This young man, I hear, is also going to be a missionary. The news goes far to reconcile me to the noble army of John Bull's colonizing agents, but I doubt whether the heathen will ever get much 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 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 coeur 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.