One day the pupils of the college went out to the yard to play baseball. It happened that one of the boys who was watching the game was hurt at the kneejoint, and fell down on the ground. The boy cried so loud that the rector at once went hurriedly to see what was happening in the yard. He saw the boy sitting on the ground with one of his legs bent. He approached him, and said, "What has happened to you, my boy?" And the boy feeling yet the pain that the ball had caused him, answered, "Father, while I was watching my companions who were playing baseball my—, my—," "What?" said the rector, impatiently. "Father, my—, my—," answered the boy, showing his kneejoint as he was pronouncing the word "my." "Do you mean your leg?" said the rector. "No, father I mean my—," replied the boy. "But your what" cried the rector, "say what you mean to say." The boy, who was trying hard to find the word in Spanish for kneejoint, answered at last, "my vino-vinohan, father, was hurt." The rector, though very angry at the boy's dullness, laughed heartily at his dictionary-making powers.
Note—The word in Tagalog for knee-joint is "alak-alakan," which is similar to the Tagalog word "alak," meaning wine in English and vino in Spanish. The boy, not knowing the proper word in Spanish for knee-joint, derived the word "vino-vinohan" from the Spanish word vino, which means alak (wine) in Tagalog.
Mr. Taft's Mistake
It was a bright day when a crowd of people stood before a platform decorated with palm leaves and roofed with a banner of stars and stripes. The eyes of the spectators, who were all eager to hear the speech of the well-known eloquent orator and skillful politician, Mr. William H. Taft, were fixed on the personages on the platform.
At last, after an ovation by the multitude, Mr. Taft rose up and addressed the audience thus: "Señoras y caballos."[8]
—Amando Clemente.
III. The Eye-Witness Account
Eye-witness account is to true story what realism is to fiction. Exactness is the aim of the narrator. He endeavors to tell precisely what he saw and heard. A great deal of our newspaper "copy" is supposed to be of this type, and likewise much court testimony. The attorneys try to separate distinctly fact from fancy. What a man really must have seen and what he thought he saw are often very different. It appears at first that an unembellished account would be the easiest thing in the world to give, but it takes only a little observation to convince one that few persons can tell what they see or hear; few indeed know what they see or hear. With the bare actuality, they are constantly confounding what they thought or inferred. As a rule, only the man educated to the work can report truthfully.
A unique and curious ancient document of this type is found in a little book that was published by the Spanish Academy of History in 1783, called "El Passo Honroso" or the Passage of Honor. It is a formal eyewitness account prepared on the spot by Delena, one of the authorized scribes of John II, and gives minutely the events of a passage of arms held against all comers in 1434 at the bridge of Orbigo, near the city of Leon, during thirty days, at a moment when the road was thronged with knights going over for a solemn festival to the neighboring shrine of Santiago.[9] Suero de Quiñones, the challenger, was a true gentleman of chivalry, it seems, and had been wearing in sentimental bondage to a noble lady a chain of iron around his neck one day in each week. From his bondage he could be freed only by bringing to her as ransom a minimum number of real spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. So they stood—ten of them—for thirty days challenging all comers. Delena records sixty-eight opponents; six hundred and twenty-seven encounters; sixty-six broken lances; one dead knight; and many wounded, among whom were Quiñones himself and eight of his fellow-champions. Along with the general narrative is a full account of the religious and chivalric ceremonies as they were actually indulged in from day to day. Such a minute and elaborate and fully authenticated eye-witness record of not fictitious but real "knightly guists and fierce encounters" is manifestly invaluable to a student of chivalry.
It is interesting to think of this dapper young scribe sitting on the side-lines watching the combatants and taking down his notes as the telling rushes were made by either party; and then sending his copy hot from the pen to his royal reader. I suppose we might well call Señor Delena the historical prototype of our modern athletics reporter.