"You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"

[Ann Burlingham]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>> And was it really Mark Twain who came up with the version that
>> permits kings, editors, and those with tapeworms to use the first
>> person plural?  Or is that a case of generalized attribution?  (Sorry,
>> Fred, I don't have a YBOQ handy.)
>
> I'm also away from my YB(o)Q, but the earliest cites I can find are attributed
> to New York Senator Roscoe Conkling:


Apropos of nothing, I was just reading the NYS Legislature's memorial
volume on Conkling, full of men expounding at length about how they
would not expound at length. (The sort of book one finds in my house.)
>From the quote, I can see why they missed him.

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