The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-12-18

beat noisy demagogue fraudulent
partisan (colloq or humorous)."-W.
irving.
Worcester defines the word slang
First, fetter worn by convicts, so
called from being slung on their legs by
a string, to prevent slipping to the
ground.-John Bee.
Archbishop Paley very nearly defines
the word in the following passage
"There is such thing as a peculiar
word or phraze eleaving, as it were, to
the memory of the writer, or speaker,
and presenting itself to his utterance at
everysturn. When we observe this, we
call it cant word or a cant phrase"
Cant and slang. According to the
authorities quoted, would seem to have
a synonymous meaning. The former
perhaps more applicable to the pulpit,
and the latter to the street" and both
indicating failing in felicity of express
sion. The can't of the pulpit and the
slang of the street evidently emanating
from men of small intellectual power,
although of keen and shrewd tempera-
ment. The one is perhaps the evasion
of the makeshift of man in the pulpit
to cover lack of real ability, while the
other, the language of the street, is the
more frank expression of the unlettered
and uneducated. Slang, however, does
not always originate with the uneduca-
ted, the illiterate or the vulgar; but
there is a slang attached to learned pro-
LESSONS, a pretentious and pompous
display of knowledge in the presence of
people who are unable to appreciate or
comprehend it, as Rare Ben JonsOn
photographs it to the letter:
1.-THE Doctor here,
When he discourseth of dissection,
OF vena cava, and of vena porta,
The meseraeum and the mesentericum,
What does he else but can't Or if he run
To his judicial astrOlogy.
And trOwl the trine, the quartie and the
sextile
Does he not cant /? Who here can understand
him?"
An additional reason why slang is
peculiarly popular in America lies in
the fact that American people are pre-
eminently humOrous-a good-natured
people, and thus they may be excused,
in great measure, for their persistent
effort at defling the Kings English.
They love a humorously turned SEN
tence.
The American journals of to-day,
from Maine to California, from Mexico
to the Rio Grande, abound in happy
expressions of wit and humor, and an
encyclopedia of the humorous element in
American periodicals and American lit
erature might very profitable be COM
piled, for it would undoubtedly have
large sale; and it would show in large
measure that nation may contain ele
ments of good-nature without in any
manner interfering with or compro-
missing it's greatness. The humorous
contribution of the Widow Bedott,
John Phoenix, William E, Burton, to-
gether with his Encyclopedia Of wit
and Humor," the writings and squibs of
Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Josh
Billings, and many others prove the
AmeriC an love of listening to or read
ing a "good thing" by the immense
circulation which they have had.
While Mr.. a. r. Spofford, the talented
and accomplished librarian of the
congressional library, in a recently
contributed paper on the Humorous
Element in American Literature" cites
as a noteworthy fact that the columns
devoted to wit and humor in the Eng
glish journals, of Public Opinion, were
made up almost entirely of sci, ctiOns
gathered from the American newspa-
per press. This is only another in
stance of the love and appreciation of
American humor, and perhaps goes far
to prove that the average American ap-
preciates humorously turned sentence
better, probably, than elegant diction
or " the we'll of English pure and IN
defled." And after all, when slang
does not degenerate into the actual vul-
gar. there is an irresistibly comical as
pect to many of it's expressions.