"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.... Métropolitain 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 à musique_, nor "to sit on the committee," _s'asseoir sur le comité_, 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, _à sec_ on the floor of his papa's parlor.