us, that all foreign boys, when moved to anger,
stabbed. Very unjustly we christened the
youngest Creole, Dagger; his little brother.
Bodkin; and the third, who was a tall lean lad
with glittering eyes, Carving-knife. I think a
good deal of nonsense—as could be proved by
the police reports and the Old Bailey sessions
papers—has been talked about the "un-English"
nature of the crime of stabbing. It is not the
custom to carry deadly weapons on the person
in England, for the reason that the laws for the
protection of life and property are very stringent,
and, as a rule, efficiently administered; but I
never heard of a drunken savage Englishman
who could get hold of a knife in a row, who
wouldn't use it; nor, as regards the softer sex,
are the biting off the nose of an adversary, and
the searing of her face with a red-hot poker,
quite "un-English" or un-Irish practices.

Our schoolmaster, who was an eccentric
instructor, half Pestalozzi, and half Philosopher
Square, had an idea that all Spanish children
were weaned upon tobacco, and absolutely
permitted these three Creole lads to smoke: on
condition, however, that they should not light up
their papelitos until night-time. when the other
boys went to bed. How we used to envy them,
as marching in Indian file to our dormitories,
we could see those favoured young Dons
enrolling their squares of tissue paper, preparatory
to a descent into the playground, and a quiet
smoke! The demoralisation among the juvenile
community, caused by this concession to Spanish
customs, was but slight. One or two of us tried
surreptitious weeds on half-holiday afternoons;
but the Widow Jones in Chiswick-lane did not
keep quite such choice brands in stock as did
Mr. Alcachofado of the Morro Castle; and
Nemesis, in the shape of intolerable nausea, very
soon overtook us. It is astounding, at fourteen
years of age, how much agony of heart, brain,
and stomach, can be got out of one penny
Pickwick. Pestalozzi Square, Ph. Dr., very wisely
refrained from excessive severity on this head.
He made it publicly known that a boy detected
in smoking, would not necessarily be caned, but
that on three alternate days for a week following
the discovery of his offence, he would be supplied
at one P.M. with a clean tobacco-pipe, and half
an ounce of prime shag in lieu of dinner. We.
had very few unlicensed smokers after this
announcement.

It was my singular good fortune, ere I left
the tutelage of the sage of Turnham-green, to
be admitted to the acquaintance, and almost to
the intimacy, of the three Creoles. I had somewhat
of a Spanish sounding name and lineage,
and they deemed me not wholly to belong to the
"Estrangeros;" at all events, they talked to me,
and told me as much as I hungered and thirsted
to know about the Morro Castle. For, long
before I began to deal with Mr. Alcachofado, I
had pondered over a picture of this fortress, and
mused as to what its real aspect might be. So,
softly and gratefully as dried mint falls upon pea-
soup, did the tales of these Spanish boys about
the rich strange island of Cuba fall upon my
willing ear. I saw it in its golden prime, all
sugar and spice, and redolent of coffee-berries
and the most fragrant of cigars. I basked in
the rich full light of the tropical sun. I saw the
caballero gravely pacing on his Andalusian
jennet; the lazy negro, pausing as he cut the
sugar-cane to suck the luscious tubes; the
señora in her mantilla; the señorita with her
fan. I revelled in a voluptuous dream of the
torrid clime, where you ate fifteen oranges before
breakfast, and a plateful of preserved cocoa-nut
at breakfast; where you never failed to take a
siesta in your hammock during the noontide
heats; where full evening costume consisted of
a suit of white linen, a Panama hat, and a guitar;
and where, with any little circumspection, you
might win the hundred thousand dollar prize in
the lottery. I longed to go to Havana, or the
Havannah as it was known in our time. Who
has not so longed to visit strange countries when
he was young, and imaginative, and had no
money? Byron's words used to drive us crazy
to see Sestos, and Abydos, and Athens.
Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Greek—why
does not some one republish that pearl of
picaroon romance?—made us tremble with
eagerness to see the Fanat of Constantinople
and the Bagnio of Smyrna; and, later in the
day, Eothen set us wild to catch a gazelle, and
bathe in the Dead Sea, and read the Quarterly
Review in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. I cannot
say the same for Gil Blas. Unsurpassed as Le
Sage's great work is, as a feat of story-telling, it is
to me singularly deficient in local colour. The
Robbers' Cave might be in, Italy or in England
in the days of Robin Hood. The Archbishop of
Granada might be resident at Barchester Towers.
I know Doctor Sangrado. He lives in Bloomsbury.
Now Don Quixote, on the contrary, ola
su ajo, is odorous of the real Spanish Gaelic
from the first to the last page. But Don
Quixote is not a boys' book, whatever you may
say. It is a book for men.

Well, the great whirling tee-totum of life spun
round, and one day it fell, spent, athwart a spot on
the map marked "United States of America." I
packed up my bundle, and crossed the Atlantic;
but with no more idea of visiting Havana than I
have, at this present writing, of going to Crim
Tartary. I am not ashamed to confess that I
had but a very dim notion indeed respecting the
topographical relation in which New York stood
towards the Island of Cuba. I think there
must have been something wrong in the manner
they taught boys geography in our time. It
was too sectional; you were made to swallow
Mercator's projection in isolated scraps of
puzzles; and if your eye wandered towards the
Gulf of Mexico when it should have been intent
on the Bay of Fundy, they boxed your ears.
We used to learn all about the West Indies, and
Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Granville Sharpe,
but no stress was laid on the fact that Cuba, and
St. Domingo. and St. Thomas, were likewise
West India Islands, and they were never
mentioned in connexion with North America. I
think Admiral Christopher Columbus, or the