Page:Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct) And Two Other Reminiscences.djvu/22

that common property of the vulgar and fashionable—slang. The apt phrase falls and applause follows, and then down it goes. The essential feature of slang is words misapplied; the essential distinction of a coarse mind from one refined, an inability to appreciate fine distinctions and minor discords; the essential of the vulgar, good example misused. First the fashionable get the apt phrase, and bandy it about in inapt connections until even the novelty of its discordance has ceased to charm, and thereafter it sinks down, down. Fin de siècle and cliché have, for instance, passed downward from the courts of the fashionable among journalists into the unspeakable depths below. Soon, if not already, fin de siècle gin and onions and haddocks will be for sale in the Whitechapel-road, and Harriet will be calling Billy a "cliché faced swine." Even so do ostrich feathers begin a career of glory at the Drawing-Room and the fashionable photographer's, and, after endless re-dyeing, come to their last pose