alls' of the
Romans--two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly
strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the
times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not
unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of
scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a
lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were never yet more than
twenty-five original 'good stories,' and that all of those now current
may be traced back to them. In a certain sense, the assertion is true;
but it is a mistake to confound the result of a cause with the cause
itself, and an error to declare the descendant to be one and the same
with the ancestor. Max Muller has proved that hundreds of words of the
most different meanings descend from the same root, and, in like manner,
we might show, if the traditional links were supplied, that the last
'good one' current at Washington, originated at the court of King
Pharaoh. Let no one laugh, for Chaucer's Clerke of Oxforde's Tale was
for years told, with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as the heroes, and we
have even met with a bold Southron who '_knew_ that it was true of
them!'

In this connection it is worth while to observe that even the slang
phrases of the day, which are popular, partly because they _save trouble
in thinking_, and partly because the vulgar mind, like the vulgar ear,
finds a relief or pleasure in monotony--are not unfrequently of ancient
origin. The current expression, 'a high old time,' occurs in a Latin
jest, given in an old German-Latin jest-book, which, as its preface
asserts, consists entirely of a reprint from still older works.
'Henricus,' it says, 'was begged to make at a wedding (_Hoch
zeit_--literally, 'high time') a wedding song, and complied with the
following:

'Iste vetus Juvenis Socius prius ad stationem arripit
Atque _altum tempus_ habere cupit.'[4]

The expression is better in its old form, since _altum_ means both high
and old. Those who have laughed at the instance in 'Ferdinand Count
Fathom,' of the Dutchman, who boasted that his brother had written a
great book of poetry as thick as a cheese, may find its original
'motive' in an anecdote given in the same work.

'A peasant going to a lawyer, begged him to undertake a case for
him, to which the man of law assenting, began to refer to and read
in a very small book. But the peasant, who saw many large folios