Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta

by Unknown

KICKING THE BUCKET.

The tradition among the slang fraternity as to the origin of this phrase is that “One Bolsover, having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—Finis!”