380
��rVoi,, v.. No. 118.'
��than that of the combined ex[>ei'ience table of the English companies. Above the age of thirty, the American morlality is decidedly leas than the English, while at the earlier agea it is greater. The American table shows a maxi- mum of advantage over the English experience about the age of fifty. The deaths at this age are about one in seventj'- three by the American table, while the English tabic gives one death in sixty at this age. The experience before ua greatly increases this discrepancy on the two Sides of the Atlantic. At the age of fifty, the Connecticut company has only one death in ninety-three, against the numbers just stated for the English and American tables respectively. Perhaps the case is seen in the strongest light by reraarkiog that the actual mortality' at the ages from thiiteen to twenty has been apprecia- bly the same as at the agea from forty-six to fitly. Whether thia extraordinary mortality is due to some special cause, is not clearly Stated. If the lives which have been accepted by the company are representative ones of their class, it would seem that 3'oung Ameri- cans are subject to some extraordinary liabil- ity to death.
The insured are divided into forty-nine classes of occupations. It will perhaps sad- den the reader to learn that travelling- agents, among whom book-agents are undouhtedlj' classed, seem to have the greatest viability of all. Taking them and lumber-roen together, the death-rate is less than half that gi\en by the tables. Dentists come thiitl, and meet witb the same fortunes as professors and teachers: for both classes the mortality is six- tenths that of the tables. How little mere occupatioa has to do with viability, is shown by the fact, that, while bankers and capital- ists suffer one-fourth less, brokers, speculators, and operators suffer twelve per cent more than the tabular mortality. Officers of the navy, and of ocean and sailing vessels, have suffered the greatest comparative mortalitj' of all, having died twice as fast as the general average of the insured, Thia is no doubt to be attributed to the civil war, which oc- curred during the time covered by the experi- ence. Taking out this case as exceptional, the greatest mortality of all would be found amongst liquor refiners and dealers, bar-keep- ers, landlords, etc. This is quite in accord with general experience.
It is much to be desired that the mortality Btatislica of the census should be placed on a better basis. If the census office were to be made a permanent one, we might expect such a result lo be attainable. . S. Newcomu-
��AMERICAN FLASH LANGUAGE IN 1798.
Tne cant or flash laugu^e, or thieves' jar- gon, was scarcely known, even by name, in the United States, until attention was drawn to it some forty years ogo by the pnblication of Ains- worth's ' Rook wood ' and 'Jack Sheppard,' followed by Dickens's 'Oliver Twist." Even then it was regarded as a purelj' English prod- uct; and it was not until 1859 that Mr. G. W. Matsell, chief of police in New- York City, pub- lished a little work upon this dialect, showing that it had been to some extent transplanted to this side of the Atlantic. I aro not aware that any mention has ever been made of the fact that there exists a full glossary of thia thieves' jargon, as spoken nearly a century c^o at the Castle in Boston harbor (now Fort Independence), which was used down to the j-ear 17il8 asastate penitentiary. The reason for this neglect lies, no doubt, in the fact that the book in which tills glossary is given — 'The life and adventures of Henry Tufts ' (Dover, N.H., 1807) — is an exceedingly rare one, having been, it is said, suppressed by the au- thor's sons. It is not to be found in any pub- lic library in Cambridge or Boston; and the only copy I have ever seen was picked up by myself at an old book-store, many years since, and was presented to the Worcester, Mass., city library. In a paper to be published elsewhere, I have given some account of this singular book; but this glossary of terms deserves a separate treatment as a contribution toward the history of the American speech. There is nothing more curious than the vitality of a class of words never employed in goo<l society, and never admitted into any dictionary. While we aU claim theoretically that vocabularies, and even academies, are necessary for the preserva- tion of a language, we yet find in practice that these base-born brats, these children of thieves and outcasts, have a vitality of their own. The profane or indecent phrases which boys hear at school, and which they repeat with bated bi'eath if at all — these same words were heard at school by their grandfathers, and have led a hardy and disreputable existence ever since; yet they remain unchanged, and time has not, as Sir Charles Pomander said of his broken statues, ' impaired their indeli- cacy.' Tufts's list does not, for a wonder, stray into the domain of impropriety, though the rest of his book does; but he gives many words that can be traced through other simili^ dictionaries, mauy thai occur iu bis glossary alone, and others Ibat are now familiar, and are commonly supposed to be recent. I hare
��I
��� �
