astonished at so much self-denial, asked how he, who had commanded armies of two hundred thousand men in the field and repeatedly received the thanks of Parliament, could put up with the command of a brigade. The real fact is," replied Sir Arthur, "that I am nimmuk-wallah, as we say in the East, that I have eaten the king's salt. On that account I believe it to be my duty to serve without hesitation, zealously and actively, wherever the king and his government may find it convenient to employ me."-GLEIG: Life of Wellington, p. 702. Salt River, geographically, is a tributary of the Ohio, and its course is in Kentucky. The slang political phrase "rowed up Salt River," to express the condition of a defeated candidate for office, is thus explained by Bayard Taylor: "Formerly there were extensive salt-works on the river, a short distance from its mouth. The laborers employed in them were a set of athletic, belligerent fellows, who soon became noted far and wide for their achievements in the pugilistic line. Hence it became a common thing for the boatmen on the Ohio, when one of their number became refractory, to say to him, 'We'll row you up Salt River,' when, of course, the burly saltmen would have the handling of him. By a natural figure of speech the expression was applied to political candidates; first, I believe, in the Presidential campaign of 1840." But a better explanation seems to be that in the early days the river, being crooked and difficult of navigation, was a favorite stronghold for river pirates, who preyed on the commerce of the Ohio and rowed their plunder up Salt River. Hence it came to be said of anything that was ir revocably lost, "It's rowed up Salt River." A third derivation makes the phrase originate in 1832, when Henry Clay, as candidate for the Presidency, had an engagement to speak in Louisville, Kentucky, and employed a boatman to row him up the Ohio. The boatman, who was a Jackson Democrat, pretended to miss his way, and rowed Clay up Salt River instead, so that he did not reach his destination until the day after the election, just in time to hear of his defeat. Salute of one hundred and one guns. Opinions differ as to the origin of firing this number of guns on great occasions. Some hold that it can be deduced from the German custom of adding one on almost every occasion, which has descended into trade and the ordinary affairs of life. Others hold to the following historical origin. On the triumphant return of Maximilian to Germany after a successful campaign, a brilliant reception was offered to the monarch by the town of Augsburg, and a hundred rounds of cannon were ordered to be discharged on the occasion. The officer in service, fearing lest he had neglected the exact number, caused an extra round to be added. The town of Nuremberg, which Maximilian next visited, desirous to prove itself equally loyal, also ordered a like salute; whence, it is held, proceeds the custom that has descended to our day. Same, Another and the. This phrase occurs originally in one of Horace's odes: Alme sol, curru nitido diem qui Bishop Hall, probably with Horace in mind, entitled his romance "Mundus Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, Lastly, Wordsworth in "The Excursion" made the phrase a household word: By happy chance we saw A twofold image on a grassy bank Sancta simplicitas ("Holy simplicity"), a phrase first applied by Rufinus (one of the earlier Latin writers, who translated and continued the "Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius) to the victory of a simple confessor of the faith over the great and hitherto invincible philosopher Eusebius, who had allied himself with the Arians. The expression was an implied contrast of the wonderful power of simple and honest conviction to the mighty, but specious, reasoning of a learned metaphysician. Arius had besought Eusebius to help adjust the difficulty that had arisen between him and his bishop, Alexander. Eusebius responded to the appeal by writing two letters, in which he affirmed that Arius had been misrepresented; and in this manner he became concerned in the great controversy, although “he was not, doctrinally, an Arian." Rufinus's exclamation, "Sancta simplicitas," was afterwards used by the dying reformer, Huss, as he watched a little child bringing up a log of wood in ignorant imitation of the servants of the Council, who were heaping fagots about the stake to which he was bound. Robertson gives a slightly different version of the incident: "It is said that, as he saw an old woman carry a fagot to the pile which was to burn him, he smiled, and said, ‘Oh, holy simplicity !' meaning that her intention was good, although the poor old creature was ignorant and misled." The application in this instance is not precisely that made by Rufinus, for in his allusion both the deed and the intent were commended. With Huss, the act was condemned, only the animating principle approved. This is the usual acceptation of the meaning as used by modern writers. Thus, Matthew Browne, speaking of Currer Bell's notion of the Duke of Wellington, says, "Sancta simplicitas! we cry." Mrs. Gaskell had quoted Charlotte as having represented the duke in the War Office, "putting on his hat at five minutes to four, telling the clerks they might go, and scattering 'largess' among them with a liberal hand, as he takes his leave for the day." Sanctity, Odor of. To die in the odor of sanctity means to die in good repute. When the odor of sanctity is said to pervade a thing, it is meant to smell of-i.e., appertain to-the Church. A sanctimonious living person of the type of Pecksniff carries the odor of sanctity about with him. To die in the odor of sanctity was originally used in a literal sense. The bodies of saintly dead were believed to be free in some manner from the corruption of sinful flesh, and to have a savory smell. Shirley had this superstition in mind when he wrote,— Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust, Contention of Ajax and Ulysses; and he also remembered Tate and Brady's metrical version of Psalm cxxii. : The sweet remembrance of the just Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust. Sand, a slang term for courage, backbone, or audacity. It is said to have been first used by Harvard students. Hence an origin implying some historical information is by no means unlikely. There is the story of Junot at the siege of Toulon. Napoleon, while constructing a battery, wanted some one to write a letter for him. Young Junot stepped forward to offer his services. Hardly had the letter been finished, when a cannon-ball, striking near the volunteer secretary, covered him with mud and dust. "Good!" said Junot: "we shall not want sand this time." Napoleon was so much pleased with this answer that he asked Junot what he could do for him. "Give me promotion," was the answer: "I will deserve it." may be a reminiscence of Napoleon's phrase in a letter on the Poor-Laws to the Minister of the Interior, in which he trusts "that we may leave some impress of our lives on the sands of time." Napoleon also said, "Better never to have been born than to live without glory," and "It would be better for a man never to have lived than not to leave behind him traces of his existence." Sandwich, a slice of meat or other article of food between two pieces of bread. They are said to have been invented by the fourth Earl of Sandwich (hence their name), who was so much addicted to gambling that he would rarely quit play for dinner. It was after this nobleman that the Sandwich Islands were in 1778 named by Captain James Cook. Sans-Culottes ("without breeches"), a name of contempt bestowed by the party of the aristocracy in the beginning of the French Revolution on the "rabble." Sardonic smile, a bitter mocking smile or laugh. The expression is as old as Homer, by whom the epithet capdavov is applied to a bitter laugh (Odyssey, xx. 302). Its derivation is unsettled. An agreeable little story is told that the ancient Sardinians, like many other barbarous tribes, used to get rid of their relations in extreme old age by throwing them alive into deep pits, a delicate attention which the venerable ladies or gentlemen were expected to greet with expressions of delight. Hence a Sardinian laugh came to mean laughing on the wrong side of one's mouth. It might seem that our proverb "grin and bear it" could be referred to the same origin. But other learned authorities hold that oapdóviov, or sardon, was a plant of Sardinia, which being eaten by man contracted the muscles and excited laughter even to death. Unfortunately for both these theories, Homer's word is capdaviov, not capdóviov, and there is no evidence that Sardinia was known in the Homeric age. We are therefore compelled to fall back upon the less thrilling explanation that the term is connected with the verb oaipw, to show the teeth, to grin like a dog. Sarrite Queen, Dido, Queen of Tyre. Sarra is an ancient name of the city of Tyre. Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost," xi. 243: Satanic School, a name invented by Southey, and first used in the vituperative preface which accompanied the publication of his “Vision of Judgment:" Immoral writers, . . . men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable to entirely disbelieve, labor to make others as miserable as themselves by infecting them with a moral virus which eats into the soul. The school which they have set up may be properly called the Satanic School; for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in their loathsome images of atrocities and horrors, which they delight to represent, they are more particularly characterized by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety which still betrays the wretched feelings of hopelessness wherewith it is allied. Primarily Byron was levelled at, but British cant has included among the number of its members Rousseau, Shelley, and Moore, and such heterogeneous elements as Bulwer, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and (the company is much honor to him) Paul de Kock. "Werther" and "Götz von Berlichingen"... have produced incalculable effects, which now indeed, however some departing echo of them may linger in the wrecks of our own Mosstroopers and Satanic Schools, do at length all happily lie behind us.-Carlyle: Essays: Goethe's Works. School-master is abroad, The, a phrase that originated with Lord Brougham. He used it first at the initial meeting of the London Mechanics' Institution in 1825. Dr. Burbeck was in the chair, and John Reynolds, a prosperous and highly-esteemed school-master of Chadwell Street, Clerkenwell, acted as secretary. In the course of some complimentary remarks, Mr. Brougham, who was not then a lord, said, “Look out, gentlemen, the schoolmaster is abroad." He repeated the saying a year or two later when Parlia ment was opened by commission on January 29, 1828. Wellington had just succeeded Canning in the premiership. The opposition had denounced the choice as that of a mere "military chieftain." Brougham, the leader of the opposition, said, “Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington may take the army, he may take the navy, he may take the great seal, he may take the mitre. I make him a present of them all. Let him come on with his whole force, sword in hand, against the constitution, and the English people will not only beat him back, but laugh at his assaults. In other times the country may have heard with dismay that 'the soldier was abroad.' It is not so now. Let the soldier be abroad if he will: he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad,—a personage less imposing; in the eyes of some, perhaps, insignificant. The school-master is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array." The phrase, which had fallen almost unnoticed before, was now caught up and repeated all over the land. Allusions to it will be found scattered thick through all contemporary literature. Hood was especially fond of turning it to humorous account. One of his best tales is entitled "The School-Mistress Abroad." Brougham is thoroughly corroborated by an authority from the other side of the house. "It is well said," remarked Moltke in the German Reichstag, February 16, 1874, "that it is the school-master that wins our battles. The Prussian school-master won the battle of Sadowa." He referred probably to an article published in Ausland, No. 29, July 17, 1866, by Peschel, who wrote, shortly after the events, on the "Lesson of the Last Campaign," seeking to prove that "the victory of the Prussians over the Austrians was a victory of the Prussian over the Austrian school-master." A like remark was that of Lehnert, Under Secretary of State in the Prussian Landtag, January 25, 1868: "It was admitted on all sides after Sadowa that not merely the needle-gun but the schools had won the battle." Schooner. The first vessel of this rig is said to have been built in Gloucester, Massachusetts, about the year 1713. When she went off the stocks into the water a by-stander cried out, "Oh, how she scoons!" The builder instantly replied, "A schooner let her be;" and from that time ves sels thus rigged have gone by that name. The word scoon is popularly used in some parts of New England to denote the act of making stones skip along the surface of the water. The Scottish scon means the same thing. The word appears to have been originally written scooner. Scot-free. Scot, or shot, means the reckoning or bill; therefore scot-free means free of all charge: compare the expression "to pay one's shot." The word comes from Anglo-Saxon sceotan, to throw down in payment; Old French escot, payment of one's own share of a common expense; Italian scotto, the reckoning at an inn; Icelandic skot, a contribution; Low German scheten, to cash, schott, contribution; compare Gaelic sgot, part or share. The expression "to pay scot and lot" also throws some light on the word, meaning to pay shares in proportion. Scotch wut. "It requires," said Sydney Smith, “a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. Their only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of wut, is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals. They are so imbued with metaphysics that they even make love metaphysically. overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in a sudden pause of the music,What you say, my lord, is very true of love in the aibstract, but Here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost." I This famous phrase has always been a thorn in the Scotchman's side. After thinking over it for a quarter of a century, some representative of the race evolved the retort that it was an English joke which necessitated the operation, and the northern part of the island of Great Britain has not yet recovered from the convulsions into which it was immediately thrown. Before Sydney Smith, however, Horace Walpole had said, referring to the same race, "The whole race has hitherto been void of wit and humor, and even incapable of relishing it." (Letter to Sir Horace Mann, 1778.) Another estimate of the Scotch which has a history of its own is the following from Chapman, Jonson, and Marston's "Eastward Ho:" Only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England when they are out on't, in the world, than they are. And for my own part I would a hundred thousand of them were there [Virginia]; for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.-Act iii., Sc. 2. This is the passage that gave offence to James I. and caused the imprisonment of the authors. The leaves containing it were cancelled and reprinted, and it occurs in only a few of the original copies. Scrape an acquaintance. An anecdote is told of the Emperor Hadrian, from which this phrase may be derived. As the emperor was entering a bath, he saw an old soldier scraping himself with a tile. Recognizing a former comrade, and pitying his condition that he had nothing better than a tile for a flesh-brush, he sent him a sum of money and some bathing-garments. Next day, as Hadrian entered the bath, he found it crowded with old soldiers scraping themselves with tiles. He understood the intent, and wittily evaded it, saying, "Scrape yourselves, gentlemen, but you will not scrape an acquaintance with me.' Some authorities refer it to the custom of scraping the foot behind in bowing, which was always done in the formal days of Louis XIV. Scrape, Getting into a. This phrase probably comes down to us from the days when England was still full of forests, and the deer running wild in the woods cut sharp gullies between the trees, called "deer-scrapes," which it was easier to fall into than to climb out of. Another suggested derivation takes the phrase from the driving of a ball at the game of golf into a rabbitburrow or " scrape." The Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, M. A., in Notes and Queries, February 14, 1880, says that in 1803 a woman was killed by a stag in Powderham Park, Devon. "It was said that, when walking across the park, she |