t few weeks spent in sight-seeing I had a great deal of
time left to myself; my friend was often I did not know where. When
not with him, I spent the day nosing about all the curious nooks and
corners of Paris; of this I never grew tired. At night I usually went
to some theatre, but always ended up at the big cafe on the Grands
Boulevards. I wish the reader to know that it was not alone the gaiety
which drew me there; aside from that I had a laudable purpose. I had
purchased an English-French conversational dictionary, and I went
there every night to take a language lesson. I used to get three or
four of the young women who frequented the place at a table and buy
beer and cigarettes for them. In return I received my lesson. I got
more than my money's worth, for they actually compelled me to speak
the language. This, together with reading the papers every day,
enabled me within a few months to express myself fairly well, and,
before I left Paris, to have more than an ordinary command of French.
Of course, every person who goes to Paris could not dare to learn
French in this manner, but I can think of no easier or quicker way of
doing it. The acquiring of another foreign language awoke me to the
fact that with a little effort I could secure an added accomplishment
as fine and as valuable as music; so I determined to make myself as
much of a linguist as possible. I bought a Spanish newspaper every
day in order to freshen my memory of that language, and, for French,
devised what was, so far as I knew, an original system of study. I
compiled a list which I termed "Three hundred necessary words." These
I thoroughly committed to memory, also the conjugation of the verbs
which were included in the list. I studied these words over and over,
much as children of a couple of generations ago studied the alphabet.
I also practiced a set of phrases like the following: "How?" "What did
you say?" "What does the word ---- mean?" "I understand all you say
except ----." "Please repeat." "What do you call ----?" "How do you
say ----?" These I called my working sentences. In an astonishingly
short time I reached the point where the language taught itself--where
I learned to speak merely by speaking. This point is the place which
students taught foreign languages in our schools and colleges find
great difficulty in reaching. I think the main trouble is that
they learn too much of a language at a time. A French child with a
vocabulary of two hu