BOULOGNE-SUR-MER:
I started to spend a few days at Paris-Plage, one of the fascinating seasides of France, where is found that rare combination, an excellent beach with shade trees; but, instead, I stopped two months at Etaples, a little fishing village, about a mile from the Plage, with a shady path through the woods between the two places.
Etaples is the old sketching-ground of Millais and Whistler, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, and is crowded with artists. It is on an arm of the sea, when the tide is in, but when that incomprehensibly weird thing is out, it is on a waste of dry sand. Etaples is but a short distance from the village of Montreuil, with its outdoor summer school for sketching. Because of the old Roman ramparts which are still standing and because of its quaintness and its antiquity, Montreuil also attracts a large colony of painters.
I am often asked what foreign language I would suggest as most useful for travelers. I answer unhesitatingly, "French!"
French is taught in the schools of every nation save our own, and it is spoken by every educated foreigner. Whenever I could not ask for what I wanted in the language of the country, invariably I was asked by host, "boots," or with whomever I was gesticulating,—
"Parlez vous Français?"
The study of French is a subject to which every parent should give serious consideration. No nation is so under-languaged as ours; and no language is so necessary to a traveler as French. It helps one with his own language and adds an interest and enjoyment to intercourse with our foreign cousins; while without it, we stand mute and helpless and ofttimes bewildered, and advantage is taken of our seeming stupidity.
Study English first and always, and polish it by the study of French.