Language is unceremoniously resolved into its original elements by Jamie. He is constitutionally opposed to inflection, which, as he must be devoid of prejudice, may be considered indisputable proof of the native superiority of the English to other languages. He is careful to include in his sentences all the important words, but he has small respect for particles, and the disposition of his words waits entirely upon his moods. _My_ usually does duty for _I_. "Want the Uncle Frank gave me hossey," with a finger pointing to the mantel-piece is just as flexible to his use as "Want the hossey that Uncle Frank gave me." "Where Baddy _can_ be?" he murmurs softly to himself, while peering behind doors and sofas in playing hide-and-seek. Hens are cud-dah, a flagrant example of Onomatopoeia. The cradle is a cay-go; corn-balls are ball-corn; and snow-bird, bird-snow; and all his rosy nails are toe-nails. He has been drilled into meet response to "how d' ye do?" but demonstrates the mechanical character of his reply by responding to any question that has the _you_ and _how_ sounds in it, as "What do you think of that?" "How did you do it?" "How came you by this?" "Pit-_tee_ well." But his performances are not all mechanical. He has a stock of poetry and orations, of which he delivers himself at bedtime with a degree of resignation,--that being the only hour in which he can be reduced to sufficient quietude for recitation; nor is that because he loves quiet more, but bed less. It is a very grievous misfortune, an unreasonable and arbitrary requisition, that breaks in upon his busy life, interrupts him in the midst of driving to mill on an inverted chair, hauling wood in a ditto footstool, and other important matters, and sweeps him off to darkness and silence. So, with night-gown on, and the odious bed imminent, he puts off the evil day by compounding with the authorities and giving a public entertainment, in consideration of a quarter of an hour's delay. He takes large liberties with the text of his poems, but his rhetorical variations are of a nature that shows it is no vain repetition, but that he enters into the spirit of the poem. In one of his songs a person "Asked a sweet robin, one morning in May, That sung in the apple-tree over the way," what it was he was singing. "Don't you know? he replied, you cannot guess wrong; Don't you know I am singing my cold-water song?" This Jamie intensifies thus:-- "Do' know my sing my co'-wotta song, hm?" When he reaches the place where "Jack fell down Boke cown," he invariably leaves Gill to take care of herself, and closes with the pathetic moral reflection, "'At _too_ bad!" Little Jack Horner, having put in his thumb and picked out a plum, is made to declare definitely and redundantly,-- "My _ga-ate_ big boy, jus' so big!" He persists in praying,-- "'F I should die 'fore I wake up."