Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/137

 To some of us language is like a landscape: various, diverse, mysterious. There are shining peaks and blue skies, and over all the glory of color. There are jungles, also, and dismal swamps. These are alive with things. The leaves rustle, claws protrude, fangs gleam, eyes glare: everything threatens; the vitality is hideous.

Slang is one of the most interesting of all linguistic phenomena. There is nothing strange about it as a sociologic phenomenon. For truly, “it is the language of wretchedness”; but it also is the speech of joy. It is everywhere and it glides through everything: commerce, business, the professions, gambling and other forms of thievery, intimate conversation, sports and play, love-making and war, art, science, and religion. Now and then it becomes stable; oftener it is ephemeral—too full of dialect’s local color to be intelligible generally as slang.

The mother talking to her babe speaks the argot of angels. The murderer hisses to his