“The body is ever in the way of the soul!” saith Mynheer. “Were we souls without bodies, what need had we of the puddings and the flannels?”
“Or the Latin,” sticketh in Ned, mischievously.
Mynheer wagged his head at Ned.
“Edward Van Louvaine, thou wist better.”
“Few folks but know better than they do, Mynheer,” saith Ned. “Yet think you there shall be lexicons needed to talk with King David or the Apostle Paul hereafter?”
“I trow not,” saith Father.
“Dear heart, Master Stuyvesant,” cries Cousin Bess, “but sure the curse of Babel was an ill thing all o’er! You would seem to count it had a silver side to it.”
“It had a golden side, my mistress,” made he answer. “Had all men ever spoken but one tongue, the paedagogus should scarce be needed, and half the delights of learning had disappeared from the earth.”
“Eh, lack-a-day!—but how different can folks look at matters!” saith Cousin Bess. “Why, I have alway thought it should be a rare jolly thing when all strange tongues were done away (as I reckon they shall hereafter), and all folks spake but plain English.”
“Art so sure it should be English, Bess?” saith Father, smiling. “What an’ it were Italian or Greek?”