[Crowded out of “A Tramp Abroad” to make room for more
vital statistics.--M. T.]
The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads
no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and
pretty self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping; there are
Frenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters.
Among the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the European
plan--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it. They
easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word
an English sentence in such a way as to enable them to comprehend it.
They think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't.
Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it
down at the time, in order to have it exactly correct.