""
"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present.
"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.
"He'll print it!" she said.
"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?"
"There!" she exclaimed. "You said '_ain't_.' He'll print that Virginians
say 'ain't'!"
"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"
She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on
the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself
of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much
better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear
many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and
the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their
fathers did."
"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd
ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was
pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements.
They've been going too far in this Commonwealth."
"What have they been doing?" I asked.
"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out
of the church pews!"
Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those
who do not believe the soft southern pronunciation is derived from
negroes, can make out an interesting case.
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