The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1901-06-21

Navy department, ana Tie laIuer U
Eastman johnson, the eminent artist
who still survives to perpetuate "the
counterfeit presentment' of those who
can afford to command his services
Next to it at the time was dilapidatcd
wooden building, in my early recollcc
ton tumbled down affair, which cum
bered that neighborhood. The rear ot
that old building was immortalized as
a background of Eastman johnson
celebrated pictare of "The Old Ken
lucky Home" johnson, who had just
returned from Dusseldorf, had a studio
next to Gllman's drug store, over the
jewelry establishment of Messrs. Gait
and upon their walls were hung his
first paintings exhibited here, Mr.
George w. Riggs becoming one of his
first patrons, and in the Riggs resi-
dence on l street hang two of the best
productions of his brush-"The Sa.
voyard' and "a Card Party."-John
F. Coyle, IN Washington Post.
MOST INTRICATE LANGUAGE
An English infantry officer, who has
been making study of the Chinese
language in connection with the effort
of the British government to encour-
age the study Of Chinese among army
men, has made report which is likely
to dishearten prospective Chinese
scholars. The subjects of Kuang-Hsu
have the most ancient of spoken and
written languages, and while the sim.
plest in construction it is, paradoxi-
cally. universally acknowledged to be
almost the most difficult to master.
Foreigners who can, unassisted, write
the language freely can be counted on
the fingers of the hand, and, according
to the English officer who made the
investigation, twenty years is not con-
sidered an extravagant period to de-
vote to acquiring an oral mastery of its
intricacies. Every word is mono.
syllable, some 49O in all constituting
the language, which has neither num-
ber nor case nor gender with regard to
nouns, nor tense nor mood nor person
with regard to verbs. Nor is it posi-
BILE to make these distinctions by means
of prefixes or suflixes, for these do not
exist. Therefore the same word with.
out change Of form may be used as a
noun, verb, an adjective, an adverb
or a participle.
Its very simplicity is the cause Of
its great difficulty. Since the number
of words in the most ordinary use is
somewhere between 5000 and 1000 Ga
Chinese newspaper has font of $1,000
and the number of possible monosyl
Liable combinations is only AGO, there
must he some way of increasing the
number of sounds to enable words tc
be distinguished the one from the other
This is accordingly done by giving
every monosyllable four different tones
that is in Pekinese. In some other
dialects there are as many as seven
1t is easy to imagine the impeachment
caused TO fluency in speaking by Tic
observance of these tones. 1t takes Il
month or two, in the first instance, tc
train the ear to recognize that there is
a difference when the tones are pro
nounced hy native, even with the
greatest emphasis, and yet they are Of
the utmost i'm mportance; for instance
''yeu" tone l is tobacco" "yeu" tone
2 is "salt;" besides these obviously
mistakable meanings, "yeu" in tone
possesses twenty-four other meanings
tone 2, thirty-fv thirty-nine in tone
s, and forty in tone 4.
The written language presents still
further obstacle. 1t is destitute of ar
alphabet; every word is represented
by symbol or character, which has
only the slightest connection with any
other and must he learned 10y sheer
memory. Some of these characters
have as many as thirty dots anC
strokes. Going still further afeld We
are confronted with the different kinds
of language that exist. There is tn.
language of the ancient classics, thu
more modern languages, the language
of official documents and the epistolary
language, all of which differ in no small
degree from the spoken language
which again possess numerous dialects
differing so widely from one another
that Cinnamon from one province can
not understand those from another
A popularity of these dialects, how
ever, is that their difference lies solely
in the fact that different sounds anG
tones are given to the characters. The
written language is the same all ovc1
the empire, however, and Pekinese
which is practically what is known as
kuan kwa or the mandarin dialect
is the official language recognized
throughout the empire Chicuyo Neus
"Why did she break the engage
ment?'
"He told Ter that she was the only
girl he had ever kisscd'
what of it,
"Why, she naturally reasoned tha
he was either untruthful or absurdly
foolish. and he was hardly worth hav
ing in either case"