OBS. 18.—­I see no reason to believe, that the class of words which have always, and almost universally, been called interjections, can ever be more conveniently explained under any other name; and, as for the term exclamation, which is preferred also by Cutler, Felton, Spencer, and S. W. Clark, it appears to me much less suitable than the old one, because it is less specific.  Any words uttered loudly in the same breath, are an exclamation.  This name therefore is too general; it includes other parts of speech than interjections; and it was but a foolish whim in Dr. Webster, to prefer it in his dictionaries.  When David “cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom!  O Absalom, my son, my son!” [442] he uttered two exclamations, but they included all his words.  He did not, like my critic above, set off his first word with an interrogation point, or any other point.  But, says Peirce, “These words are used in exclaiming, and are what all know them to be, exclamations; as I call them.  May I not call them what they are?”—­Ibid. Yes, truly.  But to exclaim is to cry out, and consequently every outcry is an exclamation; though there are two chances to one, that no interjection at all be used by the bawler.  As good an argument, or better, may be framed against every one of this gentleman’s professed improvements in grammar; and as for his punctuation and orthography, any reader may be presumed capable of seeing that they are not fit to be proposed as models.

OBS. 19.—­I like my position of the word “alas” better than that which Peirce supposes to be its only right place; and, certainly, his rule for the location of words of this sort, as well as his notion that they must stand alone, is as false, as it is new.  The obvious misstatement of Lowth, Adam, Gould, Murray, Churchill, Alger, Smith, Guy, Ingersoll, and others, that, “Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of a sentence,” I had not only excluded from my grammars, but expressly censured in them.  It was not, therefore, to prop any error of the old theorists, that I happened to set one interjection “where” according to this new oracle, “it never belonged.”  And if any body but he has been practically misled by their mistake, it is not I, but more probably some of the following authors, here cited for his refutation:  “I fear, alas! for my life.”—­Fisk’s Gram., p. 89.  “I have been occupied, alas! with trifles.”—­Murray’s Gr., Ex. for Parsing, p. 5; Guy’s, p. 56.  “We eagerly pursue pleasure, but, alas! we often mistake the road.”—­Smith’s New Gram., p. 40, “To-morrow, alas! thou mayest be comfortless!”—­Wright’s Gram., p. 35.  “Time flies, O! how swiftly.”—­Murray’s Gram., i, 226.  “My friend, alas! is dead.”—­J.  Flint’s Gram., p. 21.  “But John,