No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley’s acquaintance could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and sentences. I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher flights of fancy.
We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-called mineral water we use at table is specially still and dead, and we think it may have been compared to its disadvantage with other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed label announcing, “To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming, since that they do invariable spread the Stomach.”
We learn also by studying another bottle that “The Wermouth is a white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic herbs.” Who leso me we printed in italics in our own minds, giving the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was the somewhat familiar adjective “wholesome.”
In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:—
Room I. In the middle. The sin of our fathers.
On every side. The ovens of Babylony. Möise saved from the water.
Room II. In the middle. Möise who sprung the water.
On every side. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent wood.
Room III. In the middle. Elia transported in the heaven.
On every side. Eliseus dispansing brods.