B932 <=> B934 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 933]

“’As for the third form of the English language this form is required by anybody who wishes to be able to procure, here, there, and everywhere and at any hour – scotch whisky.’

“As the time for learning the second form of the English language by this system suited me best, I decided to pay him immediately the dollars he charged in order to know the secret of his system.

“When I had paid him the dollars he charged and he had, seemingly quite casually, but in reality not without that avidity which has also already become proper to all the beings of your planet, placed my dollars in an inside pocket, he explained to me that in order to learn this second form, only five words had to be memorized, namely:

1. Maybe

2. Perhaps

3. Tomorrow

4. Oh, I see

5. All right

“He added that if I had occasion to converse with one or more of their misters, I should only need to utter any one of these five words every now and then.

“’That will be quite enough,’ he added, ‘to convince everybody that in the first place you know the English language very well, and secondly that you are an old hand at doing dollar business.’

“Although the system of this highly esteemed Chatterlitz was very original and meritorious, yet I never had occasion to put it into practice.

“And the occasion did not arise, because the next day I met by chance in the street an old acquaintance, an, as he is called, ‘editor,’ from the continent of Europe who in conversation confided to me an even more ideal secret for the American language.