Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
I once made a speech at an ice-cream festival amid great embarrassments, and hemmed, and hawed, and expectorated cotton from my dry mouth, and sweat like a Turkish bath, the adjectives, and the nouns, and verbs, and prepositions of my address keeping an Irish wake; but the next day, in the 'Johnstown Advocate, my remarks read as gracefully as Addison's 'Spectator. I knew a phonographer in Washington whose entire business it was to weed out from Congressmen's speeches the sins against Anglo-Saxon; but the work was too much for him, and he died of delirium tremens, from having drank too much of the wine of syntax, in his ravings imagining that 'interrogations' were crawling over him like snakes, and that 'interjections' were thrusting him through with daggers and 'periods' struck him like bullets, and his body seemed torn apart by disjunctive conjunctions.
The Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War was a mischievous organization, which assumed dictatorial powers. Summoning generals before them, and having a phonographer to record every word uttered, they would propound very comprehensive questions.
He scolded and carped and criticised and caviled, told half truths and solid lies, and the august and astute Committee listened with open ears, and the phonographer dotted down every word. So the meanest gossip and slang of the camp was raked into a heap and preserved in official form.
The Representatives were attended by these shouts until they reached the barracks of the Quai d'Orsay, where they were shut up. Night was coming on, and it was wet and cold. Yet the Assembly was left two hours in the open air, as if the Government did not deign to remember its existence. The Representatives here made their last roll-call in presence of their phonographer, who had followed them.
Besides its Vice-Presidents, the Assembly was accompanied by its secretaries, its ushers, and even its phonographer who preserved for posterity the records of this last and memorable sitting.
This interview was merely a friendly one, and was passed in familiar conversation. On our second visit, we found a justice of the peace in waiting to administer the necessary oath, and also a phonographer to write our testimony. We were examined separately, and the result published officially in the Army and Naval Gazette, and also in most of the newspapers of the day.
"Deacon Jones, the editor of the 'Patriot, is a phonographer. He took down the close of the stranger's address, and next day brought it to me written out in the ordinary alphabet. Let me read it to you. As you are acquainted with several modern languages, perhaps you can give me a key to an interpretation."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking