⁂
Parisian good society no longer takes tea, it "five o'clocks"; and the bourgeois is beginning to put at the foot of his cards of invitation:
"On five o'clockera à neuf heures."
⁂
When the English wish to have a song or a piece of music repeated by an artist, they shout: Encore! And, the following day, the papers, in their accounts of the performance, announce that Mademoiselle So-and-So was encored.
While I am upon this subject, allow me to give you a little sample of modern English; it will prove to you that Alexander Dumas was right, when he pronounced English to be only French badly pronounced, and I would add, badly spelt:
"The concert was brilliant, and the ensemble excellent. Miss N—— was encored, but Mr. D——, who made his début, only obtained a succès d'estime."
Go to Trafalgar Square. Place yourself at the foot of that long Roman candle, on the summit of which the statue of Nelson may be perceived ... on a clear day. Turn toward the Palace of Westminster, and you will see on your left the Grand Hôtel and the Avenue Theatre, on your right the Hôtel Métropole. In your rear you will find the National Gallery. As all these buildings are within a hundred yards of Charing Cross station, the terminus at which you alight on coming from France, your first impression will be that it will not take you long to learn to speak English. Ah! dear compatriots, be not deceived; you little guess the terrible perfidiousness of that language. Those provoking Britons seem to have taken a wicked pleasure in inventing a collection of unheard-of sounds, a pronunciation that will fill your hearts with despair, and that puts them quite out of the reach of imitation.
Thou mayest dress like an Englishman, dear compatriot, eat roast beef like an Englishman, but, never, never wilt thou speak English like an Englishman. Thou wilt always massacre his language; let this console thee for hearing him massacre thine.
In the Spectator of the 8th of September, 1711, Addison wrote: