Eighteen Months' Imprisonment, with a Remission, by D- S-.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXVI. BURGLARS I HAVE MET. The number of admissions into hospital about this time necessitated my having a companion billeted on me, an unfortunate Frenchman, utterly oblivious of any language but his own; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as that of the warders in French, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. He was complaining to me one day of the disadvantage he laboured under, and described the usual conversation that took place daily between himself and the hospital warder. Well, are you better? ' No, sare. O, all right. Voild man ami. What do you tink? My companion, I was gratified to observe, was gradually mastering some of the idioms of our language. Not long after, an extraordinary creature was admitted as a patient, and I cannot to this day say what his nationality was, although I am inclined to believe his language was some kind of Russian patois. Nobody could make head or tail of him, and a distracted warder, in this dilemma recollecting my success with the other foreigner and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of every language of the earth besides a few of the lunar ones, came and asked me to try and understand him. My knowledge of outlandish languages is not remarkably extensive (it is confined, I may state, to the Hottentot word for rice and the Chinese for smoke ), and as no one appeared to have a Russian dictionary, I addressed him in Hindustani, considering that in point of longitude it came geographically nearest the Russian. He at once replied in a rambling speech, throwing his arms about and beating his chest; and though I am convinced he understood no more of my spe...