The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1873-02-08

The JAPASEsE-The following bit of pleas
antry from the Hearth and Home, reminds us
that the world does indeed move, and in the
right direction, after all
We saw three well-dressed japanese gentlemen
Zone had kid gloves on !! on the ferry-boat the
other day, discussing the merits of the East
River bridge, and from their evident intelligence,
and their earnest gestures, we gathered that they
were quite able 10 comprehend it. These people
are not only overturning all their old institutions,
but are even proposing to adopt one OF the West
ern languages as q court and literary tongue.
They are Iesitating between the German and
English. The English is 80 barbarously irregular,
that they may well stop and think before SUI inject
ing almOnd-cyed children TO the severe drill of
our photography, and the complex per plexity of
our irregular verbs. But the undaunted Japan
csc propose to improve our tongue by submitting
it to a japanning process. They will cure our
orthography of lis bad spell by phonetics they
will then take the kinks out of our irregular
verbs, and thus get a satisfactory speech. And
when they have thinked the matter over, and
seeked out new devices, and thus bringed the
language to perfection, and putted it TO rights.
we, who have funded our verbs SO awkward will
have students sended to Japan, and have them
teached their mother tongue, and have the Ian
guage bringed home again. Ii will be 80 much
better than the one we have had heretofore.
A "REMINISCENCES OF Mr.. GREELEY.-In the
Golden Age Theodore Tiiton relates the following
OF his interviews with Horace Greeley:
About three weeks ago Mr.. Greeley said to us
(clasping our band and holding it for the last
time) My dear friend, for thirty days and
nights l have not slept; | shall never sleep again;
l pray for DEATH From that touching interview
we retired as if stunned by a prescience of the
coming calamity; and on narratIng the incident to
a friend, we remarked, - 1t would not be strange
if Mr.. Greeley did not live three weeks The
prediction was all too sadly verified, the crumblIng
column fell within that time.
We have no sympathy with latalism, and yet
we are free to say that Mr.. Greeley's destiny was
On him and he could not escape it. There were
inward causes that gnawed their way outward TO
this effect. He had premonitions of it not only a
few weeks, but many months ago. During some
idle hours in Brooklyn, early in the campaign,
he said TO US with a voice of sudden sadness and
a tone of unwonted pathos, 81 have but one
great ambition, and that is not the Presidency,
but DEATH Later in the summer Tor perhaps
early in the fall } when some friends were talking
with him at a merry supper table, and when one
of us gayly asked how he enjoyed being praised
by one political party and damned by the other,
he simply answered that = nothing would crafty
him SO much as 10 receive from some celestial
messenger an authOritive assurance that he must
die the next morning" About the middle OF
October, in a Sunday evening conversation with
him, the same premonitory meditations on death
and immortality broke forth from his lips.