This being so, I must add that
the character of Captain Brassbound's mother, like the recovery of
the estate by the next heir, is an interpolation of my own. It is
not, however, an invention. One of the evils of the pretence that
our institutions represent abstract principles of justice instead
of being mere social scaffolding is that persons of a certain
temperament take the pretence seriously, and when the law is on
the side of injustice, will not accept the situation, and are
driven mad by their vain struggle against it. Dickens has drawn
the type in his Man from Shropshire in Bleak House. Most public
men and all lawyers have been appealed to by victims of this sense
of injustice--the most unhelpable of afflictions in a society like
ours.
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DIALECTS
The fact that English is spelt conventionally and not phonetically
makes the art of recording speech almost impossible. What is more,
it places the modern dramatist, who writes for America as well as
England, in a most trying position. Take for example my American
captain and my English lady. I have spelt the word conduce, as
uttered by the American captain, as cawndooce, to suggest (very
roughly) the American pronunciation to English readers. Then why
not spell the same word, when uttered by Lady Cicely, as
kerndewce, to suggest the English pronunciation to American
readers? To this I have absolutely no defence: I can only plead
that an author who lives in England necessarily loses his
consciousness of the peculiarities of English speech, and sharpens
his consciousness of the points in which American speech differs
from it; so that it is more convenient to leave English
peculiarities to be recorded by American authors.
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