ant thing: thick'uns and
thin'uns; two quid, five bob; tanners and coppers. And they have a
good body of expressive and colourful speech. "On the rocks" is a neat
and poetic way of saying "down and out." It is really not necessary to
add the word "resources" to the expression "on his own." A "tripper"
is a well-defined character, and so is a "flapper," a "nipper," and a
"bounder." There had to be some word for the English "nut," as no
amount of the language of John Milton would describe him; and while the
connotation of this word as humour is different with us, the
appellation of the English, when you have come to see it in their
light, hits off the personage very crisply. To say that such a one
"talks like a ha'penny book" is, as the English say, "a jolly good
job." And a hotel certainly is presented as full when it is pronounced
"full up." A "topper" would be only one kind of a hat. Very well,
then it is quite possible, we see, to be "all fed up," as they say in
England, with English slang.

Humorous Englishmen sometimes rather fancy our slang; and make naive
attempts at the use of it. In England, for instance, a man "gets the
sack" when he is "bounced" from his job. So I heard a lively
Englishman attracted by the word say that so and so should "get the
bounce."

In writing, the Englishman usually employs "the language." He has his
yellow journals, indeed, which he calls "Americanised" newspapers. But
crude and slovenly writing certainly is not a thing that sticks out on
him. What a gentlemanly book reviewer he is always! We have here in
the United States perhaps a half dozen gentlemen who review books. Is
it not true that you would get tired counting up the young English
novelists who are as accomplished writers as our few men of letters?
The Englishman has a basketful of excellent periodicals to every one of
ours. And in passing it is interesting to note this. When we are
literary we become a little dull. See our high-brow journals! When we
frolic we are a little, well, rough. The Englishman can be funny, even
hilarious, and unconsciously, confoundedly well bred at the same time.
But he does have a rotten lot of popular illustrated magazines over
there compared to ours.

When you return from a sojourn of several months in the land of "the
language" you are immediately struck very forcibly by the vast number
of Americanisms, by the richness of our popular speech, by the "punch"
it has, and by