Explore "The Grindwell Governing Machine" by Anonymous on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the other side of the Atlantic there is a populous city called Grandville. It is, as its name indicates, a great city,--but it is said that it thinks itself a good deal greater than it really is. I meant to say that Grandville was its original name, and the name by which even at the present day it is called by its own citizens. But there are certain wits, or it may be, vulgar people, who by some process have converted this name into Grindwell.
I may be able, in the course of this sketch, to give a reason why so sounding and aristocratic a name as Grandville has been changed into the plebeian one of Grindwell. I might account for it by adducing similar instances of changes in the names of cities through the bad pronunciation and spelling of foreigners. For instance, the English nickname Livorno Leghorn, the Germans insist on calling Venice Venedig, and the French convert Washington into the Chinese word Voss- Hang-Tong. And so it may be that the name Grindwell has originated among us Americans simply from miscalling or misspelling the foreign name of Grandville.