Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in boarding schools; second, those who do all their studying at home at a window which overlooks a gloomy courtyard containing a twisted old fig2 tree; third, those who also study at home in a bright little room whose window commands a view of the street.
I belonged to that third class whom Topffer considers extraordinarily3 privileged, and as likely, in consequence, to grow up into happy men. My room was upon the first floor, and it opened into the street; it had white curtains, and its green paper was embellished4 with bouquets5 of white roses. Near the window was my work desk, and above it, upon a book-shelf, was my very much neglected library.
In fine weather I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my idleness seen, and reported by a meddlesome6 neighbor. Morning and evening I glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its sunny length between the white country houses and lost itself among the old trees growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the occasional passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood cats that prowled within doorways7 or upon house-tops, the swifts darting8 about in the warm air, and the swallows skimming along the dusty street. . . . Oh! how many hours have I spent at that window feeling like a caged sparrow, my spirit filled with vague reverie; and meantime my ink-blotted copy-book lay open before me, but no inspiration would come, and the composition that I was engaged upon got itself finished very laboriously,—often not at all.
And before long I began to play tricks upon the pedestrians9, a fatal result of my idleness over which I often felt remorseful10.
I am bound to confess that my great friend Lucette was usually a willing assistant in these pranks11. Although now almost a young lady sixteen or seventeen years of age, she was at times almost as much of a child as I. “You must never tell any one!” she would say with an irrepressible smile of mischief12 in her merry eyes (but I may tell now after so many years have passed, now that the flowers of twenty summers have bloomed upon her grave).
Our pranks consisted of taking cherry stems, plum stones and any sort of trash, and wrapping them
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