THE OYSTER. 



ancestors of the oyster were different from modern 

 oysters. This is a fair question, and I will try to give 

 an outline of the reasons for this opinion. Perhaps 

 an illustration may help us. 



When a Baltimorean visits New York or Savannah 

 or Boston or Chicago, he finds that while the people 

 of these cities talk the same language, it is with a 

 difference. They all talk what they call English, but 

 when an Englishman comes among us he tells us that 

 it is not English, and it is quite clear to an American 

 who visits England that the people there do not know 

 how to talk United States, although the differences 

 are trivial ones, of accent and idiom, and do not in the 

 least hinder conversation. 



If, however, we cross the narrow strip of water 

 which separates England from the German Empire, we 

 find a strange language, which at first seems totally 

 unfamiliar and unintelligible, but as our ears become 

 more accustomed to the strange sounds we find many 

 which are not as unintelligible as they seemed at first. 



When a German talks of his vater, his mutter, his 

 bruder, his schwester, when he asks us to share his 

 brod und butter, or offers us a glas wasser, we need no 

 dictionary to tell us what he means. 



We know that the Americans and the English of 

 to-day are descended from common ancestors, only a 

 few generations back, from whom they have inherited 

 their common language, and we know from literature 

 that this was not exactly the same as modern English 

 or modern American, and history also tells us that 



