Notes From Conisboro’

Would you learn the highly intellectual and elevating art of swearing, then come and spend half an hour waiting for a train at Conisboro’ station on a Saturday evening. In less than half the time named you will be able to have the whole vocabulary of filthy invective off by heart. What strikes one as most absurd in this exercise is the paucity and monotony of the expressions used.

Cannot those who delight therein find some more fascinating terms than those which have done service for so many many years. Surely in this go-ahead inventive era something might be achieved in this direction. The compilation of a thoroughly original dictionary could not fail to bring the author into the foremost rank of celebrities.

Whoever would rank high in the attempt would do well to omit all such expressions, the fulfilment of which would bring material injury to the body or spiritual injury to the soul. A timid swearer who has substituted for the more common expression, the term “bless my eyes” may be sneered at by the more daring one, but the actual fulfilment of one would bring happiness, the other sightless misery. All swearers would do well to consider whether they would not confer a benefit on themselves, as well as upon the public at large by abandoning the use of the old threadbare method, until a new and elaborate vocabulary is compiled.

IVANHOE.