Max O'Rell

“ He is quiet and unpretending in class, and too sleepy to be up to mischief. He trusts that if he does not disturb your peace you will not disturb his. When a little boy gives you a good answer, it arouses his scorn, and he not uncommonly throws at him a little smile of congratulation. If you were not a good disciplinarian, he would go and give him a pat on the back, but this he dares not do.
When you bid him stand up and answer a question, he begins by leaning on his desk. ”

“ Good living is expensive in London. Why should I not reduce my expenses, and at the same time improve my English by teaching French in an English school as resident master? This would enable me to wait and see what turn events will take.
I have used my letters of recommendation as a means of obtaining introductions in society, and my pride will not let me make use of them again for business.
I will disappear for a time. When my English is more reliable, perhaps an examination will open the door of some good berth to me. ”

“ As for the savate, the canne, fencing, which all bring the wits into play as well as the muscles, they, even the last-named, are very little known or practiced in England. In these most young Frenchmen are well up, and as for gymnastic exercises they are more practiced in France than in England, although the English boy fondly imagines he is at the top of the ladder in all matters athletic.
The craze for athletics has inculcated in English boys the admiration for physical strength. This they like to find in their masters, as well as firmness of mind. ”

“ It is clear to my mind that, by such means, English boys can be made to speak French in the most interesting manner, and the one best suited to their taste. I firmly believe that if the great schools, public or private, were to start similar societies, that if all the young men knowing a little French were to form in their districts, such associations under the leadership of able and cheerful Frenchmen, England, or America for that matter, would in a few years, have a generation of French-speaking men. ”

“ If you set an exercise to English boys, to be written out on the spot, they all set off quickly, the question being, as they look at one another:
"Who shall have finished first?"
This I hold to be due to the influence of athletics.
"Please, sir, I've done!" will exclaim the winner triumphantly, as he looks at the rest of the class still busy scratching their paper.
You generally like to know what boys intend to be, in order to direct your attention more specially to the subjects they will require to be grounded in for such or such an examination. ”

“ English examinations consist of so many papers to be taken up; the "viva voce" does not play an important part in England, as it does in France.
A "viva voce" examination very often gives the examiner a better idea of the candidate's abilities and knowledge than a written one, but it has many drawbacks. It favors babblers and the self-assured, and does not enable the timid to show themselves at their best.
The more learned the examiner, the more kind and indulgent is he to the candidates. ”

“ 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 passed through the class-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. ”

“ French boys are more united among themselves, because their life would be intolerable if close friendship did not spring up between them, and help them to endure a secluded time of hardship and privations.
English boys are prouder, because they are freer. Their pride is born of liberty itself. ”

“ You will not get grown-up, intelligent, and well-educated boys to come out of their shells, unless you make it worth their while. Now, Englishmen, like Americans, love argument, very often for argument's sake, and every school-boy, in England as in America, is a member of some society or committee, and at its meetings tries his wings, discusses, harangues, and prepares himself for that great parliamentary life, which is the strength of the nation. ”

“ 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." ”

“ I believe that the man who thoroughly knows all the resources of the mischievous little army he has to fight and rule is better qualified and prepared for the struggle.
We have in French an old proverb that says: "It's no use trying to teach an old monkey how to make faces."
The best testimonial in favor of a school-master is that the boys should be able to say of him: "It's no use trying this or that with him; he always knows what we are up to."
How is he to know what his pupils are "up to" if he has not himself been "up to" the same tricks and games? ”

“ A French master may occasionally enjoy the drolleries that a magnificent disdain for dictionary trammels and a violent yearning towards the playground will betray his pupil into; but I imagine that a publisher, who pays in hard cash for the faithful translation of a French book, can scarcely be pleased to find that the work has been interlarded with mirth-provoking blunders thrown in gratis. ”

“ Shortly after that memorable day, my parents removed from the country to Paris. The thought of seeing her no more nearly broke my heart, and when the stage-coach reached the top of the last hill from which the town could be seen, my pent-up feelings gave way and a flood of tears came to my relief.
The last time I visited those haunts of my childhood, I heard that "little Marie" was the mamma of eight children. God bless that mamma and her dear little brood!
At fifteen I was passionately fond of music, and declared to my father that I had made up my mind to be an artiste. ”

“ 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 cœur 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 e mute was a real sore to him, the grief of his life. Without it he might have passed for English. It was too provoking to be thus balked, and, as he signed his name, he would dissimulate the poor offending little vowel, so that his name should appear to end at the double consonant.
He was not a genius.
Acting under the theory of Figaro, "Qu'il n'est pas nécessaire de tenir les choses pour en raisonner," I have heard an Englishman, engaged in teaching French, maintain that it was not necessary to be able to speak the French language to teach it. ”

“ I came across the following lines on some English boys' books:
"Don't steal this book for fear of shame,
For here you see the owner's name;
Or, when you die, the Lord will say:
'Where is that book you stole away?'"
Boys' minds are like a certain place not mentioned in geographies: they are paved with good intentions. Before they begin their work, they choose their best nib (which always takes some time) . This done, they carefully write their name and the title of the exercise. French looks magnificent. They evidently mean to do well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was twelve years of age when I struck up a friendship with a young Pole, named Gajeski, who was in the same class with me. We became inseparable chums. Year after year we got promoted at the same time. We took our degrees on the same days, entered the military school in the same year, and received our commissions in the same regiment.
We took a small appartement de garçon at Versailles, and I shall never forget the delightful evenings we spent together while in garrison there. He was a splendid violinist, and I was a little of a pianist. ”

“ That thick-necked boy, whom you see there on the front row aiming at looking very good, and whom his schoolfellows are wicked and disrespectful enough to surname "Potted Angel," is sad and sour. His eyes are half open, his tongue seems to fill his mouth, and to speak, or rather to jerk out the words, he has to let it hang out. ”

“ On the 18th of March, 1871, the people of Paris, in possession of all the armament that had been placed in their hands to defend the French capital against the Prussians, proclaimed the Commune, and, probably out of a habit just lately got into by the French army, we retreated to Versailles, leaving Paris at the mercy of the Revolutionists. ”

“ Well, I believe the genus boy to be pretty much the same all the world over. Their characteristics do not show in the same way, because educational systems are different.
Both English and French boys are particularly keen in finding out the peculiarities of a master, and taking his measure.
They are both inclined to bestow their affection and respect on the man who is possessed of moral and intellectual power; it is in their nature to love and respect what is powerful, lofty, and good.
Boys are what masters make them.
Both English and French boys are lazy if you give them a chance ”

“ For over fifteen years, the French examiners in the University of London invariably every year asked the candidates for Matriculation the following question—I had almost said riddle:
"Which is the only French substantive ending in ence that is of the masculine gender, and why?"
You may picture to yourself the unhappy candidates, scratching their heads, and going, in their minds, through the forty and some thousand words which make up the French vocabulary. ”

“ I have great respect for missionaries, but I have always strongly objected to boys who make up their minds to be missionaries before they are twelve years old.
Some good, straightforward boys are wholly destitute of humor. One of them had once to put into French the following sentence of Charles Dickens: "Mr. Squeers had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two." He said he could not put this phrase into French, because he did not know what it meant in English.
"Surely, sir," he said to me, "it is not a prejudice to prefer two eyes to one." ”

“ French boys, and only of late, are made to go through a course of French philology during their last two years at school; but English school-boys, who are seldom taught to speak French, and who would find it just as difficult to make themselves understood in Paris as they would in Pekin, are made to study the "rudiments" of French philology, that is to say, the origin of words they are unable to put together so as to make French sentences of them. ”

“ On the contrary, no difficulty about the pronunciation of the three French words, admirable, admirer, and admiration; the tonic accent falls on the last sound syllable in every case.
The less educated a man is the more stress he lays on the accented syllables; and you find the lower classes of a country lay such emphasis on these syllables that they almost pronounce nothing else. Being unable to make myself understood when pronouncing whole English words, I have often tried to use only the accented syllables when speaking to the lower class people of England ”

“ If you insist on his standing up and giving sign of life, he frowns, loosens his collar, which seems to choke him, looks at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at you. Being unable to utter a sound, he frowns more, to make you believe that he is very dissatisfied with himself. ”

“ It is not enough that he should speak to them in French, even in the upper forms, where he would be perfectly understood: understanding a language and speaking it are two very different things. Neither will he attain his end by means of dull manuals of imaginary conversations with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker; these will, at most, be useful in helping a foreigner to ask for what he wants at a table d'hôte. ”

“ Speaking from my experience, I should say that at gymnastic exercises, and all pastimes requiring a little skill, French boys are more than the equals of John Bull, junior. They are better at leaping, climbing, and wrestling. As for swimming, nine out of ten French boys are good swimmers. They do not want to emulate Captain Webb's feats when they grow up, because the object or beauty of such feats as his has never been revealed to them. ”

“ What cannot a teacher do that has succeeded in winning the esteem and affection of his pupils? First, make them respect you, then gain their hearts, and you will lead the young by a thread.
Take twenty or thirty boys, old enough to appreciate the interest you feel in them, and say to them, "My young friends, let us arrange to meet once a week, and see if we cannot speak French together. ”