In America the word “clever” is commonly understood to mean pleasant and of good disposition, not (as in England) ingenious and skilful. Thus, though an American may speak of a person as a clever workman, using the word as we do, yet when he speaks of another as a clever man, he means, in nine cases out of ten, that the man is good company and well-natured. Sometimes, I am told, the word is used to signify generous or liberal. I can not recall any passages from early English literature in which the word is thus used, but I should not be surprised to learn that the usage is an old one. In like manner, the words “cunning” and “cute” are often used in America for “pretty” (German _niedlich_). As I write, an American lady, who has just played a very sweet passage from one of Mozart’s symphonies, turns from the piano to ask “whether that passage is not cute,” meaning pretty. The word “mad” in America seems nearly always to mean “angry;” at least, I have seldom heard it used in our English sense. For “mad,” as we use the word, the Americans say “crazy.” Herein they have manifestly impaired the language. The words “mad” and “crazy” are quite distinct in their significance as used in England, and both meanings require to be expressed in ordinary parlance. It is obviously a mistake to make one word do duty for both, and to use the word “mad” to imply what is already expressed by other and more appropriate words. I have just used the word “ordinary” in the English sense. In America the word is commonly used to imply inferiority. An “ordinary actor,” for instance, is a bad actor; a “very ordinary man” is a man very much below par. There is no authority for this usage in any English writer of repute, and the usage is manifestly inconsistent with the derivation of the word. On the other hand, the use of the word “homely” to imply ugliness, as is usual in America, is familiar at this day in parts of England, and could be justified by passages in some of the older English writers. That the word in Shakspere’s time implied inferiority is shown by the line— Home keeping youths have ever homely wits. In like manner, some authority may be found for the American use of the word “ugly” to signify bad-tempered. Words are used in America which have ceased to be commonly used in England, and are, indeed, no longer regarded as admissible. Thus, the word “unbeknown” which no educated Englishman ever uses, either in speaking or in writing, is still used in America in common speech and by writers of repute.