And so I studied Bender's gestures almost as
closely as I did his words
Even the slight lisp in his "s" I accepted as part of the "real
Yankee" utterance. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural, in view of the
"th" sound, that stumbling-block of every foreigner, whom it must
needs strike as a full-grown lisp. Bender spoke with a nasal twang
which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to
the over-dignified drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I
had noticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans
as well, so, altogether, English impressed me as the language of a
people afflicted with defective organs of speech. Or else it would
seem to me that the Americans had normal organs of speech, but
that they made special efforts to distort the "t" into a "th" and the
"v" into a "w."
One of the things I discovered was the unsmiling smile. I often saw
it on Bender and on other native Americans-- on the principal of
the school, for instance, who was an Anglo-Saxon. In Russia,
among the people I knew, at least, one either smiled or not.
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