But the imprimatur of the Yankee Johnson was not potent enough to stay the course of nature, and, save in New England, the flat /a/ swept the country. He himself allowed it in /stamp/ and /vase/. His successor and rival, Lyman Cobb, decided for it in /pass/, /draft/, /stamp/ and /dance/, though he kept to the /ah/-sound in /laugh/, /path/, /daunt/ and /saunter/. By 1850 the flat /a/ was dominant everywhere West of the Berkshires and South of New Haven, and had even got into such proper names as /Lafayette/ and /Nevada/.[41] Webster failed in a number of his other attempts to influence American pronunciation. His advocacy of /deef/ for /deaf/ had popular support while he lived, and he dredged up authority for it out of Chaucer and Sir William Temple, but the present pronunciation gradually prevailed, though /deef/ remains familiar in the common speech. Joseph E. Worcester and other rival lexicographers stood against many of his pronunciations, and he took the field against them in the prefaces to the successive editions of his spelling-books. Thus, in that to "The Elementary Spelling [Pg096] Book," dated 1829, he denounced the "affectation" of inserting a /y/-sound before the /u/ in such words as /gradual/ and /nature/, with its compensatory change of /d/ into a French /j/ and of /t/ into /ch/. The English lexicographer, John Walker, had argued for this "affectation" in 1791, but Webster's prestige, while he lived, remained so high in some quarters that he carried the day, and the older professors at Yale, it is said, continued to use /natur/ down to 1839.[42] He favored the pronunciation of /either/ and /neither/ as /ee-ther/ and /nee-ther/, and so did most of the English authorities of his time. The original pronunciation of the first syllable, in England, probably made it rhyme with /bay/, but the /ee/-sound was firmly established by the end of the eighteenth century. Toward the middle of the following century, however, there arose a fashion of an /ai/-sound, and this affectation was borrowed by certain Americans. Gould, in the 50's, put the question, "Why do you say /i/-ther and /ni/-ther?" to various Americans. The reply he got was: "The words are so pronounced by the best-educated people in England." This imitation still prevails in the cities of the East. "All of us," says Lounsbury, "are privileged in these latter days frequently to witness painful struggles put forth to give to the first syllable of these words the sound of /i/ by those who have been brought up to give it the sound of /e/. There is apparently an impression on the part of some that such a pronunciation establishes on a firm foundation an otherwise doubtful social standing."[43] But the vast majority of Americans continue to say /ee-ther/ and not /eye-ther/. White and Vizetelly, like Lounsbury, argue that they are quite correct in so doing. The use of /eye-ther/, says White, is no more than "a copy of a second-rate British affectation." FOOTNOTES: