_At Table d'hôte._--Fellow-countrymen to the fore; both my immediate neighbours English, but neither shows any inclination to converse. Rather glad of it; afternoon of Museums and Galleries instructive--but exhausting. Usual Chatty Clergyman at end of table, talking Guide-book intelligently; wife next him, ruminating in silence and dismally contemplating artificial plant in a plated pot in front of her. It _is_ a depressing object--but why look at it? Horror of two Sportsmen opposite on being offered snipe. "Snipe _now_--Great Scott!" they exclaim, "And ain't they _high_ too?" One helps himself to some, with a sense that being on the Continent makes all the difference. But even _his_ courage fails on being offered stewed apricots with it. Close by a couple of Americans; a dry middle-aged man, and a talkative young fellow who informs him he was at Harvard. Elder man listens to him with a grim and wooden forbearance. "Ez fur languages," the younger man is saying. "I'd undertake to learn any language inside of six months. Fur enstance, I got up Trigonometry in two. You'll tell me that _isn't_ a language, and that's so, but take _Latin_ now, I'd learn Latin--to write _and_ speak--in a year, Italian I'd learn in a fortnight--with constant _study_, you understand. Then there's German. Well. I cann't _read_ German--not in their German text, I cann't, and I don't _speak_ it with fluency, but I can ask my _way_ in it, and order anything _I_ want, and I reckon that's about as much as a man requires to know of any language. Will you take a glass of wine outer my bottle? I've another coming along." Elder man declines stiffly, on plea that he is almost a teetotaller. "Well, maybe you're wise," says the Harvard man, "but I've discovered a thing that'll put you all right in the morning when you've eaten or drunk more'n's good for you overnight. I'll tell you what that thing _is_. It's just persly--plain ordinary simple persly. You eat a bunch o' fresh persly first thing you get up, and it don't matter _what_ you've taken, you'll feel just as _bright_!" Elder man, who has been cutting up his chicken into very small pieces, looks up and says solemnly, "You may consider yourself vurry fortunate in being able to correct the errors you allude to by a means which is at once so efficacious and so innocent." After which he subsides into his salad. Harvard man shut up.