An Irishman's Difficulties with the Dutch Language

This would never do, I felt; and that evening I bought the first grammar and dictionary I could lay my hands on at a second-hand bookstall in the Binnenhof. They were antique looking volumes, most of them there; and my books had a remarkably ancient aspect. But I was glad to find that I had completed the purchase of them without using one word of English. How? Oh, the method's very simple. You pick out some big book you don't want, and hold it up interrogatively. You can hold up a book interrogatively, you know, with a little practice.