Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned." If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him good with my medicines—the crank and water-gruel!
Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes amusement than anger—the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago, the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from "genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket azure, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive: a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King's taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they might become esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty. They conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires" not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development. Why should we not all be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage?
We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility, with its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as I don't hold to'; and she makes answer to me, 'You better hadn't.'"
Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman! There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind—who is, in one word, a Christian!
Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an e to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his example; and White spells his with a y; and Bob Smith calls his son and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip, "we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable we calls him Tow-leure."
Passing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old associations, would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective ask is one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are dry and hard as bricks, and a bitter, searching, piercing wind whistles at your sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and Jerseys, your foot-warmers and muffatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as though water were flowing aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering—dithering (there's another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount of chilliness in it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in the ask, ungenial day."
Then I like abear (the penultimate a pronounced as e)—"I can't abeer him"; addled—"Bill's addled noat a three week"; agate—"I see you've agate on't"; among-hands—"Tom schemed to do it among-hands"; all along of—"It was all along of them 'osses"; etc.
Of B's there is a swarm: beleddy (a corruption, as most men know, of "by our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens. Botch is a word which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors, is rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great object seems to be to get quantity in place of quality, and to make as much display as we can at the price—when so much is done by contract, and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be seen, the verb to botch is only too appropriate to all such scampish proceedings.
And what do you think of bofen-yed? I once heard a farmer, shouting from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a labourer at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed, can ter ear noat?" (Anglicè, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone deaf?"); and more frequently the terms, pudding-yed and noggen-yed have been addressed in my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former requires no comment, and an explanation of the latter—noggen, hard, rough, coarse—may be found in Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee were a noggen-yed," was a poor apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And there also, in time-honoured Lancaster, was made the following illustrative speech. A conceited young barrister, with a nez retroussé and a new wig, had been bullying for some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was giving evidence in a trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his opportunity, turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a short time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer, "Why, yer powder-yedded monkey, I never said noat o' sort; I appeal to th' company!"
I have a loving faith in children. Mixing with them daily—in church, in school, and at their play—I think that I know something about them; and I maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the rule, and the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the part of parents and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found, a peevish, fretful child—a child who is always wanting to taste, a child who ignores the admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs were designed, such an enfant terrible as he who told the kindly mother, offering to bring her 'Gustus to join him in his play, that "if you bring your 'Gustus here I shall make a slit in him with my new knife, and let out his sawdust"—when, I repeat, we come in contact with such an obnoxious precocity as this, what word can describe him so satisfactorily as the monosyllable—brat?