roadsides. The disappearance of it from our old homesteads affects the landscape just as the change of spelling from swipe to sweep affects the language; it tends to make uniform and uninteresting.
      In Suffolk the word "dyke" is said to be pronounced dick. This raises the suspicion that "pike" and "pick" are identical in origin, and differ only in pronunciation. Here in New England the word "handspike" used to be called handspeek.
      Of course if the long i sound went over into the long e sound, as we are familiar with it in "machine," some other sound would come in to take its place. The combination oi did this regularly. Within the last ten years, "to jine drives" has been a common political phrase in Maine. As a specimen of Norfolk usage we have this: "We'll be glad and rejice in ye." As a bit of musical criticism, and at the same time a specimen of Norfolk dialect, is given the remark of a farmer upon a performance which had been given by a lady for his entertainment: "Yes, mum, I dessay it's very fine; but I'd ruther hear my bullocks make a nize." This method of replacing the long i is familiar enough to all New Englanders, but the old Suffolk practice of pronouncing they and pay, as if spelled thy and py, is not easily traced here.
      Not all the peculiarities of English are to be found in the pronunciation of the vowels. The consonants come in for their full share of neglect and rudeness, if not of actual abuse. A miner who had strayed away from his early home, and gone up into Yorkshire, said that "Anyway he didn't save a fardin more than he did in Berkshire." We have already noticed the change from farther to further, and here we have the old Berkshire form fardin to remind us that even yet in some out-of-the-way corners of New England one may hear furder for further. In the records of the doings of the Government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay for April 30, 1629, we find an entry beginning, "It is ffurder ordered," etc. It is, perhaps, worth while to note here, that the early English, or Saxon, character for th closely resembled the d; and the two sounds seem to have been so nearly alike as to have puzzled the unlettered ever since.
      The instances of Old English dialects to be met with in New England are too numerous and too varied to be considered in individual cases. Only a few examples can be given as hints in regard to the direction in which investigation may be pushed. The application of words, or the acceptation in which they are taken, will furnish interesting and important clews to the origin of our dialectic forms.
      An English writer says that "The use of while for until marks Lincolnshire," and he gives this as an illustration: "Inkstand can't be had while missus done wi't." This usage of the eastern counties I have never found in New England; but there is another one given by the same writer, with which all our people must be familiar, and that is the use of the word want