THE STRAW EDUCATION OR THE PLACEBO EDU ...You are sorry to hear, on asking him what he intends to be, that he means to be a missionary. His face alone will be worth £500 a year in the profession. Thinking that I have prepared this worthy for missionary work, I feel, when asked what I think of missionaries, like the jam-maker's little boy who is offered jam and declines, pleading: "No, thanks—we makes it." I have great respect for missionaries, but I have always strongly objected to boys who make up their minds to be missionaries before they are twelve years old. OR POLITICAL MISSIONARIES IS MORE OR LESS THE SAME LAME LIFE WITH EXTRA CASH AND AFRICAN YES THEY CAN TITSWhen I was at school, we French boys used to draw, on the back of the cover of our books, a merry-Andrew and a gibbet, with the inscription: "Aspice Pierrot pendu, Quod librum n'a pas rendu. Si librum redidisset, Pierrot pendu non fuisset." I came across the following lines on some English boys' books: "Don't steal this book for fear of shame, For here you see the owner's name; Or, when you die, the Lord will say: 'Where is that book you stole away?'" Do you know your lesson?" you will ask him. "Yes, sir," he will reply. "But you can't say it." "Please, sir, I forget it now." Memory is his weak point. He has done his best, whatever the result may be. Last night he knew his lesson perfectly; the proof is that he said it to his mother, and that the excellent lady told him he knew it very well. Again this morning, as he was in the train coming to school, he repeated it to himself, and he did not make one mistake. He knows he didn't. Asterism If he has done but two sentences of his home work, "he is afraid" he has not quite finished his exercise. "But, my dear boy, you have written but two sentences." "Is that all?" he will inquire. "That is all." "Please, sir, I thought I had done more than that." And he looks at it on all sides, turns it to the right, to the left, upside down; he reads it forwards, he reads it backwards. No use; he can't make it out. All at once, however, he will remember that he had a bad headache last night, or maybe a bilious attack. The bilious attack is to the English schoolboy what the migraine is to the dear ladies of France: a good maid-of-all-work. Asterism Sometimes my young hero brings no exercise at all. It has slipped, in the train, from the book in which he had carefully placed it, or there is a crack in his locker, and the paper slipped through. You order excavations to be made, and the exercise has vanished like magic. Johnny wonders. "Perhaps the mice ate it!" you are wicked enough to suggest. This makes him smile and blush. He generally collapses before a remark like this. Asterism But if he has a good excuse, behold him! "I could not do my exercise last night," said to me one day a young Briton. It was evident from his self-satisfied and confident assurance that he had a good answer ready for my inquiry. "You couldn't," I said; "why?" "Please, sir, grandmamma died last night!" "Oh! did she? Well, well—I hope this won't happen again." This put me in mind of the boy who, being reproached for his many mistakes in his translation, pleaded: "Please, sir, it isn't my fault. Papa will help me." An English schoolboy never tells stories—never. A mother once brought her little son to the head-master of a great public school. "I trust my son will do honor to the school," she said; "he is a good, industrious, clever, and trustworthy boy. He never told a story in his life." "Oh! madam, boys never do," replied the head-master. The lady left, somewhat indignant. Did the remark amount to her statement being disbelieved, or to an affirmation that her boy was no better than other boys? Asterism Of course every mother is apt to think that her Johnny or Jenny is nature's highest utterance. But for blind, unreasoning adoration, commend me to a fond grandmamma. The first time I took my child on a visit to my mother in dear old Brittany, grandmamma received compliments enough on the subject of the "lovely petite blonde" to turn her head. But it did not want much turning, I must say. One afternoon, my wife was sitting with Miss Baby on her lap, and grandmamma, after devouring the child with her eyes for a few moments, said to us: "You are two very sensible parents. Some people are so absurd about their babies! Take Madame T., for instance. She was here this morning, and really, to hear her talk, one would think that child of hers was an angel of beauty—that there never was such another." "Well, but, grandmamma," said my wife, "you know yourself that you are forever discoursing of the matchless charms of our baby to your friends." "Ah!" cried the dear old lady, as serious as a judge; "but that's quite different; in our case it's all true

Some boys can grasp grammatical facts and succeed in writing a decent piece of French; but, through want of literary perception, they will give you a sentence that will make you feel proud of them until you reach the end, when, bang! the last word will have the effect of a terrible bump on your nose.

A boy of this category had to translate this other sentence of Dickens "She went back to her own room, and tried to prepare herself for bed. But who could sleep? Sleep!

His translation ran thus: "Elle se retira dans sa chambre, et fit ses préparatifs pour se coucher. Mais qui aurait pu dormir? Sommeil!"

I caught that boy napping one day.

"Vous dormez, mon ami?... Sommeil, eh?" I cried.

The remark was enjoyed. There is so much charity in the hearts of boys!

Another boy had to translate a piece of Carlyle's "French Revolution": "'Their heads shall fall within a fortnight,' croaks the people's friend (Marat), clutching his tablets to write——Charlotte Corday has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart."

The end of this powerful sentence ran thus in the translation: "Charlotte Corday a tiré son poignard de la gaîne, et d'une main sûre, elle le plonge dans le cœur de celui qui écrivait."

When I remonstrated with the dear fellow, he pulled his dictionary out of his desk, and triumphantly pointed out to me:

"Writer (substantive), celui qui écrit."

And all the time his look seemed to say:

"What do you think of that? You may be a very clever man; but surely you do not mean to say that you know better than a dictionary!"

Oh, the French dictionary, that treacherous friend of boys!

The lazy ones take the first word of the list, sometimes the figurative pronunciation given in the English-French part.

Result: "I have a key"—"J'ai un ki."

The shrewd ones take the last word, to make believe they went through the whole list.

Result: "A chest of drawers"—"Une poitrine de caleçons."

The careless ones do not take the right part of speech they want.

Result: "He felt"—"Il feutra"; "He left"—"Il gaucha."

With my experience of certain French dictionaries published in England, I do not wonder that English boys often trust in Providence for the choice of words, although I cannot help thinking that as a rule they are most unlucky.

Very few boys have good dictionaries at hand. I know that Smith and Hamilton's dictionary (in two volumes) costs twenty shillings. But what is twenty shillings to be helped all through one's coaching? About the price of a good lawn-tennis racket.

I have seen boys show me, with a radiant air, a French dictionary they had bought for six-pence.

They thought they had made a bargain.

Oh, free trade! Oh, the cheapest market!

Sixpence for that dictionary! That was not very expensive, I own—but it was terribly dear.