A case of assault and battery was tried in a Western court. The
plaintiff's counsel informed the jury in his opening, that he was
"prepared to prove that the defendant, a steamboat-captain, menaced his
client, an English traveller, and put him in bodily fear, commanding him
to vacate the avenue of the steamboat with his baggage, or he would
precipitate him into the river." The evidence showed that the captain
called out,--"Stranger, ef you don't tote your plunder off that
gang-plank, I'll spill you in the drink."
We submit that for terseness and vigor the practitioner at the bar of
the Ohio had the better of the learned counsel who appeared at the bar
of justice, albeit his client was in a Cockney mystification at
the address.
The illustration will serve our turn. It points to a class of phrases
which are indigenous to various localities of the land, in which the
native thought finds appropriate, bold, and picturesque utterance. And
these in time become incorporate into the universal tongue. Of them is
the large family of political phrases. These are coined in moments of
intense excitement, struck out at white heat, or, to follow our leading
metaphor, like the speakers who use them, come upon the stump in their
shirt-sleeves.
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