The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-05-15
Written for The Arkansa.c Trdueter
 OUR DELIGHTFUL TONGUE.
By H. S. Keller.

There is promising future ahead for some bright literary man who can sue cessfully cope with and reveal the mys- teries of our delightful tongue. Eng fish as it is spoke is no longer Ian guage. What we once took pride in is rapidly falling into decay, degeneration and evisceration to speak plain.
 am pained deeply in offering the foregoing assertion but it is a fact ncy- ertheless. If our once boasted language continues to retrograde as 1t has in the past few years it will soon assume the idiocy-to the unsophisticated-of the Digger tongue. True, we have a few of marks amid this incongruity of modern vernaeularity. But the good, old, pat sayings are rapidly being sideswitched to make room for such expressions of lunacy as All there" chestnuts," rats, and that class of brain tissue
 The man who. coins modern pun reaches distinction and glory while phil osophers die in tine gutter and poets starye in the earret. The American novel and the national drama take back seats while the wizard of slang holds high carnival in the senate chamber of the elect. This may be right-but to me it seems all wrong What we re- quire, as a people who teel proud of our language, is d concrete, concise dictlon- ary of the modern slang remarks. Af- ter that we want to hold midnight orgie and lynch the man who wrote the dictionary Then we want to mould his ashes-for We propose to crcmate him into buttons for future slang-makcrs to take as gentle twilight assumes the roseate tinge. l forgot to mention that We also propose to mix the deadliest poison known with the ashes of the de- funct If this plan is successfully fol- l lowed our future language will be as clear as brook and as musical as the trill of the lark A society known as the White Cross is doing grand work in the east. It forswears anything of the naughty order and protects gentle wo- men, We need a society to put down and trample out slang.
 The fashionable boarding schools have much to answer for in creating slang. know this has been said be- fore; but there is no harm in -reitera ting against a crying evil. say it again: boarding schools breed slang We cannot behcad our boarding schools but we can prevent them from sending forth upon an already overburdencd people the class of "rot they have for ages back
 Literature-thc select literature of the Bostonese isn't wholly free from slang. l don't like to criticize such ele gant publications as Towels is sending forth; but, Howells does not hesitate to mar some of his best passages with silly slang. He also puts it iii the mouth where cherry lips do honor. Even the gutter snipes of a great city use delicate terms-where Howells seldom picks jewels from - compared to the dirty pots that flow fromrosy lips
 It may add strength, but it don't add beauty to the essay.
 There is beauty in the broad asser tions of the sentimental journey which some prudes disparage in language re- plete with slang. "'Ostler Joe is broad but it is classic compared to the flow of rot V that is evolved from many draw ing-room conversation wholly monopo- lized by our gentle sex; that sex which provokes this article and almost rem derS the writer so unreasonable as to say: Ladies, chew a clove'