The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1888-02-09

directly on. Moreover, the chattering
peoples-the Neapoitans, for instance
are not bilingual; and the best takers in
the world, the born Parisians, spring of
ancestors who knew no language but their
own. The border peoples, too, are not
exceptionally talkative, as we see in
Wales; and the Swiss peasantry, for all
their linguistic requirements, are ex-
ceptionally taciturn. Nobody would say
that an Alsatian, accustomed from child
hood to two languages, and those among
the richest in the world, was more con-
versatile than q Lyonnais, who hardly
knows of the existence of two, while a
Partisan seems nimble in talk by the side
of Bruxellois, who is never for an in
slant out of the hearing of two tongues.
The man who is bilingual, either in fact
or by tradition, has no doubt a larger
command of words; but is the command
of words the key to the secret? If so, why
do the women, as we said before, talk bet
ter than the men, and why are not all the
cultivated equally capable Of converse
ton? How often can professors COM
paratively ignorant wife talk well, while
the learned husband is incapable of con-
versation! And, finally, if the difference
is question of knowledge of any sort,
why does wine so often, and up to point,
brighten talk and talkers9 1t cannot add
thoughts, or increase limited repertoire
of words. At most, alcohol, in any
form, can but impart courage, and per-
haps little speed to the movements of
the brain. We should say that the power
of talk, in the sense of conversing, came
first of all from the wish to talk, the de-
sire to manifest ones self to others, and
q VxyaS in, or
what the professor says it is not-a race
popularity. Nothing runs more COM
pletely in families than the habit of con
versing much, and a race is nothing hut a
big family. Did Mr.. Mahaffy, in his
whole life, ever meet a Jew who could not
talk, or who did not wish to talk, or who, if
circumstances favored him, did not talk
little too readily? Persians and Arabs,
who know nothing, chat twice as readily
as Scotch farmers, who know much; and
the populace of Naples, men as ignorant
as the fishes of their bay, talk, and talk
well all day. The Greeks have been chat
terboxes for 5000 years, and have lived
for 800 of them side by side with Turks,
who in the lower classes scarcely converse
at all. 1t is not even true, SO far as our
observation goes, that, outside the leu
tonic race, class makes any perceptible
difference, an italian or Greek or French
workman talking quite as readily as his
superiors, and enjoying talk quite as
much.
We fear that the truth is one which
Professor Mahaffy's courtesy induces him
only to hint, viz, that the Teuton of all
three branches-German, Englishman and
American-though he is filing the world,
and may possibly master it, is a slow
witted being, who does not by nature
enjoy talk, but rather feels it worry to
be called on to understand words and
make response to them SO quickly. He
does not take in readily, and therefore
has little pleasure in hearing talk; and he
cannot give out quickly, and therefore
suffers in uttering it. AS to the cause of
such popularity of race it is tiresome,
or at all events useless, even to speculate.
Spectator.