He Had A Few Pregnant
Thoughts Of His Own Craving Utterance, You Could Tell That.
But
he was handicapped into a state of dumbness by the fact that he
needed both arms to balance a tray of wine and sandwiches on his
head.
Merely using his voice in that company would not have
counted. He stood it as long as he could, which was not very long,
let me tell you. Then he slammed his tray down on the platform
and, with one quick movement, jerked his coat sleeves back to his
elbows, and inside thirty seconds he had the floor in both hands,
as it were. He conversed mainly with the Australian crawl stroke,
but once in a while switched to the Spencerian free-arm movement
and occasionally introduced the Chautauqua salute with telling
effect.
On the Continent guides, as a class, excel in the gift of tongues
- guides and hotel concierges. The concierge at our hotel in
Berlin was a big, upstanding chap, half Russian and half Swiss,
and therefore qualified by his breeding to speak many languages;
for the Russians are born with split tongues and can give cards
and spades to any talking crow that ever lived; while the Swiss
lag but little behind them in linguistic aptitude. It seemed such
a pity that this man was not alive when the hands knocked off work
on the Tower of Babel; he could have put the job through without
extending himself. No matter what the nationality of a guest might
be - and the guests were of many nationalities - he could talk with
that guest in his own language or in any other language the guest
might fancy.
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