d leaning forward sunk his
voice to a whisper. "My notion is to publish it as a serious work for
the use of schools!"

The author stared, speechless.

"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will appeal
to him. It will exactly fit in with his method. Nothing sillier,
nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever discover. He will
smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks up blacking."

The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered the title
and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it was.

The result is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of
English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it
is because something even less adaptable to the object in view has been
since invented.

Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even from the
like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British educational method
further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance of, what is
termed in the prospectus, "A native gentleman." This native French
gentleman, who, by-the-by, is generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most
worthy person, and can, it is true, understand and speak his own language
with tolerable fluency. There his qualifications cease. Invariably he
is a man with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as an
amuser of youth. He is always a comic figure. No Frenchman of a
dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school. If he
possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause
merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers. The class
naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week
that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to
by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence.
And then, when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely
to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses
not the system, but its innocent victim.

I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language we
attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak German would
be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time in teaching even
French according to this method I have never been able to understand. A
perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable.