correct them and weed out the German words that crop up in every
sentence are really untiring, and the results discouraging. Indeed, as
they get older the German asserts itself more and more, and is
threatening to swallow up the little English they have left entirely. I
talk English steadily with them, but everybody else, including a small
French nurse lately imported, nothing but German. Somebody told me the
thing to do was to let children pick up languages when they were babies,
at which period they absorb them as easily as food and drink, and are
quite unaware that they are learning anything at all; whereupon I
immediately introduced this French girl into the family, forgetting how
little English they have absorbed, and the result has been that they
pass their days delightfully in teaching her German. They were
astonished at first on discovering that she could not understand a word
they said, and soon set about altering such an uncomfortable state of
things; and as they are three to one and very zealous, and she is a meek
little person with a profile like a teapot with a twisted black handle
of hair, their success was practically certain from the beginning, and
she is getting on quite nicely with her German, and has at least already
thoroughly learned all the mistakes. She wanders in the garden with a
surprised look on her face as of one who is moving about in worlds not
realised; and the three cling to her skirts and give her enthusiastic
lessons all day long.

Poor Seraphine! What courage to weigh anchor at eighteen and go into a
foreign country, to a place where you are among utter strangers, without
a friend, unable to speak a word of the language, and not even sure
before you start whether you will be given enough to eat. Either it is
that saddest of courage forced on the timid by necessity, or, as Doctor
Johnson would probably have said, it is stark insensibility; and I am
afraid when I look at her I silently agree with the apostle of common