From tpeterpark@erols.com Thu Aug 10 10:04:27 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19341 invoked from network); 10 Aug 2000 17:04:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 10 Aug 2000 17:04:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net) (207.172.4.61) by mta1 with SMTP; 10 Aug 2000 17:04:27 -0000 Received: from 209-122-225-45.s45.tnt1.nyw.ny.dialup.rcn.com ([209.122.225.45] helo=umktgghc) by smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net with smtp (Exim 3.15 #2) id 13Mvkn-0004EF-00; Thu, 10 Aug 2000 13:04:25 -0400 Message-ID: <3992E015.4776@erols.com> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 13:02:13 -0400 Reply-To: tpeterpark@erols.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-DH397 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: anglican@list.stsams.org, INTEGRITY-L@LISTSERV.American.edu, IALlist@egroups.com, lojban@egroups.com, creepinglist@egroups.com, mythfolk@egroups.com Cc: cbrooks@pilot.infi.net, patrick@cloud9.net, RAllaire@aol.com, oldocjk_a@yahoo.com, mjl@ix.netcom.com, zomaeon@webtv.net, saminabinet@mindspring.com Subject: Chesterton's dance step language--GKC's *Club of Queer Trades* References: <3992DE32.7800@erols.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "T. Peter Park" Dear friends, I've found the G.K. Chesterton story that I asked you all about a couple of days ago, about the professor who invented a language of dance steps. It is Chapter 5, "The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd," of Chesterton's novel *The Club of Queer Trades*. One of my "list-sibs" on the "Anglican" list (Hi, Mike!) was kind enough to privately e-mail me last night to inform me that the story I was looking for was *The Club of Queer Trades*, which he said could be found in Vol. VI of Ignatius' Collected Works. This morning, I did a Web search to see if I could find *The Club of Queer Trades* online, and sure enough I did find it. It is at: I printed up the chapter from there, but it might possibly be found at other websites as well. The chapter describes an elderly eccentric professor,Prof. Chadd, noted among ethnologists as the second greatest or perhaps even gratest authority on the "relations of savages to language." After being chided by a friend on the merely bookish pedantic superficiality and the smug ethnocentric Darwinian scientism of his supposedly learned knowledge of the mentality of Zulus and other "savages," Professor Chadd seemingly "flips out." He quits speaking, and instead begins dancing, in a private "language" of his own composed entirely of dance steps. His friend finally starts dancing with him! However, Professor Chadd does not start going around trying to "sell" his dance language to the world as an international language in the manner of Esperanto. That, I have to confess, had been the mistaken impression I had gotten years ago from the very brief allusion to the story in G.R. Shipman's "How to Talk to a Martian," the 1953 *Astounding Science Fiction* article that helped set off my own life-long interest in linguistics in my early teens. Pax vobiscum, T. Peter