Brookline, Mass.
Dear Jack-in-the-Pulpit: Did you ever hear this story about Agassiz? If not, please show it to the other boys and girls.—Yours truly, Nellie Chase.
One day, a man put together parts of various insects and submitted them to Agassiz as a rare specimen. He also pretended not to know to what species it belonged, and asked the professor to tell him. It was April Fools’ Day. Agassiz gave a single glance at the object and, looking up, said “Hum-bug.”
a sardonic grin.
Here’s a bit of advice which Deacon Green once gave to the boys of the red school-house. It came back to me all at once the other day as I was watching a plump little darkey eating a sour pickle, and making very wry faces.
The Deacon said: “Whenever you come across a word that you don’t understand thoroughly, don’t rest until you have found out all you can about it.”
Sometimes words grow out of queer things and in very odd ways. There’s “sardonic,” for instance. As applied to a grin, it means one that a man makes if he is forced to laugh when he doesn’t want to, or tries to smile when he really is ready to cry out with pain.
Now, the birds tell me that in the island called Sardinia there used to grow a plant with a very disagreeable taste; and whenever a piece of it was put into anybody’s mouth, it made his face pucker up into a broad, unwilling smile—made him “laugh the wrong side of his mouth,” as I’ve heard boys say. Well, in course of time, the name of the island was given to the plant, and then, with a slight change, it was used to describe the wry face the taster made.
So you see, my dears, some words are like puzzles. By the way, I’d like to know what you yourselves can find out about this same word “sardonic,” for it may be that those chattering little friends of mine, the birds, have been trying to make an April fool of your Jack,—perhaps, just to see if I can smile a “sardonic” smile when I find out what they’ve done.
a poser from the little schoolma’am.