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After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the
cow-punchers of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty
cowmen confessed he was too much for them and telegraphed his
father to come and take the wild man away. Also, when the
father arrived to take him away, the cowmen allowed that they
would vastly prefer chumming with howling cannibals, gibbering
lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and man-eating
tigers than with this particular Young college product with
hair parted in the middle.
There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of
his early self, and that was language. By some quirk of
atavism, a certain portion of that early self's language had
come down to him as a racial memory. In moments of happiness,
exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst out in wild
barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he located
in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been
dead and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and
deliberately, several of the ancient chants in the presence of
Professor Wertz, who gave courses in old Saxon and who was a
philogist of repute and passion. At the first one, the
professor pricked up his ears and demanded to know what mongrel
tongue or hog-German it was. When the second chant was
rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward then
concluded the performance by giving a song that always
irresistibly rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce
struggling or fighting. Then it was that Professor Wertz
proclaimed it no hog-German, but early German, or early Teuton,
of a date that must far precede anything that had ever been
discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was it
that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting
reminiscences of word-forms he knew and which his trained
intuition told him were true and real. He demanded the source
of the songs, and asked to borrow the precious book that
contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young Ward had
always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German
language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend
the book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that
extended through weeks, Professor Wert took a dislike to the
young man, believed him a liar, and classified him as a man of
monstrous selfishness for not giving him a glimpse of this
wonderful screed that was older than the oldest any philologist
had ever known or dreamed.
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