The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1884-10-15
The Nastv-Partio,,lar partv

Isaac H. Bromley, in The Rochester Post Express.
We are asked to explaine the meabiog of
the phrase ''Nasty-P Particular" and the
Significance of its application to the unique
coterie of all-suffcent, self-sufficieDt, in
efficient persons who are just now engaged
in asserting their own intellectual a. moral
superiority by turning up their super-sensi-
tive noses at the personal character of men
whom the common people love and re-
spect.
A nasty-partcular person is one who is
always looking for something nasty in his
fellpw-men, in his associations aud surround
ings, 10 his food, in his drink, in society, in
the church, in the established order of
things, simply for the purpose of showing
that he himself is particularly clean, sweet
aud pure in life and character, in aspiration
aud purpose. he is especially happy when
he fiuds hair in his butter or bug in his
beer. 1t gives him the opportunity 10 show
to his neighbors by bis look of disgust as he
lifts out the hair or extracts the bug that he
has been we'll brought up aud is accustomed
to baldbeaded butter and pure beer. He
makes a row about it and asserts with dis
tiDctness and emphasis that he is very pa
ticular about ~ba. he eats and drinks. He
commonly approprates 10 himself the best
of everything within his reach at table, and
expresses disgust il bis less cultured neigh
Dor eats what he can get of the remainder
with his knife He is a paper-collar sort of
person makes a collar and cuffs answer for
a whole SUIT of il innate linen, and puts on
as many airs over them as though he were
all frllls from shin to eyebrows. He Edetects
no aroma from the garbage heap in his own
back yard, but the vulgar odUrs of his
nelghbor's kitchen annoy and exasperaie
Ntxnw
but never babes. In the matter of mint,
| anise and cumin he is rigorous and strict;
the weiehtier things he does not consider.
The Dasty-particular person is nothing, If
| not suspicious. He attaches the worst mean
| ing suspects double entendre where none is
| intended, puts a bad construction on all
that his neighbors say and do, imputes dis
honesty TO 'ybody who is engaged IN
| business, impurity aud vice to all who enjoy
social delights, and corruption and veuality
| to everybody who has gained popular conf-
dence and esteem by faithful public service.
1t is popularity of the nasty-par' iculafs,
that fagrant unconceaied nastness, however
| offensive, gives them no concern. 1t IS only
the nastiness that they suspect in cleanly
| places that sets their eyes rolling. Vice
that faunts itself they pass unnoticed.
There is no special merit in joining a gen.
I eral crusade with the "riff raff'' of decent
/ ptOpi0 dSdlH6I WlCktQuesS III lis open IOTUS.
| What tney aim at is to detect and denounce
| some shortcoming. 1t is by that token
| that they assert their own hloher
standards and superior morality And when
they have found or imagine they have found
| a weakness or fault in some reputable per-
son who is held in esteem by his neighbors,
| they go down into the slums aud call to-
| gether the scaVengers and vultures, the
| openly vicious and uotoriously vile, to as
sist them in upholding virtue aud rebuking
! vice.
| This nas'y-particular person, If he sus-
| poets that his tailor has cabbaeed few in
| ches of bis cloth, shoots off into Chatham
| street, and buys secondhand clotbipg; If be
suspects his milkman OF coquettilg with
| the pump he hies bim straight TO a gin mill
aud drowns his sorrow in the fiery COM
pounds of the distIler; if he suspects his
| clergyman of having doubts concerning the
Mosaic Cosmogonv, he flrts out of his pew
in huff aud goes and spends his SUNDAYS
in beer garden. And if somebody saws
James G. Blaine is corrupt man and liar
be snaps up the cslumny and rushes off to
lock arms with Tim" Campbell and Hu
| bert o. Thompson and help them elevate
the standard of political morality by electne
| Grover Cleveland
| And that is why we call these noisy, un.
easy, toploftical persons who have inst
marched over to the Democracy, Easty-Psr-
| tieulars.