said Huck, "he would be saying 'Can you speak French?'"' "Well, why don't he say it then?" said Jim. “He is saying it," said Huck, "that's his way of saying it." "A blame foolish way of saying it," says Jim. "Now look here," says Huck, "haven't cats got their own way of talking, and cows have their way, and dogs have their way, and we can't understand them: why shouldn't Frenchmen have their own way?" "Now look here, Huck," says Jim, "is a cat a man?" "No!" "Well is a dog a man or is a dog a cat or is either of them a COW?" "No." "Ain't a Frenchman a man?" "Yes." "Well then, what I say is, why don't he talk like a man?"

After all isn't it rather strange that if you kick a cat across the street here in London it will say Mee-a-ow, and if you do the same to a French cat in Paris it will use just the same language; while on the other hand if you tramp on an Englishman's foot, he will use a very short word indeed, which I am afraid I mustn't mention; but if you tramp on a German's foot he will say "Himmelkreuzpotzblitzhunderttausendmillionendonnerwetter," or perhaps something longer still.

Or, again, here's a loaf of bread. It is the same loaf whoever looks at it. It has the same size, the same colour, the same weight, the same smell, and the same taste, and I call it a loaf and a Frenchman calls it something quite different. Why shouldn't everybody call the same thing by the same name? Supposing you travelled more than 2,000 miles right over to America, you would find the people there calling it a loaf of bread, and yet, if you only went about 100 miles over to Calais, nobody would understand you. You may say that the Americans are really English, and are the same race as we are, while Frenchmen are like Red Indians or niggers, and so naturally talk differently, but this is not

Frenchmen and Germans and Italians and Greeks and even Hindoos are all descendants of the same people as ourselves.

VOL. XVIII.

I

Now this people lived hundreds and thousands of years before history begins. They lived on the shores of the Baltic Sea about half way between Berlin and St Petersburg. That part of Europe was then covered with big forests of firs and oaks and beeches, and our ancestors lived partly on beechnuts and acorns, and partly on milking their cows, and partly by farming in a very rudimentary fashion. They had cows and dogs and perhaps some poultry, but they had no horses. or sheep or cats. They don't seem to have had very many clothes among them, but they were fairly sensible people and had family life. They were able to count up to twelve, and very likely up to a hundred, and you must know that there are some tribes on the earth today who can only count up to two.

Well, one fine day these forefathers of ours had got over-populated. There wasn't enough to eat. Beechnuts and acorns were so dear that they had to be counted, while as for milk, it was only the swells who could afford to drink it. So a lot of the young and strong people thought it would be a good plan to emigrate, and they did. But they didn't emigrate the way people do now, in a railway train and on a steamboat. No! they did every yard of it on their own feet. So they wandered all across Russia and then into Asia and half across that until finally they settled in India. Well, after this lot had gone off, things looked better at home for a while, but after a time they got just as bad again, so another lot started to emigrate. They did not follow the same course, but made their way down into Greece and Italy and Spain, and some of them crossed France and settled in these islands. After these came another lot who spread over Germany and Denmark and Holland, and then crossed over here and drove the first comers over to Ireland and Wales and up to Scotland. So you see the French and Germans and Italians and even Hindoos are all our cousins just the same as the Americans.

Well, if that's so, why don't they talk the same?

Suppose we think of the first lot of emigrants who set off-naturally they hadn't many words to take with them, for they hadn't very many ideas, and words and ideas always go together. However, they took all they could, unless they left some behind in the hurry of packing. Now think of all the new ideas they would get while on their travels. They started from a cold sort of forest where there was nothing but trees and rocks and sparrows and squirrels on the seashore of a very dreary sea, and then they first had to cross Russia where they might travel for days and days and never see a tree of any kind, and then over Asia where they would get nearly burnt up in the deserts, and finally came to India with its warm sun and magnificent trees and palms and cocoanuts, with tigers and snakes in the jungles and crocodiles in the rivers. What a lot of

Just think

river for a

things they would have to find names for! of the first one who strolled down to the bucket of water and met a crocodile for the first time. What would he call it? He probably had never seen anything more like a crocodile than a lobster. Well of course he wouldn't stop to call it anything, he would drop his bucket and run for his life. But when he got home and his wife asked him where the water was and what he'd done with the bucket, he couldn't very well say he had run away from a lobster.

Well, that is one way that languages change. People come across new things and have to find new names for them. Another way is that children are always being born, and no child talks exactly the same as its parents. The difference is not enough to notice, but after a hundred generations it soon mounts up.

Now that's how it comes that people don't all talk the same, but why do they talk at all?

What is talking? Any one can do it, but how is it done? Most people think it is with our tongues, and certainly the tongue has a good deal to do with it;

but people have had their tongues cut out and yet been able to talk very respectably. I daresay most of you have felt that hard lump in your throats which is called Adam's apple, because it is much more noticeable in men than in women, and so people used to say that Eve swallowed the piece of apple she took, but Adam hadn't time, and so it stayed in his throat. Now that hard lump forms a kind of little box just at the top of the wind-pipe by which the air comes from the lungs, and, when we like, we can draw two little elastic pieces of skin over it so as to put a lid on the box and prevent the air getting through-(cough). When we want to talk or sing we don't shut it quite, but leave a narrow slit and stretch the edges tight, so that when the air pushes through them they make a musical note. When people sing they change this note, but, when speaking, it is pretty much the same and more gentle. Then it becomes a, e, i, o, u according to the shape of the mouth and the height of the tongue.

Quite another kind of sound is made by stopping your breath and letting it out with a rush, p, b, or by forcing it through a very narrow passages, th. Some languages have tuts and clicks-(kissing).

Of course our tongue does most of the work in changing from one sound to another, so it is not surprising to learn that it is a very strong member. It is made up of bundles of little muscles which end to end would stretch two miles, and if they all pulled together could lift half a hundredweight. Fancy lifting half a sack of coals with our tongues! It is no wonder some people can talk so long without being tired.

Well now, I've been trying very hard to tell you all I know about why we talk, and I am afraid we are not any nearer it. It is much easier to explain how a man says 'cat' than it is to explain why he says it. And as for the question why we talk at all, I'm afraid I shall have to give it up, and ask some of you to tell me.

H. D. D.

WORDSWORTH'S ROOM IN ST JOHN'S.

W

E are indebted to the proprietors of the Westminster Gazette for permission to reproduce the above engraving of the room occupied by Wordsworth from 1787 to 1791, and recently demolished in the alterations made to the Kitchen. The engraving, which is after a sketch taken by Mr R. Lofts, Clerk of the Kitchen, was sent to the Westminster Gazette by Mr H. D. Rawnsley, of Crosthwaite, and gives a very good idea of the general arrangements of the room (1st Court, F 2*).

The door on the left is that by which the rooms were entered from the staircase. The little window on the left is that by which light was admitted into the 'dark cupboard,' which formed the poet's bedroom. Nearer us on this side (though not shown in the sketch) was the door of the bedroom, to which the poet drew his bed in order to see the top of the window' in Trinity College Chapel, below which stands the Newton statue (Prelude III). The door facing us in the sketch is that of the gyp-room. The fireplace was on the right on this side of the window. This window, which now

For proof that this was Wordsworth's room see Eagle XVI, 429-30.