Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1916-03-22

the only explanation possible lies III
that he persisted shortly after the ad-
venture with the wild pigs. That il
is no discussion. He was in full vigor.
and only sudden and violent death
could have taken him off But | know
not the manner of his going-whether
he was drowned in the river or was
swallowed by a snake or went into the
stomach of old Saber Tooth. the tiger.
is beyond my knowledge.
For know that | remember only the
things | saw myself, with my own
eyes. in those prehistoric days. If my
mother knew my fathers end she never
told me. For that matter doubt if she
had a vocabulary adequate to convey
such information. Perhaps, all told,
the folk in that day had vocabulary
of thirty or forty SOUNDS.
l call them sounds rather than words
because sounds they were primarily.
They had no fixed values TO be altered
by adjectives and adverbs. These lat
ter were tools of speech not yet invent
ed. Instead Of qualifying nouns or
verbs by the use of adjectives and adj
verbs, we qualified sounds by intona-
ton, by changes in quantity and pitch,
by retarding and by accelerating. The
length of time employed in the utter
hnce of a particular sound shaded its
meaning.
We had no conjugation. One judged
the tense by the context We talked
only concrete things because we
thought only concrete things; also we
depended largely on pantomime. The
simplest abstraction was practically
beyond our thinking, and when one did
happen to think one he was hard put
to communicate it to his fellows. There
were no sounds for it. He was press
ing beyond the limits of his vocabu-
larry. If he invented sounds for it his
fellows did not understand the sounds.
Then it was that he fell back on pam
tomime, illustrating the thought wher-
ever possible and at the same time re-
peating the new sound over and over
again.
Thus language grew. BY the few
sounds we possessed we were enabled
to think a short distance beyond those
sounds; then came the need for new
sounds wherewith to express the new
thought. Sometimes, however, we
thought too long q distance in advance
of our sounds. managed to achieve alb
stractions (dim ones, j grant,, which
we failed utterly to make known to
other folk. After all, language did not
grow fast in that day.
Oh, believe me, we were amazingly
simple. But we did know a lot that is
not known today. We could twitch our
ears, prick them up and flatten them
down at will And we could scratch
between our shoulders with ease. We
could throw stones with our feet.
have done it many time. And for
that matter l could keep my knees
straight. bend forward from the hips
and touch. not the tips Of my fingers,
but the points of my elbows. to the
ground. And as for bird nesting-well.
| only wish the twentieth century boy
could see us. But we made no collec-
ton of eggs. We ate them.
l remember-but / outrun my story.
First let me tell of Lop Ear and our
friendship. Very early in my life l sep
arated from my mother. Possibly this
was because after the death of my
father she took to herself a second hus-
band. | have few recollections of him,
and they are not of the best. He was
light fellow. There was no solidity to
him. He was too voluble. His internal
chattering worries me even now as
think of it. His mind was too incOnse-
quential to permit him to possess pur-
pose. Monkeys in their cages always
remind me of him. He was mOnkeyish.
That is the best description | can give
of him.
He hated me from the first. And
quickly learned to be afraid of him
and his malicious pranks. Whenever
he came in sight l crept close to my
mother and chung to her. But | was
growing older all the time, and it was
inevitable that l should from time to
time stray from her and stray farther
and farther. And these were the OPP
portunities that the Chatterer waited
for. Il may as well explain that we
bore no names in those days; were not
known by any name. For the sake Of
convenience have myself given names
to the various folk l was more closely
in contact with, and the "Chatterer' is
the most fitting description 1 can ind
for that precious stepfather of mine.
As for me, I have named myself big
Tooth" My eye teeth were pronOunc-
eddy large)
But to return to the Chatterer. He
persistently terrOriZed me. He was al
ways pinching me and cutting me, and
on occasion he was not above biting
me- often my mother interfered, and
the way she made his fur fly was joy
to see. But the result of all this was
a beautiful and amending family quar-
rel. in which / was the bone of con-
tentiOn.
No, my home life was not happy. l