How Grammar Did Its Bit

[Jonathan Lighter]

 1916 James Norman Hall _Kitchener's Mob_  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin)
190: There
you have the British officer true to type. He is a sportsman: next to taking
part in a fight he loves to see one — and he says "is n't" not "ain't," even
under stress of the greatest excitement.

Hall studied at Harvard before the war and  was later co-author, with
Charles Nordhoff, of the _Bounty_ trilogy.
JL


-- 
"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
Platypus"

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