k upward; and, fourthly, their head is set in every variety in the
same way; fifthly, they all have two hands; sixthly, they all have smooth
bodies with hair on the head; seventhly, every muscle and every nerve in
every variety are the same; eighthly, they all speak and laugh; ninthly,
they eat different kind of food, and live in all climates; and, _lastly_,
they are more helpless and grow more slowly than other animals. Now don't
you like to know that? And now he has begun to talk about language and I
_must_ listen, even if this letter is never finished, because language is
one of my hobbies. The longer the study of language is pursued the more
strongly the Bible is confirmed, he is saying. You ought to see Morris
listen. His face is all soul when he is learning a new thing. I believe
he has the most expressive face in the world. He has decided to be a
sailor missionary. He says he will take the Gospel to every port in the
whole world. Will takes Bibles and tracts always. Morris reads every word
of _The Sailors Magazine_ and finds delightful things in it. I have
almost caught his enthusiasm. But if I were a man I would be professor of
languages somewhere and teach that every word has a soul, and a history
because it has a soul. Wouldn't you like to know how many languages there
are? It is _wonderful_. Somebody says--Adelung (I don't know who he
is)--three thousand and sixty-four distinct languages, Balbi (Mr. Holmes
always remembers names) eight hundred languages and five thousand
dialects, and Max Mueller says there are nine hundred known languages. Mr.
Holmes can write a letter in five languages and I reverence him, but what
is that where there are, according to Max Mueller, eight hundred and
ninety-five that he does not know a word of? Mr. Holmes stands still and
puts his hands in front of him (where they were meant to be), and says he
will tell us about Tradition to-morrow night, as he must go up to his
den and write letters. But he does say Pandora's box is the story of the
temptation and the fall. You know she opened her box out of curiosity,
and diseases and wars leaped out to curse mankind. That is a Greek story.
The Greek myths all seem to mean something. Father says: 'Thank you for
a pleasant evening,' as Mr. Holmes takes his lamp to leave us, and _he_
says: 'You forget what I have to thank you all for.'

"My heart _bursts_ with gratitude to him, sometimes; I have his books and
I have him; he is always ready so