The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-02-05

he has entirely yTasped foreign
tongue and is a. master of 1t. Some
men who are good French scholars
| yet of English birth, are able to en-
tirely dismiss their native tongue and
think and speak entirely in French, sell
dom, If ever, resorting to the slightest
thought in English. except insofar al
intelligent men think of all things.
Among Professor Wiener's pupils
| there are many young men who have
come to him with joy in their hearts
because they have had dreams in for
eign tongues. The Professor himself
| is master of twenty-eight distinct IAN
guages and dreams in them all, when
ever his mind happens to be occupied
with restrictions in any of them This
condition proves that the brain has
absorbed all the elements of the IAN
guage under study and is In such aD-
| solute control that it plays tricks with
/ it. The English student considers him.
! self blessed indeed who can dream OF
trip through Paris, with French peo-
ple French customs and the French
language running through his mead
When these things begin to occur he
can get up the next morning and say
to himself: 81 am a finished French
! scholar"
The scientific publications furnish
much of the material for the word cab
| inets. but there are other and peculiar
sources. The man who delivers lee
! ture before a backwoods debating So
| ciety and who earns from his fellow
members the distinction of having
| .coired' word, usually sends the
word with the Mandatory remarks of his
towpspeople to the dictionary maker;
the man who makes a new shoe polish
tooth wash, skirt binding or machlne
and invents a name to describe th5
| novelty, makes efforts to advertise MS
| invention by having the name become
a part of the dictionary, and the con-
/ sequence is that the stock of that class
of words is usually great. Some OF
these trade words have become SO pop
ular that they have been taken into
the fold. but the makers of dictionaries
are skeptics and must be fully con-
WINGED of the lasting qualities OF the
word before it is accepted.
! A striking example of this class is
| the name used for a popular pyroxyline
material The word was copyrighted
but was so well known in business thai
the dictionary people felt justified II
! giving it a place in their book Bul
while some inventors would have beer
pleased with this action, the pyroxylins
material patentees objected on the
ground that their compound was pat
ented, and should be fully described and
not cut off with a simple description OF
common noun
| IF we give the word ard its deriva-
lions and definitions just as those who
own the copyrights wish US to give
them" said dictionary maker, there
would be no objection on their part
but our book would become an ency-
clopedia." g
There is an English book seller, who
being asked, not long ago, for a ro-
nance of the sea, offered his customer
Benjamin Swifts book, 1.-The Destroyer
supposed to suggest torpedoboats tc
his mind. And there is an English edf-
| tor who, after giving a book on ath-
/ letics to a reviewer who was also q
sportsman. added, in all good faith:
/ "Oh, here's something else in your
line," and handed him Marco Polo"
The late Aubrey Beards1ey, A. Sy-
mons says, would rather have been g
great writer than a great artist. He
was neither, of course. though he had
much talent as a draughtsman and
made desperate, if desultory. efforts tt
become an auahgT. When he had, upon
occasion, to fill up form of admission
to some library to which his friend was
introducing him, he insisted on de-
scribing himself as a man of letters
He left no prose, Mr.. Symons reminds
us, except that fragment of story
| C'Under the HIP: and in verse only
| the three pieces published in the 'Sa-
voy' Here, toe. he was terribly anx.
| ious to excel; and his patience over
| a medium so unfamiliar, and hence sc
| difficult, to him as verse, was infinite
| We spent two whole days on the grassy
rampants of the old castle at Argues
la-Bataille, near Dieppe; working al
something or other in one part, he
working at The Three Musicians, il
another The eight stanzas of thai
amusing piece of verse are really, il
their own way, a tour de force; by she's
power of will, by deliberately saying
| " ullIiSSiI, W M WILLIE pCClil, dliS
! by working with such strenuous appii
cation that at last a certain result, the
kind of result he had willed, did really
come about. he succeeded in doing wha
he had certainly no natural aptitude
for doing
A marvellous tale comes from Naples
| to the effect that a local professor
made a bet that he would repeat by
heart the whole of Dante's 'Divinf
Commedia" without stopping. He be-
gan at s o'clock in the evening before &
large audience. and he did not finish
his task until o'clock the next after.
noon.