It was good to think of it by day, to dream of it by night, _although I
had not yet learned how to dream!_

There were soon other and less exclusive regions, however, which I
shared with other boys of that bygone day. Regions of freedom and
delight, where I heard the ominous crack of Deerslayer's rifle, and was
friends with Chingachgook and his noble son--the last, alas! of the
Mohicans: where Robin Hood and Friar Tuck made merry, and exchanged
buffets with Lion-hearted Richard under the green-wood tree: where
Quentin Durward, happy squire of dames, rode midnightly by their side
through the gibbet-and-gipsy-haunted forests of Touraine.... Ah! I had
my dream of chivalry!

Happy times and climes! One must be a gray-coated school-boy, in the
heart of foggy London, to know that nostalgia.

Not, indeed, but what London has its merits. Sam Weller lived there, and
Charley Bates, and the irresistible Artful Dodger--and Dick Swiveller,
and his adorable Marchioness, who divided my allegiance with Rebecca of
York and sweet Diana Vernon.

It was good to be an English boy in those days, and care for such
friends as these! But it was good to be a French boy also; to have known
Paris, to possess the true French feel of things--and the language.

Indeed, bilingual boys--boys double-tongued from their very birth
(especially in French and English)--enjoy certain rare privileges. It is
not a bad thing for a school-boy (since a school-boy he must be) to hail
from two mother-countries if he can, and revel now and then in the
sweets of homesickness for that of his two mother-countries in which he