there ain't no hell," or "If you want to cure homesickness, go back home." Many very popular phrases and proverbs are borrowings from above. "Few die and none resign" originated with Thomas Jefferson; Bret Harte, I believe, was the author of "No check-ee, no shirt-ee," General W. T. Sherman is com- monly credited with "War is hell," and Mark Twain with "Life is one damn thing after another." An elaborate and highly characteristic proverb of the uplifting variety—"So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell"—was first given currency by one of the engineers of the Panama Canal, a gentleman later retired, it would seem, for attempting to execute his own counsel. From humor the transition to cynicism is easy, and so many of the current sayings are at war with the optimism of the majority. "Kick him again; he's down" is a depressing example. "What's the use?" a rough translation of the Latin "Cui bono?" is another. The same spirit is visible in "Tell your troubles to a policeman," "How'd you like to be the ice-man?" "Some say she do and some say she don't," "Nobody loves a fat man," "I love my wife, but you kid," and "Would you for fifty cents?" The last originated in the ingenious mind of an advertisement writer and was immediately adopted. In the course of time it acquired a naughty significance, and helped to give a start to the amazing button craze of ten or twelve years ago—a saturnalia of proverb and phrase making which finally aroused the guardians of the public morals and was put down by the police.
That neglect which marks the study of the vulgate generally extends to the subject of popular proverb-making. The English publisher, Frank Palmer, prints an excellent series of little vol- umes presenting the favorite proverbs of all civilized races, in- cluding the Chinese and Japanese, but there is no American volume among them. Even such exhaustive collections as that of Robert Christy[1] contain no American specimens—not even "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw" or "Root, hog, or die."
- ↑ Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages; New York, 1905. This work extends to 1267 pages and contains about 30,000 proverbs, admirably arranged.
