inister to Vienna, who had been nursed in the mongrel
Dutch of Berks County, Pennsylvania, declared that the people of
Germany spoke very bad German.

An argument for the uniformity of the signs of our Indians is derived
from the fact that those used by any of them are generally understood
by others. But signs may be understood without being identical with
any before seen. The entribal as well as intertribal exercise of
Indians for generations in gesture language has naturally produced
great skill both in expression and reception, so as to render them
measurably independent of any prior mutual understanding, or what in
a system of signals is called preconcert. Two accomplished army
signalists can, after sufficient trial, communicate without having
any code in common between them, one being mutually devised, and those
specially designed for secrecy are often deciphered. So, if any one
of the more conventional signs is not quickly comprehended, an Indian
skilled in the principle of signs resorts to another expression of his
flexible art, perhaps reproducing the gesture unabbreviated and made
more graphic, perhaps presenting either the same or another conception
or quality of the same object or idea by an original portraiture.

An impression of the community of signs is the more readily made
because explorers and officials are naturally brought into contact
more closely with those individuals of the tribes visited who are
experts in sign language than with their other members, and those
experts, on account of their skill as interpreters, are selected as
guides to accompany the visitors. The latter also seek occasion to
be present when signs are used, whether with or without words, in
intertribal councils, and then the same class of experts comprises
the orators, for long exercise in gesture speech has made the Indian
politicians, with no special effort, masters of the art acquired by
our public speakers only after laborious apprenticeship. The whole
theory and practice of sign language being that all who understand its
principles can make themselves mutually intelligible, the fact of the
ready comprehension and response among all the skilled gesturers gives
the impression of a common code. Furthermore, if the explorer learn
to employ with ingenuity the signs used by any of the tribes, he will
probably be understood in any other by the same class of persons
who will surround him in the latter, thereby confirming him in the