The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-05-12
Slang As a Weapon.
Rare Bits.

The use of slang affords an excellent field for emotions, and an infinitessi- nal David can demolish the biggest sort of a Goliath in half dozen sharp and jagged words. There was time once in the United States senate, when Charles Sumner had delivered a mas- terly oration on "Bleeding Kansas" which no one of his contemporaries cared to answer. Only an exhaustive speech or an apt arrow of epigram could fill the bill at sight. Stephen A. Douglas, the "little giant" saw his opportunity, and remarked in the hearing of the entire senate that the speech "would be all we'll enough if everybody had not known that the senator from Massachusetts had been practising it for days in front of his looking glass, with a little nigger holding a candle" The senate was convulsed with laughter, Sumner was speeches. with rage and his ora tion was already answered.
 The old English writers rejoiced in vigorous style of Anglo-Saxon which took the form of slang in prov- erbs. One cannot read their works without realizing how old are many of our common sayings. A large number of our slang phrases antedate Shakespeare by two centuries, and Englishmen, of the time of Edward III. condenced their sturdy wit in the pithy proverbs that are heard in our homes at the present day.
 Old Chaucer, father of English po- etry, who died in the year 1,400, makes use in his "Well of English Undefiled" of many familiar expres- sions, such as "Wet the whistle" the supposed Yankeeism I guess" "Blow," in the sense of inform, "Not worth bene," "Right here," "Murder will out" etc.
 To him can be traced the saying, "In at one ear, out of the other," though, in the quaint language of his day, he said: "One ear it heard, at the other out it went" To Thomas a Kempis, who died in 1471, we are indebted for the household proverbs, "Of two evils the less is always to be chosen" and "When he is out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind." Thomas Tusser, who died in 1880, when Shakespeare was lad of sixteen, gave us, "Better late than never," "Look ere thou leap, see ere thou go," "It is an i'll mind that turns none to good" and "Christ- mas comes but once year."
 It was Chaucer who first put in print the favorite couplet of pert children
 How do you do? How do you do?
 None the better for seeing youi for in his "Troylus and Criseyde," a niece makes reply to her uncle's in- quiry as to her health. "Never the bet fer you, fox that ye ben." In his "Romaunt O the Rose," written more than five hundred years ago, occurs the line, "Brent child of fer hath much drede," which now reads "A burnt child dreads the fire," and the common slang saying, "Two's com pany, three's crowd" appears in the same poem:
 For tway in number is bet than three. The original of Shakespeare's "All That Critters is Not Gold" is found in the prologue of the "Yeoman's Tale," reading thus: But all thing which that shneth as the gold, Is nought gold, as that have heard told. The latter half of the last line might readily be transmitted into the model slang expression, "So Pve been told" The old fathers of literature are the self-confessed fathers of slang as well, and it must be conceded that there are times when the use of Anglo Saxon vigor of expression becomes a positive virtue.