January 14, 1900, asserted that "by a facetious adaptation of initials as Roman numerals [C.I.V.], the City of London Imperial Volunteers, now on their way to the front, achieve the title of the 104th, an appellation likely to commend itself to the regiment."[124] Nicknames have a way of disappearing rapidly, but this particular one seems to have stuck.[125] But it was by no means the only one in which the C. I. V. rejoiced. Those who opposed the war invented "Chamberlain's Innocent Victims," while Tommy Atkins converted the initials into "Can I Venture?" A more unpleasant nickname was "Covered In Vermin."[126] The Imperial Yeomanry were collectively called "Innocent Youths."[127] Does the history of the term Uncle Sam, now given for the first time, tend to support or to overthrow this explanation of the origin of the sobriquet? While the initials U. S. were well known in 1812 and 1813, yet no doubt the war made them still more common. "The letters U. S.," explained the _Troy Post_ of September 7, 1813, "on the government waggons, &c. are supposed to have given rise to it."[128] On October 1, 1813, a writer spoke of "Uncle Sam, the now popular explication of the U. S."[129] By implication it may be inferred that this was the view of Paulding in 1831,[130] of Abdy in 1835,[131] and of an unknown Englishman in 1838.[132] It was stated at the beginning of this paper that the history of nicknames usually follows one general course,--that those who, at the time of origin, perhaps know the real explanation do not record it, and that later people begin guessing. Must it not be admitted that Uncle Sam is an exception to the rule? that those who first used the sobriquet did record its origin? and that the explanation they gave is the true explanation? FOOTNOTES: [1] See Brother Jonathan, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, VII, 94-122. [2] "She was called Catalina, and, like all other vessels in that trade, except the Ayacucho, her papers and colors were from Uncle Sam" (Two Years before the Mast, 1841, p. 168). This extract is quoted in Farmer and Henley's Slang and its Analogues (1904), where it is dated 1835. The preface to Dana's book is dated July, 1840. Uncle Sam was first recognized in 1848 in Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, whence it found its way into the 1860 edition of Worcester and into subsequent dictionaries.