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French slang is no exception to this, theory: the two hundred and thirty double-columned pages of M. Larcher's Dictionnaire historique, etymologique et anecdotique de l'argot parisien tell us that the two grand sources and inspirations of our American slang are entirely wanting: there is not a humorous word or phrase from beginning to end; and hardly an instance of that incongruous exaggeration which is so salient a picture of our best-known and most original slang phrases.
For the worst of their kind special lexicons are designed, which, like prisons and workhouses, admit only the disreputable, as though Victor Hugo's definition "L'argot, c'est le verbe devenu forçat" were amply justified. The journals, too, which take their material where they find it, give to many specimens a life as long as their own.
"Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will doesn't put one onion the more into the soup, and 'tis good for nothing except to go to Paradise with; now, Paradise and the thieves' band are two different things. In order to be received among the thieves,* you must prove that you are good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the manikin." * L'argot.
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