shirt-sleeves. Every campaign gives us a new horde. Some die out at
once; others felicitously tickle the public ear and ring far and wide.
They "speak for Buncombe," are Barn-Burners, Old Hunkers, Hard Shells,
Soft Shells, Log-Rollers, Pipe-Layers, Woolly Heads, Silver Grays,
Locofocos, Fire-Eaters, Adamantines, Free Soilers, Freedom Shriekers,
Border Ruffians. They spring from a bon-mot or a retort. The log-cabin
and hard-cider watchwords were born of a taunt, like the "Gueux" of the
Netherlands. The once famous phrase, Gerrymandering, some of our readers
may remember. Governor Elbridge Gerry contrived, by a curious
arrangement of districts in Massachusetts, to transfer the balance of
power to his own party. One of his opponents, poring over the map of the
Commonwealth, was struck by the odd look of the geographical lines
which thus were drawn, curving in and out among the towns and counties.
"It looks," said he, "like a Salamander." "Looks like a _Gerry_-mander!"
ejaculated another; and the term stuck long and closely.

Now and then you have the aristocratic and democratic sides of an idea
in use at the same time. Those who style themselves "Gentlemen of the
Press" are known to the rest of mankind as "Dead Heads,"--being, for
paying purposes, literally, _capita mortua_.

So, too, our colleges are provided, over and above the various dead
languages of their classic curriculum, with the two tongues. The one
serves the young gentlemen, especially in their Sophomoric maturity,
with appropriate expressions for their literary exercises and public
flights. The other is for their common talk, tells who "flunked" and was
"deaded," who "fished" with the tutor, who "cut" prayers, and who was
"digging" at home. Each college, from imperial Harvard and lordly Yale
to the freshest Western "Institution," whose three professors fondly
cultivate the same number of aspiring Alumni, has its particular dialect
with its quadrennial changes. The just budded Freshmen of the class of
'64 could hardly without help decipher "The Rebelliad," which in the
Consulship of Plancus Kirkland was the epic of the day. The good old
gentlemen who come up to eat Commencement dinners and to sing with
quavery voices the annual psalm thereafter, are bewildered in the mazes
of the college-speech of their grandsons. Whence come these phrases few
can tell. Like witty Dr. S------'s "quotation," which never was
anything else, they started in life as sayings, sprin