Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/28

Rh more or less wealthy families, French, German, and English governesses. John Stuart Mill studied Greek at the age of three, which is the proper time to begin the study of any language that one intends to master. Russian children think and dream in foreign words, but it is seldom that a Russian shows any pride in his linguistic accomplishments, or that he takes it otherwise than as a matter of course. Stevenson, writing from Mentone to his mother, 7 January 1874, said: "We have two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year-old, I had the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day.... She said something in Italian which made everybody laugh very much...; after some examination, she announced emphatically to the whole table, in German, that I was a mädchen.... This hasty conclusion as to my sex she was led afterwards to revise...but her new opinion...was announced in a language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. To complete the scroll of her accomplishments,... she said good-bye to me in very commendable English." Three days later, he added, "The little Russian kid is only two and a half; she speaks six languages." Nothing excites the envy of an American travelling in Europe more sharply than to hear Russian men and women speaking European languages fluently and idiomati-