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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: talk English. To meet someone who could converse in French delighted
him, and although his version of the language was that of two centuries
before and my father's was largely derived from reading, they got on
very well together, if not too fast.
At length, after a pause, Mr. Marais, pointing to myself, a small and
stubbly-haired youth with a sharp nose, asked my father whether he would
like me to be instructed in the French tongue. The answer was that
nothing would please him better.
"Although," he added severely, "to judge by my own experience where
Latin and Greek are concerned, I doubt his capacity to learn anything."
So an arrangement was made that I should go over for two days in each
Marie |
