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Very often, too, the stranger falls a victim to the Irishman's love of fun, and goes back hopelessly 'spoofed' and quite unaware what nonsense he is talking when he lays down the law on Ireland far from that perplexing land. 'Don't you want three acres and a cow? asked an enthusiastic tourist from Birmingham, soon after Mr. Jesse Collins had provided the music-halls with the catch-phrase.
A sentence taken out of its context was misconstrued into a catch-phrase indicating the cravenness of a nation wedded to its flesh-pots, which pretended a moral superiority to others whose passionate sacrifice made them supersensitive when they looked across the Atlantic to the United States, which they saw profiting from others' misfortunes.
I believe I was the only one of our party who was pained by these impertinences, and in spite of involuntary laughter at some of my comrades' jokes, I not only defended the play itself, but also its original, simple-minded audience. A popular catch-phrase which occurred in the piece has ever since remained stamped on my memory.
She felt the warm air of good-fellowship that followed her everywhere. All of these people seemed to accept her at once as one of themselves. When she noticed it, she was amused at the way the "extras" stood back and looked at her and whispered together. More than once she overheard what seemed almost to have become a catch-phrase out here; "Jean of the lazy A" was the phrase.
"You see," she had exclaimed lightly after the production of the Barber's Pole, "how easy it is to set up business as a hairdresser." Over the Demon Egg-Cup she said that the egg was "as good as fresh." And her constantly reiterated catch-phrase "Well, this is rather queer!" was the most distressing thing of all. The Duke blushed to think what these men thought of her. Would love were blind!
There's a reduced copy behind you. The father of a family is unwrapping a bottle of Skeffington's Sloe Gin. His little ones crowd round him, laughing and clapping their hands. The man's wife is seen peeping roguishly in through the door. Beneath is the popular catch-phrase, "Ain't mother going to 'ave none?" "You're a genius," I cried. "Hardly that," he said.
But this ironical expedient is, of course, less frequently serviceable than that of emphasis by direct proportion. Emphasis by Iteration.= Undoubtedly the easiest means of inculcating a detail of narrative is to repeat it again and again. Emphasis by iteration is a favorite device of Dickens. The reader is never allowed to forget the catch-phrase of Micawber or the moral look of Pecksniff.
Less than a year ago the Richmond "Enquirer," an avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of color, in order to favor his views, invented the phrase "State equality," and now the President, in his message, adopts the "Enquirer's" catch-phrase, telling us the people "have asserted the constitutional equality of each and all of the States of the Union as States."
And he sat down and scratched himself. "Run hard! Run hard!" shouted some. "Let him rest," shouted others. And "let him rest" became a catch-phrase too. And after a while his rival drew near to him. "There comes that damned Tortoise," said the Hare, and he got up and ran as hard as could be so that he should not let the Tortoise beat him. "Those ears will win," said his friends.
That's a devilish good catch-phrase," he added, starting forward in the joy of his newborn epigram: "Devilish good. 'The spoiled minion of the Almighty's ante-chamber. It'll become historical." "If it does," said Paul, "it will be associated with the immediate retirement of the Conservative candidate." "Do you really mean that?" It was Paul's turn to start forward.
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