It don't seem's if Ivory was goin'
to take after his father that way. The little feller, now, is
smart's a whip, an' could talk the tail off a brass monkey."
"Yes, but Rodman ain't no kin to the Boyntons," Abel reminded
him. "He inhails from the other side o' the house."
"That's so; well, Ivory does, for certain, an' takes after his
mother, right enough, for she hain't spoken a dozen words in as
many years, I guess. Ivory's got a sight o' book-knowledge,
though, an' they do say he could talk Greek an' Latin both, if we
had any of 'em in the community to converse with. I've never paid
no intention to the dead languages, bein' so ocker-pied with
other studies."
"Why do they call 'em the dead languages, Tim?" asked Rish Bixby.
"Because all them that ever spoke 'em has perished off the face
o' the land," Timothy answered oracularly. "Dead an' gone they
be, lock, stock, an' barrel; yet there was a time when Latins an'
Crustaceans an' Hebrews an' Prooshians an' Australians an'
Simesians was chatterin' away in their own tongues, an' so
pow'ful that they was wallopin' the whole earth, you might say."
"I bet yer they never tried to wallop these here United States,"
interpolated Bill Dunham from the dark corner by the molasses
hogs-head.
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