A "jag," be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load," or
"package," of alcohol.
Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent books
which I commend to their notice: _Chimmie Fadden_, by Mr. E.W. Townsend,
and _Artie_, by Mr. George Ade. _Chimmie Fadden_ gives us the dialect of
the New York Bowery Boy, or "tough," in which the most notable feature
is the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th." Is this, I wonder, a
spontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence?
When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says:
"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes." When the young lady's
father comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmie
describes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being a
brave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter," "Mug,"
the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man," in Chicago finds its equivalent
in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of the
most delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English
undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglot
immigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew;
"girlerino," as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunny
south; and "spiel," meaning practically anything you please, from the
Fatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was a
long spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describing the
embarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down at
the farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark." "Mark" in the
sense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. When
Artie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it
thus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even in
the 'also rans.'" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, I
s'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether
Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he
disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next"
to the fact, as he himself would say--
"You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the
deck.... Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and
then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell
you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the
town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get
back at you people.... If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll
be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days.... But this
same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any
time she comes in."
I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy
metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."[Y]
But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr.
Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express
themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask
of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans
take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily
developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least
impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that
the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely
groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading
American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as
well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the
average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There
are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the
beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans
to attend to the motes in theirs.
POSTSCRIPT.--When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for
an editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's
sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat
desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we
habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked,
"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the
English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an
American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our
language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or
idiom."
In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far
from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he
pleases, of course." Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this
very article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. I
think the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us,
English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if I
find an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed to
a point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate
with him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, to
remonstrate with me.
It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on his
theory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily
employs an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment,
and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My view
is perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity of
reasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter both
of literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the free
infiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, and
of vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary)
into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, if
only the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take the
word "fall." Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense of
the poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the native
and more logical word 'fall,' which the British have strangely suffered
to drop into disuse." Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently early
importation. "Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews in
the same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better than
Shakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English they
brought over "autumn." The word has inherent beauty as well as splendid
poetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have made
out of "fall" so beautiful a line as
"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase."
I doubt whether Keats, had he written an _Ode to the Fall_, would have
produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."
Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poetic
value, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why
we dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recover
it. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying
"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism
(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn." By
insisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either
term is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about a
serious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr.
Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; but
if "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it
"without fear and without reproach."
Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the English
phrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a good
time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the
one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our
linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of
semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely
because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang will
understand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies."
Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in
hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier
between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us
remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell,
Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are
consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same
remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_,
March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson,
and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children,
one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert," and in Emerson
"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all the
time_." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under
his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would
translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of
brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think
of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes
me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of
the phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be not
already naturalised.
Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to
witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That
does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says,
"The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by
the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a
stern opponent of such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, and
the one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:--"'You belong
with the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others.'--_O.W.
Holmes, 'Elsie Venner_.'" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is in
dialogue. Yes, but not in dia_lect_. I am very much mistaken if the
locution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure
hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally find
cause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat's
anti-Americanism.
Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept
and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the
English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay,
indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I
trust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I,
in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. I
believe (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forces
of the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdote
of Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for the
representation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day,
and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his
opponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope _not_,"
replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some
English-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book from
the recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, and
should read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say--for the
immortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect--"the race is
not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."