The blue-eyed Goddess who convoys Ulysses, under the disguise of a young
maiden of the place, gives him some excellent advice. "Hold your
tongue," she says, "and don't look at anybody or ask any questions, for
these are seafaring people, and don't like to have strangers round or
anybody that does not belong here."
Who would have thought that the saucy question, "Does your mother know
you're out?" was the very same that Horace addressed to the bore who
attacked him in the Via Sacra?
Interpellandi locus hic erat; Est tibi mater?
Cognati, queis te salvo est opus?
And think of the London cockney's prefix of the letter h to innocent
words beginning with a vowel having its prototype in the speech of the
vulgar Roman, as may be seen in the verses of Catullus:
Chommoda dicebat, siquando commoda vellet
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias.
Et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum,
Cum quantum poterat, dixerat hinsidias...
Hoc misso in Syriam, requierant omnibus aures...
Cum subito affertur nuncius horribilis;
Ionios fluctus, postquam illue Arrius isset,
Jam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
--Our neighbors of Manhattan have an excellent jest about our crooked
streets which, if they were a little more familiar with a native author
of unquestionable veracity, they would strike out from the letter of "Our
Boston Correspondent," where it is a source of perennial hilarity.
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