r to the
golden harvest.

You will hear in the same day, almost at the same time, the lofty
melody of the Spanish language, the piquant polish of the French
(which, though not a _musical_ tongue, is the most _useful_ of them
all), the silver, changing clearness of the Italian, the harsh gangle
of the German, the hissing precision of the English, the liquid
sweetness of the Kanaka, and the sleep-inspiring languor of the East
Indian. To complete the catalogue, there is the _native_ Indian, with
his guttural vocabulary of twenty words! When I hear these sounds, so
strangely different, and look at the speakers, I fancy them a living
polyglot of the languages, a perambulating picture-gallery illustrative
of national variety in form and feature.

By the way, speaking of languages, nothing is more amusing than to
observe the different styles in which the generality of Americans talk
_at_ the unfortunate Spaniard. In the first place, many of them really
believe that when they have learned _sabe_ and _vamos_ (two words which
they seldom use in the right place), _poco tiempo_, _si_, and _bueno_
(the last they _will_ persist in pronouncing _whayno_), they have the
whole of the glorious Castilian at their tongue's end. Some, however,
eschew the above words entirely, and innocently fancy that by splitting
the tympanum of an unhappy foreigner in screaming forth their sentences
in good solid English they can be surely understood; others, at the
imminent risk of dislocating their own limbs, and the jaws of their
listeners by the laughs which their efforts elicit, make the most
excruciatingly grotesque gestures, and think that _that_ is speaking
Spanish. The majority, however, place a most beautiful and touching
faith in _broken English_, and when they murder it with the few words
of Castilian quoted above, are firmly convinced that it is nothing but
their "ugly dispositions" which make the Spaniards pretend not to
understand them.

One of those dear, stupid Yankees who _will_ now and then venture out
of sight of the smoke of their own chimneys as far as California, was
relating _his_ experience in this particular the other day. It seems he
had lost a horse somewhere among the hills, and during his search for
it met a gentlemanly Chileno, who with national suavity made the most
desperate efforts to understand the questions put to him. Of course
Chileno was so stupid that he did not succeed, for it is not possible
one of the Great Am