i857-1862 283 and at the age of seventeen went to the United States, where he remained and married. In 1914 when the Great War broke out he went at once to France and found his German, which he had not spoken for thirty-three years, return to him. A curious story is told of Ephraem Syrus who had lived many years in the desert as a hermit. There came over him a great desire to see and converse with S. Basil. So he went to Caesarea and entered the church, arriving on the Feast of the Epiphany. He was highly offended with the pomp of the service and the splendour of the vestments of the Bishop, and retreated into a nook. When S. Basil preached, he could see that the prelate was full of zeal and fire, but he could not understand what he said. Basil had marked Ephraem and his companion, another ragged hermit, and he sent a deacon to bid him speak with the Bishop in the presbytery when the liturgy was ended. Ephraem obeyed, but he could speak only Syriac, and Basil only Greek, so Ephraem through an interpreter besought the Bishop to kneel and pray with him that they might be able to understand one another. Basil obeyed. Presently, with a shout, the hermit saint sprang to his feet, exclaiming : " Save and have mercy on me, O God ! revive and protect me, through Thy Grace ! " Thenceforth he was able, no doubt in very broken Greek, to converse with S. Basil. So convinced was S. Ephraem that his acquisition of Greek was a miracle, that he wrote a book on the Gift of Tongues. It is, however, quite possible to explain the incident naturally. Ephraem, as a boy, had undoubtedly heard Greek spoken at Nisibis, where he had worked as a sail-maker ; but since he was seventeen years of age he had gone into the desert and had forgotten the Macedonian Greek there spoken. When at Caesarea it returned to him. There was nothing miraculous in this. One thing is absolutely needful if the pronunciation of a foreign tongue is to be acquired, and that is to learn it before that in puberty the vocal organs are set. I have known those who have lived for over thirty years in France, and, although they can speak the language fluently, never pronounce their words as would a native. The chaplain at Hurst, the Rev. Edmund Field, was a most excellent man, kind, good, very much in earnest, but, oh, such a
