Exaggeration, then, is one easy artifice of effect. Another is the constant repetition of certain words and phrases which have lost their meaning by detrition and are known to all. Not to be disappointed is sometimes as pleasant as to be surprised. A catchword passed from one to another is often a signal of sympathy, and many a man has been taken for a wit merely because his tinkling brain has given back the echo which was expected. In stereotyped phrases, in ready-made sentences, in the small change of meaningless words, the American language is peculiarly rich. "To cut ice," "to get next to," "straight goods," {*}—these and similar expressions, of no obvious merit in themselves, long ago lost their freshness, and are not likely to assume a dignity with age. But they save trouble, they establish an understanding between him who speaks and him who hears; and when they are thrown into a discourse they serve the purpose of gestures, To exclaim "I should smile" or "I should cough" is not of much help in an argument, but such interjections as these imply an appreciation not merely of slang but of your interlocutor.
* To the Englishman who knows them not, the following
quotations will explain their significance:—
"Tain't what ye ain't or what ye don't do that cuts ice with
me."
"Well, invested capital has got to protect itself when the
law won't do it. Ain't them straight goods?"
"Boston don't want Bishop Potter to come up here an' tell
her 't she ain't next to the latest curves in goodness.
Hully gee, no!"
Slang is better heard than read. The child of the street or the hedgerow, it assumes in print a grave air which does not belong to it, or, worse still, it is charged with the vice or the vagabondage which it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to become the sport of philologists. For the worst of their kind special lexicons are designed, which, like prisons and workhouses, admit only the disreputable, as though Victor Hugo's definition—"L'argot, c'est le verbe devenu forçat"—were amply justified. The journals, too, which take their material where they find it, give to many specimens a life as long as their own. It is scarcely possible, for instance, to pick up an American newspaper that does not turn the word cinch to some strange purpose. The form and origin of the word are worthy a better fate. It passed from Spain into the Western States, and was the name given to saddle-girths of leather or woven horse-hair. It suggests Mexican horsemanship and the open prairie. The explanation given in the Century Dictionary will make clear its meaning to the untravelled: "The two ends of the tough cordage, which constitute the cinch, terminate in long narrow strips of leather called latigos, which connect the cinches with the saddle, and are run through an iron ring, called the larigo ring, and then tied by a series of complicated turns and knots, known only to the craft." In the West the word is still used in its natural and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders. "The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"—this flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'—"is the race-horse owner, who has a cinch bottled up for a particular race, and drops into the room an hour or two before the race begins." The idea of bottling a cinch is enough to make a Californian shudder, and this confused image helps to explain the difference between East and West.
Thus words wander farther and farther from their origin; and when at last their meanings are wholly forgotten or obscured, they become part of the common speech. One kind of Slang may succeed to another, but cinch is secure for ever of a place in the newspaper, and in the spoken language, of America. Caboodle, also, is firmly established. The long series of words, such as Cachunk or Kerblunk, which suggest the impact of falling bodies with the earth, will live as expletives with Say, Sure, and many other, interjections which fill up the pauses of thought and speech. There are two other specimens of Slang beloved by the journals, for which it would be rash to prophesy a long life. To call a man or a thing or an act "the limit," is for the moment the highest step, save one, in praise or blame. When the limit is not eloquent enough to describe the hero who has climbed the topmost rung of glory, the language gasps into simplicity, and declares that he is It. "I didn't do a thing," says an eminent writer, "but push my face in there about eight o'clock last night, and I was It from the start." Though the pronoun is expressive enough, it does not carry with it the signs of immortality, and the next change of fashion may sweep it away into the limbo of forgotten words.
The journals do their best to keep alive the language of the people. The novelists do far more, since their works outlive by months or years the exaggeration of the press. And the novelists, though in narrative they preserve a scrupulous respect for the literary language, take what licence the dialect and character of their personages permit them. It is from novels, indeed, that future generations will best be able to construct the speech of to-day. With the greatest skill the writers of romance mimic the style and accent of their contemporaries. They put into the mouths of those who, in life, knew no other lingo, the highly-flavoured Slang of the street or the market. Here, for instance, is the talk of a saloon-keeper, taken from W. Payne's story, 'The Money Captain,' which echoes, as nearly as printed words can echo, the voice of the boodler:
"Stop it?" says the saloon-keeper of a journalist's attack. "What I got to stop it with? What's the matter with you fellows anyhow? You come chasin' yourselves down here, scared out of your wits because a dinky little one cent newspaper's makin' faces at you. A man 'd think you was a young lady's Bible-class and 'd seen a mouse.... Now, that's right," he exclaims, as another assailant appears; "make it unanimous. Let all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all—all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with you—you sweet-scented skates."
It is not an elegant method of speech, but such as it is, it bears as close a resemblance to the dialect of Chicago as can be transferred from the ear to the eye.
If we compare the present with the past, we cannot but acknowledge that American Slang has grown marvellously in colour and variety. The jargon of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings possessed as little fire as character. These two humourists obtained their effect by the simple method, lately advocated by Messrs Roosevelt and Carnegie, of spelling as they pleased. The modern professors of Slang have invented a new style. Their pages sparkle with wit and allusion. They interpret their shrewd sense in words and phrases which have never before enjoyed the freedom of printer's ink. George Ade, the best of them all, has shown us how the wise ones of Chicago think and speak. His 'Fables in Slang' is a little masterpiece of humour in substance and wit in expression. To quote from it would be to destroy its effect. But it will discover the processes of Slang, as it is understood in the West, more clearly than any argument, and having amused the present generation, it will remain an historical document of enduring value.
Slang is the only language known to many thousands of citizens. The newly arrived immigrant delights to prove his familiarity with the land of his adoption by accepting its idioms and by speaking the American, not of books but of the market-place. And yet this same Slang, universally heard and understood, knocks in vain for admission into American literature. It expatiates in journals, in novels of dialect, and in works, like George Ade's, which are designed for its exposition. But it has no part in the fabric of the gravely written language. Men of letters have disdained its use with a scrupulousness worthy our own eighteenth century. The best of them have written an English as pure as a devout respect for tradition can make it. Though they have travelled far in space and thought, they have anchored their craft securely in the past. No writer that has handled prose or verse with a high seriousness has offended against the practice of the masters—save only Walt Whitman. The written word and the spoken word differ even more widely in America than elsewhere. The spoken word threw off the trammels of an uneasy restraint at the very outset. The written word still obeys the law of gradual development, which has always controlled it. If you contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, you will find differences of accent and expression so slight that you may neglect them. You will find resemblances which prove that it is not in vain that our literatures have a common origin and have followed a common road. The arts, in truth, are more willingly obedient than life or politics to the established order; and America, free and democratic though she be, loyally acknowledges the sovereignty of humane letters. American is heard at the street corner. It is still English that is written in the study.