of the “Eclipse of Faith” and the “Suspense of Faith,” of “liberal” Christians, (with no reference to the contribution-plates,) of “subjective” and “objective” sermons, “Spurgeonisms,” and “businessmen’s meetings.”  And we can never think without a smile of that gifted genius, whoever he was, who described a certain public exercise as "the most eloquent prayer ever addressed to a Boston audience." He surely created a new and striking idiom.

The boys do, as Young America should, their share.  And the sayings of street urchins endure with singular tenacity.  Like their sports, which follow laws of their own, uninfluenced by meteorological considerations, tending to the sedentary games of marbles in the cold, chilly spring, and bursting into base-and foot-ball in the midsummer solstice, strict tradition hands down from boy to boy the well-worn talk.  There are still “busters,” as in our young days, and the ardent youth upon floating cakes of ice “run bendolas” or “kittly-benders,” or simply “benders.”  In different latitudes the phrase varies,—­one-half of it going to Plymouth Colony, and the other abiding in Massachusetts Bay.  And this tendency to dismember a word is curiously shown in that savory fish which the Indian christened “scup-paug.”  Eastward he swims as “scup,” while at the Manhattan end of the Sound he is fried as “porgie.”  And apropos of him, let us note a curious instance of the tenacity of associated ideas.  The street boys of our day and early home were wont to term the hetairai of the public walks “scup.”  The young Athenians applied to the classic courtesans the epithet of [Greek:  saperdion], the name of a small fish very abundant in the Black Sea.  Here now is a bit of slang which may fairly be warranted to keep fresh in any climate.

But boy-talk is always lively and pointed; not at all precise, but very prone to prosopopeia; ever breaking out of the bounds of legitimate speech to invent new terms of its own.  Dr. Busby addresses Brown, Jr., as Brown Secundus, and speaks to him of his “young companions.”  Brown himself talks of “the chaps,” or “the fellows,” who in turn know Brown only as Tom Thumb.  The power of nicknaming is a school-boy gift, which no discouragement of parents and guardians can crush out, and which displays thoroughly the idiomatic faculty.  For a man’s name was once his, the distinctive mark by which the world got at his identity.  Long, Short, White, Black, Greathead, Longshanks, etc., told what a person in the eyes of men the owner presented.  The hereditary or aristocratic process has killed this entirely.  Men no longer make their names; even the poor foundlings, like Oliver Twist, are christened alphabetically by some Bumble the Beadle.  But the nickname restores his lost rights, and takes the man at once out of the ignoble vulgus to give him identity.  We recognize this gift and are proud of our nicknames, when we can get them to suit us.  Only the sharp judgment of our peers reverses our