Slang
pal the slang of hell. The author writes to-day in the argot of yesterday; the poet sings in it; the philosopher thinks in it; and only he who has mother-wit enough to pray in it, may win the ear of the Good God, or the frown of the Great Beast.
Much of the slang of Shakespeare’s day has become good idiom in this. Shakespeare, in his most intellectual play, lets Hamlet indulge freely in “quips and cranks and wanton wiles.” This is natural. The spring of laughter and the fountain of tears flow from the same cavern of the heart. That which was slang to the frequenters of the Globe is standard English to those of the modern theatre. Such words as mob, boss, cab, taxi, car, stunt, dope, boob, jazz, and so forth, may all find their place shortly in respectable society. Cervantes and Le Sage, denuded of slang, would cut sorry figures in literature. The writer of to-day who would be read to-morrow should write in slang.
Slang is multifarious in kind. One is heroic, daring, bold, dazzling. Another is
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