something in Italian which made everybody laugh very much . . .; after
some examination, she announced emphatically to the whole table, in
German, that I was a machen.. . . This hasty conclusion as to my sex
she was led afterwards to revise . . . but her new opinion . . . was
announced in a language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. To
complete the scroll of her accomplishments, . . . she said good-bye to
me in very commendable English." Three days later, he added, "The
little Russian kid is only two and a half; she speaks six languages."
Nothing excites the envy of an American travelling in Europe more
sharply than to hear Russian men and women speaking European languages
fluently and idiomatically. When we learn to speak a foreign tongue,
we are always acutely conscious of the transition from English to
German, or from German to French, and our hearers are still more so.
We speak French as though it HURT, just as the average tenor sings. I
remember at a polyglot Parisian table, a Russian girl who spoke seven
languages with perfect ease; and she was not in the least a
blue-stocking.

Now every one knows that one of the indirect advantages that result
from the acquisition of a strange tongue is the immediate gain in the
extent of view. It is as though a near-sighted man had suddenly put on
glasses. It is something to be able to read French; but if one has
learned to speak French, the reading of a French book becomes
infinitely more vivid. With a French play in the hand, one can see
clearly the expressions on the faces of the personages, as one follows
the printed dialogue with the eye. Here is where a Russian understands
the American or the French point of view, much better than an American
or a Frenchman understands the Russian's. Indeed, the man from Paris
is nothing like so cosmopolitan as the man from Petersburg. One reason
is, that he is too well satisfied with Paris. The late M. Brunetiere