Word: websters
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...single glance at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed Madeleine that she need not be afraid of flattering too grossly; her own self-respect, not his, was the only restraint..." Accordingly, she remarked with "apparent simplicity": "Was I right in thinking that you have a strong resemblance to Daniel Webster in your way of speaking...
...notice, opposed to, to progress and to advocate. Editor William Cullen Bryant forbade his reporters to use lengthy, presidential, and to legislate. Meanwhile, John Adams proposed a national institution to provide "a public standard for all persons ... to appeal to." The institution that the nation eventually got was Noah Webster...
...Noah Webster had not been born," says Pyles, "we should have had to invent him," for he became the very symbol of the new schoolmarm tradition. "He thought of himself, with uncharacteristic modesty, as the Prompter, 'the man who . . . sits behind the scenes, looks over the rehearser, and with a moderate voice corrects him when wrong . . .' More than any other single person, he shaped the course of American English, for he supplied us with the schoolmaster's authority which we needed for linguistic self-confidence...
...With Webster's spellers and dictionaries, the reign of "purity by prescription" began. On a completely arbitrary appeal to logic, the vigorous "I didn't do nothing" gave way to the weaker "I didn't do anything...
CHARLES REIS Webster Groves...