'No humour, do you say?
The English have no humour ?' a nephew of Lady Blachington's inquired of him, with polite pugnacity, and was cordially assured, that 'he vindicated them.' 'And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coinage,' a classical Church dignitary, in grammarian disgust, remarked to a lady, as they passed.
Colney pricked-up his ears.

It struck him that he might fish for suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument before the Elders of the Court of Japan.

Dr.Wardan, whose recognition he could claim, stated to him, that the lady and he were enumerating words of a doubtfully legitimate quality now being inflicted upon the language.
'The slang from below is perhaps preferable ?' said Colney.
'As little-less.' 'But a pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue to practise piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang, otherwise it is inexpressive of new ideas.' 'Possibly the new ideas are best expressed in slang.' 'If insular.

They will consequently be incommunicable to foreigners.
You would, then, have us be trading with tokens instead of a precious currency?
Yet I cannot perceive the advantage of letting our ideas be clothed so racy of the obscener soil; considering the pretensions of the English language to become the universal.

If we refuse additions from above, they force themselves on us from below.' Dr.Wardan liked the frame of the observations, disliked the substance.
'One is to understand that the English language has these pretensions ?' he said:--he minced in his manner, after the well-known mortar-board and tassel type; the mouthing of a petrifaction: clearly useless to the pleadings of the patriotic Dr.Bouthoin and his curate.
He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let him go, after dealing him a hard pellet or two in a cracker-covering.
There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae! And he who feeds on them, to pay a price for their congratulations and flatteries, he is one of them himself! Nesta came tripping from the Rev.Septimus Barmby.