as suspended by liquor. He could
also whistle ballads and polkas, and had attained an astonishing
proficiency in these arts; for, by long practice, he could dovetail
curses and whistles in a most energetic and, indeed, astonishing manner.
It would often project two whistles and a curse, sometimes two curses and
a whistle, while all the time keeping faithfully to the tune of 'The
Sailor's Grave' or another. It was a highly cultivated and erudite
person. As it advanced in learning it took naturally to chewing tobacco,
but, being a person of strongly experimental habits, it tried one day to
curse and whistle and chew tobacco at the one moment, with the
unfortunate result that a piece of honeydew got jammed between a whistle
and a curse, and the poor thing perished miserably of strangulation.

"It is indeed singular that while every race of mankind is competent to
speak, none of the other races, such as cats, cows, caterpillars, and
crabs, have shown the slightest interest in the making of this ordered
noise. This is the more strange when we reflect that almost all animals
are provided with a throat and a mouth which are capable of making a
noise certainly equal in volume and intelligibility to the sounds made by
a German or a Spaniard.

"Long ago men lived in trees and had elongated backbones which they were
able to twitch. There were no shops, theatres, or churches in those
times, and, consequently, no necessity for a specialized and meticulous
prosody. Man barked at his fellow-man when he wanted something, and if
his request was not understood he bit his fellow-man and was quit of him.
When they forsook the trees and became ground-walkers they came into
contact with a variety of theretofore unknown objects, the necessity for
naming which so exercised their tongues that gradually their bark took on
a different quality and became susceptible of more complicated sounds.
Then, with the dawning of the Pastoral Age, food in a gregarious
community became a matter of more especial importance. When a man barked
at his wife for a cocoanut and she handed him a baby or a bowl of soup or
an evening paper it became necessary, in order to minimise her
alternatives, that he should elaborate his bark to meet this and an
hundred other circumstances. I do not know at what period of history man
was able to call his wife names with the certainty of reprisal. It was
possible quite early, because I have often heard a dog bark in a
dissatisfie