And that is the way I became acquainted with Silas Eldridge, dealer in antiques, who has sold me many a real treasure, but I keep his whereabouts as secret as possible, for of all the fascinating places for picking up astonishing bargains on Cape Cod, his old dilapidated barn offers the most surprises.
VII
A BLUE STREAK
Slang is both the curse and the delight of the English language, and that form of slang which our British friends term “Americanisms,” and which we have now largely adopted as our national mode of communication, is not confined to the youth of to-day by any means. In the home, in business, and of course in sport, slang has found its way and has spread like the weeds in the garden of the over-enthusiastic commuter. I remember hearing a clergyman of national reputation and advancing years say a short time ago, after a satisfying excursion of some sort, that he had “had more fun than a goat,” and I defied him to elucidate that time-worn phrase to my satisfaction.
The derivations and origins of American idioms and colloquial expressions are vastly interesting, not only in showing the resourcefulness of our people in cutting wordy corners and in the development of a certain form of humor which I do not defend, but in shedding real light upon the whys and wherefores of our universe down to its smallest detail. A temperamental curiosity has led me from time to time to look up certain of the commoner expressions, and I am indebted to this eccentric hobby for several pleasurable experiences.
Many years ago—so many in fact that the memory is distasteful—I went to a horse-race where the winner passed our stand at a pace which my companion described as “going like a blue streak,” a familiar term with which I ignorantly agreed at the time. I suppose that since then I have heard it repeated many hundred times, but it was not until last summer when my son applied it to a motor-boat passing out of the harbor, that I thought of inquiring into its origin, and discovered, much to my surprise, that it applied to the illusive and disconcerting movements of the ordinary sea crab, often called the “blue claw.”
The discovery piqued my curiosity and I determined forthwith to investigate the locomotory accomplishments of these retiring animals. This was not as easy a task as I had expected. The crab is not socially inclined, and the term “crabbed” is soon apparent. He is only to be found at low tide, and generally near the mouth of a salty creek where the bottom is muddy and sparsely covered with seaweed and eelgrass. There in the late summer and fall he can be seen from canoe or rowboat, if one is patient and watchful, and the expression to “go like a blue streak” fits him like a glove.
Having provided myself with a net of the butterfly variety, I determined to secure a specimen, and began my search among the creeks, so numerous along the shores of Cape Cod. Although we came upon quite a number, it took the entire morning to capture four.