29S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been less exaggerated ; and they have decreased as freedom has in- 

 creased. In the fourteenth century, in France, at the royal table, 

 " every time the herald cried, ' The king drinks ! ' every one made 

 vceux and cried, 'Long live the king!'" And, though both abroad 

 and at home the same or an allied form of wish is still used, it recurs 

 with nothing like the same frequency. So, too, is it with the good 

 wishes expressed in social intercourse. Though the exclamation, 

 " Long life to your honor!" may still be heard, it is heard among a 

 race who, till late times under personal rule, are even now greatly 

 controlled by their loyalty to representatives of old families ; while in 

 parts of the kingdom longer emancipated from feudal forms, and disci- 

 plined by industrialism, the ordinary expressions of interest, abridged 

 to " How do you do ? " and " Good-by," are uttered in a manner that 

 conveys not much more feeling than is entertained. It is interesting 

 to note that along with these phrases, very generally diffused, in which 

 divine aid is invoked on behalf of the person saluted as in the " May 

 God grant you his favors " of the Arab, " God keep you well " of the 

 Hungarian, " God protect you " of the negro ; and along with those 

 which express interest by inquiries after state of health and strength 

 and fortune, which are also wide-spread there are some which take 

 their character from surrounding conditions. One is the Oriental 

 " Peace be with you," descending from turbulent times when peace 

 was the great desideratum; another is the " How do you perspire ? " 

 alleged of the Egyptians ; and a still more curious one is, " How have 

 the mosquitoes used you ? " which, according to Humboldt, is the 

 morning salutation on the Orinoco. 



There remain to be noted those modifications of language, gram- 

 matical and other, which, by implication, exalt the person addressed or 

 abase the person addressing. These have certain analogies with other 

 elements of ceremony. We have seen that, where subjection is ex- 

 treme, the ruler, if he does not keep himself invisible, must, when 

 present, not be looked at, on pain of death ; and, from the idea that it 

 is an unpardonable liberty to gaze at an exalted person, there has 

 arisen in some countries the usage of turning the back on a superior. 

 Similarly the practice of kissing the ground before a reverenced person, 

 or kissing some object belonging to him, implies that the subject 

 person is so remote in station that he may not take the liberty of 

 kissing even the foot or the dress. And in a kindred spirit the linguis- 

 tic forms used in compliment have, in part, the trait that they avoid 

 direct relations with the person addressed. 



Special modifications of language, having, as their common result, 

 the maintenance of a distance between superiors and inferiors, are 

 widely diffused, and make their appearance in some comparatively 

 early social stages. Of the superior people among the Abipones we 

 read that " the names of men belonging to this class end in in / those 



