One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
The crowd interjected, half-sighing. We ought to be proud
of such a man! Perhaps we are a trifle exaggerating, says its
heart. But that we are wholly grateful to him, is a distinct
conclusion. And he may be one of the great men of his time:
he has a quite individual style of dress.
Lady Rodwell Blachington observed to Colney Durance:
‘Mr. Radnor bids fair to become the idol of the English
people.’
‘If he can prove himself to be sufficiently the dupe of the
English people,’ said Colney.
‘Idol—dupe?’ interjected Sir Rodwell, and his eyebrows
fixed at the perch of Colney’s famous ‘national interrogation’
over vacancy of understanding, as if from the pull of a
string. He had his audience with him; and the satirist had
nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight of a planted barb.
Colney was asked to explain. He never explained. He performed
a series of astonishing leaps, like the branchy baboon
above the traveller’s head in the tropical forest, and led
them into the trap they assisted him to prepare for them.
‘No humour, do you say? The English have no humour?’ a
nephew of Lady Blachington’s inquired of him, with polite
pugnacity, and was cordially assured, that ‘he vindicated
them.’
‘And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coinage,’
a classical Church dignitary, in grammarian disgust, remarked
to a lady, as they passed.
Colney pricked-up his ears. It struck him that he might
fish for suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument before the
Elders of the Court of Japan. Dr. Wardan, whose recognition
he could claim, stated to him, that the lady and he were
enumerating words of a doubtfully legitimate quality now
being inflicted upon the language.
‘The slang from below is perhaps preferable?’ said Colney.
‘As little-less.’
‘But a pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue
to practise piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang,
otherwise it is inexpressive of new ideas.’
‘Possibly the new ideas are best expressed in slang.’
‘If insular. They will consequently be incommunicable to
foreigners. You would, then, have us be trading with tokens
instead of a precious currency? Yet I cannot perceive the advantage
of letting our ideas be clothed so racy of the obscener
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