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Most of these, with their definitions, parrotlike, I had learned to spell, but never once in all my school experience had I been taught the derivation of a single word. Indeed, I took it for granted that in the good old days Adam had invented the words much as he named the animals, and, of course, supposed that he spoke good English.
"The devil take you and your parrotlike repetition of one word!" roared brother Ralph, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a bang. "I never laid violent hands on a woman yet, whatever I may have done to men. Who has reaped the reward of my misdeeds, I'd like to know I, an outcast and a wanderer, or you, living here like Lord Tomnoddy? None of your preaching to me, you smug Pharisee!
It is an advantage closely akin to the parrotlike recitation of the pupil who catches a few glib phrases and gives them back without thought, as compared with the recitation of the pupil who thinks and expresses his thoughts in his own childish language.
He treated her slangy sallies as if they were an original species of humour; he accepted the sweeping comment of her ignorance as if it had been an inspired criticism of life. While she chattered, parrotlike, to the judge, who was obviously impressed by her appearance, Algernon listened to her ejaculatory conversation with a mixture of admiration and awe.
The danger is that a short argument on a large question may breed in one an easy content with a superficial and parrotlike discussion of the subject. Discussions of large and abstract principles are necessary, but they are best left to the time of life when one has a comprehensive and intimate knowledge of the whole mass of facts concerned.
I drew back from the rim of Writing-On-the-Stone, that set of whispered phrases echoing in my ears. Mac caught my eye and grinned. "Gold raw gold on the rock above." I mouthed the words parrotlike, and he nodded comprehendingly. "Oh, thunder!" I exclaimed. "Do you reckon that's what he meant?" "What else?" Mac reasoned. "They'd mark the place somehow and aren't those his exact words?
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