The old gentleman came in hurriedly and called for that to which he was
accustomed. He fumbled in one pocket after another, and after going over
all his pockets several times he remarked to me "I have forgotten my
purse." His air was so friendly and confiding that it more than repaid
me for the small sum which I had to advance. He sat down close beside
me, and, after touching on the difficulty of being understood in a
tavern, he drew genially to these remarks--
"Language may be described as a medium for recording one's sensations.
It is gesture translated into sound. It is noise with a meaning. Music
cannot at all compare with it, for music is no more than the scientific
distribution of noise, and it does not impart any meaning to the
disintegrated and harried tumults. Language may be divided into several
heads, which, again, may be subdivided almost indefinitely.--The primary
heads are, language, talk, and speech. Speech is the particular form of
noise which is made by Members of Parliament. Language is the symbols
whereby one lady in a back street makes audible her impressions of the
lady who lives on the same floor--it is often extremely sinewy. Talk may
be described as the crime of people who make one tired.
"It is my opinion that people talk too much. I think the world would be
a healthier and better place if it were more silent. On every day that
passes there is registered over all the earth a vast amount of language
which, so far as I can see, has not the slightest bearing on anything
anywhere.
"I have been told of a race living in Central Africa, or elsewhere, who
by an inherent culture were enabled to dispense with speech. They
whistled, and by practice had attained so copious and flexible a
vocabulary that they could whistle good-morning and good-night, or
how-do-you-do with equal facility and distinction. This, while it is a
step in the right direction, is not a sufficiently long step. To live
among these people might appear very like living in a cageful of canaries
or parrots. Parrots are a very superior race who usually travel with
sailors. They have a whistle which can be guided or deflected into
various by-ways. I once knew a parrot who was employed by a sailor-man
to curse for him when his own speech was suspended by liquor. He could
also whistle ballads and polkas, and had attained an astonishing
proficiency in these arts; for, by long practice, he could dovetail
curses and whistles in a most energetic and, indeed, astonishing manner.
It would often project two whistles and a curse, sometimes two curses and
a whistle, while all the time keeping faithfully to the tune of 'The
Sailor's Grave' or another. It was a highly cultivated and erudite
person. As it advanced in learning it took naturally to chewing tobacco,
but, being a person of strongly experimental habits, it tried one day to
curse and whistle and chew tobacco at the one moment, with the
unfortunate result that a piece of honeydew got jammed between a whistle
and a curse, and the poor thing perished miserably of strangulation.
"It is indeed singular that while every race of mankind is competent to
speak, none of the other races, such as cats, cows, caterpillars, and
crabs, have shown the slightest interest in the making of this ordered
noise. This is the more strange when we reflect that almost all animals
are provided with a throat and a mouth which are capable of making a
noise certainly equal in volume and intelligibility to the sounds made by
a German or a Spaniard.
"Long ago men lived in trees and had elongated backbones which they were
able to twitch. There were no shops, theatres, or churches in those
times, and, consequently, no necessity for a specialized and meticulous
prosody. Man barked at his fellow-man when he wanted something, and if
his request was not understood he bit his fellow-man and was quit of him.
When they forsook the trees and became ground-walkers they came into
contact with a variety of theretofore unknown objects, the necessity for
naming which so exercised their tongues that gradually their bark took on
a different quality and became susceptible of more complicated sounds.
Then, with the dawning of the Pastoral Age, food in a gregarious
community became a matter of more especial importance. When a man barked
at his wife for a cocoanut and she handed him a baby or a bowl of soup or
an evening paper it became necessary, in order to minimise her
alternatives, that he should elaborate his bark to meet this and an
hundred other circumstances. I do not know at what period of history man
was able to call his wife names with the certainty of reprisal. It was
possible quite early, because I have often heard a dog bark in a
dissatisfied and important manner at another dog and be perfectly
comprehended.
"A difficulty would certainly arise as to the selection of a word when
forty or fifty men might at the same time label any article with as many
different names, and, it is reasonable to suppose, that they would be
reluctant to adopt any other expression but that of their own creation.
In such a crux the strongest man of the community would be likely to
clout the others to an admission that his terminology was standard.
"Thus, by slow accretions, the various languages crept into currency, and
the youth of innumerable schoolboys has been embittered by having to
learn to spell.
"Grasshoppers are a fine, sturdy race of people. A great many of them
live on the Hill of Howth, where I have often spent hours hearkening to
their charming conversation. They do not speak with the same machinery
that we use--they convey their ideas to each other by rubbing their
hind-legs together, whereupon noises are produced of exceeding variety
and interest. As a method of speech this is simply delightful, and I
wish we could be trained to converse in so majestical a manner. Perhaps
we shall live to see the day when the journals will chronicle that Mr.
Redmond had rubbed his legs together for three hours at the Treasury
Bench and was removed frothing at the feet, but after a little rest he
was enabled to return and make more noise than ever."
The old gentleman smiled very genially and went out. The assistant
suggested that he had a terrible lot of old "guff," but I did not agree
with him.