We have a weird collection of very old books kicking around in our library like this one. They seem to be written by graduates of Ivy League schools and demonstrate the authors superior erudition and wit rather than any true scholarship. This book was fun to read because some of the idioms are quite familiar and some are completely foreign. I have absolutely no confidence that the author is anything but a linguistic dilletante. That said, the sheer listings of the idioms he heard that he attributes to New Englanders is an amusing, if quick, read.