“Ez fur languages,” the younger man is saying.  “I’d undertake to learn any language inside of six months.  Fur enstance, I got up Trigonometry in two.  You’ll tell me that isn’t a language, and that’s so, but take Latin now, I’d learn Latin—­to write and speak—­in a year, Italian I’d learn in a fortnight—­with constant study, you understand.  Then there’s German.  Well.  I cann’t read German—­not in their German text, I cann’t, and I don’t speak it with fluency, but I can ask my way in it, and order anything I want, and I reckon that’s about as much as a man requires to know of any language.  Will you take a glass of wine outer my bottle?  I’ve another coming along.”  Elder man declines stiffly, on plea that he is almost a teetotaller.  “Well, maybe you’re wise,” says the Harvard man, “but I’ve discovered a thing that’ll put you all right in the morning when you’ve eaten or drunk more’n’s good for you overnight.  I’ll tell you what that thing is.  It’s just persly—­plain ordinary simple persly.  You eat a bunch o’ fresh persly first thing you get up, and it don’t matter what you’ve taken, you’ll feel just as bright!” Elder man, who has been cutting up his chicken into very small pieces, looks up and says solemnly, “You may consider yourself vurry fortunate in being able to correct the errors you allude to by a means which is at once so efficacious and so innocent.”  After which he subsides into his salad.  Harvard man shut up.

In the Fumoir.—­Two drearily undecided men trying to make up their minds where to go next.  Shall they stay at Antwerp for a day or two, or go over to Brussels, or go back to Calais and stay there, or what?  “Calais is on their way home, anyhow,” says one, and the other, without attempting to deny this, thinks “there may be more to see at Brussels.”  “Not more than there is here,” says his friend:  “all these places much about the same.”  “Well,” says the first, yawning, “shall we stay where we are?” “Just as you please,” says the other.  “No; but what would you rather do?” ...  “Me? oh, I’m entirely in your hands!” First man, who has had Green Chartreuse with his coffee and seems snappish, annoyed at this, and says, “it’s dam nonsense going on like that.”  “Oh,” says the second, “then you leave it to me—­is that it?” “Haven’t I been saying so all along!” growls the other.  Second Undecided Man silent for a time, evidently forcing himself to come to a decision of some sort.  At last he looks up with relief. “Well,” he says, very slowly, “what do you think about it?” Whereupon they begin all over again.  This indecision is catching—­leave them.