I have asked why these thoroughly acclimated French words should not be made to wear our English livery; and to this question Dr. Bradley supplied an answer when he declared that ’culture is one of the influences which retard the process of simplification’.  A man of culture is likely to be familiar with one or more foreign languages; and perhaps he may be a little vain of his intimacy with them.  He prefers to give the proper French pronunciation to the words which he recognizes as French; and moreover as the possession of culture, or even of education, does not imply any knowledge of the history of English or of the principles which govern its growth, the men of culture are often inclined to pride themselves on this pedantic procedure.

It is, perhaps, because the men of culture in the United States are fewer in proportion to the population that American usage is a little more encouraging than the British.  Just as we Americans have kept alive not a few old words which have been allowed to drop out of the later vocabulary of the United Kingdom, so we have kept alive—­at least to a certain extent—­the power of complete assimilation. Restaurant, for example, is generally pronounced as though its second syllable rhymed with ‘law’, and its third with ‘pant’. Trait is pronounced in accordance with its English spelling, and therefore very few Americans have ever discovered the pun in the title of Dr. Doran’s book, ’Table Traits, and something on them’.  I think that most Americans rhyme distrait to ‘straight’ and not to ‘stray’. Annexe has become annex; programme has become program—­although the longer form is still occasionally seen; and sometimes coterie and reverie are ‘cotery’ and ’revery’—­in accord with the principle which long ago simplified phantasie to fantasy. Charade like marmalade rhymes with made. Brusk seems to be supplanting brusque as risky is supplanting risque. Elite is spelt without the accent; and it is frequently pronounced ell-leet. Cloture is rarely to be discovered in American newspapers; closure is not uncommon; but the term commonly employed is the purely English ‘previous question’.

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century an American adaptation of a French comic opera, ‘La Mascotte’, was for two or three seasons very popular.  The heroine of its story was believed to have the gift of bringing luck.  So it is that Americans now call any animal which has been adopted by a racing crew or by an athletic team (or even by a regiment) a mascot; and probably not one in ten thousand of those who use the word have any knowledge of its French origin, or any suspicion that it was transformed from the title of a musical play.

I regret, however, to be forced to confess that I have lately been shocked by a piece of petty pedantry which seems to show that we Americans are falling from grace—­at least so far as one word is concerned.  Probably because many of our architects and decorators have studied in Paris there is a pernicious tendency to call a ‘grill’ a grille.  And I have seen with my own eyes, painted on a door in an hotel grille-room; surely the ultimate abomination of verbal desolation!