und 'em!--spoke it well.

Those phrases I was furnished with, for Germany or France,
I realised, with bitterness, would never have a chance!
I swore that they should hear me yet, and proudly turned my back
On polyglots in swallowtails, and left the beaten track....

They spoke the native language _now_; but--it was too absurd--
Of none of their own idioms they apparently had heard!
My most colloquial phrases fell, I found, extremely flat.
They _may_ have come out wrong-side up, but none the worse for that.

I tried them with my Manual; it was but little good;
For not one word of their replies I ever understood.
They never said the sentences that _should_ have followed next:
I found it quite impossible to keep them to the text!

Besides, unblushing reference to a Conversation-Book
Imparts to social intercourse an artificial look.
So I let the beggars have their way. 'Twas everywhere the same;
I led the proper openings--they _wouldn't_ play the game.

Now I've pitched the Manual away that got me in this mess,
And in ingenious pantomime my wishes I express.
They take me for an idiot mute, an error I deplore:
But still--_I'm better understood than e'er I was before!_

* * * * *

A PRODUCT OF THE SILLY SEASON.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,

London at the end of August is not particularly inviting, save in one
respect--it is negatively pleasant to find that _Matinees_ are all
but suspended. I should say quite, were it not that the Shaftesbury
Theatre on the 27th opened its doors at a quarter to three o'clock
in the afternoon, for the performance of _The Violin Makers_, an
adaptation of _Le Luthier de Cremone_, and the production of a "new
and original Comedy sketch," in two Acts, called _The Deacon_, by
HENRY ARTHUR JONES. The first piece I had already seen at the Bushey
Theatre, with Professor HERKOMER, R.A., in the principal character.
I had now an opportunity of comparing the Artist-Actor with the
Manager-Actor, and must confess that I liked the former better than
the latter. Mr. WILLARD as _Filippo_, was Mr. WILLARD, but Professor
HERKOMER, shaved for the occasion, seemed to be anyone other than
Professor HERKOMER. The mounting of the piece at Bushey was also
greatly to be preferred to the _mise-en-scene_ in Shaftesbury
Avenue, and as the accomplished Artist-Actor had also supplied
some exceedingly touching music to his version of FRANCOIS COPPEE's
Poe