The education which
has been fostered in American schools and colleges keeps the whole
nation in touch with the past. Some of their best authors write in a
style that Milton and Burke would understand and approve. There is no
more beautiful English prose than Nathaniel Hawthorne's. The best
speeches of Abraham Lincoln, and, we may truly add, of President Wilson,
are merely classic English. During my own lifetime I am sure I have seen
the speech usages of the two peoples draw closer together. For one
thing, we on this side now borrow, and borrow very freely, the more
picturesque colloquialisms of America. On informal occasions I sometimes
brighten my own speech with phrases which I think I owe to one of the
best of living American authors, Mr. George Ade, of Chicago, the author
of _Fables in Slang_. The press, the telegraph, the telephone, and the
growing habit of travel bind us closer together every year; and the
English that we speak, however rich and various it may be, is going to
remain one and the same English, our common inheritance.
One question, the most important and difficult of all, remains to be
asked.
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