30 



THE AMERICAN BllE- KEEPER. 



January 



tleman Sia: ^i lar;o vo taco. Tiie gen- 

 tleniaii p. ..; iiis ax'iB around the 

 lady's v.ai,-r, and -with the otber 

 hand lie ^c^Xi. firm hold on her arm. 

 You ^vould at first think they \\ere 

 going to wrestle. Thus prepared 

 and the gontleman having got so 

 good a purchase upon the lady they 

 begin to spin around and around 

 with a velocity which would have 

 made nie gidd.y in half a minute. — 

 "Twining Papers." 



The Englisbi Tongue. 



It is said that the Duke of York's 

 household is the first royal entour 

 age in England to speak English. 

 The queen's still holds to German 

 for a steady language, and even the 

 Prince of Vvales' comhines German 

 and English, v;ith French mixed in. 



In fact, Babel was not more bless- 

 ed with foreign tongues than these 

 homes of the reigning family, but it 

 seems the Duke and Duchess of 

 York both determined to be "Eng- 

 lish, you know," and commanded 

 their household to stick to the ver- 

 nacular without any regard for prec- 

 edent. The czar of Russia, who 

 boasts of having married an English 

 princess, though she is wholly Ger- 

 man, has also announced that Eng- 

 lish shall be spoken with Russian at 

 his court. This is because the czar- 

 ina, having found the latter very dif- 

 ficult to speak, her fond husband 

 wishes to spare her all the annoy- 

 ance possible. English is the finest 

 language in the world, anyhow. — 

 Boston Herald. 



POWER OF SPEECH OF THE CAT. 



A Substitate. 



"Have you 'The Manxman?' " in- 

 quired the dignified customer with 

 the gold headed cane. 



"The what?" said the new boy at 

 the book store. 



" 'The Manxman.'" 



"I gwess you mean marksman, 

 don't you? We've got a 'Life of Buf- 

 falo Bill' I can sell you for 10 cents. 

 How's that?"— Chicago Tribune. 



Argument In Favor of the Theory That 

 Felines Can Converse. 



Theories of articulate language in 

 the anin^al kingdom are advanced 

 every day. Some of them are seri- 

 ous, like Professor Garner's notion 

 of an intelligent and intelligible 

 speech of apes, but the most inter- 

 esting are those which treat of the 

 matter in a half humorous way 

 which does not tax the credulity too 

 far. Such a one is the theory of a 

 feline tongue, exploited by the blind 

 author, Marvin Clark, in his little 

 book on ' ' Pussy and Her Language. ' ' 

 He declares that the "smooth and 

 liquid passages in our poets which 

 express onomatopoeia are butechoeg 

 from that most beautiful of all lan- 

 guages, that of the cat." 



The one most like it among human 

 tongues, he says, is the Chinese, the 

 sounds in each being musical, mel- 

 lifluous and pleasing to the senses. 

 As in the Chinese, too, words in the 

 cat's language have various mean- 

 ings, according to the inflections of 

 the voice. The number of words is 

 very great, but the author has made 

 up no complete lexicon of them as 

 yet. The following 17, says a writ- 

 er in the Buffalo Commercial, are 

 the most important and frequent in 

 the conversation which cats struggle 

 to carry on with members of the 

 household: Aelio means food; lae, 

 milk; parriere, open; aliloo, water; 

 bl, meat; ptlee-bl, mouse meat; 

 bleeme-be, cooked meat; pad, foot; 

 bo, head ; pro, nail or claw ; tut, limb; 

 papoo, body ; oolie, fur ; mi-ouw, be- 

 ware; burrieu, satisfaction or con- 

 tent; yiaou, extermination; mi- 

 youw, here. 



Of primitive words it is believed 

 there are not more tha^ 600 in the 

 cat tongue^ and many of these are 

 obscure, for the cat relies greatly 

 upon signs for making its meaning 

 clear to those who havo neglected a 

 study of its articulate speech. Thus 

 the last word in the foreeoinff Hat is 



