THE VERB OF THE SEASON.
I counted them over. There are twelve ways of saying Have you in Dutch. That was distinctly suggestive, it seemed to me at the first brush, of the twelve months of the year. You could begin in January with Hebt gij, in February you would have Hebt ge, and so you could work on through the months, keeping your grammar and your chronology going, side by side, through the seasons till you would emerge safely near Christmas with Heb jelui. This theory was not without its attractions. But what would happen in passing, say, from June to July, if you forgot what day of the month it was? If it was July the first and you imagined it was June the thirtieth, you would be talking bad grammar! No: that would never do. My brilliant conjecture had soon to be abandoned as fanciful, and I was very sorry.
THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.
But the facts of the case were dead against the obvious chronological arrangement, though they were by no means easily grasped. There were asterisks and foot-notes to all these zodiacal forms; and a great deal of solid reading had to be gone through before you got at the relative force of any particular term. The erudition was distracting, and the warnings were positively alarming, but after much painstaking investigation I seemed to perceive three grand principles emerging.”
“Yes?” we all said together, as O’Neill paused for breath. “And these were?—”
“In the first place,” resumed Jack deliberately, checking off the principles upon his fingers.
THREE PRINCIPLES.
I. “Never say je or jij to a man unless you mean to insult him.”
II. In the second place, je and jij may be freely used on all occasions, if you only know how.