John Bull, Junior Part 11

One of my pet aversions is the young boy who arrays[5] himself in stand-up collars and white merino cravats.

[5] Being a little bit of a philologist, I a.s.sume this verb comes from the common (very common) noun, _'Arry_.

George Eliot, I believe, says somewhere that there never was brain inside a red-haired head. I think she was mistaken. I have known very clever boys with red hair.

But what I am positive about is that there is no brain on the top of boys ornamented with stand-up collars.

Young Bully wears them. He comes to school with his stick, and whenever you want a match to light the gas with he can always supply you, and feels happy he is able for once to oblige you.

In some boys I have often deplored the presence of two ears. What you impart through one immediately escapes through the other. Explain to them a rule once a week, they will always enjoy hearing it again. It will always be new to them. Their lives will ever be a series of enchantments and surprises.

You must persevere, and repeat things to them a hundred times, if ninety-nine will not do. Who knows there is not a John Wesley among them?

"I remember," once said this celebrated divine, "hearing my father say to my mother: 'How could you have the patience to tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?' 'Why,' said she, 'if I had told him only nineteen times, I should have lost all my labor.'"

I am not sure that the boy with only one ear is not still more tiresome. He always turns his deaf ear to you, and makes his little infirmity pay. "He is afraid he did not quite hear you, when you set the work yesterday." For my part, I met the difficulty by having desks placed each side of my chair. On my left I had the boys who had good right ears; on my right, those who had good left ones.

I can not say I ever saw many signs of grat.i.tude in boys for this solicitude of mine in their behalf.

At dictation time the two-eared boy is terrible, and you need all the self-control you have acquired on the English sh.o.r.es to keep your head cool.

Before beginning, you warn him that a mute _e_, or an _s_, placed at the end of a vowel, gives a long sound to that vowel, that _ie_ is long in _jolie_, and _i_ is short in _joli_; that _ais_ is long in _je serais_, and _ai_ is short in _je serai_.

Satisfied that he is well prepared, you start with your best voice:

"_Je serais...._"

The boy looks at you. Is he to write _je serais_ or _je serai_?

To settle his undecided mind, you repeat:

"_Je serais_,"

and you may lay great emphasis on ais, bleating for thirty seconds like a sheep in distress.

He writes something down at last. You go and see the result of your efforts. He has written

"_Je serai._"

_Drat_ the boy!

Next time you dictate a word ending in _ais_, he won't be caught again.

He leaves a blank or makes a blot.

You must never take it for granted that you have given this boy all the explanations he requires to get on with his work. You will always find that there is something you have omitted to tell him.

He is not hopelessly stupid, he personifies the _vis inertiae_; he is indifferent, and takes but one step at a time.

He will tell you he did not know that there were notes at the end of his French text-books. When he knows that there are such notes, he will inform you next time that you did not tell him he was to look at them.

He sees things, but at first he does not know what they are for unless they are labelled, and he will ignore the use of a chair if you do not point out the flat part of this piece of furniture, or better still, touch it, saying, "Chair--to sit upon."

The following are bits of conversation you will have with him in the cla.s.s-room:

"How is it you have no copy to give me?"

"I thought we only had to prepare the piece."

Of course you know what it means when a boy tells you he has "prepared"

his work, but has not written it down. So you tell him he is to bring a copy next time. He does, for he is most anxious to do as he is told.

When you ask him to give you the translation of the piece _viva voce_, he tells you:

"Please, sir, you did not tell us we were to learn the piece."

"But, my boy, don't you understand that you are doing a piece of French twice a week in order to learn the language?"

He never thought of that. He had to write out the translation of a piece of French, and he has done it. He did not know he had to draw such bewildering conclusions as you have just mentioned.

He does as he is told, and he marvels you do not consider him a model of a boy.

If he were placed at the door of the reading-room of the British Museum, with orders to inform people that they must take their umbrellas or sticks to the cloak-room, he would carry out the intentions of the librarians with a vengeance.

"Take your stick or your umbrella to the cloak-room," he would say to the first person presenting himself at the door.

"But I have not got either," might reply the visitor.

"That's no business of mine; go and fetch them," he would naturally suggest.

He can grasp but one idea at a time, and this one idea does not lead to another in his mind. There it remains like the buried talent.

Master Whirligig is a light-headed boy. It requires very little to entertain him. The falling of a book, a cough, a sneeze, an organ in the street, will send him into fits of hilarity behind his pocket-handkerchief, and when the school breaks up for the Midsummer holidays, he will be able to tell you the exact number of flies that pa.s.sed through the cla.s.s-room during the term.

He is never still for a moment. Always on the look-out for fresh events, he is the nearest approach to perpetual motion yet discovered.