We were seated one November evening in O’Neill’s rooms in Trinity College Dublin when the conversation turned on modern languages.

Each had his own story to tell, but we waited in vain for our host to unbosom himself on the subject of Dutch. Yet he was understood to have had thrilling experiences in the Hague in August.

By a few gentle hints we endeavoured to elicit from him some talk about his linguistic adventures, and, not succeeding very well, I at last asked him point-blank if he didn’t find Dutch hard.

“Yes”, said O’Neill promptly, in answer to my question. “Yes: it certainly is hard!” he repeated, as he balanced the poker, preparatory to smashing the biggest piece of coal on the fire. “Why the whole thing’s next to impossible!”

There was something in his tone that sounded promising. He had a grievance evidently against the language; and there was a sufficient amount of suppressed irritation in his voice to indicate that there might be entertaining disclosures at hand.

Jack O’Neill had worked too closely at his mathematics the winter before, and had taken a long holiday in summer. A month of this he had spent in Holland to master the Dutch language, he said, and get a good general acquaintance with Dutch Literature. These had been great plans, and we were naturally eager to learn how they had succeeded. We had seen, however, very little of Jack since his return, as he had been most of the time at his aunt’s place in Connemara. Now that he was back at Trinity safe and sound, we naturally expected to get the news sooner or later. The conditions were so favourable that evening for a talker to spin his yarn, that we were all impatience for Jack to begin. We settled ourselves comfortably to listen; but he did not seem in a hurry to unfold this particular tale.

We had already heard from him a great deal about William the Silent, and more than a great deal about Dutch art, but not a word about the Dutch language.

Our next-door neighbours, the “Professor” and the “Philosopher”—two students from the Cape who were working for their degree—were as interested as I was, in O’Neill’s Dutch, and they used to drop in to hear what was going on.

It was the third evening they had called; and as it was clear that Jack was somewhat reticent about his “linguistics”, we had to guide him gently to the subject.

“Nonsense!” I said again. “You had no difficulty. You made yourself understood from the first. You wrote me that.”

“Well,” said Jack, sitting bolt upright, “I know better now; and I stopped talking Dutch when I began to understand myself. You have to hunt in the dark,” he explained, “to catch the exact word or the proper idiom—and a man likes to know what he is talking about, himself. The language isn’t child’s play, that’s the truth. But it’s a fine country. You should see the light when—”

“Oh,” said the Philosopher, “we don’t want to hear any more about the country. Please not. We know all about those azure heavens and the infinite horizons and the scrumbled distances and the Rembrandt cattle, and all that. Why, man, I’ll undertake to draw from your own rhapsodies about those pictures an absolutely correct copy of (say) Paul Potter’s ‘Night Watch’, or van der Helst’s ‘Anatomy Lesson’, or Mesdag’s ‘Lost-Chord’, and the canals and the clouds and the chiaro-oscuro. You needn’t go over them again”.

“But I thought”, piped the First year’s man, who always came in with the Professor and never quite comprehended what was going on, “I thought that the ‘Night Watch’ was not by Paul Potter. Surely the ‘Night Watch’ and the ‘Anatomy Lesson’ are two well-known pictures by Remb—” “Never mind what you thought!” interrupted the Professor. “Don’t think, it’s bad for your constitution. And above all things don’t try to be accurate, or you’ll get yourself into trouble.”

“The Philosopher’s right,” I urged. “Our minds are a chaos after O’Neill’s descriptions. We’ll only pardon you, Jack, all that golden haze and the Rembrandts, if you condescend to plain facts. Tell us now about your Dutch. Do. We’re absolutely thirsting for an account of your adventures. Or were you too timid to embark on the open sea of the taal, sticking cravenly to English all the time? Why I thought you had more go.”

“Mr. O’Neill promised to master the language in the first fortnight”, chimed in the First Year’s man in his high boyish voice, “and to finish the principal Dutch classics in the second fortnight. Those were his very words.”