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Poor Henrietta often slaved away for hours at a time with her younger brother sitting at the table by her side, helping him to struggle through the genders, declensions, conjugations, or whatever else the infernal things were called; and the end of it all was that, at last, she learnt to know Latin better than Koloman, and secretly translated all his exercises from Cornelius Nepos and the Bucolics of Virgil for him.
The books which he first mentions, Pater meus, a series of declensions, and Tempora, the tenses, that is the conjugations of the verb, were probably local productions of a simple nature which never found their way into print.
"Great old chap in his way, an authority on heaven knows how many subjects, yet he scarcely makes enough money to take care of his children." "But think of the books he is giving to the world! He told Daddy he was on his thirteenth volume!" "Yes, he swims around most of the time in a sea of declensions, conjugations, and syntaxes, in Greek, Latin and English."
The Bishop of Guatemala, a great scholar, was their teacher, and day after day this little company of monks might have been seen, sitting with the Bishop, like boys at school, learning conjugations and declensions.
Nothing was left for him but to undertake her education himself; and having a theory that a thorough course of classics, both Greek and Latin, was the foundation of all knowledge, half a score of dusty grammars were brought from the garret, and for two hours every morning and afternoon little Miss Hitty worried her innocent soul over conjugations and declensions and particles, as perseveringly as any professor could have desired.
And when they came to that, they would hug each other or me, if I happened to be close and act like a pair of children, which they were. Generally it would end up by his asking her if she wasn't sorry she wasn't back at Greenwich studying French conjugations and having a dance without any men on Friday nights, and she would say "Wretch!" and kiss him, and I'd go out and slam the door.
I think you will do very well together; for her fluency will tempt you on to talk, and your perseverance will keep her up to the exercises and conjugations, which are sad drudgery, but very needful if you are ever really to know anything of the language. You are persevering, are you not, Cannie?"
During the years when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the three meals the first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morning and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing-board, with me at the kitchen table beside her, hearing me recite Latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs.
The philologist knows too well of what material speech is made, how much of the temporal and accidental it has adopted in its eternal forms, to cherish such a hope, and to think that the Logos can be eternally bound to the regular or irregular declensions or conjugations of the Greek, the German, or even the Hottentot languages. What then remains?
Yet still how different is the tamest ape from the wildest man; for the one has an immortal soul, and the other has none. The Malay language is said to be the easiest in the world, even as the Chinese is the most difficult. The Malay language has no cases or genders, or conjugations, which puzzle little boys so much in their Latin Grammars. It is easy for missionaries to learn the Malay language.
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