Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a master of language; but his is a dangerous example for the unscholarly, who are congenitally careless and who are responsible for soubriquet instead of sobriquet, for a l’outrance instead of a outrance, and for en deshabille instead of en deshabille.  The late Mrs. Oliphant in her little book on Sheridan credited him with gaiete du coeur.  It was long an American habit to term a railway station a depot (totally anglicized in its pronunciation—­deep-oh); but depot is in French the name for a storehouse, and it is not—­or not customarily—­the name of a railway station.  It was also a custom in American theatres to give the name of parquette-seats to the chairs which are known in England as ‘stalls’; and in village theatres parquette was generally pronounced ‘par-kay’.

There are probably as many in Great Britain as in the United States who speak the French which is not spoken by the French themselves.  Affectation and pretentiousness and the desire to show off are abundant in all countries.  They manifest themselves even in Paris, where I once discovered on a bill of fare at the Grand Hotel Irisch-stew a la francaise.  This may be companioned by a bill of fare on a Cunard steamer plying between Liverpool and New York, whereon I found myself authorized to order tartletes and cutletes.  When I called the attention of a neighbour to these outlandish vocables, the affable steward bent forward to enlighten my ignorance.  ’It’s the French, sir,’ he explained; ‘tartlete and cutlete is French.’

That way danger lies; and when we are speaking or writing to those who have English as their mother-tongue there are obvious advantages in speaking and writing English, with no vain effort to capture Gallic graces.  Readers of Mark Twain’s Tramp Abroad will recall the scathing rebuke which the author administered to his agent, Harris, because a report which Harris had submitted was peppered, not only with French and German words, but also with savage plunder from Choctaw and Feejee and Eskimo.  Harris explained that he intruded these hostile verbs and nouns to adorn his page, and justified himself by saying that ’they all do it.  Everybody that writes elegantly’.  Whereupon Mark Twain, whose own English was as pure as it was rich and flexible, promptly read Harris a needed lesson:  ’A man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions.  It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, “Get the translations made yourselves if you want it—­this book is not written for the ignorant classes"....  The writer would say that he uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.  Very well, then, he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book.’