12 BEACH-LA-MAR. 
Against these obstacles the lame foreigner with the stick had to make 
head as well as he could. * * * However, the Bleeding Hearts were 
kind hearts; and when they saw the little fellow cheerily limping about 
with a good-humored face, doing no harm, drawing no knives, committing 
no outrageous immoralities, living chiefly on farinaceous and milk diet, and 
playing with Mrs. Plornish’s children of an evening, they began to think 
that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still it would be 
hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began to accommodate 
themselves to his level, calling him Mr. Baptist but treating him like a 
baby, and laughing immoderately at his lively gestures and his childish 
English—more because he didn’t mind it, and laughed too. They spoke 
to him in very loud voices as if he were stone deaf. They constructed 
sentences, by way of teaching him the language in its purity, such as were 
addressed by the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson 
Crusoe. Mrs. Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained 
so much celebrity for saying “‘Me ope you leg well soon,”’ that it was con- 
sidered in the yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking Italian. 
Even Mrs. Plornish herself began to think that she had a natural call 
toward that language. As he became more popular household objects were 
brought into requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and 
whenever he appeared in the yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying 
“Mr. Baptist—tea-pot!’’, Mr. Baptist—dust-pan!’’, ““Mr. Baptist—flour- 
dredger!’’, ““Mr. Baptist—coffee-biggin!’”’ At the same time exhibiting 
those articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties 
of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. * * * 
“So that some of us thinks he’s peeping out toward where his own country 
is, and some of us thinks he’s looking for somebody he don’t want to see, 
and some of us don’t know what to think.” 
Mr. Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said: 
or perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of peeping. In 
any case, he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man who 
had his sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue it 
didn’t matter. Altro! 
“What's altro?” said Pancks. 
“Hem! It’s a sort of general kind of expression, sir,’’ said Mrs. Plornish. 
“Ts it?” said Pancks. ‘‘Why then altro to you, old chap. Good after- 
noon. Altro!’’ 
Mr. Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr. 
Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time it became 
a frequent custom with Pancks the gypsy, as he went home jaded at night, 
to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in at 
Mr. Baptist’s door, and, finding him in his room, to say ‘‘Halloo, old 
chap! Altro!’’ To which Mr. Baptist would reply with innumerable bright 
nods and smiles, ‘‘ Altro, signor, altro, altro, altro!’’ After this highly con- 
densed conversation Mr. Pancks would go his way with an appearance of 
being lightened and refreshed. 
Here we have the fractured English, the comminution so benefi- 
cial to foreigners. There can be no doubt about the value; we induct 
our infants into their heritage in the classic dignity of the speech of 
Shakespeare and Milton by drooling predigested fragments into their 
dawning intelligences; and then, with jewelish consistency, in after 
life we demand of them that they parse 
