When he was six, he was writing letters of such precocity that his elders were suspected of getting him to say things that they could not very well say themselves. My grandfather writes to my father, 20 July 1853, “I fancied by Mr *****’s letter that the boy had written something offensive. You may assure Mr ***** that no one here dictated anything to him, nor can do, for (if attempted) he would sure write contrary.”--I put one of his letters in my former _Small Talk_, page 105. My grandfather’s letters have all sorts of words and phrases. After some heavy rains, 9 January 1860, “The waters have been very stiff, but not landed yet,” meaning that the Wrey was high, but had not overflowed its banks. Whilst the railway was being made here, 30 April 1865, “There is a stagnation among the navvies about wages.” He says that my brother “has a little hoarse,” 12 June 1854, and habitually speaks of “having a hoarse” like “having a cough.” He says that one of his neighbours “is confined in the chest,” 18 February 1859, that is, confined to his house by a cold in his chest, and another one “is confined in the same complaint.” Another neighbour was unsystematic in her housekeeping, and he says that “she keeps a disorderly house,” 14 January 1848. Somebody left a letter of his unanswered, 2 February 1859, and he calls this “a very unhandsome thing.” I am Victorian enough myself to think it rather vulgar to call an omnibus a ’bus, but never had qualms in saying ’van for caravan or ’wig for periwig, that is, peruke. People habitually say You for Ye, yet snigger at our saying Us for We. What they call “a chapter of accidents” is “a proper old pedigree” here. That is etymologically right, as a pedigree is a thing that goes on step by step. Etymologically there is not much difference between a junket and a jonquil, or porcelain and pigs, or venerable and venereal; but a Venerable Archdeacon got quite cross when I applied the other adjective to him. Down here we soften ‘immodest’ into ‘vulgar’ and ‘immoral’ into ‘rough’; and a stranger may give great offence, when only meaning ‘rough’ and ‘vulgar’ in the usual sense. There is an old word ‘vair,’ still used in heraldry for ‘fur.’ This probably gave Cinderella her slipper of glass (verre) and certainly makes Pharisees into weasels. The word includes all furry things as well as fur--I imagine that the Fairies were once a furry tribe--but now it is restricted to one furry thing, the weasel, just as ‘cider’ and ‘thatch’ and ‘deer’ include all manner of strong drinks and roofs and beasts, but are now restricted to one sort of each. We have reduplicated plurals here, ‘posteses’ for ‘posts,’ and so on, including ‘vaireses’ for ‘vairs’; and naturally the children say that weasels be the only Pharisees they ever see’d.