that the nearest approach we can make to "four o'clock" is to say foah o'clock. A recent article on Southern provincialisms gives this slurring of the r as a peculiarity of the South. The fact is, that it has marked the English of England for more than five hundred years. In the early English text, one will regularly find mo for "more," and so on. The fuller sound of the r marks an inland origin. It belongs to the shires, and can be traced to its home in old Mercia. Mr. White tells how he was directed to Stockton by a party of miners at the public-house of Newton:
      "One insisted on a cut across the fields to Nuntharp. My ear caught at the sharp twang of the ar, — a Yorkshireman would have said 'Nunthurp,' — and I said, 'Surely that's Berkshire.'
      "'Ees, 'tis: I comes not fur from Read'n'."
      It will be noticed here, that although the "or" of Nunthorp was sounded ar by the Berkshireman, yet he sounded "far" as fur, just as the Yorkshireman would have pronounced "for." This will help us to understand why we have in use here, both "farther" and "further." A similar neglect of the r in "first" was formerly common in New England. An eminent professor of philosophy, to whose lectures it was the writer's privilege to listen, used always to say fust. I find the following, told of an English waterman. Speaking of refuse left on the shore, he said, "The sea'll tak' 't all away the fust gale."
      Closely connected with this treatment of the r must be considered the Northumbrian burr, as it is called. "Yes, the bawies aw flue this yeaw," is a specimen of Northumbrian. We are told that if one asks any person of that border region to say "courier," he will get a cooheous answer. It is told of a person at Ovingham, that when asked what they burned in certain kilns at a distance, he answered, "b'hicks," though all the time honestly intending to say "bricks."
      An affectation of this burr is perhaps the most aristocratic distinction in English society. It is said to have been feebly imitated in this country. Such a weakness is no new vanity. Shakspeare marks something similar, and most likely from that same border region, when he makes Lady Percy magnify Hotspur's importance in the presence of the Earl. She says:

"And speaking thick, which Nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant."