--Hawthorne: _My Visit to Niagara_.
No wonder he learned English quickly, for he was ever on the alert--no
strange word escaped him, no unusual term. He would say it over and over
till he met a friend, and then demand its meaning. One day he came to me
with a very troubled face. "Madame," he said, "please tell me why shall a
man, like me, like any man, be a 'bluenose'?"
"A what?" I asked.
"A 'bluenose.' So he was called in the restaurant, but he seemed not
offended about it. I have looked in my books; I can't find any disease of
that name."
With ill-suppressed laughter I asked, "Do you know Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland?"
"I hear the laugh in your voice," he said; then added, "Yes, I know both
these places."
"They are very cold and foggy and wet," I explained.
But with brightening eyes he caught up the sentence and continued:
"And the people have blue noses, eh? Ha! ha! Excuse me, then, but is a
milksop a man from some state, or some country, too?"
At tea some one used the word "claptrap." "What's that?" quickly demanded
the student in our midst. "'Claptrap'--'clap' is so (he struck his hands
together); 'trap' is for rats--what is, then, 'claptrap'?"
"It is a vulgar or unworthy bid for applause," I explained.
"Bah!" he contemptuously exclaimed. "I know him,--that cheap actor who
plays at the gallery. He is, then, in English a 'clap-trapper,' is he not?"
It was hardly possible to meet him without having a word or a term offered
thus for explanation.
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