‘They will be nothing after all,’ said Hector Philipon, looking at the boys at play, ‘but little clerks — petits commis. Poor little chaps! that must be their fate.’ He rolled another cigarette and began to reflect upon the various conditions of mankind, and especially on clerkery.

     
He knew the petit commis of Paris, and he rashly concluded that he of London resembled him, not knowing that in clerkery, as in the Church or the law, or any other calling, there are degree, grades, depths, and heights. He thought that all alike were hopeless. Their labour he argued from these unsound premises, is not skilled; they have no skill or craft; they can write, spell, read, cast accounts; they are worth in the market from fifteen to eighteen shillings a week; and though many arrive at two, three, or even four pounds a week, that is only by the generosity and pity of their employers, a race of men who are always confounding social economists and breaking the rules of the most lovely theory. These people, he ignorantly thought, must be miserable, because they have no pride in their work; because their work is monotonous and the same from youth to age; because there are no prizes for them; because there is no dignity in their lives; because they must always remain servants;

because they must pretend to be gentlemen; because they have no holidays, except one week in the year; because of necessity they must live amidst mean and monotonous surroundings. This class of humanity did not seem, to this philosopher, even interesting: a Frenchman is never moved by a thing which is not dramatic: and it is difficult to dramatise that kind of sorrow which comes of pinching; one feels little sympathy with a man who seldom starves yet is always kept low; who is pinched all round, in his pay and in his work; in his education and his knowledge; in his ideas and his hopes; in his art — here he is not pinched but deprived and robbed; in his religion, which requires a whole chapter of explanation; in his morals, to explain which requires a visit to the nearest music-hall; in his home, which is all pinching and pricking; in his joys, which are of the saddest. Yet this uninteresting person, if he exists, needs a great deal of pity.

     
He does exist, though M. Philipon ignorantly exaggerated his numbers: the hopeless clerk is found in every city. He is in London as well as in Paris, and wherever he is found he is always the same helpless, ignorant, hopeless log.

     
Now two, at least, of these three boys were from the beginning, as it seemed to their honest friend, destined to live the life of the hopeless clerk. Their parents were too poor to keep them at school after fourteen or fifteen, or to teach them anything beyond the ordinary school course. They had no friends, no influence, no money, and, which was worse, they had no idea that life outside the city was even possible for any boys. It was, therefore, fortunate that they were ‘found out’ by Hector Philipon. In the eyes of the village M. Philipon was nothing but a very polite and well-dressed little Frenchman, who held a post generally supposed to belong to the most harmless and the meekest of mankind; those who, like hair-dressers, drapers’ assistants, waiters, vergers, have not so much as a single kick in all their profession. He was teacher of French in a large girls’ school. Meekness and harmlessness were professional attributes. It was known, besides, that his butcher’s bill was ridiculously small, and this was taken as in itself a proof of meekness. None of the girls had ever seen him out of temper, though he was continually tempted to commit child-murder. This was another proof of meekness. He was also reported to follow the pursuit of gardening during his leisure moments, and this was another proof of meekness, if any more were wanted. Lastly, he had never been in business, and had therefore never failed. This was contemptible, He lived in a very little cottage of six small rooms, standing on the skirts of the forest, and surrounded by green wooden palings; beyond the palings you saw the old trees. The cottage was built of the old, not the new, warm red brick, and possessed a broad wooden porch with a bench on either side, One could sit in the porch

in almost all weathers. A wistaria climbed up on one side and a jessamine on the other; round and about the house there were honeysuckle, hawthorn, lilac, laburnum, and roses — roses yellow, roses red, roses white, roses of all kinds; in the front a dainty flower garden; at the back a large vegetable and fruit garden. The harmless, polite little man could be seen on half-holidays, early in the morning, late in the evening, dressed in a blue blouse, at work among his flowers and his cabbages. He was a model teacher of French for young ladies, and he had but one fault, that he did not go to church. But then a French master is always allowed to be a Roman Catholic, and there was no Catholic church in the place. He was ignorantly supposed to say mass, all by himself, alone. Harmless! And yet he was the only man in all that village who had ideas! The only man who knew his fellow-men, and they thought him harmless! If I were a lady, and, if in addition to this transformation, I were to become a lady who ‘bossed’ a girl’s school, I should not choose for my French master one whose favourite reading was Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and such revolutionary writers of the last century; nor should I feel comfortable if I knew that a red republican was turned loose among my innocent flock; nor should I keep a bit longer than I could help a man who every day, in the privacy of his home, propounded maxims and gave utterance to thoughts and sentiments of the most dangerous character. You shall see how harmless he was.

     
M. Philipon, while the boys were young, was unhappy because he had no one to talk to except his little daughter. At the school he would talk to the girls in French, but he hated the girls. Yes; had Miss Billingsworth known it! He hated the girls and he detested the grammar of his own language, and he was alone and could not express his sentiments. Fortunately he began to talk to the boys who played in the forest with his Claire, and before long he made the discovery that two of them, at least; were boys with heads upon their shoulders. Then he began, partly because he had nothing to think about, to watch them and to listen to their talk while they played, because it is the talk of a boy at play which reveals the character of that boy, and he made an observation about certain differences between them. This was that one of the boys was always wanting to sit by himself and read, and always ready to borrow any book he could get and go away to secluded spots in order to read his book; further, that another was always interested in hearing the contents of that book without desiring to read it for himself, and that the third neither read nor listened, and was not athirst for information. Now boys are like sheep in this respect, that no two boys are alike. But it requires observation to discover the differences between them. Therefore M. Philipon began to consider these boys more carefully, and he became interested in them. And by conversation and observation

he was made aware that they were desperately poor and would be sent into the city as soon as they could be taken away from school. He thought of the petit commis of Paris, and his soul was sad for the future of the two boys, bright and brave, and born for better things. Yet what help? ‘What can we do, Claire?’ he asked his daughter, ‘What can we do to, help your friends?’

     
‘Will has got a prize for arithmetic, and Allen for Latin, and Tommy for writing,’ said Claire, implying that they wanted no help.

     
‘That is well; yet, my child, the ignorance of all three is profound: it is phenomenal. To be sure, you are as ignorant as the boys. That matters less. None of you, I believe, know that there are a great many people outside the City of London.’

     
‘Oh! papa. Why, we all learn geography. I am in Asia already. Of course we all know that.’

     
‘Claire, my dear, sit here at my feet and listen.’ They were in the garden alone on a sunny afternoon. ‘You are a very little girl yet, but you are thoughtful. Consider what I say. Boys who learn nothing know nothing. Boys who know nothing and have no money have no chance. Boys who have no chance become petits commis — little clerks. These are the miserables who spend their lives copying at a desk; do you wish your friends to be copying machines?’

     
‘No. no. But Allen and Will could never be that.’

     
‘They must be that, my child, unless we help — you. and I together.’

     
‘Why, what can I do, papa?’

     
‘You must become suddenly five or six years older. You must try to understand what I am doing and why. Now listen. The only thing that can help these boys is knowledge. They must know more than their competitors. What they learn at school will not help them much. I shall try to teach them the things that will be useful, Do you understand me ?’

     
‘Yes, papa.’

     
‘Good. In order to do this I must make them eager to learn; you must help me by being yourself more eager to learn than to play.’

     
Her face fell a little. She would certainly rather play.

     
‘It is for the boys’ sake, my daughter.’

     
She hesitated no longer.

     
‘I will be eager to learn papa.’

     
‘Good girl! I will reward you by telling you more. While they are learning they shall think that they are playing; only you and I will know that they are teaching themselves useful things. All the time I shall be putting things into their heads and making them ambitious. And you shall have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to make men instead of machines. You may even, if you please, tell the boys.’

     
‘The boy,’ he went on, ‘who knows nothing, is dangerous; he has power and does not understand how to use it; he is an elector, perhaps, even, an elected; he is like a Ioaded gun in the hands of a monkey. Stupidity is only safe when it is blind, deaf, and sleepy. When it wakes up it is mad. Let us prevent the boys from being stupid.’

     
The Frenchman proceeded to act. He put on his best coat,
and a fresh flower in his button-hole, assumed his most diplomatic
manner, and made three calls in the village. First he
called upon Mr. Massey, and next upon Mrs. Engledew. To
each he pointed out the importance to a young man entering
the City of one foreign language at least, and he offered to
teach the boys his own gratuitously. The offer was accepted
promptly and with grateful surprise. For to find a man ready to
give his services for nothing is a thing quite out of the common.

     
‘I have always said,’ remarked Sir Charles when he heard of it, ‘that Monsieur Philipon was a harmless, good enough sort of person. For nothing, did you say, Massey? Dear me!
In the City, now, we know better.’

     
‘We do, indeed, Sir Charles, said Mr. Skantlebury. It is
difficult to see what services a man can render his brother man
for nothing in the City, unless he gives him cargoes for nothing.’

     
‘The man is a foreigner,’ said Mr. Colliber ‘I’ve always thought that another name for Tom Fool.’

     
‘But .if he teaches the boy French’ — observed Mr. Massey, with a little doubt.

     
‘Take his offer, Massey,’ said Mr. Colliber. ‘Take all you can get for nothing.’

     
Hector also made the same offer to Mrs. Gallaway, but it was declined because the ruler of the house said that his uncle, who had the great house at Brixton and was in a Large Way in Oil, had got on without French, and so could he.

     
The lessons were not at all what the boys expected. They looked forward with little eagerness to learning grammar and writing exercises. They found no grammar at all, and no exercises. On the contrary the lamp was lit in the sitting-room; there were two or three books on the table. Their teacher welcomed them in French, and then informed them in English that for the future no word of their own language was to be spoken in his presence. The boys looked at each other in dismay. Why, he was always with them. Not a word of English? Were, then, their very sports in the forest to be conducted, so to speak, in French? Then M. Philipon rolled a cigarette, lit it, and began to talk to Claire. Then Claire began to talk to the boys, but they understood not one word. Then she read to her father, and presently handed them the book, but they could not read a word.

     
When they went home they felt inclined to cry, and

wondered whether it was possible for two boys to look more
profoundly foolish.

     
The next evening Claire met them at the garden gate and told them a few French phrases, and the names of things about them, and what she was going to talk about with her father. Accordingly, when the lesson began, they knew what was meant, and she went round the room giving names to the things. Then they began to find French names for everything; as they played in the forest; as they walked to school and back; whenever they were with Claire. Remark, that the first thing you want in a language is the vocabulary; men who learn many languages begin after the manner of Adam, with the names, not after the manner of the schoolmaster, with the syntax. Those who do not want to learn a language begin with grammar and exercises; this is the way of our schools, and it is the cause of our brilliant success in modern languages. Next, they learned, chiefly by Claire’s help, how to connect the names with verbs and adjectives and things of that sort; and they perceived that a certain amount of grammar was necessary, which M. Philipon was so good as to put into their heads; but there was no regular teaching; he sat and listened while they talked and read. One may remark that if he had adopted the method at his school, the girls would have really learned French; but he was expected to follow the lines to which his employer was accustomed. That is to say, he read Racine with the girls and made them write exercises on the experiences of the watchmaker’s aunt and the gardener’s grandfather. Therefore, the girls did not learn French at all and the boys did, though they wrote no exercises at all and knew nothing about the gardener’s grandfather. The difference was that Miss Billingsworth bought a machine warranted to grind in one way only, and that the boys got a man’s brains given to their service and always thinking what would be best for them.

     
When their ears had caught the sound of the French language, when they had learned a copious vocabulary and could read with pleasure and talk freely, though still with plenty of mistakes, their teacher set them to write; they read a story one evening and wrote it down the next; then they compared what they had written with what they had read and were put to shame. It was necessary to find out many more things in the grammar; they found these out.

     
Hector Philipon in fact, was a man of ideas and of clear mind. He wanted the boys to learn, not to pretend. He therefore made them teach themselves by an intelligent process, while he taught his girls by the conventional process. In two years they really knew French. Hector, by this most precious gift, lifted them by one step out of the lower levels of clerkery; their commercial value was doubled.

     
One does not talk every evening with a man who has read,

and can think, and has acted among his fellow-men, without results. First of all, the boys read quantities of books, lively travels, in which the writers, being Frenchmen, looked out perpetually for dramatic situations; biographies, also written by Frenchmen, and therefore compiled with a view to tableaux; history, which is full of splendid scenes; and tales, especially the tales of Erckmann-Chatrian. Next, they learned that there are other forms of life besides business life in the City; this was an immense stride in knowledge; and other occupations besides making money by buying cheap and selling dear, and other men and women besides the people of the City. They got all kinds of ideas, with vague ambitions; they forgot their poverty and the very small and humble début into life which was before them; their hearts glowed in thinking of the great deeds of the men who had gone before them, and the splendid things which they, too, would achieve. In the course of time there grew up in both the boys a dim and shadowy vision of a great and wonderful future opening out for all the world; what it was they did not know, nor did they inquire; nor did they realise that the thing had been suggested by their instructor. All that they understood as yet was, that some time or other the wars and battles would come to an end because there would be nothing left to fight for; that the history of the world is a history of people fighting for justice; that they would at last, somehow, arrive at justice; and that this would so far extend the general stock of happiness that there would be enough to go round and to spare. Was not this a great and suggestive lesson for the boys to learn?

     
Oh! harmless M. Philipon! Oh! unsuspecting village! Oh! condescension and patronage! For here were two boys, with strong brains and stout arms, already full of ideas and athirst for knowledge, and here was a crafty teacher of girls — nothing more than that — leading them on, step by step, into ways of thought, which gentlemen who had failed for an aggregate of a million and a quarter could not contemplate without horror.