But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does.

As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr.Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate.
-- The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.
-- I replied with my usual forbearance .-- Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because A or B is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise.

I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle--BORED.

I have seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word--SLOW.

Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription.