proficiency in the language; and, as one common principle lay at the root of these three modes of conversing, in acquiring one I learned all three.
I was complimented by my instructor on the facility with which I had mastered all the accomplishments required to make me feel at my ease in the society of the subaqueous community, among whom he proposed to introduce me, when his duties as instructor would cease, and I might become practically acquainted with the institutions, the manners and the customs of my adopted country.
Hitherto we had seen but few of the inhabitants, as the spot where we had been sojourning was a sort of reserved space, not open to the general community, and only visited occasionally by persons who had some official connexion with my tutor, and who came thither to transact business with him.
I burned with eager desire to escape from the narrow limits to which I had all this time been confined, and to see and mingle with the word beyond. I was beginning to weary of the irksome discipline of study and exercise which my instructor imposed on me, and I felt quite capable of taking care of myself in a more extensive field of operations.
It was, therefore, with much satisfaction that I learned from my tutor that he considered my education sufficiently advanced to enable me to dispense with his further services.
"You are not, of course," he said, "by any means perfect in the accomplishments needed in your new abode, but you have obtained a smattering of them sufficient to enable you to mingle in society without much awkwardness, and your further development will
