"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.