298 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



D 



OUR HOMES 



A. I. ROOT 



A FRIEND of 

 .Gleanings 

 sends the be- 

 low which he 

 clipped from 

 the Kingsley 

 Gospel Tidings, 

 the editor of 

 which credits it 

 to the Ivester 

 Glad Tidings. 

 While I thank 

 the good brother 

 for the informa- 

 tion he gives us, 

 I am not quite 

 sure that I en- 

 tirely agree with 



him. It has never occurred to me that 

 " gee " had any relation to the word Jesus. 

 I may have used the word to express sur- 

 prise in times past, but I will try to do so 

 no more. 



SWEARING. 



The Church of the Brethren stands on Scripture 

 grounds against swearing, but yet there is a sugar- 

 coated swearing that is winked at. Very few peo- 

 ple are really free from swearing according to the 

 following: A person used the expression "Gee" 

 not long ago. It had never occurred to that one 

 that this was taking the name of the Lord in vain, 

 and probably few of the many who indulge in sugar- 

 coated profanity realize that they are swearing. 

 What is "Gee" tho but a euphemism for Jesus? 

 " Dear me," is nothing but the Latin " Deo Meo " 

 (My God). "For goodness sake" is only "For 

 God's sake." "For land's sake" is "For Lord's 

 sake." " Drat it" is " God rot it," "Judas Priest" 

 is " Jesus Christ." " Golly," " Gosh," " Gorry," 

 etc., are only corruptions of " God." " Darn it," 

 " Dash it," " Ding it," " Blame it," etc., are only 

 variations of " Damn it." In short, there is proba- 

 bly not an expression of this sort that cannot be 

 traced back to an oath for its origin. Notwithstand- 

 ing this you will every day hear people using them 

 thoughtlessly, who would be terribly shocked by an 

 outright oath. — Ivester Glad Tidings. 



The expression " dear me " ! may mean 

 " my God " ; but I have never taken it so, 

 and I can not think the good friends^yes, 

 and the good women who use the exclama- 

 tion — have so understood it. The same with 

 the expression " for goodness sake! " The 

 other words mentioned in the clipping, I 

 agree, are u^ndignified. While I used them 

 more or less when I was a boy I have not 

 done so of late years; and I think it is an 

 excellent idea for all of us to heed the 

 words of the dear Lord at the head of this 

 article. A man who tells the truth is not 

 often very vehement about it. I think, as 

 a rule, all the world has more faith in a 

 statement when the speaker does not lose 

 his temper. We might include, in the 

 above, slang expressions of all sorts. Many 

 of them, or, in other words, too many of 

 them, are undignitied to say the least. Quite 

 a number of our periodicals have humorous 



a 



Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay: 

 for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. — - 

 M.\TT. 5:37. 



I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of 

 the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from 

 the evil. — John 17:15. 



May, 1920 



writers, and I 

 often laugh 

 over their queer 

 spelling and 

 slang; and I am 

 not sure that 

 there is any- 

 thing wrong 

 about it if it is 

 not carried too 

 far. Many of 

 us remember 

 Josh Billings, 

 Art emus Ward, 

 Alf Burnett, 

 and others. Bil- 

 lings once said, 

 "It is a bad 

 plan to tell lies, as I know by experience." 

 I had a big laugh over the expression, and 

 it really did me good. 



Most of you can doubtless remember oth- 

 er things that have made an impression 

 just because they provoked laughter. As I 

 look back over my life I remember a period 

 when slang phrases seemed to go all over 

 our nation, and after a while these expres- 

 sions would be forgotten, and yet there 

 would be other slang phrases that seemed 

 to spread like wildfire. Sometimes what 

 might be called a slang phrase or, perhaps, 

 more properly, a little bit of pleasantry, 

 will restore good feeling when there is a 

 jangle that might result in a quarrel. On 

 page 742 of November Gleanings, 1919, I 

 used the expression, " They got the wrong 

 pig by the ear." But that little expression 

 that has been handed down from genera- 

 tion to generation hits the spot better than 

 any other words I could use. By the way, 

 50 years ago we used to have sermons not 

 only an hour long but sometimes they took 

 two hours, and there was not a bit of pleas- 

 antry, and perhaps not a single anecdote, 

 to attract the attention of the children. No 

 wonder they did not like to go to meeting. 

 Nowadays the average pastor recognizes 

 the children, and perhaps some old ones, 

 who might be inclined to go to sleep if 

 they were very tired after a hard week's 

 work ; and a little bit of pleasantry on such 

 an occasion, or something to remind the 

 people that the preacher knew what was 

 going on in this world of ours — yes, out 

 on the farm, in the factories, and in the 

 stores and groceries — some little incident, 

 and maybe something that some good peo- 

 ple might call slang, would catch the chil- 

 dren, wake up the sleepy ones, and maybe 

 drive home a wholesome moral point. And 

 liere comes in my second text: 



T pray not that thou shouldest take them out of 

 thpi world, but that thou shouldest keep them from 

 the evil. — John 17:15. 



