In this connection it is proper to urge a warning that a mere sign
talker is often a bad authority upon principles and theories. He
may not be liable to the satirical compliment of Dickens's "brave
courier," who "understood all languages indifferently ill"; but many
men speak some one language fluently, and yet are wholly unable to
explain or analyze its words and forms so as to teach it to another
person, or even to give an intelligent summary or classification
of their own knowledge. What such a sign talker has learned is by
memorizing, as a child may learn English, and though both the sign
talker and the child may be able to give some separate items useful to
a philologist or foreigner, such items are spoiled when colored by the
attempt of ignorance to theorize. A German who has studied English
to thorough mastery, except in the mere facility of speech, may in
a discussion upon some of its principles be contradicted by any mere
English speaker, who insists upon his superior knowledge because he
actually speaks the language and his antagonist does not, but the
student will probably be correct and the talker wrong. It is an old
adage about oral speech that a man who understands but one language
understands none. The science of a sign talker possessed by a
restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, who was greater as an
orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit to England gravely
argued that there was something seriously wrong in the British mind
because the people would persist in saying "give me some bread"
instead of "_donnez-moi du pain_," which was so much easier and more
natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same effect was Hood's
arraignment of the French because they called their mothers "mares"
and their daughters "fillies." It is necessary to take with caution
any statement from a person who, having memorized or hashed up any
number of signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit that those
he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclusively employed
according to his direction, all others being counterfeits or blunders.
His vocabulary has ceased to give the signs of any Indian or body of
Indians whatever, but becomes his own, the proprietorship of which he
fights for as if secured by letters-patent. When a sign is contributed
by one of the present collaborators, which such a sign talker has not
before seen or heard of, he will at once condemn it as bad, just as a
United States M