/Points of Difference/--These exchanges and coalescences, however, though they invigorate each language with the blood of the other and are often very striking in detail, are neither numerous enough nor general enough to counteract the centrifugal force which pulls them apart. The simple fact is that the spirit of English and the spirit of American have been at odds for nearly a century, and that the way of one is not the way of the other. The loan-words that fly to and fro, when examined closely, are found to be few in number both relatively and absolutely: they do not greatly affect the larger movements of the two languages. Many of them, indeed, are little more than temporary borrowings; they are not genuinely adopted, but merely momentarily fashionable. The class of Englishmen which affects American phrases is perhaps but little larger, taking one year with another, than the class of Americans which affects English phrases. This last class, it must be plain, is very small. Leave the large cities and you will have difficulty finding any members of it. It is circumscribed, not because there is any very formidable prejudice against English locutions as such, [Pg139] but simply because recognizably English locutions, in a good many cases, do not fit into the American language. The American thinks in American and the Englishman in English, and it requires a definite effort, usually but defectively successful, for either to put his thoughts into the actual idiom of the other. The difficulties of this enterprise are well exhibited, though quite unconsciously, by W. L. George in a chapter entitled "Litany of the Novelist" in his book of criticism, "Literary Chapters."[11] This chapter, it is plain by internal evidence, was written, not for Englishmen, but for Americans. A good part of it, in fact, is in the second person--we are addressed and argued with directly. And throughout there is an obvious endeavor to help out comprehension by a studied use of purely American phrases and examples. One hears, not of the /East End/, but of the /East Side/; not of the /City/, but of /Wall Street/; not of /Belgravia/ or the /West End/, but of /Fifth avenue/; not of /bowler/ hats, but of /Derbys/; not of idlers in /pubs/, but of /saloon loafers/; not of /pounds/, /shillings/ and /pence/, but of /dollars/ and /cents/. In brief, a gallant attempt upon a strange tongue, and by a writer of the utmost skill--but a hopeless failure none the less. In the midst of his best American, George drops into Briticism after Briticism, some of them quite as unintelligible to the average American reader as so many Gallicisms. On page after page they display the practical impossibility of the enterprise: /back-garden/ for /back-yard/, /perambulator/ for /baby-carriage/, /corn/-market for /grain/-market, coal-/owner/ for coal-/operator/, /post/ for /mail/, and so on. And to top them there are English terms that have no American equivalents at all, for example, /kitchen-fender/.