 | Saratoga in 1901 |  |
CANT WORDS IN 1901.
Cant words, I remember, used to be the mode at Saratoga years
ago. Swell, nobby, spooney, jolly, loud, bore, and a half-dozen
other flash words, “indicated,” as Dr. Holmes said, “the intellectual
bankruptcy of many very genteel idiots,” who didn't live
at our hotel. They talked in those days all day and never got
out of the same time-worn vocabulary. These words were like
X, Y, and Z in algebra. They represented unknown quantities
or qualities which “swell” people could not command
language to describe precisely.
Now when I used to talk
to Dann Piatt and Mark
Twain — (poor fellows, they
died a good many years
ago!)—when I used to talk to
those kind of fellows who
really understand the king's English
(over the left), I was only
too glad to rest upon these cant
words and phrases. I confess I
rather liked them. It was so easy
to talk when you could thus cut off the corners
of language.
I overheard, one day thirty years ago, the
following dialogue between the masters of this
bob-tail vernacular:
It was a “clever” dialogue between a young
Englishman, born in New York, and a young
Fifth-avenue belle, arrayed in a dress from
Worth's—
“Like Brown?” asked Miss Smith, pulling
on her six-button glove.
“Yes, rother, but yeu kneuw he's too `swell' for me, yeu
kneuw,” replied Mr. Jones, buttoning up his Pool coat.
“Now,” said my uncle Consider Perkins, who lived in those
days, and who listened with swelling indignation to Mr. Jones'
reply, “if you refer to my friend Mr. Brown, of Grace Church,
I beg to say that you are wrong. He's not swelled at all. It is
all the result of a good `square,' healthy diet and gentle Sunday
exercise. No, sir! Mr. Jones, there is no swell there—not
a bit of it!”
“Pshaw! Mr. Perkins, we don't mean your poky Mr. Brown
at all. We mean `natty' Fred Brown, of Fifth-avenue.”
“Oh!” and my uncle went on reading “Hervey's Meditations.”
“Fred drives a `nobby rig,”' continued Miss Smith.
“Yes, awful; but deuced `loud.”'
“`Jolly' with the fellows, and awful `spooney' on the girls,
eh?”
“`You bet!' `regular brick!' but he `sours' on them quick.
Don't mean business, Fred don't; he's `spooney,' then `chills
all at once!”
“Like the sermon yesterday?”
“Pshaw! too slow! `Rum,' eh, to hear old Swope pitch into
the Jews? Did you notice Fanny Green laughing when he read
about David `going for' Goliah? Ha! ha! too funny. How
did you like the singing? Just `too lovely,' wasn't it?”
“Oh, `so-so.' Fact is, I've `chilled' on last year's operas.
They're a `bore.' I'm afraid our `singing business' is going to
“bust up.”'
“Oh, awful! that would be perfectly dreadful! shocking!!
perfectly atrocious!!!” &c., &c.
NEW AMERICAN DICTIONARY.
I found, on examination, that these terms were almost all
foreign importations; they came straight from London. They
were simply the literary coinage which passes among the London
dinner.
It wounds my national pride to think that we had to depend
entirely on England for these “cant” phrases. It was a sad
thing that in bob-tail grammar, that great mark of civilization,
we should be, indeed, behind London. With tears in my eyes,
I turned away from the sad spectacle—a nation's humiliation. I
resolved that we should be no longer eclipsed—that we should
“bang” the tail of language as well as they.
So in 1901 I invented a new dictionary, or appropriated one
which was being used by a young lady friend.
Startling invention!
And so simple! In five minutes' practice you can express
precisely, by the terms of this new discovery, every sentiment or
emotion of the human heart. Linley Murray, who caused so
much unhappiness to our forefathers, is at last superseded—
eclipsed—“thrown into the shade.”
Thoughts are now expressed in percentages. One hundred is
the superlative or the par basis of every emotion, quality, quantity,
or sentiment. The rate below one hundred gives the precise
positive and comparative value of the object rated.
See how in our conversations we now eclipse the old “swells”
of the Brevoort House and the cockney chaps of Rotten Row!
“How did you like Longfellow before he died, Miss Smith?”
“100.”
“Tennyson?”
“75.”
Now, hate or disgust, which are negative emotions, or rather
passions, are expressed by the negative sign (-) before the percentage,
while positive passion of love, as Lord Kame calls it, or
adoration, is expressed by the plus sign (+) after the percentage.
“How did you like poor dead Walt Whitman?”
“—5.” (She hates him.)
“Is Mr. Brown good-looking?”
“60.”
“Dress well?”
“80.”
“How do you like him?”
“95.” (Strong friendship.)
“How is the weather?”
“100.” (Beautiful.) (25, shabby; 10, atrocious.)
“What theatre do you like best?”
“Wallack's 95; Booth's 90; Niblo's 50; Bowery, 20.”
“Is Smith clever?”
“—10.” (He's a fearful “bore.”)
“Do you love me, darling?”
“75.” (Cool friendship.)
“How do you like Mr. Thompson, the banker?”
“105+.” (Heavens! She's in love with him.)
“Like to dance the round dances?”
“120+.” (Adores them!)
“Fond of the square dances?”
“—25.” (Despises them.)
“Will you be sure to give me first `round' at the next Inauguration
Ball?”
“100.”
“How was Mr. Tweed for honesty?”
“—75.” (How much nicer than to say he stole!)
“Was Mr. Greeley honest before he died?”
“100 generally, 95 with Mr. Seward, 75 with Conkling, 60
with Grant, 5 with Murphy, and about 50 on Protection.”
“Do you think Mr. Dana used to love General Grant before
they died?”
“—374½.”
“How much did Grant use to care?”
“0,000,000,000.”
I wrote this new dictionary out first for the Galaxy, thirty
years ago, and gracious you ought to have heard the critics “go
for it.” They said I'd been “stealing John Phœnix's thunder.”
one man. If I say “it is very hot” shall some one accuse me
of flaguesism because Dickens said the same thing in Oliver
Twist?
If John Phœnix says it is a 60 hot day, can't I say Tweed is
75 honest?
If you describe a drunken scene, you will undoubtedly get in
some of the situations in Toodles, and because I use numerals
for adjectives, I get into the ground of John Phœnix! Has John
Phœnix got a patent on numerals? I say now that I wrote this
article before I ever saw John Phœnix's article—that with me it
was original, and that on looking at John Phœnix article, I don't
see similarity enough between the two to necessitate the destruction
of either.
RITUALISM IN 1901
CANDLES VERSUS THE SUN.
The greatest changes I found had taken place in religion.
The Ritualists carried everything before them. Our good old
Bishop Potter finally became a Catholic before he died. He
became a strong believer in Candles, Kerosene, and Manhattan
Gas, and he recommended all the churches to blind their windows
and burn tallow candles to the glory of the Lord. Then the
Pope dressed him up in a scarlet chasuble, made him a Cardinal,
and then he died. They wouldn't let Mr. Beecher nor Mr.
Clafin come to his funeral because they stuck to the old-fashioned
faith till they died. Cardinal Potter called them
heretics. I myself forgot the teachings of good old Bishop
Delancey who confirmed me; and joined first the Ritualists, and
now with Father Ewer, Father Brown, and Father Noyes. I am
a strong Catholic.
My dear mother in the country, held out against Ritualism for
many years, but I finally converted her to the true faith. I wrote
her many letters which were read in the home church. It was a
long time before she took to kerosene and candles. She
frequently said: “O Eli, I cannot forget
the teachings of the good old orthodox
Episcopal Church, of Bishop Delancey
and the early Fathers, and go off with
Cardinal Potter and your new-fangled
religion of candles and Manhattan gas.”
Once in 1880, after I had written
my dear mother a long letter, begging
the following reply:
My dear Son Eli:—Your St. Alban's High Church letter was
read with a great deal of interest here in our home church, but it
made us all feel very bad. We are sorry that you have gone to
the wicked city, where you so soon forget the simple teaching of
the old Church of your childhood, and go headlong into these
false, new-fangled notions about Ritualism. You ask us to board
up the windows of the old church, bar out the sunlight, and burn
flickering tallow candles. You ask us to tear out the old galleries
of the church, to dismiss the girls from the choir, and dress the farm
boys up in night-gowns, as you do in the city. You ask us to do
away with good old Dr. Watts and sing opera songs selected by
the organist of St. Alban's and arranged for the boy singers by
the middle fiddler of a German band. You ask me to tear up
our charts and maps, and decorate the church with blue and gold
“hallelujahs” and gilded crosses. O my son, we cannot do it!
We prefer to go on in the good old way. If God will not save
us because we do not burn candles—if He will not forgive our
sins because we look straight up to Heaven, and confess them
directly to Him, then I fear we must perish. My dear boy, does
not the Bible say: `I said I would confess my sins unto the
Lord, and so THOU forgavest the wickedness of my sin?' Then
do not, I pray you, my son, depend upon any forgiveness of sin
which men may grant. Eli, if you are bad, do not expect any
man to forgive you, but go right straight to your Maker, the way
your mother taught you in your childhood. Suppose you
confess your sins to a priest?
“Who will the Priest confess to?”
“Why, to the Bishop.”
“Who will the Bishop confess to?”
“To the Archbishop.”
“Who will the Archbishop confess to?”
“To the Cardinal.”
“Who will the Cardinal confess to?”
“To the Pope.”
“Who will the Pope confess to?”
“To the —, no, to God!”
“Now, Eli, the Pope is very wise to confess his sins straight
up to God, and you should do the same.”
I hear they have a very high altar and a good deal of ritual
nonsense in one of your churches away up-town—I think it is
the Church of “St. Mary the Virgin,” on West Forty-fifth
street. Won't you go up there and see just what they are doing,
and tell those two young fellows who call themselves Father
Brown and Father Noyes, if they want to be Catholics, to go
and be Catholics, but not to pretend to be Protestants and then
steal the ritual of the Catholic Church?
Write me again, and our good Elder Cleveland says he will
read your letter at our Thursday's prayer-meeting.
This was my reply:—
My dear Mother:—Your letter has caused me much anxiety.
After sleeping with it under my pillow, I went up yesterday, as
you requested, to the Church of “St. Mary the Virgin,” on West
Forty-fifth street, near Seventh avenue. Since my conversion to
the High Church Ritualistic faith, my dear mother, I have usually
attended Dr. Ewer's church. I love Dr. Ewer.
I see new beauties in Ritualism every day. The blazing
candles, the darkened windows, the pomp and procession of boys
in night-gowns, and the awe which I feel for Fathers Ewer,
Brown, and Noyes, when they turn their backs on the audience
and drink wine to the glory of the Lord, is beyond description.
I've thrown away the old Prayer Book which Bishop Delancey
one, with all the places marked—when to get up and down.
Most everything has been changed since you taught me the old-fashioned
ritual for confirmation, but, dear mother, it is so much
nicer now. Don't you remember where it used to read, “O,
Lord, have mercy on us, miserable sinners, and help us to keep
this commandment?”
Well, we don't have that any more in our High Churches. The
old-fashioned people down at Grace Church say that now, but
we don't think it is nice to stand up before everybody in the
church and confess that we are “miserable sinners.” So we
have done away with that, and we have instituted a private
confessional, where we all go on the sly and confess our sins to
Fathers Brown, and Noyes, and Ewer. We hire boys in night-gowns
to stand up publicly in the church and sing about being
“miserable sinners.” But, then, no one can hear what they do
sing, so they don't care. When we confess, we go in and kneel
down and talk to the Fathers through a hole, while he sits and
smokes a meerschaum; and then, with a word or two, he forgives
us, and we go home feeling pure and happy again. I know the
wicked Publican confessed his sins straight to God when he stood
in the market place and pounded his breast; and Christ said he
did right,—but, dear mother, things have changed since then.
How do you think we Fifth-avenue people would look confessing
our sins in public? No, we rather go round and confess them to
Dr. Ewer on the sly.
CHURCH OF THE IMITATION CANDLES.
But you ask me to write about the services at the “Church of
St. Mary the Virgin.”
Well, I went up there yesterday. It is a High Church—
higher than St. Alban's. It is where our dear Bishop Potter
trains his candidates for the Catholic Church. Here they practice
the High Church business a little while under the instructions
pasture as Father Bradley did.
The Low Church people say a good deal about our thirty-six
burning candles here. They don't know that they are not
candles at all, but only china imitations, with streams of weak
Manhattan gas spurting out of the top. We fool them entirely.
Why, every time those Low Church people attack our candle
business, every time they attack that point, they only attack the
Metropolitan Gas Company, and they are not weak enough to
stand it. If we had good gas here, as they do have in Cincinnati
and Chicago, we gas-light Christians could stand any
amount of Low Church opposition. Sometimes I think if the
Lord knew we were burning thirty-six streams of foul-smelling
gas to His glory, instead of real candles, that He would be
displeased. And sometimes I think instead of burning so much
gas where it does no good, except to make a big show, that if
we should give the money to poor widows who spoil their eyes
tyring to sew by feeble lights on side streets, that it would be
better; but such wicked thoughts, Dr. Ewer says, are the workings
of Satan upon my mind.
One wicked man-of-the-world, Rufus Hatch I
think, who gave $25,000 to a Low Church, told
Dr. Ewer that the candles were silly humbugs, and
that the china imitations were d—d frauds on a
humbug—frauds on the people, and
contemptible attempts to deceive the
Lord. Since that time this wicked
man has been detected giving money
to some suffering orphan children
who didn't belong to any church at
all!! But you poor country Christians
can never go into the High
Church business, because you have
no gas works. The new religion of
imitation candles is reserved exclusively
for us in the city, my dear mother.
But to our new High Church service.
I got there early, and took my seat directly in front of the
new $10,000 marble altar which Mr. Murray, a shrewd downtown
High Churchman, has just contributed to “St. Mary's.”
The six pews in front of me were occupied by the nuns. Yes,
dear mother, we have nuns now in our church. They dress in
long black dresses, just like the nuns of the Catholic Church.
Bishop Potter's idea is to get the people used to all these
Catholic forms and institutions, and then it will be only a step
for our Jesuit Priests like Father Brown and Noyes to lead them
over to Rome. On the pews in front was this notice:
THIS PEW
Is Reserved
for THE SISTERS OF ST. MARY.
The altar was gorgeously arranged. It is, I suppose, twenty-five
feet high, and made of solid marble. On it are forty
imitation candles, and during the last end of the service they are
all blazing with Manhattan gas. If the gas were better, we
could make a better show still, but the gas companies here are
all made up of Low Churchmen, who do not have the fear of the
Lord before their eyes. Dr. Ewer says that he will be darned if
he will forgive the wicked New York gas companies.
When the service commenced I opened my prayer book, the
one Bishop Delancey gave me, but I could not keep the place.
When we used to stand up, they all sat down, and when we used
to respond, the boys in night-gowns looted up a chaunt in high
tenor. Alas! my dear mother, my early training is of no
account, and now I must learn it all over again. How can I
ever be saved and not be able to get up and down with the boys
in night-gowns? In the anguish of my soul I cry, “Would that
I never had been born, for what does it profit a man to gain
the whole world and not be able to dance to the candleistic
ritual?”
The regular service commenced by loud singing away in the
rear of the big $10,000 altar. It sounded like the distant chorus
in the Black Crook. Pretty soon the doors burst open, and a
boy disguised as a girl in a black skirt and white night-gown,
entered carrying a pewter plate. He bowed to altar, put plate
on table, bowed to altar again and slid out side door.
Now twenty boys and seven men came in with great pomp
all dressed in red, and white, and blue dresses, with night-gowns
over them, and bearing a large cross.
Boy lighted more candles with a long pole, then bowed to
$10,000 altar, and slid to rear. Boy with big Son of Malta collar,
carried Father Brown's dress train, as Father Brown stood with
back to audience and addressed $10,000 altar. Man disguised
in women's clothes and wearing big red masonic sash, now saluted
$10,000 altar, kissed sash, and preached sermon. He abused
the poor Jews, but didn't say a word about the wicked French
Internationals who killed forty poor priests and a bishop.
Boys now brought wine and napkin to Father Brown. Father
Brown made sign of cross to $10,000 altar, drank wine, wiped
lips, and saluted altar again. More candles lighted by boys.
More wine drank. Drank wine. Imbibed wine and saluted
altar. Guzzled wine to glory of altar. Two men in night-gowns
advanced and drank wine. Then bowed as in the lancers.
Drank wine. All marched off stage. Sexton disguised in
black alpacca dress, put out lights. Audience left.
Now, mother, I write you just what I saw. I don't know the
names of things, so I only call things just as they seem to me.
Then, dear mother, we all went home. We were much impressed
by these services. The children don't get to sleep as
they do in the country. Our brilliant fireworks are as good as
fourth of July to amuse the children.
Now, all this show didn't cost much. The forty gas jets cost
say $2.50 for the day. If they had been candles they would
have cost $3. The washerwoman's bill for keeping the night
the whole thing. Now, to hold an audience with smart men
like Drs. Chapin and Beecher and Dr. Tyng costs, I suppose,
$250 per day. Think, dear mother, what a saving it is. These
intellectual preachers do cost so much, and when you can draw
the crowd just as well with the cheap fireworks, isn't it better?
Any darned fool of a minister can run the gas works just as well
as Dr. Bellows or such gifted divines as Dr. Morgan or Dr.
Montgomery.
Now, my dear mother, let me beg you again to dismiss our
old preacher up in the country. Go into the candle business.
Dress up the eighteen district school boys in girls' clothes and
night-gowns. Have opera bouffe, and you will crowd the church
every Sunday and knock the Baptists and Methodists into a
cocked hat. Dismiss Mr. Wood, the old leader of the choir, and
sing, not “Jerusalem, my happy home,” but “New York, my
happy home,” set to music by the middle fiddler of a German
band.
Ewer and Brown and Noyes are right. Their heads are level.
What if John preached in the altarless wilderness, and Christ
promulgated Christianity from the barren sides of the Mount of
Olives? They were old-fashioned. We have the new religion
which comes through $10,000 marble altars, and the new forgiveness
for sin which comes, not from God, but from Ewer and
Brown and Noyes. What if St. Paul said, “Ye have built an
altar to the unknown God,” and Daniel in his sublime wrath
overturned the brazen candlesticks of Babylon, and shouted:
“So these be the Gods ye worship!”
I tell you, mother, pure religion does not come in the simple
sunlight—in the open fields, but it comes in the beautiful glare
of Manhattan gas-light, in the sickly fumes and lovely stench of
oxydized rottenness. Religion is no longer simple and childlike,
but it comes with an army of banners, and with twenty men
and boys, disguised as women, dressed up in night-gowns, and
the God of spirit, the invisible, but He exists in the mechanisms
of men. They have made Him into wafers, into sour wine, and
He lives in dingy pictures in the Greek Church, in mouldy
images in the Romish, and in high altars, in scarlet night-gowns,
and in Manhattan gas jets in the new Church of progressive
Yankeedom. God is not the great invisible One, whom you
imagine in the country. He is not the great all-seeing Spirit
whom the blind man can worship in utter darkness and without
candles. He is not the Spirit whom the deaf man can worship
without the songs of the opera looted out by the middle fiddler
in an orchesta of imported Dutchmen. He who made the sun—
who said “Let there be light” and there was light, sighs for
the flickering candle, and He who thunders from Mount Sinai
and plays upon the tree tops with the whirlwinds, sighs for the
penny whistles and pewter bugles, yea, looks with admiration
upon the new religion of the Manhattan Gas Works.
Uncle Consider, who has just returned from Africa, sends love.
He has been invited to accept the position of Chaplain to the
Fifth Avenue Hotel.
This letter did a great deal of good. It converted my mother
to the true faith. They dismissed the choir in the country, tore
up the old hymn books of Dr. Watts, and did away with their
cheap-without-money-and-without-price religion, and started out
with the fireworks. The farm boys were disguised as girls, and
looted high opera, and the girls who used to wear white muslin
dresses, and whisper in Mr. Wood's choir, became serious,
sensible nuns. The windows of the church were darkened, and
now not a single ray of God's sunlight can get in to disturb the
gorgeous flicker of the candle. They darken the church windows
to God's sunlight, just as they darken the windows of the soul
with the thick veil of dogma and superstition.
| Saratoga in 1901 | |