a _soiree musicale_. If _musicale_ is too
serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the _e_ and
become _musical_? When Theodore Roosevelt, always as exact as he was
vigorous in his use of language, was President of the United States, the
cards of invitation which went out from the White House bore 'musical'
in one of their lower corners; so that the word, if not the King's
English, is the President's English.

To offset this I must record with regret that the late Clyde Fitch once
wrote a one-act play about a manicurist, and as this operator on the
finger-nails was a woman he entitled his playlet, the _Manicuriste_; and
he did this in spite of the fact that, as a writer fairly familiar with
French, he ought to have known the proper term--_manucure_.

Then there is _double-entendre_, implying a secondary meaning of
doubtful delicacy. Dryden used it in 1673, when it was apparently
good French, although it has latterly been superseded in France by
_double-entente_--which has not, however, the somewhat sinister
suggestion we attach to _double-entendre_. I noted it in Trench's
'Calderon' (in the 1880 reprint); and also in Thackeray; and both
Calderon and Thackeray were competent French scholars.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider _nee_, put after the
name of a married woman and before the family name of her father. The
Germans have a corresponding usage, Frau Schmidt, _geboren_ Braun. There
is no doubt that _nee_ is convenient, and there is little doubt that
it would be difficult to persuade the men of culture to surrender it
or even to translate it. To the literate 'Mrs. Smith, born Brown',
might seem discourteously abrupt. But the French word is awkward,
nevertheless, since the illiterate often take it as meaning only
'formerly', writing 'Mrs. Smith, _nee_ Mary Brown', which implies that
this lady had been christened before she was born. And there is a tale
of a profiteer's wife who wrote herself down as 'Mrs. John Smith, New
York, _nee_ Chicago'.

Yet the French themselves are not always scrupulous to follow _nee_ with
only the family name of the lady. No less a scholar than Gaston Paris
dedicated his _Poetes et Penseurs_ to 'Madame James Darmesteter, _nee_
Mary Robinson'. Perhaps this is an instance of the modification of the
strict meaning of a word by convention because of its enlarged
usefulness when so modified.

Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a mas