entertainment out of
him.

* * * * *

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:[2] "She went back to her own room, and tried to prepare
herself for bed. But who could sleep? Sleep!"[3]

[2] "The Old Curiosity Shop."

[3] Here I have to make a painful confession. I have actually
acceded to a request from my American publishers, men wholly
destitute of humor, to supply the reader with a translation of
the few French sentences used in this little volume. This
monument of my weakness will be found at the end.

His translation ran thus: "Elle se retira dans sa chambre, et fit ses
preparatifs 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 tire son poignard de la gaine, et d'une main sure,
elle le plonge dans le coeur de _celui qui ecrivait_."

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 ecrit_."

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 calecons_."

The ca