e more
graceful terms of mart, emporium, warehouse, repository, bazaar, and
lounge.
Plain folk, who sold drugs when I was a boy, were not ashamed to be
called druggists, but now they are pharmaceutical chymists, and
analytical Homoeopathists; and one is tempted to quote Canning's
paraphrase, which he made when Dr. Addington had been complimenting the
country party, "I do remember an apothecary, gulling of simples."
Persons who cut hair were known as hair-cutters, and they who attended
to the feet were called corn-cutters; but now the former are artists in
hair, and the latter are chiropodists.
No long time ago I consulted with an intelligent tradesman as to the
best way of protecting from frost a long line of standard rose-trees,
growing near a wall in my garden, and shortly afterwards I received from
him the drawing of a clever design, with a letter informing me that he
had now the pleasure of submitting to my inspection his idea of a
_Cheimoboethus_. When I rallied from my swoon, and was staggering
towards my lexicon, I remembered that, as [Greek: cheimon] was the Greek
for winter, and [Greek: boaethos] for a friend in need, the word was not
without appropriate meaning; but I never took heart to order the
invention, because I felt convinced that, if I were to inform my
gardener that we were going to have a Cheimoboethus, he would say that
he would rather leave.
A bird-stuffer is now a plumassier and taxidermist; and when I asked a
waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop
opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed
respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met
him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from _phusi_--the
ancients, and _technicon_--cups and saucers."
Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another
objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in
the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a
distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and
that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by
the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible
impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he
is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not
belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned."
If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a dr
|