But if she may take a lawful pride in "fall," America need not boast the use of "gotten." The termination, which suggests either wilful archaism or useless slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off. Nor does the use of "bully" prove a wholesome respect for the past. It is true that our Elizabethans used this adjective in the sense of great or noble. "Come," writes Ben Jonson in "The Poetaster," "I love bully Horace." {*} But in England the word was never of universal application, and was sternly reserved for poets, kings, and heroes. In modern America there is nothing that may not be "bully" if it meet with approval. "A bully place," "a bully boat," "a bully blaze,"--these show how far the word has departed from its origin. Nor, indeed, does it come down from English in an unbroken line. Overlooked for centuries, it was revived (or invented) in America some fifty years ago, and it is not to Dekker and Ben Jonson that we must look for palliation of its misuse. * Innumerable examples might be culled from the literature of the seventeenth century. One other will suffice here, taken from Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday ": "Yet I'll shave it off," says the shoemaker, of his beard, "and stuff a tennis-ball with it, to please my bully king." Words have their fates. By a caprice of fortune one is taken, another is left. This is restricted to a narrow use; that wanders free over the plain of meaning. And thus we may explain many of the variations of English and of American speech. A simple word crosses the ocean and takes new tasks upon itself. The word "parlour," for instance, is dying in our midst, while "parlor" gains a fresh vigour from an increasing and illegitimate employment. Originally a room in a religious house, a parlour (or parloir) became a place of reception or entertainment. Two centuries ago an air of elegance hung about it. It suggested spinnets and powdered wigs. And then, as fashion turned to commonness, the parlour grew stuffy with disuse, until it is to-day the room reserved for a vain display, consecrated to wax-flowers and framed photographs, hermetically sealed save when the voice of gentility bids its furtive door be opened. The American "parlor" resembles the "parlour" of the eighteenth century as little as the "parlour" of the Victorian age. It is busy, public, and multifarious. It means so many things that at last it carries no other meaning than that of a false elegance. It is in a dentist's parlor that the American's teeth are gilded; he is shaved in a tonsorial parlor; he travels in a parlor-car; and Miss Maudie's parlor proves how far an ancient and respected word may wander from its origin. One example, of many, will illustrate the accidents which beset the life of words. No examples will prove the plain absurdity which has flattered the vanity of some American critics that their language has faithfully