 | The sayings of Dr. Bushwhacker, and other learned men |  |
VIII.
Old Phrases.
“FOR my part,” said the Doctor, “I do not see
how we could get along without them. The
old phrases, the idioms, the apothegms of a people are
the gold and silver coins of their language, bearing a proportionate
value, as many hundred times, to the common
stock of words, as these do to the copper currency. Sir,
if you will get the `Lessons on Proverbs,' by Richard
Chenevix Trench, you will find you have a sub-treasury
of wisdom, my learned friend.”
“Do you not think, Doctor, there is a coarseness in
familiar proverbs that diminishes their value in polite
society?”
“No, sir, I do not think so,” replied the Doctor vehemently.
“To be sure, there may be, here and there one
in which an allusion might offend a sensitive mind; but,
generally speaking, they are rather robust, instead of
coarse, strong without being indelicate. Cervantes felicitously
calls them `Sentencias brevas sacadas de la luenga
y discreta experiencia'—short sentences drawn from long
and wise experience. Common enough are they among
sir; proverbs may be called the literature of the
illiterate—another mouthful of the Mumm, sir—thank
you.”
“How do you like that wine, Doctor?”
“Grand, sir; glorious, sir; `Mumm's the word,' sir.
If Shakspeare were living, sir, he would forswear sack,
and say `Mumm'—`a jewel of a wine, sir—Jewel
Mumm.”
“The phrase you have just used, Doctor, is a common
one.”
“ `Mumm's the word?' True, my learned friend. Dr.
Johnson, that stupendous lexicographer, remarks of the
word mumm, it may be observed that when it is pronouneed
it leaves the lips closed, thus,” (lips in sculptured
silence.)
“How did the phrase originate, Doctor?”
“That, sir, is a question I can not answer. There are
phrases, sir, beyond the scope of records, written or
printed, so old, sir, that, to use the words of our friend
Blackstone, `the memory of man runneth not to the contrary'—they
were always in use. Others we can trace at
once to their originals; such as, `How we apples swim,'
to a fable in æsop; or, `To see ourselves as others see
us,' to a poem of Burns; there are legions of phrases
from the Bible, not one of which inculcates a sentiment
not divine in its humanity; there are scores from Shakspeare,
scores from Pope, scores from Young, some from
Spenser, Addision, Congreve, Prior, Sir Philip
Sidney, Gray, Collins, Cowley, our own poets, sir—and
Daniel Webster, sir, Halleck and Irving.”
“There is no fear of a language, Doctor, in which such
coin is current.”
“No, sir; nor of a people! But there are other
phrases which, to the undisciplined ear, seem coarse and
vulgar, yet involving a story clever enough in itself to be
preserved.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, `The gray mare is the better horse.'
We know very well the line is in Prior's Epilogue to
Lucius; but the story from which the phrase is derived
is something like this: A gentleman, who had seen the
world, one day gave his eldest son a span of horses, a
chariot, and a basket of eggs. `Do you,' said he to the
boy, `travel upon the high road until you come to the
first house in which there is a married couple. If you
find the husband is the master there, give him one of the
horses. If, on the contrary, the wife is the ruler, give
her an egg. Return at once if you part with a horse,
but do not come back so long as you keep both horses,
and there is an egg remaining.' Away went the boy full
of his mission, and just beyond the borders of his father's
estate lo! a modest cottage. He alighted from the chariot
and knocked at the door. The good wife opened it
for him and curtesied. `Is your husband at home?'
came, wiping his brows. The young man told them his
errand. `Why,' said the wife, bridling and rolling the
corner of her apron, `I always do as John wants me to
do; he is my master—an't you, John?' To which John
replied, `Yes.' `Then,' said the boy, `I am to give you
a horse; which will you take?' `I think,' said John, `as
how that bay gelding seems to be the one as would suit
me the best.' `If we have a choice, husband,' said the
wife, `I think the gray mare will suit us better.' `No,'
replied John, `the bay for me; he is more square in
front, and his legs are better.' `Now,' said the wife, `I
don't think so; the gray mare is the better horse; and I
shall never be contented unless I get that one.' `Well,'
said John, `if your mind is sot on it, I'll give up; we'll
take the gray mare.' `Thank you,' said the boy; `allow
me to give you an egg from this basket; it is a nice fresh
one, and you can boil it hard or soft as your wife will
permit.' The rest of the story you may imagine; the
young man came home with both horses, but not an egg
remained in his basket.”
“That is a scandalous story, Doctor.”
“True, my learned friend; but after we finish this
Mumm, I will tell you another with a better moral.”
Old Phrases=Continued.
“Let us,” said the Doctor, “take up the familiar,
every day language—the language, sir, not of the drawing
room, but of the street—the language, not of the beau,
but of the b'hoy, sir, and dissect it.” Here the Doctor
rolled up his wristbands, and armed himself with a fruit-knife,
in the most formidable manner. “Let us,” he
continued, tapping the ringing rim of the finger-bowl,
“dissect it, sir, and expose its muscles, ligaments, and
tendons, its veins and its arteries, its viscera, its nerves
and its ganglionic system, and sir, we will find that these
old phrases are the very bones of the system, sir, the
framework that sustains and supports all the rest. Yes,
my learned friend, take even a tissue of slang, and you
will find it full of marrow-bones!”
“Among some people the range of ideas being limited
—”
“The range of ideas being limited,” interrupted the
Doctor, “the range of expression is necessarily limited
also. Yet, you will see how readily, even with a small
stock of words, the b'hoys make themselves understood.
One word passes muster for many, by dint of inflection
and gesture: a single phrase sir, will often convey as
many separate and opposite meanings, as a single string
on Ole Bull's violin will express separate and opposite
used to signify affirmation, confirmation, doubt, interrogation,
irony, triumph, and despair; and a host besides
of shades of sense relative to the subject in hand.
`You'd better believe it,' is sometimes a taunt, or a menace,
as the case may be; sometimes a grave and weighty
piece of advice; and sometimes significant of its own
opposite—that is, `You had better not believe it.' Now
my learned friend, if we could only trace these phrases,
and betimes we will, we would find them to be, not
the property of this generation, but the original expressions
of a people very much fore-shortened in language,
some centuries behind the curtain of Shakspeare; or else
the result, the quotient, of some old story, from which
every thing else had been subtracted.”
“Doctor, pardon me for interrupting you.”
“Willis,” continued the Doctor, “did originate some
phrases, sir, such as `the upper ten thousand.' You see
how it has been trimmed down to `the upper ten,' and
by and by it will be used to signify a class simply, without
any reference to its previous purport. And in this
connection the facile terminal `dom,' which so often has
brought up the rear-guard of a sentence in the papers, is
due to Willis, who struck it out in `japonicadom'—a
most happy and felicitous phrase.”
“Doctor, I would like—”
“Some authors write whole volumes without a catchword—”
“To ask if you—”
“Others again press a score of them in a—”
“Can tell me—”
Chapter. Well, sir?”
“Whether you can tell me what was the origin of the
phrase—`a fish story?,”
“Certainly,” responded Dr. Bushwhacker; “every
body knows that: An old Indian, who had been converted
by the missionaries, got along very well as far as
“Jonah and the whale,' where he faltered a little, but
finally passed over that, and went on. At last he reached
the history of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, in the
fiery furnace. `Me no believe that,' said the Indian.
`But you must believe it,' said the missionaries. The
Indian dissented; but the missionaries cleved to the point
of faith at issue. At last, after a prolonged debate, in
which the Indian distinguished himself by a display of
natural eloquence, the old aboriginal wound up the string
by saying, `Now, I tell you, me no believe that; and
since you make me mad, me no believe too that fish
story!,”
“That is the origin of the phrase, sir, and it is not
only original but aboriginal.”
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