New-York tribune., 1919-04-19
By Haywood Broun

OUT AND ABOUT LONDON" BY Thomas
isa n@rEs, na Pub1ished psi by Henry Holt & Co
ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN RACE.
iiS,oh 1s dhHI,hmond Pearson uobson PUP
s.. nsned by the Fleming u. Kovell Conn
Pahy- -0o pages. Price S126.
TIE WHOLE TRUTH ~ABCN'T AICO.
!tOh. BY George Elliot Flint. Pub
iished by tho Macmillan Company. 29i
pages. Price $3.50.
Thomas Burke has a cultivated taste
or low life and he records his delight
n LAmehouse so wildly that it is i'm
possible to doubt his sincerity. In his
new volume Of essays called "Cut and
About London" he spreads his en-
thusiasm over the entire "seven hun
dred square miles of London, in which
adventure is shyly lurking for those
who will seek her out"
IN the spreading there is at least
ground for suspicion shat here and
there authentic enthusiasm has worn
bit thin. 1t is no more than sus-
plcion, for Burke is skilful writer
who can set an emotion to galloping
without showing the whip. Only when
he comes to describe a baseball game
IS the American reader prepared to as
sert roundly that Burke is merely
paradlng an enthusiasm which he does
not feel. We could not escape the i'm
preston that the English author felt
nat a baseball game was the most
primitive thing America had to offer
and that he was in duty bound to en-
thuse over this exhibition OF human
nature in the raw.
we have seen many Englishmcn at
baseball games. We have even at
tempted to explain to q few visitors
me fine points Of the game, why John
McGraw spoke in so menacing man
FER to the umpire or why Hughie Jen-
nlngs ate grass and shouted "Ee-Yah,r
at the batter. Invariably the English
man has SAID that it was all very
strange and all very DELIGHTFUL Nova.
have we believed him. The verv cs-
sencc Of nationality lies in the fact
mat the other fellows pastime invaria
ply seems ridiculous affair. One NAV
accept the cookery. the politics and the
relglon OF foreign nation years be-
lore he Will take an alien game to his
heart. We doubt whether it would he
possible to teach an American to saw
Veil Played in less than couple of
generations.
Burke has no fears: Not only does
he describe the game in a general wav
but he plunges boldly ahead in an
effort to record American slang. The
title of the essay is we'll enough.
Burke calls it "Attaboy." This is. of
course, authentic American slang. 1t
meets all the requirements, being in
common use, having definite mean
ing and atfording short cut to the
expression of this meaning. We can
not quite accept the spelling. There is,
perhaps, room for controversy here
When When the American army first came to
France the word attracted a good deal
OF attention and some French philolo-
gists undertook to follow it to the
source. One of them quickly discov-
cred that he was dealing not with a
word but a contracted phrase We are
OF the opinion that thereafter he went
astray, for he declared that "Ataboy"
was contraction of AT her boy" and
he offered the freely translated sub
sttute "Au travail garcon."
1t will be observed that Mr.. Burke
has given his attaboy a "t' too many
"That's the boy" is the source of the
word. Perhaps it would be more ac-
curately spelled if written cat a boy"
The single "a" is a neutral vowel VIII icn
ras come to take the place Of the miss
ing "the." The same process has oc-
CURED in the popular phrases cat
asNingin and 'ataworkin" These,
nowever, have a lesser standing cat
aboy' is almost official. One of the
American army trains which ran regu-
lerly from Paris to Chaumont began as
the Attcrbury special, being named
after the general IN charge of rail
roads. In q week it had become the
Ataboy special and so it remained even
in official orders.
Some Of the slang which Burke re-
cords as being observed at the game is
palpably inaccurate. Thus he reports
hearing a rootcr shout, 'Take OFF that
pitcher 1t is safe to assume that
What the rooter actually said was,
Ia axe i'm out"
Again Burke writes, "An everlasting
chorus, with reference to the scoring
board, chanted like an anthem-'Go-ing
up. Going up! Going up.'"
Now, as a matter of fact, the "go-ing
up did not refer to the scoring
board, but to the pitcher who must
have been manifestine signs of losing
control. The shouts of baseball crowds
are so closely standardized that we
think we have right to view with a
certain distrust such unfamiliar
snatchcs of slang as Hes pitching
over a plate in heaven" or Gimme
some barb wire. I wantcr knit
sweater for the barnaclc on second"
and also, "Hcy, catcher. quit the dia-