HOW BOYS EXPRESS THEMSELVES.

SILENT in the presence of his seniors and decidedly averse to putting pen to paper, the ordinary boy might be supposed to do very little in the way of talking and writing. Nature, however, has seen fit to hang his tongue loosely, and the fates, in the form of pastors and masters, ordain that he shall, miens volens, produce much written matter; so that in the far distant future, when Macaulay's New Zealander has done sitting and moralising on the ruins of London Bridge, he may proceed to the study of a branch of the English language threatening to baffle even his advanced science. The experiences here enshrined, if ever they fall into his hands, may afford him some little light and leading.

Young pedagogues on first entering on scholastic life are likely to feel some degree of curiosity about the enormous amount of conversation that is always kept up by the smaller boys. It is not very easy to satisfy that curiosity, but there are methods. About the best way to get at them and induce them to break through their tongue-tied reserve is to invite them to tea. 'Tis merry in the ball when, for want of beards, tongues wag all. On such festive occasions youth- /al spirits are warmed, youthful bashfulness is dismissed, and youthful ideas flow. But on the whole it must be ad- mitted that these juvenile conversations, even when most vigorously kept up, are neither diverting nor instructive. They consist largely of chaff, and Tom Brown justly describes schoolboy badinage as "very poor stuff."

The schoolboy "argument" is always going on, and there is no reason why it should ever come to an end. An "argu- ment " between A and B is " squabbled out" in something like this style. A. " Yorkshire was cock county last year."— B. "No it wasn't : Lancashire was."—A. "No it wasn't."— B. "Yes it was."—A. "I know it wasn't."—B. "I know it was." —A. "I swear it wasn't."—B. "I bet you anything you like it was." And so on for a few minutes, when somehow or other, perhaps as the beginning of another " argument," the squabble comes to an end. The following occurred in my hearing a few months ago. A quarrel had been raging between two small boys, when a senior member of the circle sought to pour oil on the troubled waters by quoting the adage, "It takes two to make a quarrel, and one to end it." " All right," shouted one of the combatants, " I will be the one."—" No you sba'n't," yelled the other, " I will "; and a warm dispute followed, in which each claimed the distinction of figuring as peacemaker.

The colloquial style of the boy seems to be founded on four main principles,—a desire to be thought funny, a belief in the virtue of slang, a strong taste for hyperbole, and a disregard of all elegance of expression. The observance of these principles may be illustrated by the following examples. 1/aster. " Why are you late this morning ?"—Boy. "Please, Sir, I smashed my braces while I was sticking my breeches on." Similarly " lug out" is always preferred to " remove." The following, we must hope for the credit of surgical science, was a misrepresentation of what took place on the painful occasion. Master. " Why did M. come back two days' late this term ? "—Boy. "He had to stop at home to have his tonsils lugged out."

The boy appears to think that the language which is good enough for him is good enough for anybody or anything. Not long ago a little girl was complaining to her schoolboy brother of the overbearing behaviour of one of her school- fellows, and was asking his advice in the matter. " Tell her," said the brother, " that she is a cocky ass." Similar to this choice language is a note that I found written in the margin of a page of Mrs. Markham's "English History," in one of the many passages of that work in which a learned conversation is kept up between the mother and her intelligent children, George and Mary. George had succeeded in making a singularly apposite remark, against which I read a pencilled note,—" George is a fat ass."

Living much by rule (except when they do not), boys talk

largely in formulas. " Didn't know I had to," " Didn't know I mightn't," "Didn't notice it," are phrases continually on their lips in extenuation of sins of omission and of commission. For use in class " Bin on " (for " I have been on ") is found particularly useful. It means—" I have had my turn in con. struing or answering, and do not wish to monopolise the atten. tion of the master to the disadvantage of the rest of the class." Two formulas much in use on the cricket-ground deserve notice. When a youthful batsman has made a feeble drive forward, probably taking a well-pitched ball for a half-volley, and has been caught out, you may hear him on his return to the pavilion explaining matters by saying, "Bat didn't drive." On one occasion I remember a boy who had tamely played a ball back into the bowler's hands excusing the stroke by a reversal of the formula—" Bat drove too much." Some sort of unearthly motive-power is thought by the smaller fry to dwell in their bats, and they have a profound belief in the occult powers of the demon driver."

Less familiar to the general reader than these boyish col. loquialisms is the style of youthful performances on paper, but they are quite as diverting. As correspondents schoolboys are brief and dull. Difficulties beset them as soon as the greeting has been " stuck down." The home letter extracted weekly by the anxious parent from the unwilling youth contains very little of any interest. He rushes at once in medics res, but only into such as are of interest to himself, and records the fact that the eleven played some other eleven, and won or lost. After this, unless there is a request for cash or "grub," the letter consists mainly of questions.

Schoolboys do not often succeed in keep- ing up a correspondence with their school-friends for long, for the reason that each correspondent is inquisitive and asks many questions, and lazy and supplies little news. As an essayist the boy is almost always a dead failure. He does not know what to say, and if he did, he would not know how to say it. It need hardly be said that the subject in band is often entirely misconceived. Thus in a theme on handwriting in my possession we read: " The man who wrote beet on this earth was Mr. Goldsmith, of whom Dr. Johnson said that he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll." Now and then the essayist who fancies him. self is to the front, and his work is as precious as it is rare. He composes his similes as Mr. Robert Bridges composes some of his dramas,—" in a mixed manner." The following is from an essay on silence :—" It is quiet men generally who talk very eloquently and from whom sparks

of vivacity flow like butter The great Milton was a silent man. Witness his matchless blank verse." Numbers get badly mixed in these compositions, as may be seen from the following curious receipt : " When an elephant dies, people take their teeth out, and so we get ivory." "People," "have to have," " used to use," and "never " for "not " are in. cessantly recurring. A composition on capital punishment opens thus : " In the olden times people had to have their heads cut off." Endless mistakes, it need hardly be said, arise from the confusion of words of similar sound. I give an example, which introduces the favourite gambit of the boy essayist, —on pigeons. "There are many different kinds of pigeons in England, some wild, which are called wild pigeons, others tame. There are many different kinds of tame pigeons. One kind is the carrion pigeon." Of mountains we are told: "Many mountains are distinct volcanoes." A curious misconception seems to have prompted the next extract :—" It is the smaller quadrupeds, such as rata and mice, that are most destructive. Rats have been known to steal banknotes to line their nests with, when there was plenty of other paper lying near at hand." The improvident intelligence of the animal in this case appears as abnormal as the prudent sagacity of the friend of man in this translation: Canis ayes custodiebat, "The dog was looking for eggs. " Madame Marionette" as an historical name is plainly due to phonetic confusion. In a theme on wild flowers a hopeful has been known to express his admiration for "Ox-hide Daisies," which one would take for what gardeners call a "hardy annual" species of the flower. Still more remarkable was an anonymous order found in the matron's room for "a pair of pauper's hide laces."

Bishop Heber has suffered at the hands of a boy who makes him sing of "India's choral strand," and two familiar lines of

his have appeared in the handwriting of a small boy of my acquaintance in this shape :— "From many an ancient river, From many a blamy

Another has misplaced in a favourite lyric of Wordsworth's a common schoolboy simile :— " Not blither is the mountain roe That rises up like smoke"; a comparison which the poet applies to the powdery snow. "Murduresses," writes an essayist on prisons, "are made to pick opium." The following receipt was written out by one who had attended a lecture on the catching and preserving of moths : "You must put them in a bottle with about three- quarters of an inch of Sinai in it."

The boy-poet is rich and rare. Out of the few specimens of his art that I have treasured up I may give, first, a mysterious stanza on Harold. The poem did not, I think, extend beyond the four lines here given :—

"King Harold, he died for his island, He fought and he died for his island.

It was all very well, but what else could he do P He fought and he died for his island."

When the author of these lines was questioned by his form- master on the origin and meaning of them, all the answer he made, acting up to the spirit of the third line, was to say : " I thought it would do."

I have spoken of the art of the boy-poet ; perhaps I should rather have said artfulness. The lines on Harold, if we read between them, will be seen to be by no means artless. Observe the skill with which a very scanty amount of material is spread out and made to cover a considerable amount of paper. My second exhibit will even more markedly exemplify the same artfulness in construction. The author had been required to produce as a punishment a poem of a given number of lines on Perkin Warbeck, and proceeded to divide his task by two in the following style :- " Perkin Warbeck, Perkin Warbeck, For the words that you have said, Perkin Warbeck, Perkin Warbeck, You must surely lose your head ; " and so on, until the total number of lines was achieved.

My third example is the work of a small boy not altogether so simple as he looked. He and his class had learnt for what they called their " Rep " some harmless lines by Felicia. Hemans on "Night," an effusion in which each stanza begins with the words, "Night is the time for —." A prize was offered for the best stanza in continuation of the poem, to set forth the boyish view of the subject. The following is the prize stanza, to which a word of "sign-post criticism" may be prefixed. Please to observe the pronouns referring to the master in the third and fifth lines, in accordance with a Greek idiom of which the author, like a second Keats, was quite innocent :— "Night is the time for sprees,

When bolster fights begin,

And when we hear him coming up We are into bed like a pin, And when he gives a little peep, We pretend to be asleep."

For some years I made a habit of exacting written apologies as a mild punishment for mischief and damage. In the quotations I give from my collection of these it may be noted how the boy, in his anxiety to excuse himself, declines to be responsible for his own bodily actions. We have noticed the same in regard to his performances as a batsman. He rarely knocks a cup or a plate off a table ; it falls off. He never tears a cover off a book ; it comes off :—

"Threat Sra,—I humbly beg to apologize for breaking a basin. I was getting up and I was just going to wash, when my side hit the washing-stand and the jug fell on to it and smashed it."

"DEAR humbly apologize for smashing that mug

in my room. It happened through my cough. For as I was drinking I began to cough, and thus forgetting I was holding the mug I put my hand to my mouth, and the mug dropped on the floor and smashed."

"Dian Smn, I wish to apologize for having broken a saucer. I could not help it. I was cutting some chocolat and the knife sliped and came in contact with the saucer, and the saucer was rent in two peices." "DLL': Szn,—I humbly apologize for having smashed a break fast-cup. I never saw the cup so near the edge of the table, and I shook it by accident and it fell off."

"DLLs beg to appoligize for having broken the handle off a jug, as I was looking for my garter I was going backwards, so it was quite an accident."

(This little boy evidently was intending to "stick" his knicker- bockers on, and probably had " smashed " his garter.) A complaint has been made that in these days we hear and may learn a great deal about boys' education, but that too little is written on the boy himself. Though I, for one, should shrink from attempting to handle that vast subject, possibly a little light on his nature may be thrown by what I have here set down. In recording these scholastic experiences I have invented nothing. The specimens of puerile intellectual