and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the
mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles
of his mouth and turned himself loose--and with such a
relish! Some of his words were not Sunday-school words,
so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur.

"Yes indeedy! If _I_ ain't an American there AIN'T
any Americans, that's all. And when I heard you fellows
gassing away in the good old American language, I'm ------
if it wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging you! My
tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these
------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here;
now I TELL you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian
word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it.
I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams.
I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years.
I'm learning to be a horse-doctor! I LIKE that part of it,
you know, but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow
in his own language, they make him learn in German; so before
I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this
miserable language.

"First off, I thought it would certainly give me
the botts, but I don't mind now. I've got it where the
hair's short, I think; and dontchuknow, they made me
learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't
give a ------for all the Latin that was ever jabbered;
and the first thing _I_ calculate to do when I get through,
is to just sit down and forget it. 'Twon't take me long,
and I don't mind the time, anyway. And I tell you what!