We will not now potter again over the well-trodden paths of the differences in phraseology in the two peoples which have been so fruitful a source of "impressions" in successive generations of English visitors to the United States, for the thing grows absurd when "car," and "store," and "sidewalk," and "elevator" are commonplaces on the lips of every London cockney; nor is there any need here to thread again the mazes of the well-worn discussion as to how far the peculiarities of modern American speech are only good old English forms which have survived in the New World after disappearance from their original haunts.[215:1] The subject is worth referring to, however, for the very reason that its discussion _has_ become almost absurd,--because by a process which has been going on, as we have already said, on both sides of the ocean simultaneously, the differences themselves are disappearing, the tongues of the two peoples are coming together and coalescing once more. The two currents into which the stream divided which flowed from that original well of English are drawing together--are, indeed, already so close that it will be but a very short time when the word "Americanism" as applied to a peculiarity in language will have ceased to be used in England. The "Yankee twang" and the "strong English accent" will survive in the two countries respectively for some time yet; but the written and spoken language of the two nations will be--already almost is--the same, and English visitors to the United States will have lost one fruitful source of impressions. The process has been going on in both countries, but in widely different forms. And this seems to me a peculiarly significant fact. In America the language of the people is constantly and steadily tending to improve; and this tendency is, Englishmen should note, the result of a deliberate and conscious effort at improvement on the part of the people. This can hardly be insisted upon too strongly.