How could she
have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how
he took his after-dinner coffee?
At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most
trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.
"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure
that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_.
She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she
could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of
coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had
not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her
thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him."
This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from
a gentleman in Charleston:
It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet
convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference
to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The
very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use
of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way,
and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so
addressed.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221