so he hollers at him, and he says to the soldier, the cap'n did, he says, "Hullo, there; where you goin' with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, his head, too, by that time. So he says, "Where you going with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, the soldier he stopped-- kinder halted, you know, like a private soldier will when his presidin' officer speaks to him--and he says to him, "W'y," he says, "Cap, it's a comrade o' mine and the pore feller has got his leg shot off, and I'm a-packin' him back to where the doctors is; and there was nobody to he'p him, and the feller would 'a' died in his tracks--er track ruther--if it hadn't a-been fer me, and I'm a-packin' him back where the surgeons can take keer of him; where he can get medical attendance--er his wife's a widder!" he says, " 'cause he's got his leg shot off!" Then CAP'N says, "You blame fool you, he's got his HEAD shot off." So then the feller slacked his grip on the body and let it slide down to the ground, and looked at it a minute, all puzzled, you know, and says, "W'y, he told me it was his leg!" Ha! ha! ha! DIALECT IN LITERATURE 'And the common people heard him gladly' Of what shall be said herein of dialect, let it be understood the term dialect referred to is of that general breadth of meaning given it to-day, namely, any speech or vernacular outside of the prescribed form of good English in its present state. The present state of the English is, of course, not any one of its prior states. So first let it be remarked that it is highly probable that what may have been the best of English once may now by some be counted as a weak, inconsequent patois, or dialect. To be direct, it is the object of this article to show that dialect is not a thing to be despised in any event --that its origin is oftentimes of as royal caste as that of any speech. Listening back, from the stand- point of to-day, even to the divine singing of that old classic master to whom England's late laureate refers as ". . . the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still"; or to whom Longfellow alludes, in his matchless sonnet, as ". . . the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song"-- Chaucer's verse to us is NOW as veritably dialect as to that old time it was the chastest English; and even then his materials were essentially dialect when his song was at best pitch. Again, our present dialect, of most plebeian ancestry, may none the less prove worthy. Mark the recognition of its own personal merit in the great new dictionary, where what was, in our own remembrance, the most outlandish dialect, is now good, sound, official English.