Complete Prose Works
and magnifying their pleasant experiences only, and more than once
impell'd to jump ashore before it is too late, and stay where our
fathers stay'd, and live as they lived.
May-be I am non-literary and non-decorous (let me at least be human, and
pay part of my debt) in this word about Tennyson. I want him to realize
that here is a great and ardent Nation that absorbs his songs, and has
a respect and affection for him personally, as almost for no other
foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at Farringford as
conveying no more than the simple truth; and that truth (a little
Christmas gift) no slight one either. I have written impromptu, and
shall let it all go at that. The readers of more than fifty millions of
people in the New World not only owe to him some of their most agreeable
and harmless and healthy hours, but he has enter'd into the formative
influences of character here, not only in the Atlantic cities, but
inland and far West, out in Missouri, in Kansas, and away in Oregon, in
farmer's house and miner's cabin.
Best thanks, anyhow, to Alfred Tennyson--thanks and appreciation in
America's name.
SLANG IN AMERICA
View'd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every
dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted
composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in
the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so
much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror.
The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and
civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the
organic Universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words,
and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitaliz'd, and stand
for things, as they unerringly and soon come to do, in the mind that
enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation.
Slang, profoundly consider'd, is the lawless germinal element, below
all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain
perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United States
inherit by far their most precious possession--the language they talk
and write--from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes,
I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest
removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some
mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever
enters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes position
there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is
Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from
bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks
produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave
the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old
mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the
same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome
fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in
language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away;
though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.
To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidest
words we use, were originally generated from the daring and license of
slang. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here and
there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and
indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term _right_ means literally
only straight. _Wrong_ primarily meant twisted, distorted. _Integrity_
meant oneness. _Spirit_ meant breath, or flame. A _supercilious_ person
was one who rais'd his eyebrows. To _insult_ was to leap against. If you
_influenced_ a man, you but flow'd into him. The Hebrew word which is
translated _prophesy_ meant to bubble up and pour forth as a fountain.
The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of God within him, and
it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word prophecy is
misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere prediction; that
is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater work is to reveal
God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet.
Language, be it remember'd, is not an abstract construction of the
learn'd, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the
work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of
humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its
final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete,
having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the
Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human
intellect. "Those mighty works of art," says Addington Symonds,
"which we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples
unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determin'd not by
individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations,
acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race--Those poems of
pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery,
fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations,
which we call Mythologies--these surely are more marvellous in their
infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races which
evolv'd them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology; the true
science of Origins is yet in its cradle."
Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certain that
the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling from
their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the stores of human
utterance. Moreover, the honest delving, as of late years, by the German
and British workers in comparative philology, has pierc'd and dispers'd
many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more.
It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the
Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later
investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean _horns_ of beasts
slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis'd over the
traces of that feudal custom, by which _seigneurs_ warm'd their feet in
the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being open'd for the purpose? It now
is made to appear that the serf was only required to submit his unharm'd
abdomen as a foot cushion while his lord supp' d, and was required to
chafe the legs of the seigneur with his hands.
It is curiously in embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate,
we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, and its
noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking of a man
not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but by some odd
or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaning not directly
and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a
born quality of the common people everywhere, evidenced by nick-names,
and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles,
sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers
during the secession war, one heard of "Little Mac" (Gen. McClellan),
or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman.) "The old man" was, of course, very
common. Among the rank and file, both armies, it was very general to
speak of the different States they came from by their slang names.
Those from Maine were call'd Foxes; New Hampshire, Granite Boys;
Massachusetts, Bay Staters; Vermont, Green Mountain Boys; Rhode Island,
Gun Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New
Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads; Delaware, Muskrats;
Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; North Carolina, Tar Boilers;
South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards; Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama,
Lizards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines;
Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers; Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi,
Tadpoles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks; Wisconsin, Badgers; Iowa,
Hawkeyes; Oregon, Hard Cases. Indeed I am not sure but slang names have
more than once made Presidents. "Old Hickory," (Gen. Jackson) is one
case in point. "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too," another.
I find the same rule in the people's conversations everywhere. I heard
this among the men of the city horse-cars, where the conductor is
often call'd a "snatcher" (i. e. because his characteristic duty is to
constantly pull or snatch the bell-strap, to stop or go on.) Two young
fellows are having a friendly talk, amid which, says 1st conductor,
"What did you do before you was a snatcher?" Answer of 2d conductor,
"Nail'd." (Translation of answer: "I work'd as carpenter.") What is a
"boom"? says one editor to another. "Esteem'd contemporary," says the
other, "a boom is a bulge." "Barefoot whiskey" is the Tennessee name for
the undiluted stimulant. In the slang of the New York common restaurant
waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as "stars and stripes,"
codfish balls as "sleeve-buttons," and hash as "mystery."
The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed,
the special areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names of
localities, towns, rivers, etc. A late Oregon traveller says:
"On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called the
Shookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and
Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole counties labell'
d Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium,
and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that
Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What
man, having the whole American continent to choose from, would willingly
date his letters from the county of Snohomish or bring up his children
in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready
to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think
twice before he establish' d himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle
is sufficiently barbarous; Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that
the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because
it is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire
horror."
Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from
Reno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust off any
town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia.
They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New York
cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers, one
Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia
beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas." Among
the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, _The Fairplay_ (Colorado)
_Flume, The Solid Muldoon_, of Ouray, _The Tombstone Epitaph_, of
Nevada, _The Jimplecute_, of Texas, and _The Bazoo_, of Missouri.
Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat,
Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few
of the names of places in Butte county, Cal.
Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations of
the fermentation processes I have mention'd, and their froth and specks,
than those Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at the present
day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are of an
appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to the
Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed in Congress
for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet,
Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan towns. Miss
Bremer found among the aborigines the following names: _Men's_,
Horn-point; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out; The-Cloud-that-goes-aside;