GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 267 natural and difficult one that leads to poor results? What are the results of the gram- matical instruction? The vast majority of our college graduates neglect to read the ancient authors. They are not able to read them, but only to make a translation. They find no suffi- cient reward for this slow and irksome process. A student, having reached the stage of prog- ress in reading and writing our language, visits our country whose language he has been read- ing. What he hears at first is almost wholly unintelligible, though the same words in print would be familiar. A little later it is not un- common for him to hear a sentence without comprehending it at all, when suddenly it will flash upon his mind as though he had seen in print what he is hearing and as if he had pro- nounced it himself, and then he understands readily. The same thing occurs in listening to one's native tongue when the auditory centre has been slightly damaged by disease. When the student becomes familiar with the spoken language through every-day experience, he reads faster, finding a clearness and vigor of meaning before unknown. It is not because his vocabulary is larger, but because it is more effi- cient. The auditory centre, which formerly,
