anish. The English throat is more
flexible than that of the Frenchman or German, and, with the one
exception of French, there are no unwonted sounds in any European
language that an Englishman cannot reproduce fairly accurately. We have
something like the hard Russian "l" in the last syllable of
"impossible," and to the Scottish or Irish throat the Dutch hard
initial guttural, and the Spanish soft guttural offer but little
difficulty. "Jorje," which looks like "George" spelt phonetically, but
is pronounced so very differently, can easily be mastered, and that
real teaser "gracht," the Dutch for "canal," with a strong guttural at
either end of it, comes easily out of a Scottish throat. The power to
acquire these tongues is there, but the inclination is woefully lacking.

Some ten years ago I went out to Panama to have a look at the canal
works. On board the mail-steamer there were twelve commercial
travellers representing British firms, bound for the West Coast of
South America. Ten of these twelve were Germans, all speaking English
and Spanish fluently in addition to their native German. The other two
were English, not knowing one word of any language but their own. I had
a long talk with these two Englishmen, and asked them whether they were
familiar with the varying monetary standards of the countries they were
going to visit; for the nominal dollar represents a widely different
value in each South American State. No, they knew nothing whatever
about this, and were quite ignorant of Spanish-American weights and
measures. Now what possible object did the firms sending out these
ill-equipped representatives hope to attain? Could they in their
wildest moments have supposed that they would get one single order
through their agency? And how came it about that these young men were
so ignorant of the language and customs of the countries they were
proposing to travel? During the voyage I noticed the German travellers
constantly conversing with South Americans from the Pacific Coast, in
an endeavour to improve their working knowledge of Spanish; meanwhile
the young Englishmen played deck-quoits and talked English. That in
itself is quite sufficiently characteristic. In Manchester there is a
firm who do a large business in manufacturing brightly coloured
horse-trappings for the South American market. I speak with some
confidence about this, for I have myself watched those trappings being
made. Most of the "ponchos" used in the