10
THE · HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,
THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1998.
This is a Slanging Match, and
Our Three-Day Serial Story Gilbert Frankau
JEZEBEL
Chapter 1
"I gots guarden on de. halt, all you missies! Gyarden on de
vvarden ยน
ܐܢܚiniqL}
hald...
potr
de
gasped Uncle Cato.
Puts One Over
tremor of you would have used the word written "So what?")
ten years ago. The answer is 'Certainly not." "
AN anonymous correspon- is, about four times more dramatic, dent who signs himself moreover, then "to approve." Slang is nearly always dramatic. It hits "Four Englishmen" takes me to the nail of meaning right on the dem hawse clo'cs, Mica Jullet" stick still in his hand, and knocked task for using the word "lousy head. And if that isn't what words nt Julie's bedroom door. He call-"One wonders," he writes, "if whole of which last sentence can be are for, what are they for? (The Julle tossed her crop 10 h'. ed her, called again, but got no flicked the train of her habit over response. Julie, in a her arm and entered the drawing malicious delight, was sprending the room. "Good afternoon, everybody! red dress on her bed. Terribly sorry to be Tatel i hod At last she opened the door the trouble with the colt. You all know tiniest way. "Why Pres Dillard!" when a colt gets high-hended, it's she exclaimed. "Knocking at head, threaded her way through teach him"
him his manners right now,
lady's door! I'm scandalized at the hilarious throng, mingling or
you!" He was gripping his silek, hla her mellow cry with those of the qulously with a tinkling tray laden
passing obse face white with emotion. Suddenly other vendors, for the Mardi with toddles for the gentlemen and that if he did use it on her it would she made the delicious discovery, Gras was at its height, and to small glasses of sherry for the ladies be the greatest thrill of her life morrow the fabulous Proteus and Aunt Belle noticed with dismay "Well," she cried, tauntingly, "did Ball would end the festivities in Cantrell raised his glass and said. you come up here just to stand?"
The black girl, balancing basket of white camelias on her
a blaze of glory.
The business streets were
Oiled
Uncle Cato was
that Julle chose the former, Buck
smiling with cynical eyes. the
Dillard!" with a picturesque hodgepodge of very best health of the future Mrs.
conveyances, well-groomed
men
voices.
Julle
he
Take slang out of a language and sentences become more dignified corpses, Phone, bus, plane (no Now my critle happens to be wrong taxi, yank (to pull hard), rad, rev. apostrophes, please, Mr. Printer), about that particular words he mike-why use the can prove for himself by rending the when the shorter are so definitive? longer words following from Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," published in 1776:
Shall men who sizzle the skies at six miles a minute employ the lan- "You can never after be anything Euage of Spenser, and talk about In it (the Church),' said Pride, but "cleaving the empyrean"? #lousy prebendary.""
Must I write "the individual had become intoxicated with alcoholle He will, as a matter of stark fact, liquor" when all I mean is "the chap have to go back to 1386 and the poet was tight"? Chaucer, who writes, "A lousy jug- gler can deceive thee," for my first bone to pick with America. He My nameless correspondent has a authority.
writes about the "Vocabulary of a defilement. But that vocabulary, Hollywood stars" as though it were
"rings the bell." "hits the target."
"Like hell it does." And, again, "So what?"
"came up here to-to-" He
with it. "Oh, Julie, honey," realized that he could not go through pleaded, "how long must we go of horse "Aren't you going to wish me holding back their
like this sald spirited happiness, too, Buck?"
.. fussing... fighting mounts in the slow-moving
Uke children?" raffle. softly, her words lost In the din of Overhanging balconies wer
les-
"What's the use?" he ans
"Why do you treat me like a chlid tooned with flags bunting, and wered with disconcerting grin.
then?" top-batted elegants ladies in the "You won't get it, marrying a trader.
"Because you behave like one-issue raised, as apart from the parth at least, "gets across," "puts it over," goin' up Nawth" "Pres is not among the humbler holiday-makers.
All the "quality folks"
Ks of New
Chat to remember Orleans
had been oaked
ter-But she was angered by Pres's to an after- noon reception at the stately man- continued absence. san
swaying crinolines of 1850 moucher Buck Cantrell, and I'll thank
of General Bogardus, at which Soon she was on the way to the his unpredictable ward, Mias Julie bank in the family victoria, Aunt Marsdch, was to announce her er Holls by her side, protesting feebly, ragement to Preston Dillard, of the Julle rent Ti Bat, the black boy, with banking firm of Dillard Sons.
for her flance, telling him
at once.
and
a message
u spoiled one!"
"You used to say you liked me like that!" she
pouted, retreating ever so slightly. "You never wanted ine to grow up, you said... re- member?"
"Julle!" He remembered only tuc well, and took her in his arms,
"Want to see my new dress?" she naked sweetly, "the one I got Ted Dillard, younger of the sons, to come to her at
to wear to the Proteus Ball? Yon- had been driving through the loud Mies Julie,
the
bed! Isn't it streets
with
his hero-handsome, Ti Hat miserably, scratchidng his lovely?" hard-drinking Buck
Cantrell
who in
in woolly head, "but he say he ain't "But, Julle," he gasped, "It's the past had more than once been comin-not les' precisely!"
red! You never saw an unmarried the accepted suitor of Ackle Miss
Juile spa
snapped shut her tiny par- girl there in anything but white! Julle. ater they stopped at the St. asol, vaulted from the carriage and You know that! It's only custom, I Charles and quickly made their way was half-way up the bank steps be know-but you've B position to to the famous bar, where General fore Aunt Belle realized it,
maintain and " Bogardus halled them in his most Oh, so he won't come, won't he?" courtly manner. Further on a group she was saying to herself, as the of men were discussing horses and great doors clanged shut behind her when Buck refused to let himself be
drawn
into the
Lautrec,
n big-framed,
argument.orthy sneered,
Creole, took offence, and
You see, gentlemen, Mr. Buck Can-
dont tole him," "sald der it is, on
It
Chapter 2
"Oh!" She was suddenly scorn- "Will you please hold another ful. directors' meeting, so they may de-
But that is by the way-For the
cular word criticised, is a very much bigger one than my correspondent imagines.
Do "breeding and education" de- bar us, as he suggests, from the use of "along"?
Not So Hot MARK you, there are limits. snussy pair of shafts," In my contention it is not only as a description of what the chaster snobbery of the very worst kind to Victorians would have called 122 lay down any such rule. It is highly lady's understandings," still strikes dangerous. Because new words even me as "not so hot." whether written or spoken--are vital
to the development of language; difculty that I should bring myself And it is only with the greatest language being, in the ultimate issue, to describe one of my own pukka only the expression of concrete sahib heroes as "giving his dame a things or abstract thought.
HERE
I Coined Zip
"deevy" (Edwardian
sock on the kisser."
Yet would the newspaper reader at 50 years ago have FERE is a case in point from what "pukka" meant? Do you use understood personal experience.
for "almply Only a few years
ago Imperial divine, darling") or say that any. larise an oldish invention called the Chemical Industries decided to popu- thing "knocked you in the Old Kent-
road"? "Ughtning fastener." Their adver- Slang words and sentences become tising man, Sir Charles Higham, ad corpses, wor
the idea of a stunt luncheon, during life itself, is because language, like
the courre of which a famous actress, stant flux and reflux which modern
the time, ten that night, after the Northern States-by build and you're going to be properiv Mies Peggy O'Neil, should appear in fashion calls "evolution." the rising of the moon. Ted
Cod proud- ing this railroad"
An
AB
Jeft
Too Many Rulos
more words, and that there
cide what I can weart"
"Julle, for heavens take be rea- sonable!"
"Were
you reasonable this after noun?" trell he mad be just done lose "As I said before, gentlemen,
"So that's it, Is It? Nursing your hls lady love-Miss Julle Marsden!" the South is doomed to economic spite!" He gripped her arm. Well, With incredible speed and suavity extinction, unless it is willing to I'm not going to let you! I am call details of the coming
duel
were compete with the enterprise of ing for you to-morrow night at ten arranged, place and weapons as usual;
dressed for the ball-in whitep
a dress entirely done up (and un- "Am I?-Oh, of course, Mr. Dll-done) by the fasteners in question. ly offered himself as Buck's second, Young Pres Dillard was agreeably, lard, ir
501"
Chosen to demonstrate the speed self wire should have avenged the conservative bank directors to his down at her desk and began to pen forming both operations, "See how is only one criterion for their use. insisting ruefully that it was he him conselous that he was winning the moment he was gone she sat of doing and undoing, I said, per- MY contention is that we need sault to bis brother's future bride. way of thinking, and when the book a note to Buck Cantrell. She was easy it is. Zip, it's on. Zlp. It's off." Docs a word, or does it not, convey
they
General Bogardus keeper tiptord up behind him, pluck sure he would not have left his home gravely expressed his regrets at the ed his sleeve whispering that Julle
yel for the place of the duel, but affair, and his conviction that De was outside, he flushed
One man, Commander Ellis, who the speaker's or the writer's exact em- commanded Zeite, the mulatto girl, happened to hear me, ran straight dramatic manner to the majority of meaning in the shortest and most Lautrec was unworthy of the mettle barrassment, and excused himself as to deliver it to him with all speed. back to his office
and destroyed a gentleman. When Buck and Ted arrived, they
Some time later Buck might have every single pamphlet hended "The his hearers or readers? If it does "Well. Mr. Dillard," 'Julle said been seen with the letter as he and New Lightning Fastener."
-even at the risk of shocking some spacious
rooms of the with qulet menace, "Are you coming Ted rode
purist-let the word stand. Bogardus home a swirl of hoop- with me
of conflict. skirts, wagging tongues and waving "Julle, honey, try to understand! It was an amazingly short time fans. Everybody who was anybody This is as important!"
ten when Julie, peering down was present--except Julle herself- "I suppose it isn't Important," she into the rocket-lighted street and her fance Fres Dillard. Auni retorted, with narrowing eves, "that Buck Cantrell, in immaculate even Belle was all but in hysterics about I've spent a month having my ball ing garb, step from his carriage. her niece's absence as she overheard dress made for to-morrow night. "Back so soon?" she cried, run- two of her guests calllly mulling her and that you promised to come and ning down to the gate to meet him.
"Late at her own party! Imagine! pose that it's important what I wer
a whisper. "Did you kill see it fitted! In the don't sup- The in to the Ball! It's only you
Julie he
of
found the
over,
03
mother said before me, is the polite
queens!"
ness of
"Pollteness, darling, has never been one of Julie's virtuesi"
really!
well as he could.
with
or are you not?"
11
to the pla.rough the riotous crowds
after
BOW
answered
(To be continued to-morrow)
He substituted my slong word "Zlp," and it has become perfectly
The words we use are invariably good English ever since.
the expression of our personalities. Among the greatest dangers of our "counterstrafe," you will not find in as the result of too many rules,
Another word of my coining, day is the stereotyping of personality the dictionary. But "strate" is there. Tommy's mispronunciation of "be- Chaucer to Kipling, never followed And So is blighty"originally The best writers English, from fall," signifying "leave across the rules. They only adhered to prin- water" from India, and subsequent- cipies.
I do not clair n place among that purist is on his own lips to-morrow what I mean
The word which shocks to-day's select band. But I do claim to write clearly, succinctly, unless ho happens to be one of understandably, and dramatically.
Accordingly. I shall continue to thong High Court judges who can
use such words as "lousy," or even still protest at the use of "O.K."
"bilge," until the cows come home As a verb "to okay" is perfectly or at least three other Englishmen understandable to the majority. It object.
that's Important! I don't suppose uneasily, I don't fightly follow crudly a light wound. Mr. La Cour and the rest of the big I never did him that bad! By Zing could possibly get along that red dress of yours! It's like with
a house afire" Then he "I surely sympathize with Pres
became "Julle-right now I'm having the
serious. "Miss Julle--what Dillard! Such gentleman!
you Oh, fight of my life in there and want me for, anyhow?" here comes Tedf Good afternoon, fight! I'v
I've got to get brick! Run
"I want you to take me to the dear boy! Isn't this exciting?
to-night along now, and later
Proteus Ball!" think
your brother is the luckiest Julle left in fury, drove to her
to you and we'll man in the whole world. Tell me, Ted, wasn't Mr. Cantrell dressmaker, ordered villainously just crushed at losing her?" Ted's red dress to be delivered that eve- boyish grin changed to a scowl, ning in spite of Aunt Belle's pro- "Buck Cantrel{[” he sald coldly.
festations and ordered the black "It'd take more than any girl to driver to take them home. crush Bucki Look at him over there Pres Dillard was accosted by Dr. now, makin' 'em roart Does he Livingstone, oldest of the directors, jooked crushed?”
after the meeting ended. He ven- Julle, at the moment. WOR dils- tured to say that in his day a man mounting in front of the house, who had the sort of trouble he was Twenty, slim and imperlous, wear- evidently having with Miss Julle, ing the graceful riding habit of the would cut hickory, use it on her. period, the ran lightly up the steps grease the welts and then buy her and entered the great hall. "Praise a diamond brooch!
be, Miss Julle!" "Uncle Cato cried, Determined to be arm, Pres has- "Mis' Belle been nigh onto a nt" tened to Julie's house, where his now The mulatto maid pushed forward, attitude was highly approved "I done fald out yo
party
dress, Aunt Delle and the General.
by
Miss Julie!" "Thanks, no, Zettel The periurbed young man bound- Got to go in to my guests!" "Not in ed up the stairs, his slim walking
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MAN-PROOF
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KICHARD DIX
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