Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1905 — Mark Twain and the Italian Verbs. [ARTICLE]

Mark Twain and the Italian Verbs.

Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; It was the Verb that mixed the hands; it was the Verb that lacked stability; it was the Verb that had no permanent opinion about anything; it was the Verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. I had noticed in other foreign lan guages that verbs are bred in fam ilies. and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other kin, the cousins and what not. I hall noticed that this family mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to sneak, but the tail—the Termination, and that these tails are quite de finitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a Pluperfect frop a Subjunctive by its tail as easily an' 1 as certainly as a cowboy can tell » cow from a hcrse by the like proccst. the result cf observation and cultu*--I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called Regular. There are others—t am not meaning to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlotk, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family- resemblances, as regards a” features, tails Included. But of th«»«e pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not them; 1 am prudishly delicate and sensitive ind I do not allow them to be n«md in my presence.—Mark Twain in Harper’s Magazine.