ached me from France:

Angleterre Esquire

Monsieur....

Erbet Villa

pres Londres.

My dear compatriot had heard that "Esquire" had to be put somewhere, or
else the letter would not reach me.

* * * * *

This is not the only letter addressed to me calculated to puzzle the
postman.

A letter was once brought to me with the following high-flown
inscription:

"Al gentilissimo cavaliere professore
Signor...."

But what is even this, compared to the one I received from a worthy
Bulgarian, and which was addressed to

"Monsieur....
Metropolitain de Saint Paul."

I was at the time teaching under the shadow of London's great
cathedral.

XVIII.

THE WAY TO LEARN MODERN LANGUAGES.

I have always felt a great deal of sympathy, and even respect, for that
good, honest, straight-forward young British boy who does not easily
understand that in French "a musical friend" is not necessarily _un ami
a musique_, nor "to sit on the committee," _s'asseoir sur le comite_,
unless the context indicates that it is the painful operation which is
meant. Poor boy! For him a foreign language is only his own, with
another vocabulary; and so, when he does a piece of translation, he
carefully replaces on his paper each word of his English text by one of
the equivalents that he finds for it in his dictionary, rarely failing
to choose the wrong one, as I have already said. Now comes _que_. Shall
he put the subjunctive or the indicative? He has learnt his grammar:
he could, if occasion required, recite the rules that apply to the
employment of the terrible subjunctive mood. He has even, once or twice
in his life, written an exercise on the subject, and as it was headed
"Exercise on the Subjunctive Mood," he went through it with calm
confidence, putting all the verbs in the subjunctive, including those
that it would have been advisable to put in the indicative. This done,
he was not supposed to commit any more mistakes on this important point
of grammar. He might as well be expected to be an experienced swimmer
after once reading Captain Webb's "Art of Swimming," and going through
the various evolutions indicated in the pamphlet, _a sec_ on the floor
of his papa's parlor.

I admit that the French teacher of a public school ought to be a good
philologist to make his lessons attractive to the students of th