“So saying,” concluded Mr. Whacker, “he wrung my hand and hurried out of the room.” “Ouch!” cried Charley, letting fall upon the hearth, at the same time, a large oyster and the knife with which he was opening it. If there runs upon the people’s highway a hopelessly slow coach, it is your writer of English grammars. When will they deem this interjection respectable enough to introduce into their works? If never, how is the boy of the future to parse my works? Surely, it is worth any half-dozen of their genteel alases, or their erudite alackadays! Look at it! Ouch! How much body! What an expressive countenance! What character in its features! Hebrew verbs have genders; and don’t you see that ouch is masculine? What lady would use it? Nay, it is more than masculine,—it is manly! See those two boys,—the one with a strong pin fixed in the toe of his shoe,—the other absorbed in his lesson, and sitting in an unguarded attitude. Up goes the foot! “Ouch!” The word is more than manly,—it is stoical. Stoical, did I say? ’Tis heroic! For does not the lad say in that one breath, with Byron’s dying gladiator, that he consents to start, but conquers agony? He means, as clearly as though he had used the whole dictionary, “I am no girl. I didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt, neither. I just wanted to have you understand that I knew you were fooling with the seat of my trousers.” All this those four letters mean; and yet this is their first appearance in any serious literary work! To this masterly interjection did Mr. Charles Frobisher give vent; and he meant, of course, “I have cut my finger with this confounded knife, opening this confounded oyster; but don’t disturb yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, ’tis a small affair.” Accordingly he rose, left the room, and soon returned with his finger bandaged. “Oh, I am so sorry!” said Alice. “Badly cut?” inquired my grandfather. “It is nothing,” said Charley. “But how annoying,” added the old gentleman. “Your left hand, too! So that you will not be able to play for the dancers this evening.” Charley looked at the bandaged finger with a thoughtful air, and shook his head.