Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1913 — PHRASES YOU HEAR [ARTICLE]

PHRASES YOU HEAR

Expressions of Noted Men That Have Become Common. v •**’ ■ “While There’s Life There’s Hope," “New Brooms Sweep Clean” and Many Other Old Favorites Mark Historic Epochs. London. —No less a person than Cicero first made use of the expression, "While there’s life there’s hope,” In a letter he wrote to Atticus. ‘‘We are in the same boat” is not modern slang, but occurs in a letter written by Clement 1., bishop of Rome, to the Church of Corinth in the first century. This letter is extant and is one of the prized documents of the early church. "I never put oft till tomorrow what I can do today” was Lord Chesterfield’s explanation of how he managed to do so much work. “Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,” he wrote later In the famous Letters tsHis Son.

In some of the expressions we use habitually may be crystallized an epoch of history. Such is the motto of the Order of the Garter, “Honi solt qui mal y pense” (shamed be he who thinks evil of it), which was given by Edward 111. of England. Wishing to draw the best soldiers in the world to him he proposed a revival of the Round Table of King Arthur, holding a tournament at Windsor Castle on New Year’s day, 1344. After the contest of arms, the guests were enters tained at his expense at a round table. Philip, king of France, was jealous over the Interest this aroused, and forbade his subjects to attend, at the same time misrepresenting Edward’s motives. Several years later, when Edward founded the Order of the Garter, he chose a motto that seemed to challenge his rival monarch to think wrong of it if he dared. Later English history has not been laggard in, increasing the supply of apt remarks that have grown Into everyday sayings. Lord Eldon, lord' chancellor of England during the first 26 years of the nineteenth century, continually mispronounced the name of Henry Brougham, afterward to be a successor to the chancellor's office. Brougham objected to being called Brdftam, and in this regard Eldon was the chief offender. Once, after Brougham had made an excellent speech Eldon, by way of apology, pronounced his name correctly and made a proverb, “New brooms sweep clean.” The same expression occurs frequently to different people who could have no knowledge that their thought had been given utterance before. "No man is a hero to his valet” has been paraphrased by scores, from Madame du Carnuel, a witty Frenchwoman of the seventeenth century, to Dr. Johnson and Napoleon. The first record

of it, however, is found in Plutarch 1 , who states that when Hermodotus addressed a poem to Antigonus L, king of Sparta, hailing him ps son of the sun and a god, the monarch replied, "My body servant sings me no such song.” » It was Diogenes, the cynic, who declared that “habit Is second nature.” The phrase “circumstances over which he has no control” was used by the duke of Wellington in a letter concerning some affairs in which he declined to interfere. Dickens also used the expression a few years later yhen he had Micawber write to David Copperfield, “Circumstances beyond by individual control—,” etc. “Conspicuous by their absence” has been used on many occasions in mod-

ern oratory. It was first used by Tacitus in relating that in the funeral procession of Julia, niece of Cato, sister of Brutus, wife of Cassius, many of the iffiages of the most famous families in Rome were seen, but “Cassius and Brutus shone pre-eminent because their images were not displayed.” “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” was said by James I. of England, when his favorite, the duke of Buckingham, complained that a mob bad broken his glass windows, which were at that time a luxury. “Mind your P’s and Q’s” Is said to have been taken from an old French phrase at the time of Louis XIV.