Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/242

224 of the difficulties with which his lexicographer will have to contend; for interjections, as all students of foreign tongues know, are among the hardest words to render from one language to another. A literal translation is liable to convey almost no meaning. When a Spaniard grows red in the face and vociferates, "Jesús, María y José!" he is not thinking of the holy family, but in all likelihood of something very, very different; and when a devout New England deacon hears some surprising piece of news, and responds with "My conscience!" he is not thinking at all of the voice of God in the soul of man. Such phrases—and the jay language, I feel sure, is full of them—are not so much expressions of thought as vents for feeling. You may call them safety-valves. Emotion is like steam. If you stop the nose of the tea-kettle, off goes the cover. The hotter the blood, of course, the more need for such exclamatory outlets; and the jay, unless his behavior belies him, is Spaniard, Italian, and Frenchman all in one. I pity his lexicographer if he undertakes to render all his subject's emotions in prim lit-