How shall we go to work to learn foreign languages? The answer is as simple as the prescription for reading English. Open a book written in the foreign language and take each word in order through a whole sentence. Then read that same sentence in a good translation. Then write down all the words that seem to be nouns and all the words that seem to be verbs. After that read the sections in the grammar about verbs and nouns. The other parts of speech will take care of themselves for a while. Then try another sentence. I know one young person who read through a French book and got at its meaning by guessing at the words and then returning over those which appeared oftenest and which, of course, were the commonest. It is possible by a comparison of the many uses of the same word to squeeze some meaning out of it. The dictionary and the grammar will give the rest. The foreign book stores, the publishers of text books, and the purveyors of home teaching methods that are advertised in the more reputable journals offer language books that are of real assistance. The scope of this Guide does not admit any detailed instruction in the methods of learning foreign languages. I can only insist that with a few books and perseverance anyone can learn, not to speak, perhaps not to write, but to read a strange tongue. And I say to the boy or the girl who is going to the high school that not to take the courses in Greek, Latin, French and German is to throw away a precious opportunity. Upon the grounding of those few years in school, the young receptive years, what a knowledge of languages one can build! The notion, all too prevalent, that foreign languages, especially Greek and Latin, are of no use to the boy or the girl who is going “right into business,” is one of the dullest fallacies with which a hard-working practical people ever blinded its soul. Playing the piano and learning to sing, nay, even going to church, are of no use in business. But who will be so foolish as to devote his whole life to business? Burritt, the blacksmith boy, taught himself languages. The high-school boy who is going to be a blacksmith can begin to study languages before he picks up the tools of his bread-winning labor. If this seems like the vain idealism of a bookish person, let me make an appeal to your patriotism. Do you know that this land of opportunity and prosperity is not developing so many fundamentally educated men and women as we should expect from our vast system of public schools and our many universities? One reason is that we have so many bread-and-butter Americans who allow their boys and girls to stay away from those classes in Greek and Latin and French and German which our high schools provide at such great cost to the generous taxpayer. All we lack in America is the will to use the good things we have provided for us.