Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — Teaching a Stove to Talk Chinese. [ARTICLE]

Teaching a Stove to Talk Chinese.

The Pall Mall Gazette, tells a story, apropos of the appointment of M. De Saint Denys to the post of Sorbone Professor of Chinese, of what happened to his predecessor in that learned chair— Mr. Stanislas JulTien. When M. Jullien was nominated to the post, his lectures were given on Thursday and Saturday of each week, but for the first month his audiences consisted solely of the stove, which could scarcely be expected to derive much benefit from a lecture on language. One day, greatly to his surprise, a large party of fashionably-dressed ladies and gentlemen put in an appearance, and M. Jullien, out of gallantry toward the former, began his lecture by translating a sonnet by the Chinese poet Li-o-Tsing, in which woman is compared to “ the lotus of the Yellow River.” The audience appeared to follow the lecturer with deep interest, and M. Jullien began to think that his office would be no sinecure. There was a large attendance the following week, and among the company the lecturer noticed one gentleman who had been present on the previous occasion, and whom he set down as an enthusiastic admirer of the C’hinese language. This gentleman continued to attend a whole course of the lectures, accompanied on each occasion by a fresh party, and it was only six months afterward that M. Jullien discovered that he was a guide who showed foreigners the sights of Paris, one of the most remarkable of which he considered to be a professor teaching a stove to talk Chinese.