to avoid cursing;" and it is certain that it was from no desire to display his wit, that Eschylus devoted twelve lines of "a splendid and passionate chorus" to a denunciation of

"Sweet Helen,

Hell in her name, but Heaven in her looks."

Even Dr. Johnson, a professed hater of puns, could not resist the temptation, when introduced to Mrs. Barbauld, of growling, "Bare-bald! why, that's the very pleonasm of baldness!"

At the beginning of this chapter some remarks were made on the names of children, and with a few words further on the same theme I will end. Too often the boy or girl is named after the father or mother, taking the names, however ugly, ill-sounding, or uneuphonious, that have been handed down in the family from generation to generation, without a thought of the cruelty inflicted on the unconscious babe by fastening Ebenezer or Tabitha on it for life. Where this folly is avoided by parents, they often outrage their sons by baptizing them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, or Andrew Jackson, or worse still, loading them with classical names, like those of which Ex-President Grant is a conspicuous victim. The whims, freaks, and eccentricities which dictate the names of children are as inexplicable as they are multifarious. At a United States census some years ago, record was obtained of a man who had named his five children Imprimis, Finis, Appendix, Addendum, and Erratum. It has been suggested that had there been a sixth, he would probably have been Supplement. Everybody is familiar with the story of a worthy lady, who, having named four sons successively Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, insisted on

calling the fifth Acts,--a perversity equalled by that of the father of ten children, who, having been blessed with three more, named them Moreover, Nevertheless, and Notwithstanding. No doubt these last appellatives are mythical; but it is positively certain that names are often given to children, which, being utterly incongruous with their looks, descent, or character, rendering them targets for coarse jests, or raising expectations that are sure to be falsified, are productive to their bearers, if they are at all sensitive, of an incalculable amount of suffering. In naming a child his individuality should, first of all, be recognized. Instead of being invested with the cast-off appellation of some dead ancestor, as musty as the clothes he wore, a ghostly index-finger forever pointing to the past, he should have a fresh name, free from all ridiculous or unpleasant associations, congruous with his probable destiny, and suggestive of a history to be filled, a life of usefulness to be lived. If such a name cannot be invented, let him bear the plain, honest one of John, Edward, or Robert, which affords no opportunity for gibes, and consequent heart-burnings, promises nothing, disappoints nobody, and yet may be transfigured and glorified by the noblest and most illustrious deeds.

CHAPTER XIV.

NICKNAMES.

The word "nick" in nickname is cognate with the German word necken, to mock, to quiz, and the English word "nag," to tease, or provoke.-W. L. BLACKLEY, Word-Gossip.

A good name will wear out, a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.-ZIMMERMAN.

J'ai été toujours étonné que les Familles qui portent un Nom odieux ou ridicule, ne le quittent pas.-BAYLE.

AMO

MONG the books that need to be written, one of the most instructive would be a treatise on the history and influence of nicknames. Philosophers who study the great events in the world's history, are too apt, in their eagerness to discover adequate causes, to overlook the apparently trifling means by which mankind are influenced. They are eloquent enough upon the dawning of a new idea in the world, when its effects are set forth in all the pomp of elaborate histories and disquisitions; but they would do a greater service by showing how and when, by being condensed into a pithy word or phrase, it wins the acceptance of mankind. The influence of songs. upon a people in times of excitement and revolution is familiar to all. "When the French mob began to sing the Marseillaise, they had evidently caught the spirit of the revolution; and what a song is to a political essay, a nickname is to a song." In itself such a means of influence may seem trivial; and yet history shows that it is no easy thing to estimate the force of these ingenious appellations.

The name of a man is not a mere label, which may be detached, as one detaches a label from a piece of lifeless furniture. As Goethe once feelingly said, it is not like a cloak, which only hangs about a man, and at which one may at any rate be allowed to pull and twitch; but it is a close-fitting garment, which has grown over and over him, like his skin, and which one cannot scrape, and flay without injuring himself. Names not only represent certain facts or thoughts, but they powerfully mould the facts and thoughts which they represent. Men have borne names which they have felt to be stigmas, an active cause of discouragement and failure to their dying day; and they have borne names, inherited from their ancestors, which have lifted them above themselves, by bringing them into fellowship with a past of high effort or generous sacrifice.

In politics, it has long been observed that no orator can compare for a moment in effect with him who can give apt and telling nicknames. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise and irresistible. It is a terse, pointed, short-hand mode of reasoning, condensing a volume of meaning into an epithet, and is especially popular in these days of steam and electric telegraphs, because it saves the trouble of thinking. There is a deep instinct in man which prompts him, when engaged in any controversy, whether of tongue or pen, to assume to himself some honorable name which begs the whole matter in dispute, and at the same time to fasten on his adversary a name which shall render him ridiculous, odious, or contemptible. By facts and logic you may command the assent of the few; but by nicknames you may enlist the passions of the million on your

side. Who can doubt that when, in the English civil wars, the parliamentary party styled themselves "the Godly" and their opponents "the Malignants," the question at issue, wherever entrance could be gained for these words, was already decided? Who can estimate how much the Whig party in this country was damaged by the derisive sarcasm, "All the decency," or its opponents by the appellation of "Locofocos"? Is it not certain that the odious name "Copperheads," which was so early in our late civil war affixed to the northern sympathizers with the South, had an incalculable influence in gagging them, and in preventing their numbers from multiplying?

It has been truly said that in the distracted times of early revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, though neither those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define the hateful appellative. The historian Hume says that when the term "Delinquents" came into vogue in England, it expressed a degree and species of guilt not easily known or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those revolutionists who had coined it, by involving any person in, or coloring any action by, "delinquency"; and many of the nobility and gentry were, without any questions being asked, suddenly discovered to have committed the crime of "delinquency." The degree in which the political opinions of our countrymen were influenced, and their feelings embittered, some forty years ago, by the appellation "Federalist," cannot be easily estimated. The fact that many who heard the derisive title knew not its origin, and some not even its meaning, did not lessen its influence, as an incident related by Judge Gaston of North Carolina well illustrates. In travelling on his circuit through