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I could hardly help it, for she lived in the hotel where I stopped, and although she was full thirty-five years old, she was altogether the most attractive woman in the house. She was agreeable, good-looking, intelligent, and what the vernacular calls "smart." At all events, she was much too smart for me, as I soon found out.
In the expressive vernacular of the gauchos the large dragon-fly is called hijo del pampero son of the south-west wind.
Doubtless many and earnest enquiries will be made after my fate, by the learned societies of the world, and perhaps expeditions will be sent into these regions to remove any doubts, which may arise on so important a subject. I esteem myself happy that a man, who speaks the vernacular, is present, to preserve the record of my end.
Sentinels were stationed at all the passages, who would not allow her to enter. "Citizens," said she, at last adroitly adopting the vernacular of the Jacobins, "in this day of salvation for our country, in the midst of those traitors who threaten us, you know not the importance of some notes which I have to transmit to the president." These words were a talisman.
"Ze great Kennedy, ze detectif Americain to put it tersely in our own vernacular, wouldn't it be a fool thing for me to appear at the Vesper Club where I should surely be recognised by someone if I went in my ordinary clothes and features? Un faux pas, at the start? Jamais!"
He was evidently a true gentleman in his patients' eyes, because he was not above stopping to talk to them in their own vernacular about local gossip, and had the reputation of great good nature in regard to the bills of the poor, and they loved his jokes. They were of the class within grasp of the elementary sense of humour of his audience.
Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent. I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary and vernacular speech.
Vernacular poetry, and vernacular composition, of every kind, were almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence, wrote in the Latin language. Some discerning spirits became sensible that the German language was susceptible of great improvement, and excited their countrymen to its cultivation. Among these was Otfroid; he translated the Gospel into German verse.
"That you value so highly?" Fred echoed her gravity playfully. "You are delicious when you fall into your vernacular." He laughed half to himself. "What's the matter with that? Isn't it perfectly good English?" "Perfectly good Moonstone, my dear. Like the readymade clothes that hang in the windows, made to fit everybody and fit nobody, a phrase that can be used on all occasions.
His friend the doctor was at the trouble of repeating to us several times, till we had pretty well learned them by rote, some of the most necessary inquiries for food and provender, in the vernacular. When we had written these down in the characters, and after the orthography of our mother-tongue, we felt fully prepared for all contingencies.
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