He said he knew but two languages, the English and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to be applied to his memory.

Then he laid before the assemblage his program -- a sufficiently extraordinary one.

He proposed that one gentleman should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in the sentence.

He was furnished with the French word 'est', and was told it was second in a sentence of three words.

The next gentleman gave him the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of four words.