Occasionally, writers from whom one would expect at least correct grammar make mistakes which in England would be regarded as very bad—mistakes which are not, indeed, passed over in America, but still attract less notice there than in England. Thus, Mr. Wilkie, who is so severe on English English in “Sketches beyond the Seas,” describes himself as saying (in reply to the question whether Chicago policemen have to use their pistols much), “I don’t know _as_ they have to as a matter of law or necessity, but I know they do as a matter of fact;” and I have repeatedly heard this incorrect use of “as” for “that” in American conversation. I have also noted in works by educated Americans the use of the word “that” as an adverb, “that excitable,” “that head-strong,” and so forth. So the use of “lay” for “lie” seems to me to be much commoner in America than in England, though it is too frequently heard here also. In a well-written novelette called “The Man who was not a Colonel,” the words—“You was” and “Was you?” are repeatedly used, apparently without any idea that they are ungrammatical. They are much more frequently heard in America than in England (I refer, of course, to the conversation of the middle and better classes, not of the uneducated). In this respect it is noteworthy that the writers of the last century resemble Americans of to-day; for we often meet in their works the incorrect usage in question. And here it may be well to consider the American expression “I guess,” which is often made the subject of ridicule by Englishmen, unaware of the fact that the expression is good old English. It is found in a few works written during the last century, and in many written during the seventeenth century. So careful a writer as Locke used the expression more than once in his treatise “On the Human Understanding.” In fact, the disuse of the expression in later times seems to have been due to a change in the meaning of the word “guess.” An Englishman who should say “I guess” now, would not mean what Locke did when he used the expression in former times, or what an American means when he uses it in our own day. We say, “I guess that riddle,” or “I guess what you mean,” signifying that we think the answer to the riddle, or the meaning of what we have heard, may be such and such. But when an American says, “I guess so,” he does not mean “I think it may be so,” but more nearly “I know it to be so.” The expression is closely akin to the old English saying, “I wis.” Indeed, the words “guess” and “wis” are simply different forms of the same word. Just as we have “guard” and “ward,” “guardian” and “warden,” “Guillaume” and “William,” “guichet” and “wicket,” etc., so we have the verbs to “guess” and to “wis.” (In the Bible we have not “I wis,” but we have “he wist.”) “I wis” means nearly the same as “I know,” and that this is the root-meaning of the word is shown by such words as “wit,” “witness,” “wisdom,” the legal phrase “to-wit,” and so forth.