"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in
Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht
of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying
'you-all' meaning one person only."
When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase
so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies
and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they
agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"
"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a
family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you
when you come to my town,' you write something which is really
ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may
refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."
I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection
with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound
them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged
exclusively to the South.
The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until
coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not,
for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the
tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take
sugah?"
Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but
the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my
interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with
which it had been discussed.
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