58 
PRESTON. 
Changed Meanings of Words. —It is a fact frequently ob¬ 
served that one nation often takes a word from a foreign lan¬ 
guage and gives it a debased meaning in its own, much in 
the same spirit that one religion supplants another and makes 
the gods of the old one the devils of the new. Apporter (to 
carry) in French is transformed into apportieren in German 
and applied to dogs as a hunting term. 
Take the word manger. With us it is for horses; in 
French it means to eat, and applies also to men and women. 
The word saloon here means a low drinking place; in 
France it is the parlor. These linguistic compliments are 
mutual between two of the Latin countries of Europe. 
The French word to speak (parler) is used in Spanish to 
designate one who talks too much and says little of impor¬ 
tance ( parlero ). Reciprocally, the Spanish word to talk 
(hablar ) serves a similar purpose across the Pyrenees, and 
a Ilableur is one with many words and few thoughts and 
who goes about telling lies. Each nation, by implication, 
casts a slur on the other. We all know what it is to take 
French leave. So do the French—only they call the same 
thing going off, after the English fashion, s’en oiler a Van - 
glaise. We speak of the leprosy being a disease of the 
Hawaiian islands. The Hawaiians call it mai poke (Chi¬ 
nese disease). The same principle was exemplified in Europe 
in the sixteenth century. The Italians called it French. 
These, in turn, threw it on the Spanish; and so it went. No 
country was willing to father it. 
These facts are cited by way of contrast with what took 
place in Hawaii. The tendency here was to give words and 
ideas absorbed through external intercourse an elevated 
meaning. Their conception of foreigners was one of supe¬ 
riority. Captain Cook was the personification of their God, 
and he is still spoken of as Lono ) one of the four deities of 
Hawaiian mythology. No human being was ever feared or 
worshipped as he, and notwithstanding the tragic circum¬ 
stances of his death, the natives could not entirely relinquish 
the supernatural idea, nor bring themselves to give up the 
