CHAPTER III.

THE RECITATIONS IN THE WOOD.

A SUSPICIOUS POLICEMAN.--DUIZENDMAAL VERGIFFENIS.--DAT IK OP UW TEEN HEB GETRAPT.

You may be sure that made me rather diffident till I had mastered some of these 'polite phrases'. Polite they were, and no mistake--why French was nothing to it!--and I got the very nicest of them well into my head. I went round to Enderby's, and he put me on the way of pronouncing the words. Then I took a whole morning in Het Bosch and recited them to myself aloud. When no one was in sight I allowed myself some freedom of utterance; and once I thought I must have startled with my _ore rotundo_ an artist who was plying his harmless calling unseen behind a clump of trees. At least some one retired very hastily after I had delivered, "Doe zooveel moeite niet", three times with a vigorous rising inflection and four times with the falling inflection, followed in each case by the rhetorical pause. From the deserted easel I judged it must have been an artist. He withdrew at a good pace, and never once looked back.

These and similar polite idioms I repeated over some hundreds of times, till I knew them backwards and forwards and every way, and could have rattled them off in my sleep. Then there was some difficulty in avoiding the policemen in the wood. They kept prowling about after I had incautiously experimented on the first one with, "Mynheer! ik wensch U goeden morgen; ik hoop dat ik U niet stoor. Vaarwel." He had looked amazed at this; so, as a parting shot--a sort of courteous Good Bye--I added gaily, "Ik bid U maak geen complimenten." It was this that made the trouble, as he looked distinctly displeased, not to say suspicious. When he heard the words first, he had stood speechless, transfixed. Then he followed me home and hung about the street--I could see him from my window--for over half an hour. I feared my pronouns had been too familiar, though I couldn't see how to change them, for there they were in the book. On the whole I concluded I had been a trifle abrupt, and with renewed vigour I set to and committed a host of apologetic phrases such as: "Ik bid U verschoon mij. Duizendmaal vergiffenis. Het heeft niets te beduiden." A pretty little triplet caught my ear and I took rather a fancy to it: "Het geeft niets--het hindert niet--het komt er niet op aan."

It was a little puzzling to disentangle some of the courteous introductions from the sentences in which they stood; and occasionally I committed to memory somewhat more than I needed. This was the case with a sentence that greatly took my fancy. It was an apology to an imaginary gentleman in a tram-car for having trodden on his foot. It seemed odd to provide yourself so soon for such contingency; but of course the book knew best. Well, from constantly seeing the two parts of this sentence together I got into the way mechanically of associating the one phrase with the other. Thus when repeating that engaging expression "Duizendmaal vergiffenis", I was accustomed to follow it up by, "dat ik op Uw teen heb getrapt," either in my own mind or audibly, for the sake of practice. From the first this polite sentence was a great favourite of mine, and I was soon able to repeat it with the utmost fluency and ease. So well did I know it, indeed, after two day's practice that I was tempted to seek occasion for its use, and in getting into the tram-car. I was half disposed to brush, accidentally, against any object in the way for the sake of working off my courteous apology. But that sort of thing has unexpected consequences; and I came to the conclusion that it is more philosophic to learn too little than to learn too much. Ne quid nimis, you know."

"Oh, leave metaphysics to me," said the Philosopher, "and go on with your story. You wanted to buy pens? Did you get them?"

"Not at first," answered O' Neill shamefacedly, "but I'll tell you about it".