' 'Oh,' says
he, 'you one very droll Yankee, dat very good joke, Sare; you talk
Indian and call it French.' 'But,' says I, 'Mister Mount shear; it is
French, I vow; real merchantable, without wainy edge or shakes--all
clear stuff; it will pass survey in any market--it's ready stuck
and seasoned.' 'Oh, very like,' says he, bowin' as polite as a black
waiter at New OrLEENS, 'very like, only I never heerd it afore; oh,
very good French dat--CLEAR STUFF, no doubt, but I no understand--it's
all my fault, I dare say, Sare.'
"Thinks I to myself, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. I
see how the cat jumps--Minister knows so many languages he hain't
been particular enough to keep 'em in separate parcels and mark 'em
on the back, and they've got mixed, and sure enough I found my French
was so overrun with other sorts, that it was better to lose the whole
crop than to go to weedin', for as fast as I pulled up any strange
seedlin', it would grow right up agin as quick as wink, if there was
the least bit of root in the world left in the ground, so I let it
all rot on the field.
"There is no way so good to larn French as to live among 'em, and if
you WANT TO UNDERSTAND US, YOU MUST LIVE AMONG US, TOO; your Halls,
Hamiltons, and De Rouses, and such critters, what can they know of
us? Can a chap catch a likeness flyin' along a railroad? Can he even
see the feature? Old Admiral Anson once axed one of our folks afore
our glorious Revolution (if the British had a known us a little
grain better at that time, they wouldn't have got whipped like a sack
as they did then), where he came from.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87