Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/245

Rh bad as are the generality of such performances. They read well; only it was a little irritating to listen to them. The hearer never could be sure that his lordship would not break down altogether. Speaking made him and his audience hot. They perspired sympathetically. It made him uncertain what to do with his legs, and those listening to his words found their attention drawn away to his inferior members, and were kept in suspense as to what he would do next with his extremities. Sometimes he endeavoured to stand on one foot, and then he invariably lost his balance, and grabbed at the table-cloth, or a lady's bonnet to stay himself from falling. On such an occasion he lost the thread of his discourse, and had to seek it in his pocket-handkerchief, whilst those listening good-naturedly stamped and rapped the table, and shrieked "Hear, hear!"

Sometimes he curled one leg round the other in such a manner that to recover himself he was obliged to face about, and he found himself addressing the latter part of a sentence to the waiter and the tent wall behind him, instead of the audience at the table. It was said that once he put his foot into his plate on the table, but this was an exaggeration; he caught himself about to do it and desisted in time.

How is it that the Englishman is so poor a speaker? I believe that the language is partly the cause. The English tongue is so simple in its structure that it runs out of the mouth faster than the ideas it is supposed to express have taken shape in the brain. Consequently we males, sometimes women even, say things before we have thought them out, and then are embarrassed because the thought lags behind the word, like the thunder after the flash.

In such a language as the German, however, the mind has to formulate the sentence in all its ramifications and subsidiary articulations, before it is uttered. The idea is kneaded, and squeezed into a shape and then baked. A