Well, well, although our coast is not precisely hospitable, I believe its inhabitants are at any rate free from that reproach.

Jasper, my boy, can you walk now?
If so, Joseph here will see you home, and we will do our best for the--the-- foreign gentleman thus unceremoniously cast on our shores." My uncle seemed to regard magnificence of speech as the natural due of a foreigner: whether from some hazy conception of "foreign politeness," or a hasty deduction that what was not the language of one part of the world must be that of another, I cannot say.

At any rate, the fishermen regarded him approvingly as the one man who could--if human powers were equal to it--extricate them from the present deadlock.
"You do not happen, my friend, to be in a position to inform us whether any--pardon the expression--any corpses are now lying on the rocks to bear witness to this sad catastrophe ?" Again the stranger made a gesture of perplexity.
"Dear, dear! I forgot.

Jasper, when you get home, read very carefully that passage about the Tower of Babel.

Whatever the cause of that melancholy confusion, its reality is impressed upon us when we stand face to face with one whom I may perhaps be allowed to call, metaphorically, a dweller in Mesopotamia." As no one answered, my uncle took silence for consent, and called him so twice--to his own great satisfaction and the obvious awe of the fishermen.
"It is evident," he continued, "that this gentleman (call him by what name you will) is in immediate need of food and raiment.