiescence. It was not his habit to allow any man to so completely absorb public attention.

"Look a hyar, Amos, fur Gawd's sake, shet up that thar foolishness!" he stuttered at last. "Thar's n-no tellin' how f-f-fur yer servigrus bellerin' kin be hearn. An' besides, ye'll b-b-bring the rocks down on to we-uns d-d'rectly. They tell me that it air dangerous ter f-f-f-fire pistols an' jounce 'round in a Bring the roof down."

cave.

It was a lame story for old Groundhog Cayce to tell. Even the hesitating echoes seemed ashamed of it. Mirandy Jane's mythical raider, and dream, and D'rindy's folly, were these to baffle that stout-hearted soldier? Amos James said no more. If old Cayce employed an awkward subterfuge to conceal the enterprise of the rescue, he had no occasion to intermeddle. Somehow, the strengthening of his suspicions brought Amos to a new realization of his despair. He sought to modify it by frequent reference to the jug, which came his way at hospitably short intervals. But he had a strong head, and had seen the jug often before; and although he thought his grief would be alleviated by getting as drunk as a "fraish b'iled owel," that consummation of consolation was coy and tardy. He was only mournfully frisky after a while, feeling that he should presently be obliged to cut his throat, yet laughing at his own jokes when the moonshiners laughed, then pausing in sudden seriousness to listen to the elfin merriment evoked among the lurking echoes. And he sang, too, after a time, a merry catch, in a rich and resonant voice, with long, dawdling, untutored cadences and distortions of effect, sudden changes of register, many an abrupt crescendo and diminuendo, and "spoken" interpolations and improvisations, all of humorous intent.

The others listened with the universal greedy appetite for entertainment which might have been supposed to have dwindled and died of inanition in their serious and deprived lives. Pete Cayce first revolted from the strain on his at

"Look a hyar, Amos Jeemes, ye air the b-b-banged-est critter on this hyar m-mounting! Jes' kem hyar ter our s-still an' c-c-call me a Ph-Ph-Philistine!"

The jug had not been stationary, and as Pete thrust his aggressive face forward the vivid quivering line of light from the furnace showed that it was flushed with liquor and that his eyes were bloodshot. His gaunt head, with long, colorless hair, protruding teeth, and homely, prominent features, as it hung there in the isolating effect of that sharp and slender gleam, the rest of his body canceled by the darkness, had a singularly unnatural and sinister aspect. The light glanced back with a steely glimmer. The drunken man had a knife in his hand.

"Shet up, Pete. said Amos gravely.

I'll take it back," "I'm the Philistine myself; fur pa'son read ez Samson killed a passel o' Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, an' ez long ez ye be talkin' I feel in an' about dead."

Amos James had bent close attention to the sermon, and had brought as much accurate information from meeting as was consistent with hearing so sensational a story as Samson's for the first time. In the mountains men do not regard church privileges as the opportunity of a quiet hour to meditate on secular affairs, while a gentle voice drones on antiquated themes. To Amos, Samson was the latest thing out.

Pete did not quite catch the full meaning of this sarcasm. He was con

tent that Amos should seem to recant. He replaced his knife, but sat surly and muttering, and now and then glancing toward the guest.

Meantime that vivid white gleam quivered across the dusky shadows; now and then the horse pawed, raising martial echoes, as of squadrons of cavalry, among the multitudinous reverberations of the place, while his stall-companion, that the light could conjure up, was always noiseless; the continuous fresh sound of water gurgling over the rocks mingled with the monotonous drip from the worm; occasionally a gopher would scud among the heavily booted feet, and the jug's activity was marked by the shifting for an interval of the red sparks which indicated the glowing pipes of the burly shadows around the still.

The stories went on, growing weird as the evening outside waned, in some unconscious sympathy with the melan

ows.

The white line of light had yellowed, deepened, grown dull. The furnace needed fuel. Ab suddenly leaned down and threw open the door. The flare of the pulsing coals resuscitated the dim scene and the long, dun-colored shadHere in the broad red light were the stolid, meditative faces of the distillers, each with his pipe in his mouth and his hat on his head; it revealed the dilated eye and unconsciously dramatic gesture of the story-teller, sitting upon a barrel in their midst; the horse was distinct in the background, now dreaming and now lifting an impatient fore-foot, and his gigantic stall-mate, the simulacrum of the mastodon, moved as he moved, but softly, that the echoes. might not know, the immortal echoes, who were here before him, and here still.