says that "The East Anglian word rowen for aftermath, used by old writers, but now, we believe, confined to parts of Suffolk, is in common use in New England." This was written for English readers. All that is needed to give the statement point and interest here is simply to reverse it.
      There is a puzzling superlative still to be heard, I doubt not, within the limits of New England, and which bears strong marks of being indigenous to the soil. It is worthy of remark, that superlatives are more in request among our people than other forms; and it is upon these that a Yankee may be expected to exercise his inventive faculty. The word in mind is beatemest — expressive if not elegant. It has the appearance of native coinage, and seems to refer to our proverbial aptitude to getting ahead in the world; possibly to some minds it might be suggestive of the methods of getting ahead as well. But we shall have to give up all claims to originality here, for the Yorkshireman uses the derivative bettermy, as the author of "A Month in Yorkshire" shows. From bettermy would come the superlative bettermiest, beatemest, by a perfectly legitimate course. And more than this, the work quoted enables us to give another account of the word which is not unreasonable. A Yorkshireman, of the same neighborhood as the one who used bettermy, speaking of paper-hanging said, "'Tis only the bettermost rooms we gets to do."
      As the words last quoted seem to mean we find the time to do, or have the ability to do, the phrase gives warrant to the very common Southern and Western expression, to get to do a thing. However this may be, there is no mistaking the following Yorkshire speech as being the original of one of the most marked peculiarities of the West: "'Tis so nice to hear the leaves a-rustlin' like they do now." This phrase is becoming quite common among English writers of the present day, but I fancy it has been brought in from India or Australia. The Yorkshire vernacular, however, proves it to have been indigenous to that soil.
      There is another usage in which the people of the West indulge, and which I had supposed native to that region; it is the practice of retrenching clerical titles, and of speaking of the Rev. Mr. Smith, for example, as the Rev. Smith. When they come to speak of the Rev. Brewer, the Rev. Potter, and the Rev. Butler, the absurdity of the usage becomes apparent at once. But even this practice is not original with the West. It is from Norfolk, Eng., where it had vogue among the common people for centuries. If our friends in the West would only carry this economy of titles into military, official, and educational circles, the reform would more than atone for all that is offensive in the present usage.
      In Lincolnshire the boundary between adjoining farms, a narrow strip of land left unploughed, is called a balk. The practice is clearly borrowed from the Roman, is probably a survival from the time of the Roman occupation, but the name belongs to the vernacular speech. We have the