It may
occur to some hypercritical person to suggest that the English
language has frequently been murdered in my den, and that it is its
horrid corse which is playing havoc at my home, crying out to heaven
and flaunting its bloody wounds in the face of my conscience, but I
can pass such an aspersion as that by with contemptuous silence, for
even if it were true it could not be set down as wilful
assassination on my part, since no sane person who needs a language
as much as I do would ever in cold blood kill any one of the many
that lie about us. Furthermore, the English language is not dead. It
may not be met with often in these days, but it is still encountered
with sufficient frequency in the works of Henry James and Miss Libby
to prove that it still lives; and I am told that one or two members
of our consular service abroad can speak it--though as for this I
cannot write with certainty, for I have never encountered one of
these exceptions to the general rule.
[Illustration: "IT IS NOT OFTEN THAT ONE'S LITERARY CHICKENS COME
HOME TO ROOST"]
The episode with which this narrative has to deal is interesting in
some ways, though I doubt not some readers will prove sceptical as
to its realism.
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