With the parts of the body might be formed a complete orchestra. Thus “guitare” stands for the head; “flûtes” for legs; “grosse caisse” for the body; “trompette” does duty for the face, “mirliton” for the nose, and “sifflet” for the throat. The study of the slang jargon of a nation--a language which is not the expression of conventional ideas, but the unvarnished and rude expression of life in its true aspects--may give us an insight into the foibles and predominant vices of those who use it. Now though the French as a nation are not hard drinkers, yet we must come to the conclusion--in the face of the many synonyms of the single word drunk, whilst there is not one for the word sober--that Parisian workmen have either a lively imagination, or that they would scarcely prove eligible for recruits in the Blue Ribbon Army. Intoxication--from a state of gentle inebriation, when one is “allumé,” or “elevated,” to the helpless state when the “poivrot,” or “lushington,” is “asphyxié,” or “regularly scammered,” when he can’t “see a hole in a ladder,” or when he “laps the gutter”--has no less than eighty synonyms. The French possess comparatively few terms for the word money; but, in spite of the well-worn saying, “l’or est une chimère,” or the insincere exclamation, “l’or, ce vil métal!” the argot vocabulary shows as many as fifty-four synonyms for the “needful.” The English are still richer, for Her Majesty’s coin is known by more than one hundred and thirty slang words, from the humble “brown” (halfpenny) to the “long-tailed one” (bank-note). Though there is no evidence that the social evil has a greater hold on Paris than on London or Berlin, yet the Parisians have no less than one hundred and fifty distinct slang synonyms to indicate the different varieties of “unfortunates,” many being borrowed from the names of animals, such as “vache,” “chameau,” “biche,” &c. Some of the other terms are highly suggestive and appropriate. So we have “omnibus,” “fleur de macadam,” “demoiselle du bitume,” “autel de besoin,” the dismal “pompe funèbre,” the ignoble “paillasse de corps de garde,” and the “grenier à coups de sabre,” which reflects on the brutality of soldiers towards the fallen ones. For the _head_ the French jargon can boast of about fifty representative slang terms, some of which have been borrowed from the vegetable kingdom. Homage is rendered to its superior or governing powers by such epithets as “boussole” and “Sorbonne,” and a compliment is paid to its inventive genius by the term, “la boîte à surprises,” which is, however, degraded into “la tronche” when it has rolled into the executioner’s basket. But it is treated with still more irreverence when deprived of its natural ornament,--so that a man with a bald pate is described as having no more “paillasson à la porte,” or “mouron sur la cage.” He is also said sometimes to sport a “tête de veau.”