AMERICA TO-DAY
the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next" to the fact, as he himself would say—
"You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the deck. . . . Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell you you're a two-spot, and if you come into the same part o' the town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get back at you people. . . . If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days. . . . But this same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any time she comes in."
I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."[1] But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr. Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the
- ↑ Extract from a letter to the Chicago Evening Post: "I do not at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured people in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and a trailer, and he said, 'No; just one car.' And I told him right there that I could not agree with him."
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