[CHAPTER V.]
A NEW WAY TO LEARN GAELIC.
After the captain and the pilot had retired, sais I, “Miss Jessie, sposin we young folks—(ah me, it is time to get a new word, I guess, for that one has been used so long, it’s e’en amost worn out now)—sposin we young folks leave the doctor and your father to finish their huntin’ stories, and let us go to the other room, and have a dish of chat about things in general, and sweethearts in particular.”
“Oh, we live too much alone here,” said she, “to know anything of such matters, but we will go if you will promise to tell us one of your funny stories. They say you have written a whole book full of them; how I should like to see it.”
“Would you, Miss?” said I, “well, then, you shall have one, for I have a copy on board I believe, and I shall be only too proud if you will read it to remember me by. But my best stories ain’t in my books. Somehow or another, when I want them they won’t come, and at other times when I get a goin talkin, I can string them together like onions, one after the other, till the twine is out. I have a heap of them, but they are all mixed and confused like in my mind, and it seems as if I never could find the one I need. Do you work in worsted, Miss?”
“Well, a little,” sais she. “It is only town-bred girls, who have nothing to attend to but their dress and to go to balls, that have leisure to amuse themselves that way; but I can work a little, though I could never do anything fit to be seen or examined.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said I, and I paused, and she looked as if she didn’t over half like my taking her at her word that way. “I shouldn’t wonder,” said I, “for I am sure your eyes would fade the colour out of the worsted.”
“Why, Mr Slick,” said she, drawing herself up a bit, “what nonsense you do talk, what a quiz you be.”
“Fact,” sais I, “Miss, I assure you, never try it again, you will be sure to spoil it. But as I was a sayin, Miss, when you see a thread of a particular colour, you know whether you have any more like it or not, so when a man tells me a story, I know whether I have one of the same kind to match it or not, and if so, I know where to lay my hand on it; but I must have a clue to my yarns.”
Squire, there is something very curious about memory, I don’t think there is such a thing as total forgetfulness. I used once to think there was, but I don’t now. It used to seem to me that things rusted out, but now it appears as if they were only misplaced, or overlaid, or stowed away like where you can’t find them; but depend on it, when once there, they remain for ever. How often you are asked, “Don’t you recollect this or that?” and you answer, “No, I never heard, or saw it, or read it,” as the case may be. And when the time, and place, and circumstances are told you, you say, “Stop a bit, I do now mind something about it, warn’t it so and so, or this way, or that way,” and finally up it comes, all fresh to your recollection. Well, until you get the clue given you, or the key note is struck, you are ready to take your oath you never heard of it afore. Memory has many cells: Some of them ain’t used much, and dust and cobwebs get about them, and you can’t tell where the hinge is, or can’t easily discarn the secret spring; but open it once, and whatever is stowed away there is as safe and sound as ever. I have a good many capital stories poked away in them cubby-holes, that I can’t just lay my hand on when I want to; but now and then, when looking for something else, I stumble upon them by accident. Tell you what, as for forgettin’ a thing tee-totally, I don’t believe there is sich a thing in natur. But to get back to my story.
“Miss,” sais I, “I can’t just at this present moment call to mind a story to please you. Some of them are about hosses, or clocks, or rises taken out of folks, or dreams, or courtships, or ghosts, or what not; but few of them will answer, for they are either too short or too long.”