The real Gipsy could talk about apples all day, but the sudden demand for the unconnected word, staggers him--at least, until he has had some practice in this, to him, new process.

And it is so with other races.

Professor Max Muller once told me in conversation, as nearly as I can recollect, that the Mohawk Indian language is extremely rich in declension, every noun having some sixteen or seventeen inflexions of case, but no nominative.

One can express one's relations to a father to a most extraordinary extent, among the dilapidated descendants of that once powerful tribe.

But such a thing as the abstract idea of _a_ father, or of 'father' _pur et simple_, never entered the Mohawk mind, and this is very like the Gipsies.
When a rather wild Gipsy once gives you a word, it must be promptly recorded, for a demand for its repetition at once confuses him.