I will confess at the outset that my knowledge of Hungarian is limited to some dozen words. The time of day I will pass with you in the most fluent Ungarisch; if you, enraptured at my accent, wish to continue the conversation, and will confine yourself to remarking that the weather is hot or cold (you must not say warm or chilly), I will agree, or disagree, with you--curtly, maybe, but nevertheless I will do so; if you are thirsty I will order you wine, beer, or water; your hunger I will satisfy with bread. Further, I can amuse, instruct, and elevate you by counting up to ten. The reader who himself possesses some knowledge of Hungarian will share with me my admiration of my linguistic accomplishments. It takes some years of patient efforts for an Hungarian himself to learn his own language. I feel confident, had I been so fortunate (I am writing this in the heart of Hungary, and the inhabitants are an impulsive people) as to have been born an Hungarian, I should have borne dumbness with equanimity. All this--though, to the broad-minded, it excuses my ignorance of the language--does not alter the fact that I was fully aware beforehand that in certain regions of the country I should not be able to enjoy heart-to-heart talks with the people. Even in England there are whole villages which speak no tongue save their native one. I did not, however, anticipate that my ignorance would land me in the weird adventure here set forth. In a town, however, such as Arad I did not anticipate that there would exist one miserable, imbecile, uneducated incompetent--who, alas, only knows my opinion of him through a far too polite interpreter--who spoke only his own language, and that this one disreputable outcast and disgrace to an educated nation should cross my path. I arrived in Arad--a town of about sixty thousand people, lying near the Roumanian border--at about 2 a.m. I had not slept for over thirty-six hours, and I was so tired that I would have shared a bed with a Roumanian peasant. Can I say more? At the nearest hotel I pulled myself together and demanded, in what was, under the circumstances, very tolerable German, a bedroom. There was no difficulty about this; there was a room vacant. Gladly I filled in particulars of myself on the Police Form as the law demands. "Are you an Austrian or a German?" inquired the porter. I glanced at him sharply; I was in no mood for sarcasm. Besides, if it came to that, _his_ German wasn't of much account. But no; his face was gravity itself; courteous curiosity was its only expression. I pointed--I had no mind to risk my reputation as a linguist by further speech--to the form I had just filled in. "London," he read. "So, ein Englander?" "_Ja_," said I. I got into bed at 2.30 a.m., and immediately fell last asleep. [Illustration: "ONCE MORE THE IDIOT MET ME WITH AN AMIABLE GRIN."]