… your letter is in faultless English, and, long as it is, nowhere betrays, as nearly all foreigners’ letters do by some trifling lapse in idiom, that its writer is not an Englishman. I receive many letters in English from foreigners, but do not remember ever having had occasion to say this before.
《万象》上的文章作者还介绍了自己和葛传槼的一次交往。他在美国人家里吃饭，说 It’s not bad，主人附和说yes。他询问主人，说按照教科书的说法，如果附和，应该 用no。主人想了一会儿，仍坚持说应该用yes。他回国就写信向当时英语界的泰斗葛传 槼请教。葛先生的信的开头是Dear Comrade Deng，令人莞尔。回信的英语真是漂亮：
Though I can produce no evidence, I feel that the “Yes” as a reply to your “It’s not bad” is correct. “Not bad” is almost a fixed phrase=”quite good” or “fairly good” and is different from “not clever”, “not happy ”, “not a boy” etc., all of which are semantically opposed to “clever”, “happy”, “boy”.
然后葛先生说很多不符合严格语法的习惯用法，常常有人不赞成。但说到底，凡是有人 不赞成的东西，实际上都是存在的。 最后又说，you might say I seem to be non- committal. But usage is something that one often has to be non-committal about. 这个“non-committal”，“不置可否”，真是体现了一个既严谨又随和的完美 人格。