Charleston Provincialisms

Extract

In every large city we find peculiarities in the language and customs which serve in the aggregate to mark its distinctive and individual character. They strike the stranger upon his first contact with its people as archaisms or as innovations, at least as developments peculiar to the place itself. They are often, indeed, heirlooms which the founders of the city have left it, invaluable and sacred, whose historic worth is incomparable to the philologist and historian. Often a single expression, or even sound, or a peculiar custom, conveys an historic truth more forcibly to the attentive observer than long chapters of dry history. For words, sounds, customs, also have their history, and a word has often been called an epic poem. Moreover, these peculiarities set their seal, as it were, upon each of its citizens, identifying him with itself, and whatever distinction he may acquire, either at home or abroad, is reflected upon his native place. They carry us back, historically, to the fatherland of those pioneers who founded the city and peopled the adjacent country. They still preserve the kindred relations to the mother-country, even after those of a political nature have been severed. We may see this in those colonies of Greece which have left their impress upon the country colonized, observable after everything Greek had passed away. (cf. Lower Italy, Marseille in France, and Louisiana in this country).