The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1902-12-02
DIDN'T SPEAK DUTCH

ing England-wlthout having somebody
along as an interpreter" said an amiable
Mount Pleasant matron who recently re-
turned from a tour of the continent. "Such
a dreadful time as we had, my husband and
l. and he seemed to get crosser and more
out OF patience with the poor, uninstructed
folks who couldn't speak English every mile
that we traversed. We were in lots of
places in England where we actually
couldn't understand word the people said,
although they were supposed to be speaking
English, and my poor dear of testy hus-
band came near getting into fst1cuffs with
some of the restaurant folks and BARRIERS
and tradespeople in Yorkshire because they
bridled up and seemed to be huffy when he,
not being able to understand the patois that
they believe is English, asked them why
they didn't speak the language of their
king.
but in the really-and-truly foreign coun-
tries our difficulties were beyond belief
Neither of us knows a word Of any other
language but English. Now, l, being WON
an, and therefore a reasoning being, am
willing to concede that there are several
languages spoken on the globe besides Eng.
lish, and to admit the right Of the people
who are born and raised to these languages
to speak them in their own lands. But my
nusDdHu- DtlHR u udu, anu u man Oh eA-
clusiyely English speech, became more and
more ferocious over the languages of the
people as we progressed on the tour. 1t
didn't make any difference where we were,
whether in the Tyrol or by the Italian
lakes, he seemed to take it as a personal
affront when the people addressed him in
their own tongues, and he became even
more angry when he inadvertently asked
one of them question and received only
shake of the head in reply
THE internal imbecilesP he was ex
claiming to me all over Europe, how in the
dickens do they expect a white man to talk
such idiotic rubbish as that?
But, l would expostulate, they are
talking the only language they know
"'Well, that's the reason l call EN- inn
becilesl' he would hotly retort.
But would start to say, when he
would interrupt me with such an outbreak
as this:
There are no ifs, ands and butts about
it; they talk like a lot of monkeys-the
idea of man who talks English that's
fairly decent at any rate not beng able to
get a word of sense out of a single one of
about 100000 alleged human beings that
he's addressed necessary questions to all
over a continent that's supposed TO be
civilized
"And there spoke the average American
man abroad, for all the world III never
forget the morning we first arrived in Am
sterdam. We started out early to explore,
and my husband became more gloomy and
morose every step we took over the utter
inability of any of the people we met to
understand us. / suppose the Dutch people
are the least accomplished lnguists in Eu-
repeat least they struck us as being so.
We didn't strike single individual iii Am
sterdam that could speak English. Along
in the afternoon we became hungry and de-
cided to hunt IN some restaurant for lunch
con instead OF returning to the hotel. So
my husband began asking everybody we met
where there was good restaurant They
all stared vacantly at him and shook their
heads with awful solemnity without word
and passed on, many of them turning about
to look after us as If they considered us
escaped insane folks
I'm gong to get one of these Dutch
balloons to give me some kind of an lntelli-
Rible reply to a civil question if | have to
stay right here on the streets of Amster-
dam for 1000 years. he said to me, hoarsely
and with such utter unreasonableness that
couldn't for the life of me have helped
throwing my head back right there and
laughing at him-which didn't tend to in
crease his cheerfulness a particle, as you
may imagine.
FINALLY he went up to gendarme-one
of those funny-looling little squatty male
persons with the exaggeratedly ferocious
expression of countenance- and he fairly
bawled in the astonished gendarme's teeth
Say, my adipose friend of the Broad
way squad, can you and will you tell me
Whora / oap find r,lapa in This hiir U w her
two pilgrims can get bite and sup Of
something fit to eat and to drink
Gle asked this question, as l say, in an
exceedingly loud tone of voice--I observed
that most travelling American men shouted
their questions at foreigners, as if mere
volume of lung power would suffice to
bridge the conversational gulf that yawns
between two persons of different nationali-
ties who attempt to make themselves plain
to each other in their respective tongues.
"The gendarme gazed at my husband with
amazement He undoubtedly thought that
my husband was threatening him, and he
suddenly hoped back a couple of PAGES
and gave a peculiar whistle, which was i'm
mediatey answered by a couple of other
gendarmes who came running around the
corner from a schnapps shop where they
had been RECALLING themselves. My poor
unreasonable husband wasn't a bit taken
back by their appearance, although began
to have visions of him being hailed off to a
noisome dungeon, full of rats and bats and
things, and of my being compelled to go on
my knees to the American minister at The
Hague to have him released, and of my
friends in Washington reading of his being
arrested as desperate character and all
that sort of thing. / tried to pluck at his
-