Except that I grew our of the common tall and
very strong, a more commonplace boy than I must have seemed (after my
artistic vein gad run itself dry) never went to a public school. So much
for my outer life at Bluefriars.
[Illustration: A DREAM OF CHIVALRY]
But I had an inner world of my own, whose capital was Passy, whose fauna
and flora were not to be surpassed by anything in Regent's Park or the
Zoological Gardens.
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.
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