Flash.—Cant language, also to sport or show off. A fellow who affects any particular habit, as swearing, dressing in a particular manner, taking a fashionable snuff, &c., &c., merely to be noticed, is said to do it out of flash. Flashman, a despicable wretch and the paramour of a prostitute.
Flash of Lightning.—A glass of gin, “gone in the twinkling of an eye.”
Flat Catcher.—A man, woman, or any article intended to take in the public.
Flat cum Sharp: par nobile fratrum.—There is not a word in cant or flash vocabulary, nor, in the English language, taken in its right sense and meaning, that conveys so much, and is so generally applicable, as the simple monosyllable Flat. There are flats of every rank, grade, and station in society, in every part of the known world—and possibly in the unexplored portion also. There are flats alike in office and out; in the senate house and in the cottage—from the councillor of state to the omega of legislators, parochial vestrymen! Oh, most comprehensive patronymic! Sharp is also a good term; but only a cipher, in numerical strength of application, when compared with flat. Flat is an independent, honest, and respectable word. Sharp is diametrically opposite; it owes its very birth to flat, and cannot live without it. Flat is the parent; progenitor, and preserver of sharp, the very root and sap of its existence. Without flats sharps would become extinct. The fact of sharp having sprung from flat is so apparent, that there is not a sharp to be found that has not a flat about him; there consanguinity, therefore, is undoubted.
Such is human nature, that three parts of the vast universe is peopled with flats; while the circumscribed and degenerated race of sharps do not occupy more than a quarter or one fourth of the space. Another proof may be adduced of the independence of the flats, and that is that they can live, flourish, and prosper much better without the company of sharps than with it. Not so with the sharps. They cannot herd and feed together without first getting the means from the substance and resources of the flats. We think we have satisfactorily proved to every dispassionate, disinterested individual, that sharps are entirely dependent upon their fathers and forefathers, the flats! and there can be very little doubt but that they are both ungrateful and undutiful to the parents who have, as we have shown, given them being, succour, the means of existence.
If a sharp happens to reside in the neighbourhood of a flat, he will always be found setting his wits to work to relieve him of his property and earnings, even though the sharp have plenty, and the flat but little. Such is the undutiful penchant of the sharp for the goods and chattels of his progenitor the flat!
In this good city, not inappropriately denominated the world’s metropolis, flats and sharps are plentiful, and may be found located together in every street and alley. Although the flats have the advantage numerically, such are the ingenuity and plausible tactics of the sharps, that they compel the flats to work to support them. The sharps, though industrious at scheming, always profess, as their creed, a profound and rooted contempt for manual labour. Sharps are not found among gravel-diggers or stone-breakers; we may go further—seldom amongst artisans or mechanics of any description. No, they are men whose exalted minds soar far above the ordinary pursuits even of middle life. The army boasts of them in abundance. The navy may be said to be composed of flats, with scarcely one exception. The attachment of the sharps to the red-coat service of their country is clearly demonstrated by the fact of the élite of their class conferring military titles on themselves, without troubling the formal publicity of the Gazette! We may safely venture to assert, that there is not an army of any nation that can boast of the number of staff-officers that adorn the lists of our royal corps of London malleteers, otherwise gentlemen sharps. They resemble our disbanded militia, only the staff preserved. It is said and sung that “One half the world does not know how the other half lives—or dies.” How true is that oft-used aphorism? What quiet, respectable, church-going citizen would believe that, early as he rises to give his best care to the legitimate commerce of his enterprise, there are many traders in the illegitimate mercantile world who are wide awake, and in full pursuit of their customers long before his drowsy eyes are open to the brightly-shining sun; long before the aforesaid shining sun has superseded the gas-light radiance shed over the populous city of London:—
From East-end to West-end.
From worst end to best end?
Flats.—Persons easily taken in, good customers.
Flesh and Blood.—Port wine and brandy mixed.