THE RECITATIONS IN THE WOOD.
A SUSPICIOUS POLICEMAN.--DUIZENDMAAL VERGIFFENIS.--DAT IK OP UW TEEN
HEB GETRAPT.
You may be sure that made me rather diffident till I had mastered
some of these 'polite phrases'. Polite they were, and no mistake--why
French was nothing to it!--and I got the very nicest of them well
into my head. I went round to Enderby's, and he put me on the way of
pronouncing the words. Then I took a whole morning in Het Bosch and
recited them to myself aloud. When no one was in sight I allowed myself
some freedom of utterance; and once I thought I must have startled with
my _ore rotundo_ an artist who was plying his harmless calling unseen
behind a clump of trees. At least some one retired very hastily after I
had delivered, "Doe zooveel moeite niet", three times with a vigorous
rising inflection and four times with the falling inflection, followed
in each case by the rhetorical pause. From the deserted easel I judged
it must have been an artist. He withdrew at a good pace, and never once
looked back.
These and similar polite idioms I repeated over some hundreds of times,
till I knew them backwards and forwards and every way, and could
have rattled them off in my sleep. Then there was some difficulty in
avoiding the policemen in the wood. They kept prowling about after
I had incautiously experimented on the first one with, "Mynheer! ik
wensch U goeden morgen; ik hoop dat ik U niet stoor. Vaarwel." He had
looked amazed at this; so, as a parting shot--a sort of courteous Good
Bye--I added gaily, "Ik bid U maak geen complimenten." It was this
that made the trouble, as he looked distinctly displeased, not to say
suspicious. When he heard the words first, he had stood speechless,
transfixed. Then he followed me home and hung about the street--I could
see him from my window--for over half an hour. I feared my pronouns
had been too familiar, though I couldn't see how to change them, for
there they were in the book. On the whole I concluded I had been a
trifle abrupt, and with renewed vigour I set to and committed a host
of apologetic phrases such as: "Ik bid U verschoon mij. Duizendmaal
vergiffenis. Het heeft niets te beduiden." A pretty little triplet
caught my ear and I took rather a fancy to it: "Het geeft niets--het
hindert niet--het komt er niet op aan."
It was a little puzzling to disentangle some of the courteous
introductions from the sentences in which they stood; and occasionally
I committed to memory somewhat more than I needed. This was the case
with a sentence that greatly took my fancy. It was an apology to an
imaginary gentleman in a tram-car for having trodden on his foot.
It seemed odd to provide yourself so soon for such contingency; but
of course the book knew best. Well, from constantly seeing the two
parts of this sentence together I got into the way mechanically of
associating the one phrase with the other. Thus when repeating that
engaging expression "Duizendmaal vergiffenis", I was accustomed to
follow it up by, "dat ik op Uw teen heb getrapt," either in my own
mind or audibly, for the sake of practice. From the first this polite
sentence was a great favourite of mine, and I was soon able to repeat
it with the utmost fluency and ease. So well did I know it, indeed,
after two day's practice that I was tempted to seek occasion for its
use, and in getting into the tram-car. I was half disposed to brush,
accidentally, against any object in the way for the sake of working
off my courteous apology. But that sort of thing has unexpected
consequences; and I came to the conclusion that it is more philosophic
to learn too little than to learn too much. Ne quid nimis, you know."
"Oh, leave metaphysics to me," said the Philosopher, "and go on with
your story. You wanted to buy pens? Did you get them?"
"Not at first," answered O' Neill shamefacedly, "but I'll tell you
about it".