scene 1), Shakespeare makes Helena say, “Sickness is catching”; again

in “Cymbeline” (act 5, scene 4), we read, “Yet am I better than one that’s sick of the gout”; and in “Romeo and Juliet” (act 5, scene 2), we read, “Here in this city visiting the sick.” Not only so. “Sick,” in the American acceptation, has an unbroken line of the best literary authority from Chaucer, “that well of English undefiled,” down to Doctor Johnson, whose dictionary defines the word in reference to a person afflicted with disease. American usage, furthermore, is supported by the King James version, in which “ill” is nowhere found, and also by the Anglican Church ritual. It is needless to multiply citations. If Americans sin in the improper use of “sick,” it may be urged in extenuation that they can at least plead a long array of illustrious and unimpeachable authority and are in good company.

The use of “well” as an interjection is mentioned by Bartlett in his dictionary as one of “the most marked peculiarities of American speech.” Moreover, he adds, “Englishmen have told me that they could always detect an American by the use of this word.” If this is an infallible hall-mark of American speech, then American English is nearer the tongue of Shakespeare than British English of the present day. For the word “well” in the sense of an interjection occurs again and again in Shakespeare. In “Hamlet” (act 1, scene 1), Bernardo asks, “Have you had a quiet guard?” Francisco replies, “Not a mouse stirring.” Whereupon Bernardo adds, “Well, good-night.” Again in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (act 3, scene 1):

_Bottom._ And then indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

_Quince._ Well, it shall be so.

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Captain” (act 3, scene 3), we find an excellent example in the line, “Well, I shall live to see your husbands beat you.” No one, of course, would think of charging Tennyson with using unidiomatic English. Yet, in “Locksley Hall,” you read:

“Well--’tis well that I should bluster.”

Surely it is superfluous to cite further examples from English authors showing that American usage in the case of “well” as an interjection is perfectly good English, even if the locution is censured by British pedantry and never heard on British lips.

The trite and hard-worked “guess,” as characteristic of American speech as the much-abused “fancy” is of British speech, furnishes another conspicuous example of a reputable word in Elizabethan English which has become obsolete in England, but is still preserved on this side of the Atlantic. There is no doubt that our constant employment of this good old Saxon word to do service on every occasion and to express every shade of thought from mild conjecture to positive assertion is somewhat inelegant; and this circumstance has perhaps contributed to bring the overtaxed phrase into disrepute with our kin across the sea. Yet there is abundant warrant in Elizabethan usage for the familiar notation we give “guess” in our every-day speech, although it is generally confined to its strict meaning of conjecture in that period of the language. We find it used in the familiar sense of “think” in several passages in Shakespeare, notably in “I. Henry VI.” (act 2,