St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-04-25
SLANG AS A WEAPON.
The Effectiveness and Antiquity
of Slang.

Rare Bits.
The use of slang affords an excellent
field for emotions, and an infinitesimaI
David can demolish the biggest sort of
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 Grafton ON BLEEDING Kansas
which no one of his contemporaries
cared to answer. Only an exhaustive
speech or an apt arrow of epigram could
hill 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 well enough if everybody
had not known that the senator from
Massachusetts had been practicing it
for days in front of his looking glass,
with little niger holding a candle"
The senate was cOnvulSed with laugh
ter. Sumner was SpeechleSS with rage
and his Grafton was already answered.
The old English writer's rejOiced in a
vigorous style of AnglO-SaXon which
took the form of slang in proverbs. One
cannot read their works without real
izing how old ale 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. condensed their study
within the pithy proverbs that are heard
in our homes at the present day.
Old Chaucer, father of English
poetry, who died i'll the year 400, makes
uses in his well of English indebted"
OF many familiar expressions, such as
"Wet the whistle" the supposed Yam
keeiSm Il guess" Blow" in the sense
of inform, Not worth bene," Fright
here" Murder will out" etc.
Te 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 147l, we are indebted for the house
hold proverbs. 'Of two evils the less is
always to be chosen" and when he is
out of sight, quickly also is he 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 CO." ut is an ill mind that turns
none to good" and ''ChiStmas comes
but once year"
1t 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 you
for in his "Troylus and Criseyde,"
niece makes reply to her uncle'S i'll
quiry as to her health. "Never the bet
for you, fox that we ben" In his ''Ro-
maunt o. the Rose" written more than
500 years ago, occurs the line, ''Brent
child of fer hath much drede," which
now reads ga burnt child breads tue
fire." and the common slang saying,
'Two's company, three's crowd"
appears in the same poem:
For tway in number is bet than three.
The original of Shakespeare's "All that
Glitters is not Gold" is found in the
prologue of the ''Yeoman's Tale" read
ing thus:
But al things which that shineth as the gold,
Is nought gold, as that have heard told.
The latter half of the last line might
readily be transmitted into the modern
slang expression, $50 I've 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 pasitive
virtue.