All right except one thing,--there was a confounded little
_hair_ had got tangled round the balance-wheel. So my young Solomon
got a pair of tweezers, and caught hold of the _hair_ very
nicely, and pulled it right out, without touching any of the
wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and the watch had done up twenty-four hours in
double magnetic-telegraph time!--The English language was wound up to
run some thousands of years, I trust; but if everybody is to be pulling
at everything he thinks is a _hair_, our grandchildren will have to
make the discovery that it is a hair-_spring_, and the old Anglo-Norman
soul's-timekeeper will run down, as so many other dialects have done
before it. I can't stand this meddling any better than you, Sir. But
we have a great deal to be proud of in the lifelong labors of that old
lexicographer, and we mustn't be ungrateful. Besides, don't let us
deceive ourselves, the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised
rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of publishers. After all,
the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and
dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and
harrow it afterwards, if you can,--but the moon will still lead the
tides, and the winds will form their surface.
----Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the
divinity-student.
Haoew?--said the divinity-student.--He colored, as he noticed on my face
a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth,
(_zygomaticus major_,) and which I could not hold back from making a
little movement on its own account.
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