CANT AND SLANG.

No expression can become a vulgarism which has not a broad foundation. The language of the vulgar hath its source in physics, in known, comprehended, and operative things."

(Walter Savage Landor.)

THE number of really new American words is but very small, and many of these even will, no doubt, upon more careful investigation, be found to be mere imitations of well-known terms. After all, human nature differs very little wherever society is well organized, and what may appear original for a time, in the efforts at reform, or in startling innovations, is speedily discovered to be but a repetition of former experiments. New habits and new occupations do not always call for new terms, since they bear generally sufficient resemblance to others of well-known character, to allow of old names receiving a new application. It is only where special importance is attached to a custom, as in the case of "Forefathers' Day;" where a casual word happens to strike the fancy of the people with such force as to make a word popular, like "boost" or where the usefulness and power of a modified form makes itself felt at once, as in "mailable," that really new words establish their claim to be considered essential parts of the language. Some of these even disappear again after a short period of usefulness; such are especially the names of political parties and fractions of parties, which are manufactured at nearly every election, certainly whenever a change in politics takes place, and are forgotten again when a new emergency produces new names. Their number is legion; their interest often merely local, and always only ephemeral; so that it has been deemed better to omit them here altogether. They have been quite as numerous in Europe, and quite as fleeting. But for the help afforded by

the charming Memoirs of the Duke of Guise, few but the most ardent students of history would, for instance, know of the existence of "Beggars," as the revolters of Flanders were called in his time, while those of Guienne took the name of "Eaters," those of Normandy that of "Bare Feet," and those of Beausse and Boulogne that of " Woollen Pattens." These names convey to us no more meaning than will after a few years those of Barnburners and Old Hunkers, Copperheads and Butternuts, Scallawags and Carpetbaggers, which in their time stirred up the passions of a great nation, and were in everybody's mouth and on every page of the public journals.

It has, also, been thought unnecessary to repeat here those colloquial or genuine cant and slang terms, which either owe their origin to a foreign tongue or belong to a special department of social life, such as religious or political institutions, railways or counting-rooms, or hunting or fishing pursuits. These have already been mentioned in their proper connection.

Attention has, on the other hand, been bestowed upon the cant and slang terms which are not simply importations from England; the latter being introduced only when they have been modified in some essential point as to form or meaning. American cant and slang have some peculiarities unknown to the Old World. The women even contribute to it largely, availing themselves of the national gallantry extended to their sex on all occasions, for the purpose of indulging to the utmost in unbridled license of expression, both in public and in private. There is as much truth as wit in the conundrum: Wherein do the women of the day resemble St. Paul? In that they speak after the manner of men. Then the Great West contributes its characteristic features, demanding from its popular speakers free manners and bold words, and, conscious of its political importance and exhaustless resources, caring as little for the canons of verbal criticism as for the dictates of European lawgivers. Its speech is impregnated with the racy flavor of the backwoods and the prairie, and reflects in form and intonation the primitive life in the settler's log cabin. Its vast extent, the boundless plains and gigantic rivers, and all the matchless features of Nature on the largest scale ever beheld by man, impress upon language also a certain freedom from restraint and a certain tendency to employ vast terms and large-sounding

phrases, which give an air of unconscious grandiloquence and genuine slang even to ordinary conversation.

The most fertile source of cant and slang, however, is, beyond doubt, the low-toned newspaper, written for the masses, which, instead of being a monitor and an instrument of improvement in the hands of great men, has become a flatterer of the populace, and a panderer to their lowest vices. The common tendency to slang which characterizes the American people, the colloquial inelegancies that mark our conversation, and the downright vulgarities which deface so much of our literature, are all, more or less, due to the pernicious influence of the low-toned party newspaper of the day. Thanks to this influence, any sudden excitement, political event, or popular literary production, originates and sets a-going a number of slang words, vulgar at first, and rejected by the few who are careful of the people's English, but soon adopted as semi-respectable by the force of habit and the innate indolence of the American in such matters. How truly was it said by Grose, as far back as 1785, that "those burlesque phrases, quaint allusions, and nicknames for persons, things, and places, which from long, uninterrupted usage, are made classical by prescription," form an essential part of the English language. Englishmen have always been distinguished by their fondness for vulgar equivalents, and their descendants on this continent have not forgotten the customs of their fathers. They constantly coin new words, and give new forcé to half-obsolete terms; and as Mr. Buckle often used to say, "many of these words are but serving their apprenticeship, and will eventually become the active strength of our language.” America has sent a fair supply of cant terms to the home-country, and they have been welcomed and readily adopted by English politicians and English merchants especially, while at home they spread with a rapidity heretofore unknown in the history of language-thanks to the fact that there is no country where reading is so universal and newspapers are so numerous. The gradual growth of such terms has been well described. "These vulgarisms and corruptions of language do not come at once into general use; they creep in stealthily; they often spring from ignorance or caprice; then they do some service in an humble way, in the market or the courts, ministering to the wants of the poor and the ignorant; then they attract the

favor of the press in its least authoritative form, and finally, partly by assumption and partly from necessity, they come to be acknowledged as good citizens and freeholders of the realm."

Among the fertile sources of slang, sound must not be forgotten, which contributes a large number of words, although etymology is but too apt. to overlook its productive powers. Nothing pleases ignorant persons so much as high-sounding terms, "full of fury,” and hence they delight in words melodious to their ear, like "rumbumptious, slantindicular, splendiferous, rumbustious, and ferricadouzer." (Slang Dictionary.) Thus Americans have invented "catawampiously, karnuption and conniption-fits," and love to devise new terms like "skeet, skoot, and skit," to represent, by the mere sound, brisk action and energetic movement. It is this same love of sound which leads to the marked preference of Western people for high-flown, intense, or grandiloquent expressions. "The Western man," says a recent writer on the subject, "touches the high keys of conversation when he speaks of condiments, instead of sugar and cream, in his coffee, and uses propelling for walking. He says his neighbor speaks judgmatically; he talks of going out as prospecting; when he wishes to know what he has to pay, he asks, What's the damage? or, not so charitably, What's the swindle? He talks of your plunder, and his betterments on his farm. He speaks soberly of building a pair of shoes, and says of an old goose, We biled it, and biled it, but it was tougher than the wrath of God." (Henry Reeves.) Nothing is more amusing than to listen to a group of hunters or Western backwoodsmen, as they lie around the fire, smoking their short pipes and talking quietly in a tone and a style which, to the person unaccustomed to their speech, sounds like the height of extravagance and absurdity. Thus a literary tailor relates of his wandering associates, that "One would declare that for thirty days, in the city of London, he had not seen a 'patch' of blue sky big enough to seat a pair of breeches of the Jack of Clubs.' Another would aver that he knew a restaurant in some town, where he could get coffee strong enough to 'bear an iron wedge.' A third, in discussing the social qualities of his landlady, would allege that she could talk off the ears of a cast-iron dog,' whilst still another declared he knew an Irishman who lay six weeks speechless in the month of August, overcome by heat, and all his cry was water.""