The Rev. John Watson, who has written several successful books under the _nom de plume_ of "Ian Maclaren," recently visited this country--his home is in Liverpool, England--where he met with wonderful success on a lecture tour. Just before departing for his home he met a New York editor who was a class-mate of his at school years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland. Calling him familiarly by his first name, as of old, Dr. Watson, in response to congratulations, said: "I am glad this success did not come to me when I was young. Why, Dave, if this had happened when I was twenty-one, it would have turned my head, and I should have thought myself a very great man! But now I know better."
Funny Incidents with Unfamiliar Languages.
The late George du Maurier, an account of whose early student days has recently been published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, was once much put out by an Englishman who took him for a Frenchman. The two conversed for a while in French, the Englishman stumbling through the conversation, thinking it necessary to bring into service all the French he knew in order to make himself understood by this greatest of English satirists.
But Du Maurier was not the only man to have this experience. Some years ago a party of four American gentlemen met, in the park at Versailles, four American ladies whose acquaintance they had made some months before in Germany. Desiring to treat them to a carriage ride, one of the gentlemen motioned to a cab that stood near. Supposing cabby to be French because he was in France, the eight summoned their best French, and, after a great deal of difficulty, in which cabby seemed dull and the Americans unable to give a French pronunciation to their French, succeeded in fixing upon a price for a two-hour ride. As four of the party were about to enter the carriage, one lady objected to the small seat. The cabby desired, so it afterward developed, to tell the lady she could sit on the front seat with him. Thinking of an inducement for so doing, he undertook to express it by bending over, shaking his trousers, then his coat tails, next his coat collar, and lastly his mustaches, which he pulled to their greatest length, having first inflated his cheeks to their fullest extent. His performance was so ludicrous that the whole party laughed, and some lady, in true American vernacular, shouted,