Note 1 — XII
Reading edition
Why it was that Bob said "bears," and did not say "b'ars," as some of his class did, I do not know. Broad as his dialect was, it was perceptibly less aberrant than that of Lazar Brown's family, for example. It is impossible to trace the causes for local and family variations of speech; nor is a word always pronounced in the same way in a dialect,—it varies in sound sometimes, when more or less stress is put upon it. The varieties are here set down as they existed, except that print can never give those shades of pronunciation and inflection that constitute so large a part of the peculiarities of speech, local, personal and temporary.