Henry, O., 1862-1910 / 2008-11-05 00:00:00
Goodwin handed the message to Keogh.
"Read that, Billy," he said. "It's from Bob Englehart. Can you
manage the cipher?"
Keogh sat in the other half of the doorway, and carefully perused
the telegram.
"'Tis not a cipher," he said, finally. "'Tis what they call
literature, and that's a system of language put in the mouths
of people that they've never been introduced to by writers of
imagination. The magazines invented it, but I never knew before that
President Norvin Green had stamped it with the seal of his approval.
'Tis now no longer literature, but language. The dictionaries tried,
but they couldn't make it go for anything but dialect. Sure, now
that the Western Union indorses it, it won't be long till a race of
people will spring up that speaks it."
"You're running too much to philology, Billy," said Goodwin. "Do you
make out the meaning of it?"
"Sure," replied the philosopher of Fortune. "All languages come easy
to the man who must know 'em. I've even failed to misunderstand an
order to evacuate in classical Chinese when it was backed up by the
muzzle of a breech-loader. This little literary essay I hold in my
hands means a game of Fox-in-the-Morning. Ever play that, Frank,
when you was a kid?"
"I think so," said Goodwin, laughing.
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