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for not many months. They had never been out of England before, nor learnt any other foreign language. They would have been utterly at sea if they had attempted to do what they did on a similar acquaintance with any foreign tongue. But during the two days spent en route in Paris, where the British party was fêted and shown round by the French Esperantists, on the journey to Geneva, which English and French made together, on lake steamboats, at picnics and dinners, etc., etc., here they were, rattling away with great ease and mutual entertainment. Many of these came from the North of England, and it was a real eyeopener, over which easy-going South-Englanders would do well to ponder, to see what results could be produced by a little energy and application, building on no previous linguistic training. The Northern accent was evidently a help in pronouncing the full-sounding vowels of Esperanto.

One Englishman, who was talking away gaily with the French samideanoj,^[1] was an Esperantist of one year's standing. He had happened to be at Boulogne in pursuit of a little combined French and seasiding at the time of the first congress held there, 1905. One day he got his tongue badly tied up in a café, and was helped out of his linguistic difficulties with the waiter by certain compatriots, who wore green stars in their buttonholes,^[2] and sat at another table conversing in an unknown lingo with a crowd of foreigners. He made inquiries, and found it was Esperanto they were talking. He was so much struck by their facility, and the practical way in which they had set his business to rights in a minute (the waiter was an Esperantist trained ad hoc!), that he decided to give up French and go in for Esperanto. This man was a real learner of French, who had spent a long time on it, and realised with disgust his impotence to wield it practically. To judge by his conversation next year at Geneva, he had no such difficulty with Esperanto. He was quite jubilant over the change.