I wish to call attention to a work of national importance, which, in the judgment of those best entitled to an opinion, should be accomplished within the next decade, if it is to be well done. As is doubtless known to everyone here to-day, there has been in progress for many years a plan to prepare and publish an adequate dictionary of our American vernacular speech. But the details of the undertaking, the plan that should be followed, and the special reasons for making more rapid progress are matters that have received comparatively slight attention, even in this Association of representative American scholars.