y in Paris for instance, is
entirely correct.]

=FOREIGN LANGUAGES=

In the Latin countries, grace and facility of speech is an object of
lifelong cultivation--and no one is considered an educated person who can
not speak several languages well. Those who speak many fluently, by the
way, are seldom those who constantly interlard their own tongue with words
from another.

Not to understand any foreign languages would be a decided handicap in
European society, where conversation is very apt to turn polyglot,
beginning in one tongue and going on in a second and ending in a third. So
that one who knows only English is often in the position of a deaf person,
even though Europeans are invariably polite and never let a conversation
run long in a language which all those present do not understand. It might
easily happen that a French lady and an American, neither understanding
the tongue of the other, meet at the house of an Italian, where there is
also an Italian monolinguist, so that the hostess has to talk in three
languages at once.

It is unreasonable to expect the average American to be a linguist; we are
too far removed from foreign countries. As a matter of fact, if you would
make yourself agreeable, it is much better (unless your facility was
acquired as a child or you have a talent amounting to genius for accent
and construction), to make it a rule when you lunch or dine with Europeans
to talk English, since all Latins acutely suffer at hearing their language
distorted. English, on the other hand, is not beautiful in sound to the
foreign ear; it is a series of esses and shushes, lumped with consonants
like an iron-wheeled cart bumping over a cobble-stoned street. The Latin's
accent in English is annoying even to us at times, but the English accent
in French, Italian or Spanish is murderous! Furthermore, the Latin
passionately loves his language in the way the Westerner loves his city;
he simply can not endure to have it abused, and execrates the person who
does so. And, proportionately, he loves the few who prove they share his
love by speaking it creditably.

=TO IMPROVE ONE'S ACCENT=

If you want to improve your accent, nothing can so help you as going to
the theater abroad until your ears literally absorb the sounds! All people
are imitative. There are few who do not gradually lose the purity of a
good foreign accent when long away from Europe, and all speak more
fluently when their ears become accustome