They are the blank checks of
intellectual bankruptcy;--you may fill them up with what idea you
like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the
treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing
smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi
spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper
use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to
conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better
than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the
intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and
youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash
phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of
English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-
volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured
urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial
climate.
- The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was
"rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang
line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.
- I replied with my usual forbearance.--Certainly, to give up the
algebraic symbol, because A or B is often a cover for ideal
nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to
express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed
sensation (as it supposed,) all of which could have been
sufficiently explained by the participle--BORED.
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