easy-going South-Englanders would do well to ponder, to see what results
could be produced by a little energy and application, building on no
previous linguistic training. The Northern accent was evidently a help
in pronouncing the full-sounding vowels of Esperanto.

One Englishman, who was talking away gaily with the French
_samideanoj_,[1] was an Esperantist of one year's standing. He had
happened to be at Boulogne in pursuit of a little combined French and
seasiding at the time of the first congress held there, 1905. One day
he got his tongue badly tied up in a cafe, and was helped out of his
linguistic difficulties with the waiter by certain compatriots, who wore
green stars in their buttonholes,[2] and sat at another table conversing
in an unknown lingo with a crowd of foreigners. He made inquiries, and
found it was Esperanto they were talking. He was so much struck by their
facility, and the practical way in which they had set his business to
rights in a minute (the waiter was an Esperantist trained _ad hoc_!),
that he decided to give up French and go in for Esperanto. This man
was a real learner of French, who had spent a long time on it, and
realized with disgust his impotence to wield it practically. To judge
by his conversation next year at Geneva, he had no such difficulty with
Esperanto. He was quite jubilant over the change.

[1]Terse Esperanto word. = partisans of the same idea (i.e.
Esperanto).

[2]The Esperanto badge.

Such examples could be multiplied _ad infinitum_. No one who attended a
congress could fail to be convinced.