unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the
vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every
inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to
hold the Bowery up to ridicule and laughter, so he sits down, and out of
his circumscribed brain, mutilates the English tongue (he can rarely coin
a word), and blames the mutilation on the Bowery.

'Tis the same with newspapers and authors, too, detracting the Irish
race. Men and women who have never seen the green hills of Ireland, paint
Irish characters as boors and blunderers and make them say ludicrous
things and use such language as is never heard within the four walls of
Ireland. 'Tis very well known that Ireland is the most learned country on
the face of the earth--is, and has been. The schoolmaster has been abroad
there for hundreds, almost thousands, of years, and nowhere else in the
world to-day is the king's English spoken so purely as in the cities and
towns of the little Western Isle.

Current events, happenings of everyday life, often give rise to slang
words, and these, after a time, come into such general use that they take
their places in everyday speech like ordinary words and, as has been
said, their users forget that they once were slang. For instance, the
days of the Land League in Ireland originated the word _boycott_, which
was the name of a very unpopular landlord, Captain Boycott. The people
refused to work for him, and his crops rotted on the ground. From this
time any one who came into disfavor and whom his neighbors refused to
assist in any way was said to be boycotted. Therefore to boycott means to
punish by abandoning or depriving a person of the assistance of others.
At first it was a notoriously slang word, but now it is standard in the
English dictionaries.