Most young people, however, will think of Greek, Latin, French, and German as difficult and “learned” mysteries accessible only to the fortunate who can go to the higher schools, and of use only to those who intend to enter scientific and literary professions. If I say that with no knowledge of any language but English you can teach yourself any other language well enough to read it, I hope you will not shake your head and say that such self-teaching is possible only to extraordinary intellects. Many commonplace persons have learned languages by reading them, with no equipment but a lexicon, a short grammar, and an interesting text. Perhaps it is not fair on top of that statement to cite the case of Elihu Burritt, for he was an exceptional man. But as readers will learn from his excellent “Autobiography,” he began his studies under very difficult circumstances; so that, taking all things together, talent and conditions, many a young man can start where he began and under no greater disadvantages. Burritt would have gone some way on the road to learning even if his endowments had been small. And with no genius but the genius of industry we can follow for a little distance his democratic course. Burritt was a blacksmith by trade. He had only such education as he could get in a country academy, where his brother was the master. In his leisure he studied mathematics and languages, and before he died he had acquired a reading knowledge of fifty tongues and dialects, ancient and modern. Yet he was not a self-absorbed man who shut himself up in profitless culture. He became a world-wide apostle of peace. The study of languages taught him that all men are brothers. If he could learn fifty foreign languages, any of us can learn one, and through that one we too shall understand that we are not an isolated people, not the only people in the world. We shall meet in their native tongue some great group of our brothers, the Germans, the French, the Italians, learn their ideals and broaden our own. It is impossible to learn Greek and Latin and not to feel how close we are to the peoples of two thousand years ago. It is impossible to learn French or German and keep in our hearts any of that contempt for “foreigners” which ignorant and provincial people so stupidly cherish. We shall arrive, too, through knowledge of another language at a finer appreciation of our own language, its shades and distinctions, its variety and power. We shall understand better the great English writers, many of whom have known something of foreign literature and refer in a familiar way to French and German and ancient classics, as if they took for granted in their readers an acquaintance with the literature of other nations.