Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/148

 becomes respectable and boasts of heraldry. The great soul of mankind is a tumbling sea of light and darkness. What is its destiny? We think of it and shudder. The shudder is slang.

Slang is endowed with perpetual and disreputable youth. The paradox of it is: if it survive youth it becomes admirable idiom. Slang is emotive, symbolic, intellectual. It is the most entrancing element of language, because it displays so many unsuspected and diverse forms of thought. It is the mirror of human character: traits of the populace are set forth as by reflection from fragments. Slang retains fugitive moans and furtive smiles. If we were wise enough, we should be able to read in it an explanation of human misery, and perhaps the source of happiness. It should tell us the reason why the children of men are tortured for their heritage of feeling. It might even explain the absence of compassion in the scheme of things.