drayhorse

She lifts Tohin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

tramped by" (BR 36), a possible echo of the "great grey drayhorse" with its "battering sandal" in Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "Felix Randal." However, most of the narrator's other allusions, even when short, carry decidedly ironic overtones.

My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal; How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

One of the leading curmudgeons of our time--he has been called the Prince of Prescriptivists--is John Simon, theater critic for New York Magazine, and he comes to do battle in "Do You Speak American?" Simon sees the language today as "unhealthy, poor, sad, depressing, and probably fairly hopeless." In the foreword to a new book, The Dictionary of Disagreeable English, he writes: "No damsel was ever in such distress, no drayhorse more flogged, no defenseless child more drunkenly abused than the English language today."