[Novel] Do You Understand?

The Two Schoolmaters

It was a long train journey. Fraser and Williams were tired of reading and tired of looking through the window. They were also tired to doing nothing. They were schoolmaters on their way to Paris, where there were going??to teach English.

"We both know a lot of??English,"said Fraser. "But I can show you some English which you probably can't read properly."

"If there's any sense in it,"said Williams, not very pleased, "I think I shall be able to read it."

"It has five words together all the same,"said Fraser.

"What sort of words? Something like horse, horse, horse, horse, horse?That's nonsense."

Fraser took a card out of a case and wrote the following on it:

THE SCHOOLMASTER SAID THAT THAT THAT THAT THAT BOY WROTE WAS WRITTEN WRONGLY.

He gave the card to Williams. "Read that properly," he said.

Williams read it, but did not understnad what if meant." Has it any meaning at all?" he asked.

"Yes. The boy wrote the word THAT wrongly. Let me show you. I'll write it all again and change one or two words. But you'll see that the me-aning is just the same." He wrote on the card:

THE SCHOOLMATER SAID THAT THIS " THAT" WHICH THE BOY WROTE WAS WRITTEN WRONGLY.

"If you say the middle THAT very strongly," he added, "it makes good sense."

"Very clever," said Williams thoughfully. "Do you ever put a full stop after the word AND?"

"Certainly not," said Fraser. "You can't do that."

"Just give me that card,please," said Williams. He took it and wrote on it.

IT WAS BUT I SAID NOT AND.

"Can you make any sense out of that?" he demanded.

Fraser studied it for some minutes. Then he said, "It's nonsense. You can't stop at the word AND. AND WHAT? You have to add something at the end."

"Not at all," said Williams. "It means this: I said the word BUT; I did not say the word AND. It was BUT that I said; not AND."

The train began to go more slowly."And it is Paris we are reaching," added Williams, "not London."