BUNKUM AND LOG-ROLLING. 207 



File with us has a slang meaning, very different from 

 its household sense in Albany ; there it is the usual name 

 for a mop. A lady will also lament that she has got a 

 winkelliawlc in her gown; this means an angular tear, 

 like the letter L, and is pure Dutch. 



Among parliamentary words, Sam Slick has made 

 Bunkum., or &quot; talking to Bunkum &quot; making speeches at 

 Washington, or in the State Legislature, which are 

 intended not for the House, but for the speaker s consti 

 tuents sufficiently familiar to English readers. Log 

 rolling, is another equally significant and useful word in 

 parliamentary diction, derived, as I have already explained, 

 from a practice of the lumberers. When the trees are 

 felled and trimmed, &quot; rolling the logs&quot; to the rivers or 

 brooks down which they are to be floated, as soon as the 

 spring freshets set in, remains to be done. This being 

 the hardest work of all, the men of several camps will 

 unite, giving their conjoined strength to the first party 

 on Monday, to the second on Tuesday, and so on. A 

 like system in parliamentary matters is called log-rolling. 

 You and your friends help me in my railroad bill, and I 

 and my friends help you with your bank charter ; or 

 sometimes the Whigs and the Democrats, when nearly 

 balanced, will get up a party log-rolling, agreeing that 

 the one shall be allowed to carry through a certain 

 measure without much opposition, provided a similar 

 concession is granted to the other. The former variety 

 of log-rolling is said to be very frequent in the State 

 Legislatures. It is probably not rare either in Wash 

 ington or Westminster, 



I notice two peculiarities in the use of English words 

 I have heard on the Hudson, which probably owe their 

 origin to the connecting of German or Dutch ideas with 

 the English sound. In New York they talk of riding in 

 a steamboat ; we say sail, which is as improper, says the 

 New Yorker, because our river steamers have no sails. 



