But these tendencies, or at least the more extravagant of them, belong to the next chapter. How much influence they exert, even [Pg147] indirectly, is shown by the American disdain of the English precision in the use of the indefinite pronoun. I turn to the /Saturday Evening Post/, and in two minutes find: "/one/ feels like an atom when /he/ begins to review /his/ own life and deeds."[37] The error is very rare in English; the Fowlers, seeking examples of it, could get them only from the writings of a third-rate woman novelist, Scotch to boot. But it is so common in American that it scarcely attracts notice. Neither does the appearance of a redundant /s/ in such words as /towards/, /downwards/, /afterwards/ and /heavenwards/. In England this /s/ is used relatively seldom, and then it usually marks a distinction in meaning, as it does on both sides of the ocean between /beside/ and /besides/. "In modern standard English," says Smith,[38] "though not in the English of the United States, a distinction which we feel, but many of us could not define, is made between /forward/ and /forwards/; /forwards/ being used in definite contrast to any other direction, as 'if you move at all, you can only move /forwards/,' while /forward/ is used where no such contrast is implied, as in the common phrase 'to bring a matter forward.'"[39] This specific distinction, despite Smith, probably retains some force in the United States too, but in general our usage allows the /s/ in cases where English usage would certainly be against it. Gould, in the 50's, noted its appearance at the end of such words as /somewhere/ and /anyway/, and denounced it as vulgar and illogical. Thornton has traced /anyways/ back to 1842 and shown that it is an archaism, and to be found in the Book of Common Prayer (/circa/ 1560); perhaps it has been preserved by analogy with /sideways/. Henry James, in "The Question of Our Speech," attacked "such forms of impunity as /somewheres else/ and /nowheres else/, /a good ways on/ and /a good ways off/" as "vulgarisms with what a great deal of general credit for what we good-naturedly call 'refinement' appears so able to coexist."[40] /Towards/ and /afterwards/, though frowned upon in England, are now quite sound in American. I [Pg148] find the former in the title of an article in /Dialect Notes/, which plainly gives it scholastic authority.[41] More (and with no little humor), I find it in the deed of a fund given to the American Academy of Arts and Letters to enable the gifted philologs of that sanhedrin "to consider its duty /towards/ the conservation of the English language in its beauty and purity."[42] Both /towards/ and /afterwards/, finally, are included in the /New York Evening Post's/ list of "words no longer disapproved when in their proper places," along with /over/ for /more than/, and /during/ for /in the course of/.