Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute the word _no-at_ for nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that epoch comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to those expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a _no-at." "_He's up to _no-at_." One day, years ago, we waited for the train at, not Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a weary workman, with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the bench beside. Presently we were joined by a third person in the garrulous phase of inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his _bosh_and _gibberish_ (two words which should have been introduced at an earlier period of my history) until he provoked the righteous expostulation, "Oh, don't bother me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the Midland Districts, he delivered an oration: "Now just you listen to me. Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the barley to grow, and the 'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak' 'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you know _no-at_!" Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this--that a Mighty Power never meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn yoursen into a be-ast." _Nobbut_ is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing but." I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the doctor, and he said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir--but it's _nobbut_ th' 'prentice." My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might have enlarged upon such words as _palaver_, and _pawling_, and _peart_, and _prod_, and_romper_, and _ramshackle_, and _rawm_; and I can only dwell upon one selection from the S's, of which there is a long Sigmatismus, such as _snag_ ("Billy and Sally's always at _snags_"), and _scuft_, and _scrawl_ ("he wor' just a glass over the scrawl," _i.e._ the line of sobriety), and _scrawm_, and _slape_, and _snigger_, and _slive_ ("I see that _shack a-_sliving_ and a_-skulking about"), and _slare_, and_slawmy_, and _sneck_, and _snoozle_, and _spank_, and _stodge_, and _stunt_, and _swish_.