“I have who and which,” replied Pronoun. “Instead of saying, ‘I met a man, the man had no eyes,’ you say, ‘I met a man who had no eyes;’ so my little who saves Mr. Noun’s man. Instead of saying, ‘I will tell you a tale, a tale was told to me,’ you can say, ‘I will tell you a tale which was told to me;’ so which stands instead of tale.”
“We understand,” said the Judge. “No more of your tales now, if you please. You have no more words, I suppose?”
“Indeed I have, my lord. This and that, these and those, are pronouns. For when you say, ‘Look at this,’ you mean a picture, or a sum, or anything else that this may happen to stand for; and when you say, ‘Take that,’ that stands for a halfpenny, or a kick, or anything else you may be giving at the time. And if you sing to a child—if your lordship ever does sing—which does not seem very likely——”
“Mind your words, sir,” said the Judge, again. “If we sing what?”
“If you sing ‘This is the way the lady goes,’ then this stands for the jogging up and down of my knee, the way the lady goes.”
“Really, Mr. Pronoun,” said the Judge, “you are very childish. The Schoolroom-shire people are quite ashamed of you. We shall ask for no more of your words to-day, for I suppose, after all, they are easy enough to find out.”
“All words that stand instead of nouns belong to me,” said Pronoun; “but they are not quite so easy to find out as you suppose. Those that stand instead of persons, like I, thou, he, we, you, they, any one can find out. I have told you about a good many others, and if Serjeant Parsing wishes to discover the rest for himself——”
“He does, sir,” said the Judge, who was getting very tired and hungry. “You may go. I will only ask you to assist our Schoolroom-shire friends in making the following verses right. They read very queerly at present; but if you can set them right, I think we shall agree that what you have been saying of your words is true.”
The Judge then wished them all good-morning, and went to lunch off a few pages of dictionary.
Here are the verses.