INANE JOCULARITIES.
THERE is nothing in the world which produces the sense of mental nausea more completely, or is more certain to turn the intellectual stomach, than the use of certain jocu- larities of speech with which many people think fit to adorn their conversation. The people who seem to find it impossible to speak of an unmarried man except as "a gay bachelor," with whom the sea is always "the briny" or the "herring-pond," and a horse "a fiery steed," who eternally talk about. "Sunday go-to-meeting" clothes, and who have such phrases'- as
"no extra charge," "agitate the tintinalmlator," "the. noxious weed," "the pipe of peace," "forty winks," and " braving the elements," for ever on their lips, are capable of producing a sense of disgust in those who care to see language kept bright and clean, which is absolutely
intolerable. It is difficult to say whether these cant phrases—that is a perfectly proper description of them —are more odious when used consciously, or unconsciously,— that is, by people who believe them to be funny, and intend that their hearers should consider them funny, or by those who have merely caught them up and repeat them like parrots, and without any intention, good or bad. In our own opinion, the use of "common-form" jocularities is most offensive in those who think of them as wit, though most painful in persons who use them unconsciously and as mere methods of expressing their meaning. We feel that those who try to force a laugh out of such expressions as "my downy couch," or " committing matrimony," who squirm into a smile as they ask if " there- isn't room for a little one," or who speak of "japanning. their trotter-cases," might fairly be shot at sight. When. some excellent mother of a large and heavily facetious family catches up, and uses almost unconsciously, such phrases as "getting outside a square meal," "the clerk of the weather," "she's no chicken," or "put on your war-paint ; " and when even the father mechanically talks of "perform- ing his ablations," the sense of pathos overcomes alL other feelings. With such an exhibition before our eyes, we can only feel sung laerymee relilM, and pass by with averted heads. As a rule, however, people who take to the use of verbal jocularities, combine the mental stand- point of those who try to be funny with the hollow sprightliness of mere imitation. They have a half- hearted belief that they are being funny ; but at the same time, their chief reason for talking about " maternal relatives," -and "people of the masculine persuasion," is the fact that they hear those with whom they associate doing the same. They say, "Why this thusness " or, "A fine day for the "ducks!" just as they say " Yes ! " or "No !"
As so many people are jocular without really mean- ing it, it may be worth while to quote some examples of the turns of speech that they should avoid. In all probability, there are thousands of persons of most ex- -emplary behaviour, and of excellent moral character in • other respects, whose speech is inadvertently strewn with the -verbal atrocities against which we are protesting, and who are not in any true sense aware of the shocking exhibition they often make of themselves. Let it not be supposed for a moment that it is only the " minxes " of one sex or the 4"Arries " of the other who are steeped to the lips in joculari- ties. The use of jocularities is by no means exclusively a sin of the vulgar. Plenty of people who would not talk about -" the Marquis," or "Lord Hamilton" when they meant "Lord George," may be heard "recruiting exhausted nature" by a drink from the "flowing bowl," and declaring that they are -" full inside," though they have been very peckish." All sorts and conditions of men and women, boys and girls, are implicated in our charge, and there is no class or set that -can be held blameless. Since, therefore, there are so many unconscious sinners, we propose, as we have said above, -to select some specially bad examples of jocularities in 'order that those in need of conversion may have their -consciences awakened, and so be brought to a better way. Those who have never yet realised that they use -the most atrocious expressions a hundred times a day will be able to see themselves in a mirror, and to under- stand what their pet phrases sound like when presented in cold blood. We will begin with what is perhaps the most ghastly example in a collection of verbal atrocities -placed at our disposal by a champion of what is sound and of good repute in language, thought, and sentiment. We are given to understand that the funny thing, when some one comes near to treading on your feet, is to exclaim, with the requisite vivacity, "Ware wheat I" "Ware wheat," of course, is equal to "Look out for corn," and so "Don't tread upon my toes." Anything more disagreeably foolish and inanely unpleasant it is difficult to imagine. There -is, of course, no harm in talking about corns, but this remote and feeble "jokelet "—to borrow a phrase loved by the jocular—is positively ghoulish. After this, such phrases as "spare my blushes," "to indite an epistle," " to be shot" (i.e., to be photographed), "as the poet hath it," "good after tea," instead of "good afternoon," "playing the giddy garden goat," "the best of everything's good .enough for me," sound almost commendable. They must, however, be avoided like the plague, for so catching and so insidious is the habit of using jocularities, that a man who begins with "spare my blushes," is more than likely to end with "ware wheat." Another very common and very shocking cant phrase is, "it doesn't suit my peculiar style of beauty," and almost as bad are "0 K," i.e., all right, "only his little joke," "I like them, but they don't like me," "there isn't a head-ache in a hogshead," and "how goes the enemy?" There are, in addition, many single words which, by derivation or association, must rank as jocularities. We will, however, only cite one. Can anything be more horrible than the word "toothsome," especially when applied, as we have known it applied, to liqueur P A. glass of " tooth- some Green Chartreuse" is, perhaps, the most nauseous form of words it is possible to imagine. It is far worse than that greasy phrase, "the succulent chop of commerce," which so often passes for wit in the eating-house, when Hunting asks Bunter what he is going to have for dinner this "after-tea."
It will, perhaps, be said that we ought not to draw this indictment against a whole set of words and phrases without giving some reason for the disapprobation with which we have regarded them. All people capable of forming a rational opinion will, we may fairly assume, agree that cheap and conventional jocularities of the sort we have given are to be condemned; but they may still like to have the sources of disgust analysed and investigated. In our opinion, one of the chief reasons why verbal jocularities are so shocking, is to be found in the fact that they are blurred and defaced by usage. They were originally made of somewhat soft metal, and they are now blunted and rubbed into shape- less caricatures of their former selves. They are, in fact, like those worn engravings of pictures which one sees in sea-side lodgings. The original picture may have been well enough, but the ten-thousandth impression is a most revolting object. The shadows and lights are all run together, and the total effect is unbearable. When Diogenes, or whoever it was, asked Aristotle to take " pot-luok " with him, the phrase was bright and clean, meant something, and was sufficiently humorous. Now, however, that it has been used a million times, it is as greasy as one of the 50-centime notes that used to pass current in Italy. "Feeling below par," again, may have been a tolerable Stock-Exchange wit- ticism when Mr. Levison first let it off at the House to an admiring "runner." Now it is so sorry a joke, that in pity the doctors are making it into a technical expression for a condition of health below normal. The first boy, too, who complained of "a bone in his leg" had, no doubt, a right to be proud of his inventiveness ; but who feels inclined to laugh at it now P Turns of phrase intended to be comic are all very well, and should not necessarily be discouraged ; but they must be had in, as the shops say, "fresh-as-fresh." The moment they are the least bit off colour, they not merely cease to amuse, but are justly the cause of loathing, and become things as abominable as eggs that have ceased to be fresh. In their case, too, no one has a right to act like the humble curate who replied : "Fresh enough for me, thank you," when the green shade in his egg had made the wife of his beneficed brother-parson exclaim "Dear me, I am afraid your egg isn't quite fresh." We can keep the unfreshness of our eggs to our- selves, but not so the unfreshness of our jokes. In addition, also, to those worn-out jokes whose ghosts, like the ghosts in Julius Omar, scream and jibber in the public streets, and bear about with them a ghastly mockery of fun, there are jocularities which were never anything but vulgar and dis- gusting. They are disgusting because they are disgusting, and of him who cannot recognise them we can only say—if we are charitably inclined—as we say of a man who has no sense of smell, that he escapes a great deal. No doubt there remains, when all is said and done, a certain scope for private judgment. The best judges of pictures and music never quite agree in their censures. For example, some would condemn "A little bird told me" as a jocularity. To the present writer, the phrase is so venerable and so historic that he cannot place it among jocularities. It was under cover of this form of speech that our ancestors passed to each other some dangerous piece of news :— " Ding-a-ding-ding, I heard a bird sing, The Parliament soldiers Are gone to the King."
That was how the news that Monk was going to bring back Charles, spread among the people who had grown tired of the reign of the Saints. To condemn the old phrase may, for all we know, be to condemn primitive man's first attempt at the use of an indirect mode of expressing his meaning. "The maids who called on Hertha in deep forest glades," doubtless found the phrase invaluable for introducing some woodland on dit of their own invention.
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