had only the first continued to importune me.  Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I fused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters’ and making a connected story.  Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings.

As I have seen extracts from what purported to be writings of Mr. Biglow, which were not genuine, I may properly take this opportunity to say, that the two volumes now published contain every line I ever printed under that pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as I can remember, written an anonymous article (elsewhere than in the ’North American Review’ and the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ during my editorship of it) except a review of Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Minister’s Wooing,’ and, some twenty years ago, a sketch of the antislavery movement in America for an English journal.

A word more on pronunciation.  I have endeavored to express this so far as I could by the types, taking such pains as, I fear, may sometimes make the reading harder than need be.  At the same time, by studying uniformity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice minute exactness.  The emphasis often modifies the habitual sound.  For example, for is commonly fer (a shorter sound than fur for far), but when emphatic it always becomes for, as ‘wut for!’ So too is pronounced like to (as it was anciently spelt), and to like ta (the sound as in the tou of touch), but too, when emphatic, changes into tue, and to, sometimes, in similar cases, into toe, as ‘I didn’ hardly know wut toe du!’ Where vowels come together, or one precedes another following an aspirate, the two melt together, as was common with the older poets who formed their versification on French or Italian models.  Drayton is thoroughly Yankee when he says ’I ‘xpect,’ and Pope when he says, ‘t’ inspire.’ With becomes sometimes ’ith, ’[)u]th, or ’th, or even disappears wholly where it comes before the, as, ’I went along th’ Square’ (along with the Squire), the are sound being an archaism which I have noticed also in choir, like the old Scottish quhair.[33] (Herrick has, ‘Of flowers ne’er sucked by th’ theeving bee.’) Without becomes athout and ’thout. Afterwards always retains its locative s, and is pronounced always ahterwurds’, with a strong accent on the last syllable.  This oddity has some support in the erratic towards’ instead of to’wards, which we find in the poets and sometimes hear.  The sound given to the first syllable of to’wards, I may remark, sustains the Yankee lengthening of the o in to.  At the beginning of a