-

bit of German translation, "Sie löffelten | Even the thief demands his quota, his mit einander," "They were spooning share of the plunder, or may be he will together; "the translator being quite be content if his comrade will "tip him unaware how far she was really going some quids." This word quids, for back into the early ages of Alemannic money," the wherewithal" (a quid stands love. For last examples of the German for a sovereign), may be seen scholastigroup, we may take those quaint Ameri- cally treated in the following French pascanisms which are, after all, only Low or sage, cited by Francisque-Michel : High Dutch words brought by early or Siméon.- Que veut dire conquibus? late settlers. A cookey-shine, which is Thomas. J'entends des escus. funny for a tea-party, means a feast where cookeys, little cakes (Dutch, koekje), are the staple. The American dislikes calling any man his master, wherefore he speaks of his boss (pron. baus), which is simply Dutch baas, and meant and means master all the same. These are both Low Dutch words; for High Dutch or German the two following will serve. In German packs of cards the bauer, or peasant, corresponds to our knave; thus it comes to pass that in America the two highest cards in the game of Euchre are called bowers. The right bower is the knave of trumps, and the left bower the knave of the suit of the same colour:

But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made

Were quite frightful to see -
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

A good deal has been written not more, indeed, than an art of such wide prevalence deserved - about the etymology of loafer, and its derived verb to loaf. There is no difficulty, however, as to the usual view, that they come from German landläufer, läufer, a vagabond, an unsettled roamer about the country. The etymologists who have sought to derive loafer from Dutch looper, landlooper, or from English slang loper, landloper (which were very likely borrowed from the Low Countries), might have saved their pains had they borne in mind the essential distinction of Grimm's Law as to f and between High German dialects such as the language we call German, and Low German dialects such as Dutch or English. The American loafer and the English loper no doubt had a common ancestor, but neither is the descendant of the other.

The ways are various by which Latin words, good or bad, have filtered into slang. The sheriff's officer and the attorney's clerk brought their learned technicalities out of Cursitor Street and the Old Bailey, so that now ipsal dixal stands for ipse dixit, and a davy is an affidavit.

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The verb to fake, meaning to do, is no doubt in some way from Latin facere (possibly through Norman French faict, done, faked). One remembers 64 pals fake away as the burden of a low streetsong years ago; the word is naturally given over to the kind of doing proper to rogues namely, cheating and stealing. From it is derived fakement, a false begging letter or swindling document, such as fallen schoolmasters screeve (Law French, scriver) for a living in tramps' lodging-houses. Less repulsive in their associations are such Latinisms as nostrum for a medicine, from "our own private recipe; or conk for a nose, no doubt from the spouting concha of the classical fountain. And others have positively a pleasant humour, such as the schoolboy class of which omnium gatherum may serve as an instance. I like the unsuspecting gravity of old Noah Webster, in his respectable and jokeless Dictionary, where he criticises the term driving tandem, with the remark that "tandem properly refers to time, and not to length of line."

Certainly it is not by literary dignity that we have to measure languages here. English slang took tribute from the speech of the great Aryan nations, classic and modern; but no Aryan dialect was more congenial to the English vagabond than that of the lowest and wildest of Aryan hordes, the Gipsies, who in the middle ages spread over Europe from the East. Their name for a man of course, a gipsy man-is rom; and chabo is a lad, a son. Borrow, who knows more about the matter than other people, is probably right in saying that rum chap, now such thorough English slang, was originally nothing but a gipsy phrase, meaning gipsy lad; in Germany, also, the gipsies call themselves Romanitschavei.e." sons of men." The word rum, when first taken into English cant, meant fine or good; thus, rum booze," or a rum bung," meant good liquor or a full purse. Among the words brought by the gipsies into the slang of other nations, some

66

66

are very curious.

of a pow-wow or a squaw; and the streetfolk can realize, without having it explained, the desperate condition of a gone coon."

66

Thus jockey is no doubt the gipsy horse-dealer's word for a whip, chukni, meaning especially that formidable instrument known as a jockeywhip. A pal is a brother (Gipsy, pal, With these outlandish elements, I conplal). The term bosh for a fiddle, a word clude this sketch of the Philology of only used by the lower orders, is Gipsy. Slang. Some of its proper topics, such "Can you roker Romany, and play on the as that of secret and artificial language, bosh? means, “Can you talk gipsy, and have been omitted for briefness, and play on the fiddle?" Of such tramps' others as being too repulsive. Much of words, now fallen to low estate, some the slang-maker's skill is spent on foul have honoured relatives in the sacred ideas, which make the Slang Dictionary, language of India. Thus in the French at its best, an unpresentable book; while, Argot, chouriner (to knife a man), whence short of this limit, there is an ugly air the name of the Chourineur in the "Mys-about lists of words so largely coined by tères de Paris," goes back through Gipsy vagabonds and criminals, whose grochuri to Sanskrit chhurî (a knife). When tesque fancy plays fitfully round the real the London costermonger calls a heavy wretchedness of their lives, in sour jests shower a dowry of parny, the gipsy from on the "skilly" and the "everlasting whom the phrase was learnt meant a staircase," and half-shrinking, half-defiant river (doriove) of pani (water); this latter "chaff" of the hangman and the devil. word (Sanskrit, pânîya) is the same that Such details as I have given, however, Anglo-Indians have imported in brandy- are enough for my purpose, to show that pawnee. These gipsy words stand lin- whether the English Dictionary acknowlguistically in the same rank as those our edges slang or not, every serious student soldiers have of late years brought di- of English must take it up and treat it rectly from India, such as batty, wages, seriously. There is much more novelty perquisites (Sanskrit, bhâti, pay), and loot in this essay than I expected when I be(Sanskrit, lota), plunder. If one asks for gan to write it; but the fact is, that hithan instance of a slang word imported by erto the linguistic examination of newEnglishmen from China, the answer will fangled and outcast words has by no be at once "first-chop." Now it is true means kept pace with their compilation; that we did pick up the term in Chinese and it will be some while before fresh ports, but chop is no Chinese word for all students cease to find enough new points that; it is Hindi chhápa, a stamp or seal, left to repay their pains. especially a Custom-house stamp; thence, in the Chinese trade dialect, a boat-load of teas is called a chop; and the quality of teas and things in general is estimated as first-chop, second-chop, &c.

E. B. TYLOR.

From The Queen.

IMPULSIVE PEOPLE.

A real Chinese word in English slang is kotooing, or performing the ko-too. Everybody knows that to run a-muck is No people are more to be pitied, and Malay, amuk; that bosh is Turkish for none are more harshly judged, than those empty; that chouse is derived from a cer- who to natural impulsiveness add limtain Turkish chiaus, or envoy, who came ited means, a good heart, and that kind to England in 1609 and took in our mer- of instinctive unselfishness which never chants, or as we should say now, chiselled takes count of the difficulties or disthem; and that nabob for a rich, retired agreeables standing in the way of kind Indian official is Arabic, nawab, used for actions-zeal for others dwarfing conthe governor of a province. Mentioning sideration for themselves, and imaginaArabic, it is curious how little influence tion going the same way. In their honest Hebrew has had on English slang. The desire to help where help is needed, they Jewish doctors of the Middle Ages, the are always offering more than they can money-dealers, brokers, pedlars, and old-give, and undertaking more than they can clothesmen since, have only left in our streets a few such terms as shoful, or show-full, bad money or sham jewellery (Hebrew, shafal, low, base). Positively, the languages of the North American Indians have contributed almost as much to English slang, for we talk quite naturally

make good. Being people of a lively imagination, they sink the details in the result, and overlook the obstacles standing between them and the fulfilment of their generous desires. They fancy they can clear a mountain at a leap, and ford a sea as if it were a millpond; but when

they come to measure the height of those | your article to write, your part to study, inaccessible-looking crags, when they see even your puddings to make and your how the waves are breaking against their children's mouths to feed generally. But frail boat, they then have to draw back you are a warm-hearted impulsive little and say that the thing is beyond them. woman, worn out atom as you are, and On which they are accused of half-heart- you offer great things out of your great edness, unreliability, unfriendliness; they soul, which when searched for are not to are turncoats and deserters; men of be found within the compass of your words and not of deeds- whereof the small body. Your husband, who is not latest stage is "sudden death, and death impulsive, and whose idea of masculine indeed!" They blow hot and cold, and duty includes taking care of you, even are the reeds which, leant on, break and against your will, laughs you and your pierce the hands of the leaner. No one Quixotic offer to scorn when he hears of remembers how ardent and how true was it. He will have none of this folly, he the kindly impulse which placed goods says trenchantly; you have enough to do and service at the feet of the one in with your own affairs, and he will not need; how desire ran before power, and suffer you to add your neighbour's load how "cannot " has been forced to wait to your own. Forthwith your sick upon "I would." Had the thing been friend's household is informed that you possible with only an ordinary amount of are a defaulter, and that the well-conself-sacrifice, it would have been done; stituted substitute must take your place; but when it came to the sacrifice of may- that you cannot receive the children: be more than the thing was relatively that you cannot do this or do that as you worth, and of more than the friend could had offered when you come to conafford, then the merest instinct of self- sider it your strength was not sufficient, preservation, backed by the dictates of and your husband would not allow it. common sense, stepped in. The offer, From that hour you have lost your standwhich was to give one a few hours' pleasing among them, and are ranked with ure at the cost of days of damage and weeks of pinching or pressure to the other, is withdrawn - vituperation, the loss of the warmest strain of friendship, and the casting of scornful proverbs not- Nothing can be a more untrue way of withstanding. And in general the with-putting it. You neither offered for brag drawal is the right thing.

those who make grand professions, then throw over the wretched dupes who trust to them, and at the eleventh hour back out of the agreement.

nor drew back for selfishness. The first was honest sympathy, and the second incapacity; and the sole fault you committed was letting your kindly impulse run away with your judgment, and your desire to be of use obscure your power of calculation.

It is impossible for some people to see or hear of distress in any form without longing to relieve it. And from longing to offering it is only the passage of a breath. Is a friend ill? "Let me sit up with him to-night." Willingly. Your sitting up to-night will give ease and a good These are kindly impulses dealing with spell of rest to the tired watchers, and insufficient working power, consequently save the substitute standing reluctantly in always sharing the fate of Icarus and the gap. Let us state, however, that the coming to the ground because of defecsubstitute is a stout and sturdy well-con- tive "attachments." And of the two, ditioned person who has the strength of the people who offer and cannot fulfil, a man and can bear any amount of fatigue and the people who trust in that offer and without failing; or maybe a person of lei- are disappointed, we confess we pity the sure, with nothing on earth to do but former the more-always presupposing amuse herself and bury her hours with as absolute sincerity and the simplicity of much enjoyment and little ennui as is desire. They must suffer divers torcompatible with propriety. If she watches ments, of which the humiliating confesthrough the night she can sleep through sion that they have grossly miscalculated the day, and by six o'clock next evening their resources on the one hand, and the will be as blithe as a bird and as fresh as pain of having still to see the sorrow, a daisy. You, on the contrary, are a frail the misery, the privation they have fatigued little woman with a large family started forward to alleviate on the other, and the affliction of neuralgia. Every are about equal in grievous intensity. hour of your day is occupied with work that can neither be delegated nor laid aside. You have your lessons to give,

Both together, they may be certainly taken to outweigh the annoyance of having to go on again, after we had thought

From The Spectator.

BUSY BEE."

to have made a pleasant little halt in the wearisome journey of disaster of hav- SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON "THE LITTLE ing to carry one's heavy burden unrelieved, after we had hoped to have shifted SIR JOHN LUBBOCK has been devoting it for a spell to friendly shoulders volun- his attention to the mental qualities distarily offered for the porterage. Doubt- played by bees and wasps, with a result less this annoyance, this disappointment, which would be very far from satisfactory is bad to bear; and for that reason the to Dr. Watts and those other orthodox impulsive should be more careful than admirers of the busy bee, who made that they are to restrain their flights of charit- insect so obnoxious to our childhood by able fancy, and be less prodigal of their over-praise and invidious comparisons. offers of rich and loving help grounded In fact, the result of Sir John Lubbock's on desire and not on power. It is ill ingenious investigations may be said to asking a hungry man to a naked board, have been, so far as they have yielded defibut all the goodwill in the world will not nite results, decidedly iconoclastic. The cover it with food when there is no food bees have always been idols of the moralin the cupboard. It would have been ists, from causes more or less accidental. substantially kinder, then, to have left Teachers have been discreditably overthe poor famished creature to the elastic awed by the hexagonal cell of these exmercy of chance than to bring him as you cellent insects, which sheds a certain have into a barren certainty, though aureole of mathematical glory round their backed by the most luxuriant setting of heads; and Mr, Darwin had not, in those benevolent intentions. Benevolent in- days, explained that the distinction betentions are like the fine words offered in tween the comparatively barbarous bees lieu of butter when parsnips abound; -the Mexican Melipona domestica — and the Barmecide who gave a feast which make spherical cells partially quenched no thirst and satisfied no hun-moulded, at the side at which they come ger for all his verbal array of sparkling wines and luscious food.

into contact with each other, into rectilineal forms,—and the hive bee of civilization, was not by any means so great as the distinction between the Esquimaux and the Englishman or Frenchman. The idea of the bee as an insect of only one remove from barbarism, is an entirely heterodox one. In the last generation it was the insect devoted to the moral improvement of little boys and little girls, and it would have been a far less shock to our grandmothers to be assured that schoolmasters were capable of idleness, this they really knew, though they carefully concealed their knowledge of it from us,

If impulses of loving generosity are apt to come to grief, the impulses of unfriendly wrath are still more sure to find evil issues. It is strange how often an unkind impulse proves itself untrue. The suspicious fear, the passionate denunciation, the vague abhorrence, if acted on are almost certain to be found wrong before the thing is done with, and many an impulsive hater, hitting hard, and thinking he or she is hitting righteously, has had cause to regret to the last day of life the incautious acceptance of belief as truth, and the unfriendly "sincerity which gave utterance to the same. Without being sentimental or sickly, there is no question the more generous the judgment the more likely it is to be true, and the fewer the hard words we have uttered the less we shall have wherewith to re-bee's laborious qualities. He credits the proach ourselves when we come to measure the amount of unmerited mischief we have done our fellow-men. Undoubtedly, the less we yield to unfriendly impulses, the more safely we shall walk and the more surely we shall be right.

than that bees were in any respect undeserving of the eulogium uniformly bestowed upon them in moral books for the young. Nor can we say that Sir John Lubbock has exactly attacked their moral character. He does not at all deny the

bee with a complete ten hours' working
day, even about the equinox, when the
days are not at their longest, and does
not suggest that they knock off work for
any day in the week. But then an essen-
tial part of the glory of the bee in the
days of our grandmothers was its wonder-
ful ingenuity :-

How skilfully she builds her cell,
How neat she spreads her wax !

sang Dr. Watts, leading the chorus of
the bee's didactic admirers, -immediate-

ly adding, too, as from his young disciple's mouth,

In works of labour and of skill

I would be busy too,

and evidently never dreading the advent of the day when the pre-eminence of the bee in such matters might possibly be rudely assailed.

turn might find their way to the honey and then back again into the hive. Sir John Lubbock found that very few bees found their way through the postern at all, while of those which did so, the greater part flew straight to the window and did not discover the honey. The few, however, which did find out the honey went and returned to the hive at But that day has at length come. Sir regular intervals, but did not communiJohn Lubbock has done a fair stroke of cate their discovery to their friends in work towards exposing the Bees. The the hive. Clearly either they were like unreasoning enthusiasm for bees, on the Lord Byron, who, when he met a friend strength of their gift for architecture and in Rome, humorously explained in his organization, has so prejudiced the eyes journal, "Did not invite him to dine with of naturalists, that they have been cred- me to-day, because I had a fine young ited with all sorts of qualities not in the turbot which I wished to eat myself; " or least borne out by facts. In fact, there if they were less governed by selfish inhas been something in the blind defer- stincts, they were also less competent to ence for bees analogous to the blind def- gratify generous instincts. One experierence for the clergy. What with their ment of Sir John Lubbock's, if it were monarchical constitution, and their an- made on a bee of average ability and culcient repute, and their formidable stings, ture, would be decisive on this point of and their impressive love for hexagons, intellectual capacity. "He put bee into it has been held a sort of impiety not to a bell-glass, 18 inches long, with a mouth take example by the bees, and still more 6 1-2 inches in diameter, turning the to speak lightly of their virtues. As Sir closed end to the window." If, then, the John Lubbock shows, bees have been bee had had sufficient sagacity to explore assumed to possess the power of commu- its prison, it would have found that at the nicating ideas freely to each other on the end furthest removed from the light there slenderest evidence in the world. We was no obstacle to its escape at all, suspect that these kinds of qualities were though at the end turned towards the ascribed to them rather honoris causâ, light there was no escape. It does not as honorary degrees are given to distin- seem, however, to have occurred to the guished preachers, rather than from bee to try for an egress on the dark side, any clear testimony in favour of the hon-"The bee buzzed about for an hour, orific opinion thus formed of them. Sir when, as there seemed no chance of her John Lubbock has taken great pains to getting out, he released her," - clearly, test their capacities of communicating a bee quite without scientific method, very simple ideas to each other, and has and destitute even of that familiarity with proved either that they do not possess it, the paradoxes of the universe which or, that if they do, they are even more might have suggested to her that her best purely devoted to the selfish system, and way towards the light might well be to are less of communists, than men them- begin by retiring from it. Sir John selves. And as we shall see, the last Lubbock, musing on these phenomena, opinion is not very probable, unless we suggests that the bees and wasps which so attribute very great inequalities of intel- often seem to be idling frivolously in our lectual capacity to the bees, and suppose rooms have simply lost their way, and are at least one individual selected acciden- not so much unprincipled loafers, as tally to have been by chance a bee-idiot. First Sir John Lubbock brought eight bees separately to some honey which he had placed in his sitting-room near the open window. In each of these cases the little busy bee fed with much satisfaction, flew away, and returned no more. Sir John then brought a hive of bees to his sitting-room, placing it between the open window and the honey, while he left open a little postern door in the back of the hive by which those of them which were of an inquiring and enterprising

dull, laborious red-tapists, which cannot originate anything when once off the beaten track of regularly-organized instinct.

We confess to a feeling of satisfaction in the result. Thanks to the didactic writers of the early part of this century, we have been so "sat upon " by bees, as to feel quite a new sense of self-respect at discovering that after all they can't go even a hair's breadth or two out of the beaten track of immemorable Conservatism, without coming to signal grief. But.