(THE LAMENT OF A WOULD-BE LINGUIST.)
When on my Continental tour preparing to depart,
I bought a Conversation-Book, and got it up by heart;
A handy manual it seemed, convenient and neat,
And gave for each contingency a dialogue complete.
Upon the weather--wet _or_ fine--I could at will discourse,
Or bargain for a bonnet, or a boot-jack, or a horse;
Tell dentists, in three languages, which tooth it is that hurts;
Or chide a laundress for the lack of starch upon my shirts.
I landed full of idioms, which I fondly hoped to air--
But crushing disappointment met my efforts everywhere.
The waiters I in fluent French addressed at each hotel
Would answer me in English, and--confound 'em!--spoke it well.
Those phrases I was furnished with, for Germany or France,
I realised, with bitterness, would never have a chance!
I swore that they should hear me yet, and proudly turned my back
On polyglots in swallowtails, and left the beaten track....
They spoke the native language _now_; but--it was too absurd--
Of none of their own idioms they apparently had heard!
My most colloquial phrases fell, I found, extremely flat.
They _may_ have come out wrong-side up, but none the worse for that.
I tried them with my Manual; it was but little good;
For not one word of their replies I ever understood.
They never said the sentences that _should_ have followed next:
I found it quite impossible to keep them to the text!
Besides, unblushing reference to a Conversation-Book
Imparts to social intercourse an artificial look.
So I let the beggars have their way. 'Twas everywhere the same;
I led the proper openings--they _wouldn't_ play the game.
Now I've pitched the Manual away that got me in this mess,
And in ingenious pantomime my wishes I express.
They take me for an idiot mute, an error I deplore:
But still--_I'm better understood than e'er I was before!_
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