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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Boy Life
+       Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Editor: Percival Chubb
+
+Release Date: May 7, 2008 [EBook #25383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOY LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: KITE-TIME]
+
+
+
+
+BOY LIFE
+
+STORIES AND READINGS SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+AND ARRANGED FOR SUPPLEMENTARY
+READING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS BY
+
+PERCIVAL CHUBB
+
+DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH IN THE
+ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL, NEW YORK
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+    NEW YORK AND LONDON
+    MCMIX
+
+
+
+
+HARPER'S MODERN SERIES
+
+OF SUPPLEMENTARY READERS FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
+
+_Each, Illustrated, 16mo, 50 Cents School._
+
+
+BOY LIFE
+
+Stories and Readings Selected from the Works of WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,
+and Arranged by PERCIVAL CHUBB, Director of English in the Ethical
+Culture School, New York.
+
+     "The literary culture which we are trying to give our boys and
+     girls is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+     sufficiently national and American....
+
+     "Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+     distinctively American savor than that of William Dean
+     Howells.... The juvenile books of Mr. Howells' contain some of
+     the very best pages ever written for the enjoyment of young
+     people."--PERCIVAL CHUBB.
+
+(_Others in Preparation._)
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+Published September, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                   PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                         ix
+
+
+I. ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+  HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS           3
+
+  THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN                                                13
+
+  JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE                                  23
+
+
+II. LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+  THE TOWN                                                           41
+
+  EARLIEST MEMORIES                                                  45
+
+  HOME LIFE                                                          47
+
+  THE RIVER                                                          51
+
+  SWIMMING                                                           55
+
+  SKATING                                                            61
+
+  MANNERS AND CUSTOMS                                                64
+
+  GIRLS                                                              68
+
+  MOTHERS                                                            69
+
+  A BROTHER                                                          73
+
+  A FRIEND                                                           79
+
+
+III. GAMES AND PASTIMES
+
+  MARBLES                                                            89
+
+  RACES                                                              91
+
+  A MEAN TRICK                                                       93
+
+  TOPS                                                               96
+
+  KITES                                                              98
+
+  THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 103
+
+  PETS                                                              108
+
+  INDIANS                                                           124
+
+  GUNS                                                              129
+
+  NUTTING                                                           138
+
+  THE FIRE-ENGINES                                                  145
+
+
+IV. GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD
+
+  THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS                                             151
+
+  PASSING SHOWS                                                     163
+
+  THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN                                         168
+
+  THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS                                         171
+
+
+V. THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN                                         183
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+PAGE
+
+KITE-TIME                                              _Frontispiece_
+
+HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE
+VERY NEXT MORNING                                                   5
+
+THE FIRST LOCK                                                     43
+
+THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 105
+
+ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE                                127
+
+NUTTING                                                           141
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+There are two conspicuous faults in the literary culture which we are
+trying to give to our boys and girls in our elementary and secondary
+schools: it is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+sufficiently national and American. Hence it lacks vitality and
+actuality. So little of it is carried over into life because so little
+of it is interpretative of the life that is. It is associated too
+exclusively in the child's mind with things dead and gone--with the
+Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere,
+the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively
+recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of
+the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the
+Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies
+do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which--if
+he reads at all--he is most likely to be concerned: the short story, the
+sketch, and the popular essay of the magazines and newspapers; the new
+novel, or the plays which he may see at the theatre. He has not been
+interested in the writers of his own time, and has never been put in the
+way of the best contemporary fiction. Hence the ineffectualness and
+wastefulness of much of our school work: it does not lead forward into
+the life of to-day, nor help the young to judge intelligently of the
+popular books which later on will compete for their favor.
+
+To be sure, not a little of the material used in our elementary schools
+is drawn from Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, from Irving and
+Hawthorne; but because it is often studied in a so-called thorough and,
+therefore, very deadly way--slowly and laboriously for drill, rather
+than briskly for pleasure--there is comparatively little of it read, and
+almost no sense gained of its being part of a national literature. In
+the high school, owing to the unfortunate domination of the college
+entrance requirements, the situation is not much better. Our students
+leave with a scant and hurried glimpse--if any glimpse at all--of
+Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, or of Lowell, Lanier, and Poe; with no
+intimate view of Hawthorne, our great classic; none at all of Parkman
+and Fiske, our historians; or of writers like Howells, James, and Cable,
+or Wilkins, Jewett, and Deland, and a worthy company of story-tellers.
+
+We may well be on our guard against a vaunting nationalism. It retards
+our culture. There should be no confusion of the second-rate values of
+most of our American products with the supreme values of the greatest
+British classics. We may work, of course, toward an ultimate
+appreciation of these greatest things. We fail, however, in securing
+such appreciation because we have failed to enlist those forms of
+interest which vitalize and stimulate literary studies--above all, the
+patriotic or national interest. Concord and Cambridge should be dearer,
+as they are nearer, to the young American than even Stratford and
+Abbotsford; Hawthorne should be as familiar as Goldsmith; and Emerson,
+as Addison or Burke. Ordinarily it is not so; and we suffer the
+consequences in the failure of our youth to grasp the spiritual ideals
+and the distinctively American democratic spirit which find expression
+in the greatest work of our literary masters, Emerson and Whitman,
+Lowell and Lanier. Our culture and our nationalism both suffer thereby.
+Our literature suffers also, because we have not an instructed and
+interested public to encourage excellence.
+
+Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+distinctively American savor than that of William Dean Howells; and it
+is to make his delightful writings more widely known and more easily
+accessible that this volume of selections from his books for the young
+has been prepared as a reading-book for the elementary school. These
+juvenile books of Mr. Howells contain some of the very best pages ever
+written for the enjoyment of young people. His two books for boys--_A
+Boy's Town_ and _The Flight of Pony Baker_--rank with such favorites as
+_Tom Sawyer_ and _The Story of a Bad Boy_.
+
+These should be introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and
+essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is
+one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and
+distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still,
+from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern
+writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our
+older high-school pupils are anxious to deal with, are alive in his
+books. Our young people should know his _Rise of Silas Lapham_ and _A
+Hazard of New Fortunes_, as well as his social and literary criticism.
+As stimulating and alluring a volume of selections may be made for
+high-school students as this volume will be, we venture to predict, for
+the younger boys and girls of the elementary school.
+
+In this little book of readings we have made, we believe, an entirely
+legitimate and desirable use of the books named above. _A Boy's Town_
+is a series of detachable pictures and episodes into which the boy--or
+the healthy girl who loves boys' books--may dip, as the selections here
+given will, we believe, tempt him to do. The same is true of _The Flight
+of Pony Baker_. The volume is for class-room enjoyment; for happy hours
+of profitable reading--profitable, because happy. Much of it should be
+read aloud rather than silently, and dramatic justice be done to the
+scenes and conversations which have dramatic quality.
+
+                              PERCIVAL CHUBB.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS
+
+
+Just before the circus came, about the end of July, something happened
+that made Pony mean to run off more than anything that ever was. His
+father and mother were coming home from a walk, in the evening; it was
+so hot nobody could stay in the house, and just as they were coming to
+the front steps Pony stole up behind them and tossed a snowball which he
+had got out of the garden at his mother, just for fun. The flower struck
+her very softly on her hair, for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a
+jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh; and then she caught him by the
+arm and boxed his ears.
+
+"Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I
+thought it was a bat!" she said, and she broke out crying and ran into
+the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her,
+"Lucy, Lucy, my dear child!"
+
+Pony was crying, too, for he did not intend to frighten his mother, and
+when she took his fun as if he had done something wicked he did not know
+what to think. He stole off to bed, and he lay there crying in the dark
+and expecting that she would come to him, as she always did, to have him
+say that he was sorry when he had been wicked, or to tell him that she
+was sorry when she thought she had not been quite fair with him. But she
+did not come, and after a good while his father came and said: "Are you
+awake, Pony? I am sorry your mother misunderstood your fun. But you
+mustn't mind it, dear boy. She's not well, and she's very nervous."
+
+"I don't care!" Pony sobbed out. "She won't have a chance to touch me
+again!" For he had made up his mind to run off with the circus which was
+coming the next Tuesday.
+
+He turned his face away, sobbing, and his father, after standing by his
+bed a moment, went away without saying anything but "Don't forget your
+prayers, Pony. You'll feel differently in the morning, I hope."
+
+Pony fell asleep thinking how he would come back to the Boy's Town with
+the circus when he was grown up, and when he came out in the ring riding
+three horses bareback he would see his father and mother and sisters in
+one of the lower seats. They would not know him, but he would know them,
+and he would send for them to come to the dressing-room, and would be
+very good to them, all but his mother; he would be very cold and stiff
+with her, though he would know that she was prouder of him than all the
+rest put together, and she would go away almost crying.
+
+[Illustration: HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT
+MORNING]
+
+He began being cold and stiff with her the very next morning, although
+she was better than ever to him, and gave him waffles for breakfast with
+unsalted butter, and tried to pet him up. That whole day she kept trying
+to do things for him, but he would scarcely speak to her; and at night
+she came to him and said, "What makes you act so strangely, Pony? Are
+you offended with your mother?"
+
+"Yes, I am!" said Pony, haughtily, and he twitched away from where she
+was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning over him.
+
+"On account of last night, Pony?" she asked, softly.
+
+"I reckon you know well enough," said Pony, and he tried to be disgusted
+with her for being such a hypocrite, but he had to set his teeth hard,
+hard, or he would have broken down crying.
+
+"If it's for that, you mustn't, Pony dear. You don't know how you
+frightened me. When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was a bat, and
+I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I didn't mean to hurt my poor boy's
+feelings so, and you mustn't mind it any more, Pony."
+
+She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, but he did not move or
+say anything; only, after that he felt more forgiving toward his mother.
+He made up his mind to be good to her along with the rest when he came
+back with the circus. But still he meant to run off with the circus. He
+did not see how he could do anything else, for he had told all the boys
+that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and
+said, "Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like
+running off with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would
+see whether it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.
+
+The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the
+corporation line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and
+knights, the first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a
+band-chariot, all made up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty
+baggage-wagons; but before you got to them there was the greatest thing
+of all. It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was
+shaped like a big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there
+were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus
+clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed
+to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen
+Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough
+to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus
+girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the
+fellows, and they all had to get out of the way then.
+
+Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
+nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
+word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
+wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after
+that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus
+men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they
+would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt
+brandy would do it, but that would do it, sure.
+
+Pony was scared at first when he heard that most of the circus fellows
+were stolen, but he thought if he went of his own accord he would be all
+right. Still, he did not feel so much like running off with the circus
+as he did before the circus came. He asked Jim Leonard whether the
+circus men made all the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy Hawkins
+and Hen Billard heard him ask, and began to mock him. They took him up
+between them, one by his arms and the other by the legs, and ran along
+with him, and kept saying, "Does it want to be a great big circus actor?
+Then it shall, so it shall," and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
+careful of you, Pony dear!" till Pony wriggled himself loose and began
+to stone them.
+
+After that they had to let him alone, for when a fellow began to stone
+you in the Boy's Town you had to let him alone, unless you were going to
+whip him, and the fellows only wanted to have a little fun with Pony.
+But what they did made him all the more resolved to run away with the
+circus, just to show them.
+
+He helped to carry water for the circus men's horses, along with the
+boys who earned their admission that way. He had no need to do it,
+because his father was going to take him in, anyway; but Jim Leonard
+said it was the only way to get acquainted with the circus men. Still,
+Pony was afraid to speak to them, and he would not have said a word to
+any of them if it had not been for one of them speaking to him first,
+when he saw him come lugging a great pail of water, and bending far over
+on the right to balance it.
+
+"That's right," the circus man said to Pony. "If you ever fell into that
+bucket you'd drown, sure."
+
+He was a big fellow, with funny eyes, and he had a white bulldog at his
+heels; and all the fellows said he was the one who guarded the outside
+of the tent when the circus began, and kept the boys from hooking in
+under the curtain.
+
+Even then Pony would not have had the courage to say anything, but Jim
+Leonard was just behind him with another bucket of water, and he spoke
+up for him. "He wants to go with the circus."
+
+They both set down their buckets, and Pony felt himself turning pale
+when the circus man came toward them. "Wants to go with the circus,
+heigh? Let's have a look at you." He took Pony by the shoulders and
+turned him slowly round, and looked at his nice clothes, and took him by
+the chin. "Orphan?" he asked.
+
+Pony did not know what to say, but Jim Leonard nodded; perhaps he did
+not know what to say, either; but Pony felt as if they had both told a
+lie.
+
+"Parents living?" The circus man looked at Pony, and Pony had to say
+that they were.
+
+He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could scarcely hear him, and the
+circus man said:
+
+"Well, that's right. When we take an orphan, we want to have his parents
+living, so that we can go and ask them what sort of a boy he is."
+
+He looked at Pony in such a friendly, smiling way that Pony took courage
+to ask him whether they would want him to drink burnt brandy.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To keep me little."
+
+"Oh, I see." The circus man took off his hat and rubbed his forehead
+with a silk handkerchief, which he threw into the top of his hat before
+he put it on again. "No, I don't know as we will. We're rather short of
+giants just now. How would you like to drink a glass of elephant milk
+every morning and grow into an eight-footer?"
+
+Pony said he didn't know whether he would like to be quite so big; and
+then the circus man said perhaps he would rather go for an India-rubber
+man; that was what they called the contortionists in those days.
+
+"Let's feel of you again." The circus man took hold of Pony and felt his
+joints. "You're put together pretty tight; but I reckon we could make
+you do if you'd let us take you apart with a screw-driver and limber up
+the pieces with rattlesnake oil. Wouldn't like it, heigh? Well, let me
+see!" The circus man thought a moment, and then he said: "How would
+double-somersaults on four horses bareback do?"
+
+Pony said that would do, and then the circus man said: "Well, then,
+we've just hit it, because our double-somersault, four-horse bareback
+is just going to leave us, and we want a new one right away. Now,
+there's more than one way of joining a circus, but the best way is to
+wait on your front steps with your things all packed up, and the
+procession comes along at about one o'clock in the morning and picks you
+up. Which'd you rather do?"
+
+Pony pushed his toe into the turf, as he always did when he was ashamed,
+but he made out to say he would rather wait out on the front steps.
+
+"Well, then, that's all settled," said the circus man. "We'll be along,"
+and he was going away with his dog, but Tim Leonard called after him:
+
+"You hain't asked him whereabouts he lives?"
+
+The circus man kept on, and he said, without looking around, "Oh, that's
+all right. We've got somebody that looks after that."
+
+"It's the magician," Jim Leonard whispered to Pony, and they walked
+away.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN
+
+
+A crowd of the fellows had been waiting to know what the boys had been
+talking about to the circus man, but Jim Leonard said, "Don't you tell,
+Pony Baker!" and he started to run, and that made Pony run, too, and
+they both ran till they got away from the fellows.
+
+"You have got to keep it a secret; for if a lot of fellows find it out
+the constable'll get to know it, and he'll be watching out around the
+corner of your house, and when the procession comes along and he sees
+you're really going he'll take you up, and keep you in jail till your
+father comes and bails you out. Now, you mind!"
+
+Pony said, "Oh, I won't tell anybody," and when Jim Leonard said that if
+a circus man was to feel _him_ over, that way, and act so kind of
+pleasant and friendly, he would be too proud to speak to anybody, Pony
+confessed that he knew it was a great thing all the time.
+
+"The way'll be," said Jim Leonard, "to keep in with him, and he'll keep
+the others from picking on you; they'll be afraid to, on account of his
+dog. You'll see, he'll be the one to come for you to-night; and if the
+constable is there the dog won't let him touch you. I never thought of
+that."
+
+Perhaps on account of thinking of it now Jim Leonard felt free to tell
+the other fellows how Pony was going to run off, for when a crowd of
+them came along he told them. They said it was splendid, and they said
+that if they could make their mothers let them, or if they could get out
+of the house without their mothers knowing it, they were going to sit
+up with Pony and watch out for the procession, and bid him good-bye.
+
+At dinner-time he found out that his father was going to take him and
+all his sisters to the circus, and his father and mother were so nice to
+him, asking him about the procession and everything, that his heart
+ached at the thought of running away from home and leaving them. But now
+he had to do it; the circus man was coming for him, and he could not
+back out; he did not know what would happen if he did. It seemed to him
+as if his mother had done everything she could to make it harder for
+him. She had stewed chicken for dinner, with plenty of gravy, and hot
+biscuits to sop in, and peach preserves afterward; and she kept helping
+him to more, because she said boys that followed the circus around got
+dreadfully hungry. The eating seemed to keep his heart down; it was
+trying to get into his throat all the time; and he knew that she was
+being good to him, but if he had not known it he would have believed his
+mother was just doing it to mock him.
+
+Pony had to go to the circus with his father and sisters, and to get on
+his shoes and a clean collar. But a crowd of the fellows were there at
+the tent door to watch out whether the circus man would say anything to
+him when he went in; and Jim Leonard rubbed against him, when the man
+passed with his dog and did not even look at Pony, and said: "He's just
+pretending. He don't want your father to know. He'll be round for you,
+sure. I saw him kind of smile to one of the other circus men."
+
+It was a splendid circus, and there were more things than Pony ever saw
+in a circus before. But instead of hating to have it over, it seemed to
+him that it would never come to an end. He kept thinking and thinking,
+and wondering whether he would like to be a circus actor; and when the
+one came out who rode four horses bareback and stood on his head on the
+last horse, and drove with the reins in his teeth, Pony thought that he
+never could learn to do it; and if he could not learn he did not know
+what the circus men would say to him. It seemed to him that it was very
+strange he had not told that circus man that he didn't know whether he
+could do it or not; but he had not, and now it was too late.
+
+A boy came around calling lemonade, and Pony's father bought some for
+each of the children, but Pony could hardly taste his.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Pony? Are you sick?" his father asked.
+
+"No. I don't care for any; that's all. I'm well," said Pony; but he felt
+very miserable.
+
+After supper Jim Leonard came round and went up to Pony's room with him
+to help him pack, and he was so gay about it and said he only wished
+_he_ was going, that Pony cheered up a little. Jim had brought a large
+square of checked gingham that he said he did not believe his mother
+would ever want, and that he would tell her he had taken if she asked
+for it. He said it would be the very thing for Pony to carry his clothes
+in, for it was light and strong and would hold a lot. He helped Pony to
+choose his things out of his bureau drawers: a pair of stockings and a
+pair of white pantaloons and a blue roundabout, and a collar, and two
+handkerchiefs. That was all he said Pony would need, because he would
+have his circus clothes right away, and there was no use taking things
+that he would never wear.
+
+Jim did these up in the square of gingham, and he tied it across
+cater-cornered twice, in double knots, and showed Pony how he could put
+his hand through and carry it just as easy. He hid it under the bed for
+him, and he told Pony that if he was in Pony's place he should go to bed
+right away or pretty soon, so that nobody would think anything, and
+maybe he could get some sleep before he got up and went down to wait on
+the front steps for the circus to come along. He promised to be there
+with the other boys and keep them from fooling or making a noise, or
+doing anything to wake his father up, or make the constable come. "You
+see, Pony," he said, "if you can run off this year, and come back with
+the circus next year, then a whole lot of fellows can run off. Don't you
+see that?"
+
+Pony said he saw that, but he said he wished some of the other fellows
+were going now, because he did not know any of the circus boys and he
+was afraid he might feel kind of lonesome. But Jim Leonard said he would
+soon get acquainted, and, anyway, a year would go before he knew it, and
+then if the other fellows could get off he would have plenty of company.
+
+As soon as Jim Leonard was gone Pony undressed and got into bed. He was
+not sleepy, but he thought maybe it would be just as well to rest a
+little while before the circus procession came along for him; and,
+anyway, he could not bear to go down-stairs and be with the family when
+he was going to leave them so soon, and not come back for a whole year.
+
+After a good while, or about the time he usually came in from playing,
+he heard his mother saying: "Where in the world is Pony? Has he come in
+yet? Have you seen him, girls? Pony! Pony!" she called.
+
+But somehow Pony could not get his voice up out of his throat; he wanted
+to answer her, but he could not speak. He heard her say, "Go out to the
+front steps, girls, and see if you can see him," and then he heard her
+coming up the stairs; and she came into his room, and when she saw him
+lying there in bed, she said: "Why, I believe in my heart the child's
+asleep! Pony! Are you awake?"
+
+Pony made out to say no, and his mother said: "My! what a fright you
+gave me! Why didn't you answer me? Are you sick, Pony? Your father said
+you didn't seem well at the circus; and you didn't eat any supper,
+hardly."
+
+Pony said he was first-rate, but he spoke very low, and his mother came
+up and sat down on the side of his bed.
+
+"What is the matter, child?" She bent over and felt his forehead. "No,
+you haven't got a bit of fever," she said, and she kissed him, and began
+to tumble his short black hair in the way she had, and she got one of
+his hands between her two, and kept rubbing it. "But you've had a long,
+tiresome day, and that's why you've gone to bed, I suppose. But if you
+feel the least sick, Pony, I'll send for the doctor."
+
+Pony said he was not sick at all; just tired; and that was true; he felt
+as if he never wanted to get up again.
+
+His mother put her arm under his neck, and pressed her face close down
+to his, and said very low: "Pony dear, you don't feel hard toward your
+mother for what she did the other night?"
+
+He knew she meant boxing his ears, when he was not to blame, and he
+said: "Oh no," and then he threw his arms round her neck and cried; and
+she told him not to cry, and that she would never do such a thing again;
+but she was really so frightened she did not know what she was doing.
+
+When he quieted down, she said: "Now say your prayers, Pony, 'Our
+Father,'" and she said, "Our Father" all through with him, and after
+that, "Now I lay me," just as when he was a very little fellow. After
+they had finished she stooped over and kissed him again, and when he
+turned his face into his pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her
+hand for about a minute. Then she went away.
+
+Pony could hear them stirring about for a good while down-stairs. His
+father came in from uptown at last, and asked: "Has Pony come in?"
+
+And his mother said; "Yes, he's up in bed. I wouldn't disturb him,
+Henry. He's asleep by this time."
+
+His father said: "I don't know what to make of the boy. If he keeps on
+acting so strangely I shall have the doctor see him in the morning."
+
+Pony felt dreadfully to think how far away from them he should be in the
+morning, and he would have given anything if he could have gone down to
+his father and mother and told them what he was going to do. But it did
+not seem as if he could.
+
+By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then he dozed off, but he thought
+it was hardly a minute before he heard the circus band, and knew that
+the procession was coming for him. He jumped out of bed and put on his
+things as fast as he could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to
+it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to
+keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down to the front door without
+seeming to touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front
+steps he saw the circus magician coming along. By that time the music
+had stopped and Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a
+tall, peaked hat, like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so
+wide in the black glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched
+them out, for he seemed to be groping along that way, with his wand in
+one hand, like a blind man.
+
+He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking voice, "It's all glory; it's
+all glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to
+get back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him,
+but when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere;
+nothing but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to
+shrink up so little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his
+wide goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the
+doctor were standing by him looking down at him, and the doctor said:
+
+"He has been walking in his sleep; he must be bled," and he got out his
+lancet, when Pony heard his mother calling: "Pony, Pony! What's the
+matter? Have you got the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found it was
+just morning.
+
+The sun was shining in at his window, and it made him so glad to think
+that by this time the circus was far away and he was not with it, that
+he hardly knew what to do.
+
+He was not very well for two or three days afterward, and his mother let
+him stay out of school to see whether he was really going to be sick or
+not. When he went back most of the fellows had forgotten that he had
+been going to run off with the circus. Some of them that happened to
+think of it plagued him a little and asked how he liked being a circus
+actor.
+
+Hen Billard was the worst; he said he reckoned the circus magician got
+scared when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and told the circus men that
+they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason
+why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to
+wait on the front steps, Pony dear?" But after that he was pretty good
+to him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend
+that Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up to see.
+
+Pony himself could never be exactly sure whether he had waited on the
+front steps and seen the circus magician or not. Sometimes it seemed all
+of it like a dream, and sometimes only part of it. Jim Leonard tried to
+help him make it out, but they could not. He said it was a pity he had
+overslept himself, for if he had come to bid Pony good-bye, the way he
+said, then he could have told just how much of it was a dream and how
+much was not.
+
+
+
+
+JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE
+
+
+Jim Leonard's stable used to stand on the flat near the river, and on a
+rise of ground above it stood Jim Leonard's log-cabin. The boys called
+it Jim Leonard's log-cabin, but it was really his mother's, and the
+stable was hers, too. It was a log stable, but up where the gable began
+the logs stopped, and it was weather-boarded the rest of the way, and
+the roof was shingled.
+
+Jim Leonard said it was all logs once, and that the roof was loose
+clapboards, held down by logs that ran across them, like the roofs in
+the early times, before there were shingles or nails, or anything, in
+the country. But none of the oldest boys had ever seen it like that, and
+you had to take Jim Leonard's word for it if you wanted to believe it.
+The little fellows nearly all did; but everybody said afterward it was a
+good thing for Jim Leonard that it was not that kind of roof when he had
+his hair-breadth escape on it. He said himself that he would not have
+cared if it had been; but that was when it was all over, and his mother
+had whipped him, and everything, and he was telling the boys about it.
+
+He said that in his Pirate Book lots of fellows on rafts got to land
+when they were shipwrecked, and that the old-fashioned roof would have
+been just like a raft, anyway, and he could have steered it right across
+the river to Delorac's Island as easy! Pony Baker thought very likely he
+could, but Hen Billard said:
+
+"Well, why didn't you do it, with the kind of a roof you had?"
+
+Some of the boys mocked Jim Leonard; but a good many of them thought he
+could have done it if he could have got into the eddy that there was
+over by the island. If he could have landed there, once, he could have
+camped out and lived on fish till the river fell.
+
+It was that spring, about fifty-four years ago, when the freshet, which
+always came in the spring, was the worst that anybody could remember.
+The country above the Boy's Town was under water for miles and miles.
+The river-bottoms were flooded so that the corn had to be all planted
+over again when the water went down. The freshet tore away pieces of
+orchard, and apple-trees in bloom came sailing along with logs and
+fence-rails and chicken-coops, and pretty soon dead cows and horses.
+There was a dog chained to a dog-kennel that went by, howling awfully;
+the boys would have given anything if they could have saved him, but the
+yellow river whirled him out of sight behind the middle pier of the
+bridge, which everybody was watching from the bank, expecting it to go
+any minute. The water was up within four or five feet of the bridge, and
+the boys believed that if a good big log had come along and hit it, the
+bridge would have been knocked loose from its piers and carried down the
+river.
+
+Perhaps it would, and perhaps it would not. The boys all ran to watch it
+as soon as school was out, and stayed till they had to go to supper.
+After supper some of their mothers let them come back and stay till
+bedtime, if they would promise to keep a full yard back from the edge of
+the bank. They could not be sure just how much a yard was, and they
+nearly all sat down on the edge and let their legs hang over.
+
+Jim Leonard was there, holloing and running up and down the bank, and
+showing the other boys things away out in the river that nobody else
+could see; he said he saw a man out there. He had not been to supper,
+and he had not been to school all day, which might have been the reason
+why he would rather stay with the men and watch the bridge than go home
+to supper; his mother would have been waiting for him with a sucker from
+the pear-tree. He told the boys that while they were gone he went out
+with one of the men on the bridge as far as the middle pier, and it
+shook like a leaf; he showed with his hand how it shook.
+
+Jim Leonard was a fellow who believed he did all kinds of things that he
+would like to have done; and the big boys just laughed. That made Jim
+Leonard mad, and he said that as soon as the bridge began to go, he was
+going to run out on it and go with it; and then they would see whether
+he was a liar or not! They mocked him and danced round him till he
+cried. But Pony Baker, who had come with his father, believed that Jim
+Leonard would really have done it; and at any rate, he felt sorry for
+him when Jim cried.
+
+He stayed later than any of the little fellows, because his father was
+with him, and even all the big boys had gone home except Hen Billard,
+when Pony left Jim Leonard on the bank and stumbled sleepily away, with
+his hand in his father's.
+
+When Pony was gone, Hen Billard said: "Well, going to stay all night,
+Jim?"
+
+And Jim Leonard answered back, as cross as could be, "Yes, I am!" And he
+said the men who were sitting up to watch the bridge were going to give
+him some of their coffee, and that would keep him awake. But perhaps he
+thought this because he wanted some coffee so badly. He was awfully
+hungry, for he had not had anything since breakfast, except a piece of
+bread-and-butter that he got Pony Baker to bring him in his pocket when
+he came down from school at noontime.
+
+Hen Billard said, "Well, I suppose I won't see you any more, Jim;
+good-bye," and went away laughing; and after a while one of the men saw
+Jim Leonard hanging about, and asked him what he wanted there at that
+time of night; and Jim could not say he wanted coffee, and so there was
+nothing for him to do but go. There was nowhere for him to go but home,
+and he sneaked off in the dark.
+
+When he came in sight of the cabin he could not tell whether he would
+rather have his mother waiting for him with a whipping and some supper,
+or get to bed somehow with neither. He climbed softly over the back
+fence and crept up to the back door, but it was fast; then he crept
+round to the front door, and that was fast, too. There was no light in
+the house, and it was perfectly still.
+
+All of a sudden it struck him that he could sleep in the stable-loft,
+and he thought what a fool he was not to have thought of it before. The
+notion brightened him up so that he got the gourd that hung beside the
+well-curb and took it out to the stable with him; for now he remembered
+that the cow would be there, unless she was in somebody's garden-patch
+or cornfield.
+
+He noticed as he walked down toward the stable that the freshet had come
+up over the flat, and just before the door he had to wade. But he was in
+his bare feet, and he did not care; if he thought anything, he thought
+that his mother would not come out to milk till the water went down, and
+he would be safe till then from the whipping he must take, sooner or
+later, for playing hooky.
+
+Sure enough, the old cow was in the stable, and she gave Jim Leonard a
+snort of welcome and then lowed anxiously. He fumbled through the dark
+to her side, and began to milk her. She had been milked only a few hours
+before, and so he got only a gourdful from her. But it was all
+strippings, and rich as cream, and it was smoking warm. It seemed to Jim
+Leonard that it went down to his very toes when he poured it into his
+throat, and it made him feel so good that he did not know what to do.
+
+There really was not anything for him to do but to climb up into the
+loft by the ladder in the corner of the stable, and lie down on the old
+last year's fodder. The rich, warm milk made Jim Leonard awfully sleepy,
+and he dropped off almost as soon as his head touched the cornstalks.
+The last thing he remembered was the hoarse roar of the freshet outside,
+and that was a lulling music in his ears.
+
+The next thing he knew, and he hardly knew that, was a soft, jolting,
+sinking motion, first to one side and then to the other; then he seemed
+to be going down, down, straight down, and then to be drifting off into
+space. He rubbed his eyes and found it was full daylight, although it
+was the daylight of early morning; and while he lay looking out of the
+stable-loft window and trying to make out what it all meant, he felt a
+wash of cold water along his back, and his bed of fodder melted away
+under him and around him, and some loose planks of the loft floor swam
+weltering out of the window. Then he knew what had happened. The flood
+had stolen up while he slept, and sapped the walls of the stable; the
+logs had given way, one after another, and had let him down, with the
+roof, into the water.
+
+He got to his feet as well as he could, and floundered over the rising
+and falling boards to the window in the floating gable. One look outside
+showed him his mother's log-cabin safe on its rise of ground, and at the
+corner the old cow, that must have escaped through the stable door he
+had left open, and passed the night among the cabbages. She seemed to
+catch sight of Jim Leonard when he put his head out, and she lowed to
+him.
+
+Jim Leonard did not stop to make any answer. He clambered out of the
+window and up onto the ridge of the roof, and there, in the company of a
+large gray rat, he set out on the strangest voyage a boy ever made. In a
+few moments the current swept him out into the middle of the river, and
+he was sailing down between his native shore on one side and Delorac's
+Island on the other.
+
+All round him seethed and swirled the yellow flood in eddies and
+ripples, where drift of all sorts danced and raced. His vessel, such as
+it was, seemed seaworthy enough. It held securely together, fitting like
+a low, wide cup over the water, and perhaps finding some buoyancy from
+the air imprisoned in it above the window. But Jim Leonard was not
+satisfied, and so far from being proud of his adventure, he was
+frightened worse even than the rat which shared it. As soon as he could
+get his voice, he began to shout for help to the houses on the empty
+shores, which seemed to fly backward on both sides while he lay still on
+the gulf that swashed around him, and tried to drown his voice before it
+swallowed him up. At the same time the bridge, which had looked so far
+off when he first saw it, was rushing swiftly toward him, and getting
+nearer and nearer.
+
+He wondered what had become of all the people and all the boys. He
+thought that if he were safe there on shore he should not be sleeping in
+bed while somebody was out in the river on a roof, with nothing but a
+rat to care whether he got drowned or not.
+
+Where was Hen Billard, that always made fun so; or Archy Hawkins, that
+pretended to be so good-natured; or Pony Baker, that seemed to like a
+fellow so much? He began to call for them by name: "Hen Billard--_O_
+Hen! Help, help! Archy Hawkins--_O_ Archy! I'm drowning! Pony, Pony--_O_
+Pony! Don't you _see_ me, Pony?"
+
+He could see the top of Pony Baker's house, and he thought what a good,
+kind man Pony's father was. Surely _he_ would try to save him; and Jim
+Leonard began to yell: "O Mr. Baker! Look here, Mr. Baker! It's Jim
+Leonard, and I'm floating down the river on a roof! Save me, Mr. Baker,
+save me! Help, help, somebody! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Fire!"
+
+By this time he was about crazy, and did not half know what he was
+saying. Just in front of where Hen Billard's grandmother lived, on the
+street that ran along the top of the bank, the roof got caught in the
+branches of a tree which had drifted down and stuck in the bottom of the
+river so that the branches waved up and down as the current swashed
+through them. Jim Leonard was glad of anything that would stop the roof,
+and at first he thought he would get off on the tree. That was what the
+rat did. Perhaps the rat thought Jim Leonard really was crazy and he had
+better let him have the roof to himself; but the rat saw that he had
+made a mistake, and he jumped back again after he had swung up and down
+on a limb two or three times. Jim Leonard felt awfully when the rat
+first got into the tree, for he remembered how it said in the Pirate
+Book that rats always leave a sinking ship, and now he believed that he
+certainly was gone. But that only made him hollo the louder, and he
+holloed so loud that at last he made somebody hear.
+
+It was Hen Billard's grandmother, and she put her head out of the window
+with her nightcap on, to see what the matter was. Jim Leonard caught
+sight of her, and he screamed: "Fire, fire, fire! I'm drownding, Mrs.
+Billard! Oh, do somebody come!"
+
+Hen Billard's grandmother just gave one yell of "Fire! The world's
+a-burnin' up, Hen Billard, and you layin' there sleepin' and not helpin'
+a bit! Somebody's out there in the river!" and she rushed into the room
+where Hen was, and shook him.
+
+He bounced out of bed and pulled on his pantaloons, and was down-stairs
+in a minute. He ran bareheaded over to the bank, and when Jim Leonard
+saw him coming he holloed ten times as loud: "It's me, Hen! It's Jim
+Leonard! Oh, do get somebody to come out and save me! Fire!"
+
+As soon as Hen heard that, and felt sure it was not a dream, which he
+did in about half a second, he began to yell, too, and to say: "How did
+you get there? Fire, fire, fire! What are you on? Fire! Are you in a
+tree, or what? Fire, fire! Are you in a flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If
+I had a skiff--fire!"
+
+He kept racing up and down the bank, and back and forth between the bank
+and the houses. The river was almost up to the top of the bank, and it
+looked a mile wide. Down at the bridge you could hardly see any light
+between the water and the bridge.
+
+Pretty soon people began to look out of their doors and windows, and Hen
+Billard's grandmother kept screaming: "The world's a-burnin' up! The
+river's on fire!" Then boys came out of their houses; and then men with
+no hats on; and then women and girls, with their hair half down. The
+fire-bells began to ring, and in less than five minutes both the fire
+companies were on the shore, with the men at the brakes and the foremen
+of the companies holloing through their trumpets.
+
+Then Jim Leonard saw what a good thing it was that he had thought of
+holloing fire. He felt sure now that they would save him somehow, and he
+made up his mind to save the rat, too, and pet it, and maybe go around
+and exhibit it. He would name it Bolivar; it was just the color of the
+elephant Bolivar that came to the Boy's Town every year. These things
+whirled through his brain while he watched two men setting out in a
+skiff toward him.
+
+They started from the shore a little above him, and they meant to row
+slanting across to his tree, but the current, when they got fairly into
+it, swept them far below, and they were glad to row back to land again
+without ever getting anywhere near him. At the same time, the tree-top
+where his roof was caught was pulled southward by a sudden rush of the
+torrent; it opened, and the roof slipped out, with Jim Leonard and the
+rat on it. They both joined in one squeal of despair as the river leaped
+forward with them, and a dreadful "Oh!" went up from the people on the
+bank.
+
+Some of the firemen had run down to the bridge when they saw that the
+skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the
+window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand.
+It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men
+used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw
+Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to.
+He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on
+it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and
+pull it up to the pier. The strongest current set close in around the
+middle pier, and the roof would have to pass on one side or the other.
+That was what Blue Bob argued out in his mind when he decided that the
+skiff would never reach Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could not
+save him that way, nothing could save him.
+
+Blue Bob must have had a last name, but none of the little fellows knew
+what it was. Everybody called him Blue Bob because he had such a thick,
+black beard that when he was just shaved his face looked perfectly blue.
+He knew all about the river and its ways, and if it had been of any use
+to go out with a boat, he would have gone. That was what all the boys
+said, when they followed Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him getting out
+on the pier. He was the only person that the watchman had let go on the
+bridge for two days.
+
+The water was up within three feet of the floor, and if Jim Leonard's
+roof slipped by Blue Bob's guard and passed under the bridge, it would
+scrape Jim Leonard off, and that would be the last of him.
+
+All the time the roof was coming nearer the bridge, sometimes slower,
+sometimes faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the current; once
+it seemed almost to stop, and swayed completely round; then it just
+darted forward.
+
+Blue Bob stood on the very point of the pier, where the strong
+stone-work divided the current, and held his hooked pole ready to make a
+clutch at the roof, whichever side it took. Jim Leonard saw him there,
+but although he had been holloing and yelling and crying all the time,
+now he was still. He wanted to say, "O Bob, save me!" but he could not
+make a sound.
+
+It seemed to him that Bob was going to miss him when he made a lunge at
+the roof on the right side of the pier; it seemed to him that the roof
+was going down the left side; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then
+it gave a loud crack and went to pieces, and flung itself away upon the
+whirling and dancing flood. At first Jim Leonard thought he had gone
+with it; but it was only the rat that tried to run up Blue Bob's pole,
+and slipped off into the water; and then somehow Jim was hanging onto
+Blue Bob's hands and scrambling onto the bridge.
+
+Blue Bob always said he never saw any rat, and a good many people said
+there never was any rat on the roof with Jim Leonard; they said that he
+just made the rat up.
+
+He did not mention the rat himself for several days; he told Pony Baker
+that he did not think of it at first, he was so excited.
+
+Pony asked his father what he thought, and Pony's father said that it
+might have been the kind of rat that people see when they have been
+drinking too much, and that Blue Bob had not seen it because he had
+signed the temperance pledge.
+
+But this was a good while after. At the time the people saw Jim Leonard
+standing safe with Blue Bob on the pier, they set up a regular election
+cheer, and they would have believed anything Jim Leonard said. They all
+agreed that Blue Bob had a right to go home with Jim and take him to his
+mother, for he had saved Jim's life, and he ought to have the credit of
+it.
+
+Before this, and while everybody supposed that Jim Leonard would surely
+be drowned, some of the people had gone up to his mother's cabin to
+prepare her for the worst. She did not seem to understand exactly, and
+she kept round getting breakfast, with her old clay pipe in her mouth;
+but when she got it through her head, she made an awful face, and
+dropped her pipe on the door-stone and broke it; and then she threw her
+check apron over her head and sat down and cried.
+
+But it took so long for her to come to this that the people had not got
+over comforting her and trying to make her believe that it was all for
+the best, when Blue Bob came up through the bars with his hand on Jim's
+shoulder, and about all the boys in town tagging after them.
+
+Jim's mother heard the hurrahing and pulled off her apron, and saw that
+Jim was safe and sound there before her. She gave him a look that made
+him slip round behind Blue Bob, and she went in and got a table-knife,
+and she came out and went to the pear-tree and cut a sucker.
+
+She said, "I'll learn that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he's got a
+decent bed in the house!" and then she started to come toward Jim
+Leonard.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+THE TOWN
+
+
+I call it a Boy's Town because I wish it to appear to the reader as a
+town appears to a boy from his third to his eleventh year, when he
+seldom, if ever, catches a glimpse of life much higher than the middle
+of a man, and has the most distorted and mistaken views of most
+things.... Some people remain in this condition as long as they live,
+and keep the ignorance of childhood, after they have lost its innocence;
+heaven has been shut, but the earth is still a prison to them. These
+will not know what I mean by much that I shall have to say; but I hope
+that the ungrown-up children will, and that the boys of to-day will like
+to know what a boy of forty years ago was like, even if he had no very
+exciting adventures or thread-bare escapes; perhaps I mean hair-breadth
+escapes; but it is the same thing--they have been used so often. I shall
+try to describe him very minutely in his daily doings and dreamings, and
+it may amuse them to compare these doings and dreamings with their own.
+For convenience, I shall call this boy, my boy; but I hope he might have
+been almost anybody's boy; and I mean him sometimes for a boy in
+general, as well as a boy in particular.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIRST LOCK]
+
+It seems to me that my Boy's Town was a town peculiarly adapted for a
+boy to be a boy in. It had a river, the great Miami River, which was as
+blue as the sky when it was not as yellow as gold; and it had another
+river, called the Old River, which was the Miami's former channel, and
+which held an island in its sluggish loop; the boys called it The
+Island; and it must have been about the size of Australia; perhaps it
+was not so large. Then this town had a Canal, and a Canal-Basin, and a
+First Lock and a Second Lock; you could walk out to the First Lock, but
+the Second Lock was at the edge of the known world, and, when my boy was
+very little, the biggest boy had never been beyond it. Then it had a
+Hydraulic, which brought the waters of Old River for mill-power through
+the heart of the town, from a Big Reservoir and a Little Reservoir; the
+Big Reservoir was as far off as the Second Lock, and the Hydraulic ran
+under mysterious culverts at every street-crossing. All these streams
+and courses had fish in them at all seasons, and all summer long they
+had boys in them, and now and then a boy in winter, when the thin ice
+of the mild Southern Ohio winter let him through with his skates. Then
+there were the Commons: a wide expanse of open fields, where the cows
+were pastured, and the boys flew their kites, and ran races, and
+practised for their circuses in the tan-bark rings of the real circuses.
+
+
+
+
+EARLIEST MEMORIES
+
+
+Some of my boy's memories reach a time earlier than his third year, and
+relate to the little Ohio River hamlet where he was born, and where his
+mother's people, who were river-faring folk, all lived. Every two or
+three years the river rose and flooded the village; and his
+grandmother's household was taken out of the second-story window in a
+skiff; but no one minded a trivial inconvenience like that, any more
+than the Romans have minded the annual freshet of the Tiber for the last
+three or four thousand years. When the waters went down the family
+returned and scrubbed out the five or six inches of rich mud they had
+left. In the mean time it was a godsend to all boys of an age to enjoy
+it; but it was nothing out of the order of Providence. So, if my boy
+ever saw a freshet, it naturally made no impression upon him. What he
+remembered was something much more important, and that was waking up one
+morning and seeing a peach-tree in bloom through the window beside his
+bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very
+earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom
+without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that
+
+    "Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
+
+Over the spot where the little house once stood a railroad has drawn its
+erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built
+up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree
+glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender,
+pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward
+in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a
+reminiscence of that dim past, and the little coal-smoky town on the
+banks of the Ohio.
+
+Perversely blended with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse
+of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up
+and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never
+have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is
+certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as
+likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One
+of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to
+the southward, and had sent out a yawl and captured him, and brought him
+home. He began a checkered career of uselessness when they were ferrying
+him over from Wheeling in a skiff, by trying to help wear the pantaloons
+of the boy who was holding him; he put one of his fore-legs in at the
+watch-pocket; but it was disagreeable to the boy and ruinous to the
+trousers. He grew very tame, and butted children over, right and left,
+in the village streets; and he behaved like one of the family whenever
+he got into a house; he ate the sugar out of the bowl on the table, and
+plundered the pantry of its sweet cakes. One day a dog got after him,
+and he jumped over the river-bank and broke his leg, and had to be shot.
+
+
+
+
+HOME LIFE
+
+
+The house gave even to him a sense of space unknown before, and he could
+recall his mother's satisfaction in it. He has often been back there in
+dreams, and found it on the old scale of grandeur; but no doubt it was a
+very simple affair. The fortunes of a Whig editor in a place so
+overwhelmingly Democratic as the Boy's Town were not such as could have
+warranted his living in a palace; and he must have been poor, as the
+world goes now. But the family always lived in abundance, and in their
+way they belonged to the employing class; that is, the father had men to
+work for him. On the other hand, he worked with them; and the boys, as
+they grew old enough, were taught to work with them, too. My boy grew
+old enough very young; and was put to use in the printing-office before
+he was ten years of age. This was not altogether because he was needed
+there, I dare say, but because it was part of his father's Swedenborgian
+philosophy that every one should fulfil a use; I do not know that when
+the boy wanted to go swimming, or hunting, or skating, it consoled him
+much to reflect that the angels in the highest heaven delighted in uses;
+nevertheless, it was good for him to be of use, though maybe not so much
+use.
+
+If his mother did her own work, with help only now and then from a hired
+girl, that was the custom of the time and country; and her memory was
+always the more reverend to him, because whenever he looked back at her
+in those dim years, he saw her about some of those household offices
+which are so beautiful to a child. She was always the best and tenderest
+mother, and her love had the heavenly art of making each child feel
+itself the most important, while she was partial to none. In spite of
+her busy days she followed their father in his religion and literature,
+and at night, when her long toil was over, she sat with the children and
+listened while he read aloud.
+
+The first book my boy remembered to have heard him read was Moore's
+_Lalla Rookh_, of which he formed but a vague notion, though while he
+struggled after its meaning he took all its music in, and began at once
+to make rhymes of his own. He had no conception of literature except the
+pleasure there was in making it; and he had no outlook into the world of
+it, which must have been pretty open to his father. The father read
+aloud some of Dickens' Christmas stories, then new; and the boy had a
+good deal of trouble with the _Haunted Man_. One rarest night of all,
+the family sat up till two o'clock, listening to a novel that my boy
+long ago forgot the name of, if he ever knew its name. It was all about
+a will, forged or lost, and there was a great scene in court, and after
+that the mother declared that she could not go to bed till she heard the
+end. His own first reading was in history. At nine years of age he read
+the history of Greece, and the history of Rome, and he knew that
+Goldsmith wrote them. One night his father told the boys all about Don
+Quixote; and a little while after he gave my boy the book. He read it
+over and over again; but he did not suppose it was a novel. It was his
+elder brother who read novels, and a novel was like _Handy Andy_, or
+_Harry Lorrequer_, or the _Bride of Lammermoor_. His brother had another
+novel which they preferred to either; it was in Harper's old "Library of
+Select Novels," and was called _Alamance; or, the Great and Final
+Experiment_, and it was about the life of some sort of community in
+North Carolina. It bewitched them, and though my boy could not afterward
+recall a single fact or figure in it, he could bring before his mind's
+eye every trait of its outward aspect.
+
+All this went along with great and continued political excitement, and
+with some glimpses of the social problem. It was very simple then;
+nobody was very rich, and nobody was in want; but somehow, as the boy
+grew older, he began to discover that there were differences, even in
+the little world about him; some were higher and some were lower. From
+the first he was taught by precept and example to take the side of the
+lower. As the children were denied oftener than they were indulged, the
+margin of their own abundance must have been narrower than they ever
+knew then; but if they had been of the most prosperous, their bent in
+this matter would have been the same. Once there was a church festival,
+or something of that sort, and there was a good deal of the provision
+left over, which it was decided should be given to the poor. This was
+very easy, but it was not so easy to find the poor whom it should be
+given to. At last a hard-working widow was chosen to receive it; the
+ladies carried it to her front door and gave it her, and she carried it
+to her back door and threw it into the alley. No doubt she had enough
+without it, but there were circumstances of indignity or patronage
+attending the gift which were recognized in my boy's home, and which
+helped afterward to make him doubtful of all giving, except the
+humblest, and restive with a world in which there need be any giving at
+all.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER
+
+
+It seems to me that the best way to get at the heart of any boy's town
+is to take its different watercourses and follow them into it.
+
+The house where my boy first lived was not far from the river, and he
+must have seen it often before he noticed it. But he was not aware of it
+till he found it under the bridge. Without the river there could not
+have been a bridge; the fact of the bridge may have made him look for
+the river; but the bridge is foremost in his mind. It is a long, wooden
+tunnel, with two roadways, and a foot-path on either side of these;
+there is a toll-house at each end, and from one to the other it is about
+as far as from the Earth to the planet Mars. On the western shore of the
+river is a smaller town than the Boy's Town, and in the perspective the
+entrance of the bridge on that side is like a dim little doorway. The
+timbers are of a hugeness to strike fear into the heart of the boldest
+little boy; and there is something awful even about the dust in the
+roadways; soft and thrillingly cool to the boy's bare feet, it lies
+thick in a perpetual twilight, streaked at intervals by the sun that
+slants in at the high, narrow windows under the roof; it has a certain
+potent, musty smell. The bridge has three piers, and at low water
+hardier adventurers than he wade out to the middle pier; some heroes
+even fish there, standing all day on the loose rocks about the base of
+the pier. He shudders to see them, and aches with wonder how they will
+get ashore. Once he is there when a big boy wades back from the middle
+pier, where he has been to rob a goose's nest; he has some loose silver
+change in his wet hand, and my boy understands that it has come out of
+one of the goose eggs. This fact, which he never thought of questioning,
+gets mixed up in his mind with an idea of riches, of treasure-trove, in
+the cellar of an old house that has been torn down near the end of the
+bridge.
+
+The river had its own climate, and this climate was of course much such
+a climate as the boys, for whom nature intended the river, would have
+chosen. I do not believe it was ever winter there, though it was
+sometimes late autumn, so that the boys could have some use for the
+caves they dug at the top of the bank, with a hole coming through the
+turf, to let out the smoke of the fires they built inside. They had the
+joy of choking and blackening over these flues, and they intended to
+live on corn and potatoes borrowed from the household stores of the boy
+whose house was nearest. They never got so far as to parch the corn or
+to bake the potatoes in their caves, but there was the fire, and the
+draught was magnificent. The light of the red flames painted the little,
+happy, foolish faces, so long since wrinkled and grizzled with age, or
+mouldered away to dust, as the boys huddled before them under the bank,
+and fed them with the drift, or stood patient of the heat and cold in
+the afternoon light of some vast Saturday waning to nightfall.
+
+The river-climate, with these autumnal intervals, was made up of a
+quick, eventful springtime, followed by the calm of a cloudless summer
+that seemed never to end. But the spring, short as it was, had its great
+attractions, and chief of these was the freshet which it brought to the
+river. They would hear somehow that the river was rising, and then the
+boys, who had never connected its rise with the rains they must have
+been having, would all go down to its banks and watch the swelling
+waters. These would be yellow and thick, and the boiling current would
+have smooth, oily eddies, where pieces of drift would whirl round and
+round, and then escape and slip down the stream. There were saw-logs and
+whole trees with their branching tops, lengths of fence and hen-coops
+and pig-pens; once there was a stable; and if the flood continued, there
+began to come swollen bodies of horses and cattle. This must have meant
+serious loss to the people living on the river-bottoms above, but the
+boys counted it all gain. They cheered the objects as they floated by,
+and they were breathless with the excitement of seeing the men who
+caught fence-rails and cord-wood, and even saw-logs, with iron prongs at
+the points of long poles, as they stood on some jutting point of shore
+and stretched far out over the flood. The boys exulted in the turbid
+spread of the stream, which filled its low western banks and stole over
+their tops, and washed into all the hollow places along its shores, and
+shone among the trunks of the sycamores on Delorac's Island, which was
+almost of the geographical importance of The Island in Old River. When
+the water began to go down their hearts sank with it; and they gave up
+the hope of seeing the bridge carried away. Once the river rose to
+within a few feet of it, so that if the right piece of drift had been
+there to do its duty, the bridge might have been torn from its piers and
+swept down the raging tide into those unknown gulfs to the southward.
+Many a time they went to bed full of hope that it would at least happen
+in the night, and woke to learn with shame and grief in the morning that
+the bridge was still there, and the river was falling. It was a little
+comfort to know that some of the big boys had almost seen it go,
+watching as far into the night as nine o'clock with the men who sat up
+near the bridge till daylight: men of leisure and public spirit, but not
+perhaps the leading citizens.
+
+
+
+
+SWIMMING
+
+
+There must have been a tedious time between the going down of the flood
+and the first days when the water was warm enough for swimming; but it
+left no trace. The boys are standing on the shore while the freshet
+rushes by, and then they are in the water, splashing, diving, ducking;
+it is like that; so that I do not know just how to get in that period of
+fishing which must always have come between. There were not many fish in
+that part of the Miami; my boy's experience was full of the ignominy of
+catching shiners and suckers, or, at the best, mudcats, as they called
+the yellow catfish; but there were boys, of those who cursed and swore,
+who caught sunfish, as they called the bream; and there were men who
+were reputed to catch at will, as it were, silvercats and river-bass.
+They fished with minnows, which they kept in battered tin buckets that
+they did not allow you even to touch, or hardly to look at; my boy
+scarcely breathed in their presence; when one of them got up to cast his
+line in a new place, the boys all ran, and then came slowly back. These
+men often carried a flask of liquid that had the property, when taken
+inwardly, of keeping the damp out. The boys respected them for their
+ability to drink whiskey, and thought it a fit and honorable thing that
+they should now and then fall into the river over the brinks where they
+had set their poles. But they disappear like persons in a dream, and
+their fishing-time vanishes with them, and the swimming-time is in full
+possession of the river, and of all the other waters of the Boy's Town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The swimming-holes in the river were the greatest favorites. My boy
+could not remember when he began to go into them, though it certainly
+was before he could swim. There was a time when he was afraid of getting
+in over his head; but he did not know just when he learned to swim, any
+more than he knew when he learned to read; he could not swim, and then
+he could swim; he could not read, and then he could read; but I dare say
+the reading came somewhat before the swimming. Yet the swimming must
+have come very early, and certainly it was kept up with continual
+practise; he swam quite as much as he read; perhaps more. The boys had
+deep swimming-holes and shallow ones; and over the deep ones there was
+always a spring-board, from which they threw somersaults, or dived
+straight down into the depths, where there were warm and cold currents
+mysteriously interwoven. They believed that these deep holes were
+infested by water-snakes, though they never saw any, and they expected
+to be bitten by snapping-turtles, though this never happened. Fiery
+dragons could not have kept them out; gallynippers, whatever they were,
+certainly did not; they were believed to abound at the bottom of the
+deep holes; but the boys never stayed long in the deep holes, and they
+preferred the shallow places, where the river broke into a long ripple
+(they called it riffle) on its gravelly bed, and where they could at
+once soak and bask in the musical rush of the sunlit waters. I have
+heard people in New England blame all the Western rivers for being
+yellow and turbid; but I know that after the spring floods, when the
+Miami had settled down to its summer business with the boys, it was as
+clear and as blue as if it were spilled out of the summer sky. The boys
+liked the riffle because they could stay in so long there, and there
+were little land-locked pools and shallows, where the water was even
+warmer, and they could stay in longer. At most places under the banks
+there was clay of different colors, which they used for war-paint in
+their Indian fights; and after they had their Indian fights they could
+rush screaming and clattering into the riffle. When the stream had
+washed them clean down to their red sunburn or their leathern tan, they
+could paint up again and have more Indian fights.
+
+I wonder what sign the boys who read this have for challenging or
+inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used
+to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the
+forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did
+this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when
+they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when
+they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had
+to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at
+all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and
+as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort
+of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since
+this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one
+time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the
+fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a
+boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about
+going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard
+fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then
+they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made
+this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on
+wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came
+upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public
+opinion in the boy's world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their
+honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts;
+and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As
+the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if
+you were such a miscreant, and there was some boy you hated, you stole
+up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in one arm or both arms of his
+shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into your heart, you soaked the knot
+in water, and pounded it with a stone.
+
+I am glad to know that in the days when he was thoughtless and senseless
+enough, my boy never was guilty of any degree of this meanness. It was
+his brother, I suppose, who taught him to abhor it; and perhaps it was
+his own suffering from it in part; for he, too, sometimes shed bitter
+tears over such a knot, as I have seen hapless little wretches do,
+tearing at it with their nails and gnawing at it with their teeth,
+knowing that the time was passing when they could hope to hide the fact
+that they had been in swimming, and foreseeing no remedy but to cut off
+the sleeve above the knot, or else put on their clothes without the
+shirt, and trust to untying the knot when it got dry.
+
+There must have been a lurking anxiety in all the boys' hearts when they
+went in without leave, or, as my boy was apt to do, when explicitly
+forbidden. He was not apt at lying, I dare say, and so he took the
+course of open disobedience. He could not see the danger that filled the
+home hearts with fear for him, and he must have often broken the law and
+been forgiven, before Justice one day appeared for him on the river-bank
+and called him away from his stolen joys. It was an awful moment, and
+it covered him with shame before his mates, who heartlessly rejoiced, as
+children do, in the doom which they are escaping. That sin, at least, he
+fully expiated; and I will whisper to the young people here at the end
+of the chapter that somehow, soon or late, our sins do overtake us, and
+insist upon being paid for. That is not the best reason for not sinning,
+but it is well to know it, and to believe it in our acts as well as our
+thoughts. You will find people to tell you that things only happen so
+and so. It may be; only, I know that no good thing ever happened to
+happen to me when I had done wrong.
+
+
+
+
+SKATING
+
+
+I am afraid that the young people will think I am telling them too much
+about swimming. But in the Boy's Town the boys really led a kind of
+amphibious life, and as long as the long summer lasted they were almost
+as much in the water as on the land. The Basin, however, unlike the
+river, had a winter as well as a summer climate, and one of the very
+first things that my boy could remember was being on the ice there. He
+learned to skate, but he did not know when, any more than he knew just
+the moment of learning to read or to swim. He became passionately fond
+of skating, and kept at it all day long when there was ice for it,
+which was not often in those soft winters. They made a very little ice
+go a long way in the Boy's Town; and began to use it for skating as soon
+as there was a glazing of it on the Basin. None of them ever got drowned
+there; though a boy would often start from one bank and go flying to the
+other, trusting his speed to save him, while the thin sheet sank and
+swayed, but never actually broke under him. Usually the ice was not
+thick enough to have a fire built on it; and it must have been on ice
+which was just strong enough to bear that my boy skated all one bitter
+afternoon at Old River, without a fire to warm by. At first his feet
+were very cold, and then they gradually felt less cold, and at last he
+did not feel them at all. He thought this very nice, and he told one of
+the big boys. "Why, your feet are frozen!" said the big boy, and he
+dragged off my boy's skates, and the little one ran all the long mile
+home, crazed with terror, and not knowing what moment his feet might
+drop off there in the road. His mother plunged them in a bowl of
+ice-cold water, and then rubbed them with flannel, and so thawed them
+out; but that could not save him from the pain of their coming to: it
+was intense, and there must have been a time afterward when he did not
+use his feet.
+
+His skates themselves were of a sort that I am afraid boys would smile
+at nowadays. When you went to get a pair of skates forty or fifty years
+ago, you did not make your choice between a Barney & Berry and an Acme,
+which fastened on with the turn of a screw or the twist of a clamp. You
+found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with
+guttered blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps
+curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an
+acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that
+skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass
+acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your
+skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about
+while he pierced the wood with strap-holes; or else you managed to bore
+them through with a hot iron yourself. Then you took them to a saddler,
+and got him to make straps for them; that is, if you were rich, and your
+father let you have a quarter to pay for the job. If not, you put
+strings through, and tied your skates on. They were always coming off,
+or getting crosswise of your foot, or feeble-mindedly slumping down on
+one side of the wood; but it did not matter, if you had a fire on the
+ice, fed with old barrels and boards and cooper's shavings, and could
+sit round it with your skates on, and talk and tell stones, between
+your flights and races afar; and come whizzing back to it from the
+frozen distance, and glide, with one foot lifted, almost among the
+embers.
+
+
+
+
+MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
+
+
+I sometimes wonder how much these have changed since my boy's time. Of
+course they differ somewhat from generation to generation, and from East
+to West and North to South, but not so much, I believe, as grown people
+are apt to think. Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of
+the laws that govern grown-up communities, and it has its unwritten
+usages, which are handed down from old to young, and perpetuated on the
+same level of years, and are lived into and lived out of, but are
+binding, through all personal vicissitudes, upon the great body of boys
+between six and twelve years old. No boy can violate them without losing
+his standing among the other boys, and he cannot enter into their world
+without coming under them. He must do this, and must not do that; he
+obeys, but he does not know why, any more than the far-off savages from
+whom his customs seem mostly to have come. His world is all in and
+through the world of men and women, but no man or woman can get into it
+any more than if it were a world of invisible beings. It has its own
+ideals and superstitions, and these are often of a ferocity, a
+depravity, scarcely credible in after-life. It is a great pity that
+fathers and mothers cannot penetrate that world; but they cannot, and it
+is only by accident that they can catch some glimpse of what goes on in
+it. No doubt it will be civilized in time, but it will be very slowly;
+and in the mean while it is only in some of its milder manners and
+customs that the boy's world can be studied.
+
+The first great law was that, whatever happened to you through another
+boy, whatever hurt or harm he did you, you were to right yourself upon
+his person if you could; but if he was too big, and you could not hope
+to revenge yourself, then you were to bear the wrong, not only for that
+time, but for as many times as he chose to inflict it. To tell the
+teacher or your mother, or to betray your tormentor to any one outside
+of the boys' world, was to prove yourself a cry-baby, without honor or
+self-respect, and unfit to go with the other fellows. They would have
+the right to mock you, to point at you, and call "E-e-e, e-e-e, e-e-e!"
+at you, till you fought them. After that, whether you whipped them or
+not, there began to be some feeling in your favor again, and they had to
+stop.
+
+Every boy who came to town from somewhere else, or who moved into a new
+neighborhood, had to fight the old residents. There was no reason for
+this, except that he was a stranger, and there appeared to be no other
+means of making his acquaintance. If he was generally whipped he became
+subject to the local tribe, as the Delawares were to the Iroquois in the
+last century; if he whipped the other boys, then they adopted him into
+their tribe, and he became a leader among them. When you moved away from
+a neighborhood you did not lose all your rights in it; you did not have
+to fight when you went back to see the boys, or anything; but if one of
+them met you in your new precincts you might have to try conclusions
+with him; and perhaps, if he was a boy who had been in the habit of
+whipping you, you were quite ready to do so. When my boy's family left
+the Smith house, one of the boys from that neighborhood came up to see
+him at the Falconer house, and tried to carry things with a high hand,
+as he always had done. Then my boy fought him, quite as if he were not a
+Delaware and the other boy not an Iroquois, with sovereign rights over
+him. My boy was beaten, but the difference was that, if he had not been
+on new ground, he would have been beaten without daring to fight. His
+mother witnessed the combat, and came out and shamed him for his
+behavior, and had in the other boy, and made them friends over some
+sugar-cakes. But after that the boys of the Smith neighborhood
+understood that my boy would not be whipped without fighting. The home
+instruction was all against fighting; my boy was taught that it was not
+only wicked but foolish; that if it was wrong to strike, it was just as
+wrong to strike back; that two wrongs never made a right, and so on. But
+all this was not of the least effect with a hot temper amid the trials
+and perplexities of life in the Boy's Town.
+
+Their fights were mostly informal scuffles, on and off in a flash, and
+conducted with none of the ceremony which I have read of concerning the
+fights of English boys. It was believed that some of the fellows knew
+how to box, and all the fellows intended to learn, but nobody ever did.
+The fights sprang usually out of some trouble of the moment; but at
+times they were arranged to settle some question of moral or physical
+superiority. Then one boy put a chip on his shoulder and dared the other
+to knock it off. It took a great while to bring the champions to blows,
+and I have known the mere preparatory insults of a fight of this kind to
+wear out the spirit of the combatants and the patience of the
+spectators, so that not a blow was struck, finally, and the whole affair
+fell through.
+
+
+
+
+GIRLS
+
+
+Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy
+went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would
+have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have scorned to
+play with one. Of course, while they were very little, they played with
+girls; and after they began to be big boys, eleven or twelve years old,
+they began to pay girls some attention; but for the rest they simply
+left them out of the question, except at parties, when the games obliged
+them to take some notice of the girls. Even then, however, it was not
+good form for a boy to be greatly interested in them; and he had to
+conceal any little fancy he had about this girl or that unless he wanted
+to be considered soft by the other fellows. When they were having fun
+they did not want to have any girls around; but in the back-yard a boy
+might play teeter or seesaw, or some such thing, with his sisters and
+their friends, without necessarily losing caste, though such things were
+not encouraged. On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them
+against anything that he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not
+have to verify the fact that anything had been said or done; you merely
+had to hear that it had.
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS
+
+
+The boys had very little to do with the inside of one another's houses.
+They would follow a boy to his door, and wait for him to come out; and
+they would sometimes get him to go in and ask his mother for crullers or
+sugar-cakes; when they came to see him they never went indoors for him,
+but stood on the sidewalk and called him with a peculiar cry, something
+like "E-oo-we, e-oo-we!" and threw stones at trees, or anything, till he
+came out. If he did not come after a reasonable time, they knew he was
+not there, or that his mother would not let him come. A fellow was kept
+in that way, now and then. If a fellow's mother came to the door the
+boys always ran.
+
+The mother represented the family sovereignty; the father was seldom
+seen, and he counted for little or nothing among the outside boys. It
+was the mother who could say whether a boy might go fishing or in
+swimming, and she was held a good mother or not according as she
+habitually said yes or no. There was no other standard of goodness for
+mothers in the boy's world, and could be none; and a bad mother might be
+outwitted by any device that the other boys could suggest to her boy.
+Such a boy was always willing to listen to any suggestion, and no boy
+took it hard if the other fellows made fun when their plan got him into
+trouble at home. If a boy came out after some such experience with his
+face wet, and his eyes red, and his lips swollen, of course you had to
+laugh; he expected it, and you expected him to stone you for laughing.
+
+When a boy's mother had company, he went and hid till the guests were
+gone, or only came out of concealment to get some sort of shy lunch. If
+the other fellows' mothers were there, he might be a little bolder, and
+bring out cake from the second table. But he had to be pretty careful
+how he conformed to any of the usages of grown-up society. A fellow who
+brushed his hair, and put on shoes, and came into the parlor when there
+was company, was not well seen among the fellows; he was regarded in
+some degree as a girl-boy; a boy who wished to stand well with other
+boys kept in the woodshed, and only went in as far as the kitchen to get
+things for his guests in the back-yard. Yet there were mothers who would
+make a boy put on a collar when they had company, and disgrace him
+before the world by making him stay round and help; they acted as if
+they had no sense and no pity; but such mothers were rare.
+
+Most mothers yielded to public opinion and let their boys leave the
+house, and wear just what they always wore. I have told how little they
+wore in summer. Of course in winter they had to put on more things. In
+those days knickerbockers were unknown, and if a boy had appeared in
+short pants and long stockings he would have been thought dressed like a
+circus-actor. Boys wore long pantaloons, like men, as soon as they put
+off skirts, and they wore jackets or roundabouts such as the English
+boys still wear at Eton. When the cold weather came they had to put on
+shoes and stockings, or rather long-legged boots, such as are seen now
+only among lumbermen and teamsters in the country. Most of the fellows
+had stoga boots, as heavy as iron and as hard; they were splendid to
+skate in, they kept your ankles so stiff. Sometimes they greased them to
+keep the water out; but they never blacked them except on Sunday, and
+before Saturday they were as red as a rusty stovepipe. At night they
+were always so wet that you could not get them off without a boot-jack,
+and you could hardly do it anyway; sometimes you got your brother to
+help you off with them, and then he pulled you all round the room. In
+the morning they were dry, but just as hard as stone, and you had to
+soap the heel of your woollen sock (which your grandmother had knitted
+for you, or maybe some of your aunts) before you could get your foot in,
+and sometimes the ears of the boot that you pulled it on by would give
+way, and you would have to stamp your foot in and kick the toe against
+the mop-board. Then you gasped and limped round, with your feet like
+fire, till you could get out and limber your boots up in some water
+somewhere. About noon your chilblains began.
+
+I have tried to give some notion of the general distribution of comfort,
+which was never riches, in the Boy's Town; but I am afraid that I could
+not paint the simplicity of things there truly without being
+misunderstood in these days of great splendor and great squalor.
+Everybody had enough, but nobody had too much; the richest man in town
+might be worth twenty thousand dollars. There were distinctions among
+the grown people, and no doubt there were the social cruelties which are
+the modern expression of the savage spirit otherwise repressed by
+civilization; but these were unknown among the boys. Savages they were,
+but not that kind of savages. They valued a boy for his character and
+prowess, and it did not matter in the least that he was ragged and
+dirty. Their mothers might not allow him the run of their kitchens quite
+so freely as some other boys, but the boys went with him just the same,
+and they never noticed how little he was washed and dressed. The best of
+them had not an overcoat; and underclothing was unknown among them.
+When a boy had buttoned up his roundabout, and put on his mittens, and
+tied his comforter round his neck and over his ears, he was warmly
+dressed.
+
+
+
+
+A BROTHER
+
+
+My boy was often kept from being a fool, and worse, by that elder
+brother of his; and I advise every boy to have an elder brother. Have a
+brother about four years older than yourself, I should say; and if your
+temper is hot, and your disposition revengeful, and you are a vain and
+ridiculous dreamer at the same time that you are eager to excel in feats
+of strength and games of skill, and to do everything that the other
+fellows do, and are ashamed to be better than the worst boy in the
+crowd, your brother can be of the greatest use to you, with his larger
+experience and wisdom. My boy's brother seemed to have an ideal of
+usefulness, while my boy only had an ideal of glory--to wish to help
+others, while my boy only wished to help himself. My boy would as soon
+have thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother's
+doing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice,
+of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which he
+wished to make shine before men in their fulfilment. His brother was
+always doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only did
+for himself; he had a very gray mustache before he began to have any
+conception of the fact that he was sent into the world to serve and to
+suffer, as well as to rule and enjoy. But his brother seemed to know
+this instinctively; he bore the yoke in his youth, patiently if not
+willingly; he shared the anxieties as he parted the cares of his father
+and mother. Yet he was a boy among boys, too; he loved to swim, to
+skate, to fish, to forage, and passionately, above all, he loved to
+hunt; but in everything he held himself in check, that he might hold the
+younger boys in check; and my boy often repaid his conscientious
+vigilance with hard words and hard names, such as embitter even the most
+self-forgiving memories. He kept mechanically within certain laws, and
+though in his rage he hurled every other name at his brother, he would
+not call him a fool, because then he would be in danger of hell-fire. If
+he had known just what Raca meant, he might have called him Raca, for he
+was not so much afraid of the council; but, as it was, his brother
+escaped that insult, and held through all a rein upon him, and governed
+him through his scruples as well as his fears.
+
+His brother was full of inventions and enterprises beyond most other
+boys, and his undertakings came to the same end of nothingness that
+awaits all boyish endeavor. He intended to make fireworks and sell them;
+he meant to raise silkworms; he prepared to take the contract of
+clearing the new cemetery grounds of stumps by blasting them out with
+gunpowder. Besides this, he had a plan with another big boy for making
+money, by getting slabs from the saw-mill, and sawing them up into
+stove-wood, and selling them to the cooks of canal-boats. The only
+trouble was that the cooks would not buy the fuel, even when the boys
+had a half-cord of it all nicely piled up on the canal-bank; they would
+rather come ashore after dark and take it for nothing. He had a good
+many other schemes for getting rich that failed; and he wanted to go to
+California and dig gold; only his mother would not consent. He really
+did save the Canal-Basin once, when the banks began to give way after a
+long rain. He saw the break beginning, and ran to tell his father, who
+had the fire-bells rung. The fire companies came rushing to the rescue,
+but as they could not put the Basin out with their engines, they all got
+shovels and kept it in. They did not do this before it had overflowed
+the street, and run into the cellars of the nearest houses. The water
+stood two feet deep in the kitchen of my boy's house, and the yard was
+flooded so that the boys made rafts and navigated it for a whole day.
+My boy's brother got drenched to the skin in the rain, and lots of
+fellows fell off the rafts.
+
+He belonged to a military company of big boys that had real wooden guns,
+such as the little boys never could get, and silk oil-cloth caps, and
+nankeen roundabouts, and white pantaloons with black stripes down the
+legs; and once they marched out to a boy's that had a father that had a
+farm, and he gave them all a free dinner in an arbor before the house:
+bread-and-butter, and apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, and
+peaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about the
+Mexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got a
+farmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy place
+there was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured.
+They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fort
+about fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher than their
+heads, but they got so eager to have the works stormed that they could
+not wait, and they commenced having the battle when they had the walls
+only breast high. There were going to be two parties: one to attack the
+fort, and the other to defend it, and they were just going to throw
+sods; but one boy had a real shot-gun, that he was to load up with
+powder and fire off when the battle got to the worst, so as to have it
+more like a battle. He thought it would be more like yet if he put in a
+few shot, and he did it on his own hook. It was a splendid gun, but it
+would not stand cocked long, and he was resting it on the wall of the
+fort, ready to fire when the storming-party came on, throwing sods and
+yelling and holloing; and all at once his gun went off, and a cow that
+was grazing broadside to the fort gave a frightened bellow, and put up
+her tail, and started for home. When they found out that the gun, if not
+the boy, had shot a cow, the Mexicans and Americans both took to their
+heels; and it was a good thing they did so, for as soon as that cow got
+home, and the owner found out by the blood on her that she had been
+shot, though it was only a very slight wound, he was so mad that he did
+not know what to do, and very likely he would have half killed those
+boys if he had caught them. He got a plough, and he went out to their
+fort, and he ploughed it all down flat, so that not one sod remained
+upon another.
+
+My boy's brother went to all sorts of places that my boy was too shy to
+go to; and he associated with much older boys, but there was one boy
+who, as I have said, was the dear friend of both of them, and that was
+the boy who came to learn the trade in their father's printing-office,
+and who began an historical romance at the time my boy began his great
+Moorish novel. The first day he came he was put to roll, or ink, the
+types, while my boy's brother worked the press, and all day long my boy,
+from where he was setting type, could hear him telling the story of a
+book he had read. It was about a person named Monte Cristo, who was a
+count, and who could do anything. My boy listened with a gnawing
+literary jealousy of a boy who had read a book that he had never heard
+of. He tried to think whether it sounded as if it were as great a book
+as the _Conquest of Granada_, or _Gesta Romanorum_; and for a time he
+kept aloof from this boy because of his envy. Afterward they came
+together on _Don Quixote_, but though my boy came to have quite a
+passionate fondness for him, he was long in getting rid of his grudge
+against him for his knowledge of _Monte Cristo_. He was as great a
+laugher as my boy and his brother, and he liked the same sports, so that
+two by two, or all three together, they had no end of jokes and fun. He
+became the editor of a country newspaper, with varying fortunes but
+steadfast principles, and when the war broke out he went as a private
+soldier. He soon rose to be an officer, and fought bravely in many
+battles. Then he came back to a country-newspaper office where, ever
+after, he continued to fight the battles of right against wrong, till he
+died not long ago at his post of duty--a true, generous, and lofty
+soul. He was one of those boys who grow into the men who seem commoner
+in America than elsewhere, and who succeed far beyond our millionaires
+and statesmen in realizing the ideal of America in their nobly simple
+lives. If his story could be faithfully written out, word for word, deed
+for deed, it would be far more thrilling than that of Monte Cristo, or
+any hero of romance; and so would the common story of any common life.
+But we cannot tell these stories, somehow.
+
+
+
+
+A FRIEND
+
+
+My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at
+school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning
+in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. I
+dare say it was a sense of his kinship with Nature that took my boy with
+him, and rested his soul from all its wild dreams and vain imaginings.
+He was like a piece of the genial earth, with no more hint of toiling or
+spinning in him; willing for anything, but passive, and without force or
+aim. He lived in a belated log-cabin that stood in the edge of a
+cornfield on the river-bank, and he seemed, one day when my boy went to
+find him there, to have a mother, who smoked a cob-pipe, and two or
+three large sisters who hulked about in the one dim, low room. But the
+boys had very little to do with each other's houses, or, for that
+matter, with each other's yards. His friend seldom entered my boy's
+gate, and never his door; for with all the toleration his father felt
+for every manner of human creature, he could not see what good the boy
+was to get from this queer companion. It is certain that he got no harm;
+for his companion was too vague and void even to think evil. Socially,
+he was as low as the ground under foot, but morally he was as good as
+any boy in the Boy's Town, and he had no bad impulses. He had no
+impulses at all, in fact, and of his own motion he never did anything,
+or seemed to think anything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply
+appeared in the neighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence
+till he came out. He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other
+fellows did, but waited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off
+with wherever my boy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never
+any will but to go in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did
+not even fish; and I suppose that money could not have hired him to run
+races. He played marbles, but not very well, and he did not care much
+for the game. The two boys soaked themselves in the river together, and
+then they lay on the sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but
+my boy could not have talked to him about any of the things that were in
+his books, or the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must
+rather have soothed against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of
+his fantastic spirit, and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax
+and easy aimlessness. Their friendship was not only more innocent than
+any other friendship my boy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved
+each other, and that was all; and why people love one another there is
+never any satisfactory telling. But this friend of his must have had
+great natural good in him; and if I could find a man of the make of that
+boy I am sure I should love him.
+
+My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it was
+often made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; so
+that in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been to
+him. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he was
+ignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I am
+not able to say now just how he worked his friend up to the point of
+coming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, and
+putting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and my
+boy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendship
+with him before the whole school. This was not easy, for though
+everybody knew how much the two were together, it was a different thing
+to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to
+help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He
+struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from
+the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one
+half-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiled
+their simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the old
+ground of perfect trust and affection. Perhaps the kindly earth-spirit
+had instinctively felt a wound from the shame my boy had tried to brave
+out, and shrank from their former friendship without quite knowing why.
+Perhaps it was my boy who learned to realize that there could be little
+in common but their common humanity between them, and could not go back
+to that. At any rate, their friendship declined from this point; and it
+seems to me, somehow, a pity.
+
+Among the boys who were between my boy and his brother in age was one
+whom all the boys liked, because he was clever with everybody, with
+little boys as well as big boys. He was a laughing, pleasant fellow,
+always ready for fun, but he never did mean things, and he had an open
+face that made a friend of every one who saw him. He had a father that
+had a house with a lightning-rod, so that if you were in it when there
+was a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boy
+once proved by being in it when there was a thunder-storm and not
+getting struck. This in itself was a great merit, and there were
+grape-arbors and peach-trees in his yard which added to his popularity,
+with cling-stone peaches almost as big as oranges on them. He was a
+fellow who could take you home to meals whenever he wanted to, and he
+liked to have boys stay all night with him; his mother was as clever as
+he was, and even the sight of his father did not make the fellows want
+to go and hide. His father was so clever that he went home with my boy
+one night about midnight when the boy had come to pass the night with
+his boys, and the youngest of them had said he always had the nightmare
+and walked in his sleep, and as likely as not he might kill you before
+he knew it. My boy tried to sleep, but the more he reflected upon his
+chances of getting through the night alive the smaller they seemed; and
+so he woke up his potential murderer from the sweetest and soundest
+slumber, and said he was going home, but he was afraid; and the boy had
+to go and wake his father. Very few fathers would have dressed up and
+gone home with a boy at midnight, and perhaps this one did so only
+because the mother made him; but it shows how clever the whole family
+was.
+
+It was their oldest boy whom my boy and his brother chiefly went with
+before that boy who knew about _Monte Cristo_ came to learn the trade in
+their father's office. One Saturday in July they three spent the whole
+day together. It was just the time when the apples are as big as walnuts
+on the trees, and a boy wants to try whether any of them are going to be
+sweet or not. The boys tried a great many of them, in an old orchard
+thrown open for building-lots behind my boy's yard; but they could not
+find any that were not sour; or that they could eat till they thought of
+putting salt on them; if you put salt on it, you could eat any kind of
+green apple, whether it was going to be a sweet kind or not. They went
+up to the Basin bank and got lots of salt out of the holes in the
+barrels lying there, and then they ate all the apples they could hold,
+and after that they cut limber sticks off the trees, and sharpened the
+points, and stuck apples on them and threw them. You could send an apple
+almost out of sight that way, and you could scare a dog almost as far as
+you could see him.
+
+On Monday my boy and his brother went to school, but the other boy was
+not there, and in the afternoon they heard he was sick. Then, toward the
+end of the week they heard that he had the flux; and on Friday, just
+before school let out, the teacher--it was the one that whipped so, and
+that the fellows all liked--rapped on his desk, and began to speak very
+solemnly to the scholars. He told them that their little mate, whom they
+had played with and studied with, was lying very sick, so very sick that
+it was expected he would die; and then he read them a serious lesson
+about life and death, and tried to make them feel how passing and
+uncertain all things were, and resolve to live so that they need never
+be afraid to die.
+
+Some of the fellows cried, and the next day some of them went to see the
+dying boy, and my boy went with them. His spirit was stricken to the
+earth, when he saw his gay, kind playmate lying there, white as the
+pillow under his wasted face, in which his sunken blue eyes showed large
+and strange. The sick boy did not say anything that the other boys could
+hear, but they could see the wan smile that came to his dry lips, and
+the light come sadly into his eyes, when his mother asked him if he knew
+this one or that; and they could not bear it, and went out of the room.
+
+In a few days they heard that he was dead, and one afternoon school did
+not keep, so that the boys might go to the funeral. Most of them walked
+in the procession; but some of them were waiting beside the open grave,
+that was dug near the grave of that man who believed there was a hole
+through the earth from pole to pole, and had a perforated stone globe on
+top of his monument.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+GAMES AND PASTIMES
+
+
+
+
+MARBLES
+
+
+In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and went
+in a stated order. The first thing in the spring, as soon as the frost
+began to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played till
+the weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left it
+off. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but any
+boy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbles
+he won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out in
+the morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or a
+brown marble of the lowest value, and come home at night with a
+pocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters and
+bull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was not
+approved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness of
+his heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
+too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
+playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
+before he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
+the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
+base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
+round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
+five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
+was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
+knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
+fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
+at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
+your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with
+the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw
+cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly
+every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from
+resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster
+of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate,
+and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were
+always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that
+of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether
+a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay when he
+shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground, in
+shooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble against
+another and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" before
+the other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of the
+ring, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gambling
+and the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, and
+began again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings when
+school let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with a
+stick, but when there was a great hurry, or there was no stick handy,
+the side of a fellow's boot would do, and the hollows for knucks were
+always bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to
+wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made
+for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a
+citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his walking
+round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia sense for
+amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense was smart.
+
+
+RACES
+
+When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their shoes
+for good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings. Life
+has a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none so
+ecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast of
+our mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then from
+the heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, and
+cousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leaps
+as wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their arms
+in June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of the
+earlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, his
+races; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leave
+the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is
+all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the
+earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they
+shall not be thankless, nor she a stepmother any more.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, which
+you were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and before
+you had got used to your new running weight. When you struck your toe
+against a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hopped
+about a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.
+Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,
+till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as
+soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet
+about it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.
+
+
+
+
+A MEAN TRICK
+
+
+There were shade-trees all along the street, that you could climb if you
+wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had run yourself
+out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctly remembered that
+under one of these trees his elder brother first broached to him that
+awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and applied to their own lives the
+moral of _The Trippings of Tom Pepper_; he remembered how a conviction
+of the righteousness of the scheme sank into his soul, and he could not
+withhold his consent. Under the same tree, and very likely at the same
+time, a solemn conclave of boys, all the boys there were, discussed the
+feasibility of tying a tin can to a dog's tail, and seeing how he would
+act. They had all heard of the thing, but none of them had seen it; and
+it was not so much a question of whether you ought to do a thing that on
+the very face of it would be so much fun, and if it did not amuse the
+dog as highly as anybody, could certainly do him no harm, as it was a
+question of whose dog you should get to take the dog's part in the
+sport. It was held that an old dog would probably not keep still long
+enough for you to tie the can on; he would have his suspicions; or else
+he would not run when the can was tied on, but very likely just go and
+lie down somewhere. The lot finally fell to a young yellow dog belonging
+to one of the boys, and the owner at once ran home to get him, and
+easily lured him back to the other boys with flatteries and caresses.
+The flatteries and caresses were not needed, for a dog is always glad to
+go with boys, upon any pretext, and so far from thinking that he does
+them a favor, he feels himself greatly honored. But I dare say the boy
+had a guilty fear that if his dog had known why he was invited to be of
+that party of boys, he might have pleaded a previous engagement. As it
+was, he came joyfully, and allowed the can to be tied to his tail
+without misgiving. If there had been any question with the boys as to
+whether he would enter fully into the spirit of the affair, it must have
+been instantly dissipated by the dogs behavior when he felt the loop
+tighten on his tail, and looked round to see what the matter was. The
+boys hardly had a chance to cheer him before he flashed out of sight
+round the corner, and they hardly had time to think before he flashed
+into sight again from the other direction. He whizzed along the ground,
+and the can hurtled in the air, but there was no other sound, and the
+cheers died away on the boys' lips. The boy who owned the dog began to
+cry, and the other fellows began to blame him for not stopping the dog.
+But he might as well have tried to stop a streak of lightning; the only
+thing you could do was to keep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it
+was successful beyond the wildest dreams of its projectors, though it
+would have been a sort of relief if the dog had taken some other road,
+for variety, or had even reversed his course. But he kept on as he
+began, and by a common impulse the boys made up their minds to abandon
+the whole affair to him. They all ran home and hid, or else walked about
+and tried to ignore it. But at this point the grown-up people began to
+be interested; the mothers came to their doors to see what was the
+matter. Yet even the mothers were powerless in a case like that, and the
+enthusiast had to be left to his fate. He was found under a barn at
+last, breathless, almost lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who
+untied the can from his tail. Eventually he got well again, and lived
+to be a solemn warning to the boys; he was touchingly distrustful of
+their advances for a time, but he finally forgot and forgave everything.
+They did not forget, and they never tried tying a tin can to a dog's
+tail again, among all the things they tried and kept trying. Once was
+enough; and they never even liked to talk of it, the sight was so awful.
+They were really fond of the dog, and if they could have thought he
+would take the matter so seriously, they would not have tried to have
+that kind of fun with him. It cured them of ever wanting to have that
+kind of fun with any dog.
+
+
+
+
+TOPS
+
+
+As the weather softened, tops came in some weeks after marbles went out,
+and just after foot-races were over, and a little before swimming began.
+At first the boys bought their tops at the stores, but after a while the
+boy whose father had the turning-shop on the Hydraulic learned to turn
+their tops, and did it for nothing, which was cheaper than buying tops,
+especially as he furnished the wood, too, and you only had to get the
+metal peg yourself. I believe he was the same boy who wanted to be a
+pirate and ended by inventing a steam-governor. He was very ingenious,
+and he knew how to turn a top out of beech or maple that would outspin
+anything you could get in a store. The boys usually chose a firm, smooth
+piece of sidewalk, under one of the big trees in the Smith neighborhood,
+and spun their tops there. A fellow launched his top into the ring, and
+the rest waited till it began to go to sleep--that is, to settle in one
+place, and straighten up and spin silently, as if standing still. Then
+any fellow had a right to peg at it with his top, and if he hit it, he
+won it; and if he split it, as sometimes happened, the fellow that owned
+it had to give him a top. The boys came with their pockets bulged out
+with tops, but before long they had to go for more tops to that boy who
+could turn them. From this it was but another step to go to the shop
+with him and look on while he turned the tops; and then in process of
+time the boys discovered that the smooth floor of the shop was a better
+place to fight tops than the best piece of sidewalk. They would have
+given whole Saturdays to the sport there, but when they got to holloing
+too loudly the boy's father would come up, and then they would all run.
+It was considered mean in him, but the boy himself was awfully clever,
+and the first thing the fellows knew they were back there again. Some
+few of the boys had humming-tops, but though these pleased by their
+noise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head against the
+good old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind up
+with a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flat
+button held between your forefinger and middle finger. Some of the boys
+had a very pretty art in the twirl they gave the top, and could control
+its course, somewhat as a skilful pitcher can govern that of a baseball.
+
+
+
+
+KITES
+
+
+I do not know why a certain play went out, but suddenly the fellows who
+had been playing ball, or marbles, or tops, would find themselves
+playing something else. Kites came in just about the time of the
+greatest heat in summer, and lasted a good while; but could not have
+lasted as long as the heat, which began about the first of June, and
+kept on well through September; no play could last so long as that, and
+I suppose kite-flying must have died into swimming after the Fourth of
+July. The kites were of various shapes: bow kites, two-stick kites, and
+house kites. A bow kite could be made with half a barrel hoop carried
+over the top of a cross, but it was troublesome to make, and it did not
+fly very well, and somehow it was thought to look babyish; but it was
+held in greater respect than the two-stick kite, which only the
+smallest boys played with, and which was made by fastening two sticks in
+the form of a cross. Any fellow more than six years old who appeared on
+the Commons with a two-stick kite would have been met with jeers, as a
+kind of girl.
+
+The favorite kite, the kite that balanced best, took the wind best, and
+flew best, and that would stand all day when you got it up, was the
+house kite, which was made of three sticks, and shaped nearly in the
+form of the gable of a gambrel-roofed house, only smaller at the base
+than at the point where the roof would begin. The outline of all these
+kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a string carried taut
+from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes
+the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes
+they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them.
+The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an
+inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of
+the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his
+brother could usually get paste from the printing-office; and when they
+could not they would make it by mixing flour and water cream-thick, and
+slowly boiling it. That was a paste that would hold till the cows came
+home, the boys said, and my boy was courted for his skill in making it.
+But after the kite was pasted, and dried in the sun, or behind the
+kitchen stove, if you were in very much of a hurry (and you nearly
+always were), it had to be hung, with belly-bands and tail-bands; that
+is, with strings carried from stick to stick over the face and at the
+bottom, to attach the cord for flying it and to fasten on the tail by.
+This took a good deal of art, and unless it were well done the kite
+would not balance, but would be always pitching and darting. Then the
+tail had to be of just the right weight; if it was too heavy the kite
+kept sinking, even after you got it up where otherwise it would stand;
+if too light, the kite would dart, and dash itself to pieces on the
+ground. A very pretty tail was made by tying twists of paper across a
+string a foot apart, till there were enough to balance the kite; but
+this sort of tail was apt to get tangled, and the best tail was made of
+a long streamer of cotton rags, with a gay tuft of dog-fennel at the
+end. Dog-fennel was added or taken away till just the right weight was
+got; and when this was done, after several experimental tests, the kite
+was laid flat on its face in the middle of the road, or on a long
+stretch of smooth grass; the bands were arranged, and the tail stretched
+carefully out behind, where it would not catch on bushes. You unwound a
+great length of twine, running backward, and letting the twine slip
+swiftly through your hands till you had run enough out; then you seized
+the ball, and with one look over your shoulder to see that all was
+right, started swiftly forward. The kite reared itself from the ground,
+and swaying gracefully from side to side, rose slowly into the air, with
+its long tail climbing after it till the fennel tuft swung free. If
+there was not much surface wind you might have to run a little way, but
+as soon as the kite caught the upper currents it straightened itself,
+pulled the twine taut, and steadily mounted, while you gave it more and
+more twine; if the breeze was strong, the cord burned as it ran through
+your hands; till at last the kite stood still in the sky, at such a
+height that the cord holding it sometimes melted out of sight in the
+distance.
+
+If it was a hot July day the sky would be full of kites, and the Commons
+would be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, or
+winding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of their
+voices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, at
+least, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.
+Besides the wild debate of the rival excellences of the different kites,
+there were always quarrels from getting the strings crossed; for, as the
+boys got their kites up, they drew together for company and for an
+easier comparison of their merits. It was only a mean boy who would try
+to cross another fellow's string; but sometimes accidents would happen;
+two kites would become entangled and both would have to be hauled in,
+while their owners cried and scolded, and the other fellows cheered and
+laughed. Now and then the tail of a kite would part midway, and then the
+kite would begin to dart violently from side to side, and then to whirl
+round and round in swifter and narrower circles till it dashed itself to
+the ground. Sometimes the kite-string would break, and the kite would
+waver and fall like a bird shot in the wing; and the owner of the kite,
+and all the fellows who had no kites, would run to get it where it came
+down, perhaps a mile or more away. It usually came down in a tree, and
+they had to climb for it; but sometimes it lodged so high that no one
+could reach it; and then it was slowly beaten and washed away in the
+winds and rains, and its long tail left streaming all winter from the
+naked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on the
+Commons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but a
+vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped
+to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their
+kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges of
+their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the
+kite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if you
+put your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers.
+The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, so
+as to slip over the string, which would be pulled level long enough to
+give the messenger a good start, and then released, when the wind would
+catch the little circle, and drive it up the long curving incline till
+it reached the kite.
+
+It was thought a great thing in a kite to pull, and it was a favor to
+another boy to let him take hold of your string and feel how your kite
+pulled. If you wanted to play mumble-the-peg, or anything, while your
+kite was up, you tied it to a stake in the ground, or gave it to some
+other fellow to hold; there were always lots of fellows eager to hold
+it. But you had to be careful how you let a little fellow hold it; for,
+if it was a very powerful kite, it would take him up. It was not certain
+just how strong a kite had to be to take a small boy up, and nobody had
+ever seen a kite do it, but everybody expected to see it.
+
+
+
+
+THE BUTLER GUARDS
+
+
+The Butler Guards were the finest military company in the world. I do
+not believe there was a fellow in the Boy's Town who even tried to
+imagine a more splendid body of troops: when they talked of them, as
+they did a great deal, it was simply to revel in the recognition of
+their perfection. I forget just what their uniform was, but there were
+white pantaloons in it, and a tuft of white-and-red cockerel plumes that
+almost covered the front of the hat, and swayed when the soldier walked,
+and blew in the wind. I think the coat was gray, and the skirts were
+buttoned back with buff, but I will not be sure of this; and somehow I
+cannot say how the officers differed from the privates in dress; it was
+impossible for them to be more magnificent. They walked backward in
+front of the platoons, with their swords drawn, and held in their
+white-gloved hands at hilt and point, and kept holloing,
+"Shoulder-r-r--arms! Carry--arms! Present--arms!" and then faced round,
+and walked a few steps forward, till they could think of something else
+to make the soldiers do.
+
+[Illustration: THE BUTLER GUARDS]
+
+Every boy intended to belong to the Butler Guards when he grew up; and
+he would have given anything to be the drummer or the marker. These were
+both boys, and they were just as much dressed up as the Guards
+themselves, only they had caps instead of hats with plumes. It was
+strange that the other fellows somehow did not know who these boys were;
+but they never knew, or at least my boy never knew. They thought more of
+the marker than of the drummer; for the marker carried a little flag,
+and when the officers holloed out, "By the left flank--left! Wheel!" he
+set his flag against his shoulder, and stood marking time with his feet
+till the soldiers all got by him, and then he ran up to the front rank,
+with the flag fluttering behind him. The fellows used to wonder how he
+got to be marker, and to plan how they could get to be markers in other
+companies, if not in the Butler Guards. There were other companies that
+used to come to town on the Fourth of July and Muster Day, from smaller
+places round about; and some of them had richer uniforms: one company
+had blue coats with gold epaulets, and gold braid going down in loops on
+the sides of their legs; all the soldiers, of course, had braid straight
+down the outer seams of their pantaloons. One Muster Day a captain of
+one of the country companies came home with my boy's father to dinner;
+he was in full uniform, and he put his plumed helmet down on the entry
+table just like any other hat.
+
+There was a company of Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called
+them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe,
+and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said
+for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the Dutch
+officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de
+hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot--_links, links, links!_" (left, left,
+left!). But the boys honored even these imperfect intelligences so much
+in their quality of soldiers that they would any of them have been proud
+to be marker in the Dutch company; and they followed the Dutchmen round
+in their march as fondly as any other body of troops. Of course, school
+let out when there was a regular muster, and the boys gave the whole day
+to it; but I do not know just when the Muster Day came. They fired the
+cannon a good deal on the river-bank, and they must have camped
+somewhere near the town, though no recollection of tents remained in my
+boy's mind. He believed with the rest of the boys that the right way to
+fire the cannon was to get it so hot you need not touch it off, but just
+keep your thumb on the touch-hole, and take it away when you wanted the
+cannon to go off. Once he saw the soldiers ram the piece full of
+dog-fennel on top of the usual charge, and then he expected the cannon
+to burst. But it only roared away as usual.
+
+
+
+
+PETS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+As there are no longer any Whig boys in the world, the coon can no
+longer be kept anywhere as a political emblem, I dare say. Even in my
+boy's time the boys kept coons just for the pleasure of it, and without
+meaning to elect Whig governors and presidents with them. I do not know
+how they got them--they traded for them, perhaps, with fellows in the
+country that had caught them, or perhaps their fathers bought them in
+market; some people thought they were very good to eat, and, like
+poultry and other things for the table, they may have been brought alive
+to market. But, anyhow, when a boy had a coon, he had to have a
+store-box turned open side down to keep it in, behind the house; and he
+had to have a little door in the box to pull the coon out through when
+he wanted to show it to other boys, or to look at it himself, which he
+did forty or fifty times a day, when he first got it. He had to have a
+small collar for the coon, and a little chain, because the coon would
+gnaw through a string in a minute. The coon himself never seemed to take
+much interest in keeping a coon, or to see much fun or sense in it. He
+liked to stay inside his box, where he had a bed of hay, and whenever
+the boy pulled him out, he did his best to bite the boy. He had no
+tricks; his temper was bad; and there was nothing about him except the
+rings round his tail and his political principles that anybody could
+care for. He never did anything but bite, and try to get away, or else
+run back into his box, which smelled, pretty soon, like an animal-show;
+he would not even let a fellow see him eat.
+
+My boy's brother had a coon, which he kept a good while, at a time when
+there was no election, for the mere satisfaction of keeping a coon.
+During his captivity the coon bit his keeper repeatedly through the
+thumb, and upon the whole seemed to prefer him to any other food; I do
+not really know what coons eat in a wild state, but this captive coon
+tasted the blood of nearly that whole family of children. Besides biting
+and getting away, he never did the slightest thing worth remembering; as
+there was no election, he did not even take part in a Whig procession.
+He got away two or three times. The first thing his owner would know
+when he pulled the chain out was that there was no coon at the end of
+it, and then he would have to poke round the inside of the box pretty
+carefully with a stick, so as not to get bitten; after that he would
+have to see which tree the coon had gone up. It was usually the tall
+locust-tree in front of the house, and in about half a second all the
+boys in town would be there, telling the owner of the coon how to get
+him. Of course the only way was to climb for the coon, which would be
+out at the point of a high and slender limb, and would bite you awfully,
+even if the limb did not break under you, while the boys kept whooping
+and yelling and holloing out what to do, and Tip the dog just howled
+with excitement. I do not know how that coon was ever caught, but I know
+that the last time he got away he was not found during the day, but
+after nightfall he was discovered by moonlight in the locust-tree. His
+owner climbed for him, but the coon kept shifting about, and getting
+higher and higher, and at last he had to be left till morning. In the
+morning he was not there, nor anywhere.
+
+It had been expected, perhaps, that Tip would watch him, and grab him if
+he came down, and Tip would have done it probably if he had kept awake.
+He was a dog of the greatest courage, and he was especially fond of
+hunting. He had been bitten oftener by that coon than anybody but the
+coon's owner, but he did not care for biting. He was always getting
+bitten by rats, but he was the greatest dog for rats that there almost
+ever was. The boys hunted rats with him at night, when they came out of
+the stables that backed down to the Hydraulic, for water; and a dog who
+liked above all things to lie asleep on the back-step, by day, and would
+no more think of chasing a pig out of the garden than he would think of
+sitting up all night with a coon, would get frantic about rats, and
+would perfectly wear himself out hunting them on land and in the water,
+and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of
+hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he
+would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would
+lift his hind legs off the ground.
+
+I do not know how he came into that family, but I believe he was given
+to it full grown by somebody. It was some time after my boy failed to
+buy what he called a Confoundland dog, from a colored boy who had it for
+sale, a pretty puppy with white and black spots which he had quite set
+his heart on; but Tip more than consoled him. Tip was of no particular
+breed, and he had no personal beauty; he was of the color of a mouse or
+an elephant, and his tail was without the smallest grace; it was smooth
+and round, but it was so strong that he could pull a boy all over the
+town by it, and usually did; and he had the best, and kindest, and
+truest ugly old face in the world. He loved the whole human race, and as
+a watch-dog he was a failure through his trustful nature; he would no
+more have bitten a person than he would have bitten a pig; but where
+other dogs were concerned, he was a lion. He might be lying fast asleep
+in the back-yard, and he usually was, but if a dog passed the front of
+the house under a wagon, he would be up and after that dog before you
+knew what you were about. He seemed to want to fight country dogs the
+worst, but any strange dog would do. A good half the time he would come
+off best; but, however he came off, he returned to the back-yard with
+his tongue hanging out, and wagging his tail in good-humor with all the
+world. Nothing could stop him, however, where strange dogs were
+concerned. He was a Whig dog, of course, as any one could tell by his
+name, which was Tippecanoe in full, and was given him because it was the
+nickname of General Harrison, the great Whig who won the battle of
+Tippecanoe. The boys' Henry Clay Club used him to pull the little wagon
+that they went about in singing Whig songs, and he would pull five or
+six boys, guided simply by a stick which he held in his mouth, and
+which a boy held on either side of him. But if he caught sight of a dog
+that he did not know, he would drop that stick and start for that dog as
+far off as he could see him, spilling the Henry Clay Club out of the
+wagon piecemeal as he went, and never stopping till he mixed up the
+strange dog in a fight where it would have been hard to tell which was
+either champion and which was the club wagon. When the fight was over
+Tip would come smilingly back to the fragments of the Henry Clay Club,
+with pieces of the vehicle sticking about him, and profess himself, in a
+dog's way, ready to go on with the concert.
+
+Any crowd of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or
+hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town,
+and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind,
+it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of
+character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he
+grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would
+move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no
+reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it
+is certain that he no longer showed his early ardor. He joined the
+Free-Soil movement in 1848, and supported Van Buren and Adams, but
+without the zeal he had shown for Henry Clay. Once a year, as long as
+the family lived in the Boy's Town, the children were anxious about Tip
+when the dog-law was put in force, and the constables went round
+shooting all the dogs that were found running at large without muzzles.
+At this time, when Tip was in danger of going mad and biting people, he
+showed a most unseasonable activity, and could hardly be kept in bounds.
+A dog whose sole delight at other moments was to bask in the summer sun,
+or dream by the winter fire, would now rouse himself to an interest in
+everything that was going on in the dangerous world, and make forays
+into it at all unguarded points. The only thing to do was to muzzle him,
+and this was done by my boy's brother with a piece of heavy twine, in
+such a manner as to interfere with Tip's happiness as little as
+possible. It was a muzzle that need not be removed for either eating,
+drinking, or fighting; but it satisfied the law, and Tip always came
+safely through the dog-days, perhaps by favor or affection with the
+officers who were so inexorable with some dogs.
+
+While Tip was still in his prime the family of children was further
+enriched by the possession of a goat; but this did not belong to the
+whole family, or it was, at least nominally, the property of that eldest
+brother they all looked up to. I do not know how they came by the goat,
+any more than I know how they came by Tip; I only know that there came a
+time when it was already in the family, and that before it was got rid
+of it was a presence there was no mistaking. Nobody who has not kept a
+goat can have any notion of how many different kinds of mischief a goat
+can get into, without seeming to try, either, but merely by following
+the impulses of its own goatishness. This one was a nanny-goat, and it
+answered to the name of Nanny with an intelligence that was otherwise
+wholly employed in making trouble. It went up and down stairs, from
+cellar to garret, and in and out of all the rooms, like anybody, with a
+faint, cynical indifference in the glance of its cold gray eyes that
+gave no hint of its purposes or performances. In the chambers it chewed
+the sheets and pillow-cases on the beds, and in the dining-room, if it
+found nothing else, it would do its best to eat the table-cloth.
+Washing-day was a perfect feast for it, for then it would banquet on the
+shirt-sleeves and stockings that dangled from the clothes-line, and
+simply glut itself with the family linen and cotton. In default of these
+dainties, Nanny would gladly eat a chip-hat; she was not proud; she
+would eat a split-basket, if there was nothing else at hand. Once she
+got up on the kitchen table, and had a perfect orgy with a lot of
+fresh-baked pumpkin-pies she found there; she cleaned all the pumpkin so
+neatly out of the pastry shells that, if there had been any more pumpkin
+left, they could have been filled up again, and nobody could have told
+the difference. The grandmother, who was visiting in the house at the
+time, declared to the mother that it would serve the father and the boys
+just right if she did fill these very shells up and give them to the
+father and the boys to eat. But I believe this was not done, and it was
+only suggested in a moment of awful exasperation, and because it was the
+father who was to blame for letting the boys keep the goat. The mother
+was always saying that the goat should not stay in the house another
+day, but she had not the heart to insist on its banishment, the children
+were so fond of it. I do not know why they were fond of it, for it never
+showed them the least affection, but was always taking the most unfair
+advantages of them, and it would butt them over whenever it got the
+chance. It would try to butt them into the well when they leaned down to
+pull up the bucket from the curb; and if it came out of the house, and
+saw a boy cracking nuts at the low flat stone the children had in the
+back-yard to crack nuts on, it would pretend that the boy was making
+motions to insult it, and before he knew what he was about it would fly
+at him and send him spinning head over heels. It was not of the least
+use in the world, and could not be, but the children were allowed to
+keep it till, one fatal day, when the mother had a number of other
+ladies to tea, as the fashion used to be in small towns, when they sat
+down to a comfortable gossip over dainty dishes of stewed chicken, hot
+biscuit, peach-preserves, sweet tomato-pickles, and pound-cake. That day
+they all laid off their bonnets on the hall table, and the goat, after
+demurely waiting and watching with its faded eyes, which saw everything
+and seemed to see nothing, discerned a golden opportunity, and began to
+make such a supper of bonnet-ribbons as perhaps never fell to a goat's
+lot in life before. It was detected in its stolen joys just as it had
+chewed the ribbon of a best bonnet up to the bonnet, and was chased into
+the back-yard; but, as it had swallowed the ribbon without being able to
+swallow the bonnet, it carried that with it. The boy who specially owned
+the goat ran it down in a frenzy of horror and apprehension, and managed
+to unravel the ribbon from its throat, and get back the bonnet. Then he
+took the bonnet in and laid it carefully down on the table again, and
+decided that it would be best not to say anything about the affair. But
+such a thing as that could not be kept. The goat was known at once to
+have done the mischief; and this time it was really sent away. All the
+children mourned it, and the boy who owned it the most used to go to the
+house of the people who took it, and who had a high board fence round
+their yard, and try to catch sight of it through the cracks. When he
+called "Nanny!" it answered him instantly with a plaintive "Baa!" and
+then, after a vain interchange of lamentations, he had to come away, and
+console himself as he could with the pets that were left him.
+
+But all were trifling joys, except maybe Tip and Nanny, compared with
+the pony which the boys owned in common, and which was the greatest
+thing that ever came into their lives. I cannot tell just how their
+father came to buy it for them, or where he got it; but I dare say he
+thought they were about old enough for a pony, and might as well have
+one. It was a Mexican pony, and as it appeared on the scene just after
+the Mexican war, some volunteer may have brought it home. One volunteer
+brought home a Mexican dog, that was smooth and hairless, with a skin
+like an elephant, and that was always shivering round with the cold; he
+was not otherwise a remarkable dog, and I do not know that he ever felt
+even the warmth of friendship among the boys; his manners were reserved
+and his temper seemed doubtful. But the pony never had any trouble with
+the climate of Southern Ohio (which is indeed hot enough to fry a
+salamander in summer); and though his temper was no better than other
+ponies', he was perfectly approachable. I mean that he was approachable
+from the side, for it was not well to get where he could bite you or
+kick you. He was of a bright sorrel color, and he had a brand on one
+haunch.
+
+My boy had an ideal of a pony, conceived from pictures in his
+reading-books at school, that held its head high and arched its neck,
+and he strove by means of checks and martingales to make this real pony
+conform to the illustrations. But it was of no use; the real pony held
+his neck straight out like a ewe, or, if reined up, like a camel, and he
+hung his big head at the end of it with no regard whatever for the
+ideal. His caparison was another mortification and failure. What the boy
+wanted was an English saddle, embroidered on the morocco seat in crimson
+silk, and furnished with shining steel stirrups. What he had was the
+framework of a Mexican saddle, covered with rawhide, and cushioned with
+a blanket; the stirrups were Mexican, too, and clumsily fashioned out of
+wood. The boys were always talking about getting their father to get
+them a pad, but they never did it, and they managed as they could with
+the saddle they had. For the most part they preferred to ride the pony
+barebacked, for then they could ride him double, and when they first
+got him they all wanted to ride him so much that they had to ride him
+double. They kept him going the whole day long; but after a while they
+calmed down enough to take him one at a time, and to let him have a
+chance for his meals.
+
+They had no regular stable, and the father left the boys to fit part of
+the cow-shed up for the pony, which they did by throwing part of the
+hen-coop open into it. The pigeon-cots were just over his head, and he
+never could have complained of being lonesome. At first everybody wanted
+to feed him as well as ride him, and if he had been allowed time for it
+he might have eaten himself to death, or if he had not always tried to
+bite you or kick you when you came in with his corn. After a while the
+boys got so they forgot him, and nobody wanted to go out and feed the
+pony, especially after dark; but he knew how to take care of himself,
+and when he had eaten up everything there was in the cow-shed he would
+break out and eat up everything there was in the yard.
+
+The boys got lots of good out of him. When you were once on his back you
+were pretty safe, for he was so lazy that he would not think of running
+away, and there was no danger unless he bounced you off when he trotted;
+he had a hard trot. The boys wanted to ride him standing up, like
+circus-actors, and the pony did not mind, but the boys could not stay
+on, though they practised a good deal, turn about, when the other
+fellows were riding their horses, standing up, on the Commons. He was
+not of much use in Indian fights, for he could seldom be lashed into a
+gallop, and a pony that proposed to walk through an Indian fight was
+ridiculous. Still, with the help of imagination, my boy employed him in
+some scenes of wild Arab life, and hurled the Moorish javelin from him
+in mid-career, when the pony was flying along at the mad pace of a
+canal-boat. The pony early gave the boys to understand that they could
+get very little out of him in the way of herding the family cow. He
+would let them ride him to the pasture, and he would keep up with the
+cow on the way home, when she walked, but if they wanted anything more
+than that they must get some other pony. They tried to use him in
+carrying papers, but the subscribers objected to having him ridden up to
+their front doors over the sidewalk, and they had to give it up.
+
+When he became an old story, and there was no competition for him among
+the brothers, my boy sometimes took him into the woods, and rode him in
+the wandering bridle-paths, with a thrilling sense of adventure. He did
+not like to be alone there, and he oftener had the company of a boy who
+was learning the trade in his father's printing-office. This boy was
+just between him and his elder brother in age, and he was the good
+comrade of both; all the family loved him, and made him one of them, and
+my boy was fond of him because they had some tastes in common that were
+not very common among the other boys. They liked the same books, and
+they both began to write historical romances. My boy's romance was
+founded on facts of the Conquest of Granada, which he had read of again
+and again in Washington Irving, with a passionate pity for the Moors,
+and yet with pride in the grave and noble Spaniards. He would have given
+almost anything to be a Spaniard, and he lived in a dream of some day
+sallying out upon the Vega before Granada, in silk and steel, with an
+Arabian charger under him that champed its bit. In the mean time he did
+what he could with the family pony, and he had long rides in the woods
+with the other boy, who used to get his father's horse when he was not
+using it on Sunday, and race with him through the dangling wild
+grape-vines and pawpaw thickets, and over the reedy levels of the river,
+their hearts both bounding with the same high hopes of a world that
+could never come true.
+
+
+
+
+INDIANS
+
+
+There was not a boy in the Boy's Town who would not gladly have turned
+from the town and lived in the woods if his mother had let him; and in
+every vague plan of running off the forest had its place as a city of
+refuge from pursuit and recapture. The pioneer days were still so close
+to those times that the love of solitary adventure which took the boys'
+fathers into the sylvan wastes of the great West might well have burned
+in the boys' hearts; and if their ideal of life was the free life of the
+woods, no doubt it was because their near ancestors had lived it. At any
+rate, that was their ideal, and they were always talking among
+themselves of how they would go farther West when they grew up, and be
+trappers and hunters. I do not remember any boy but one who meant to be
+a sailor; they lived too hopelessly far from the sea; and I dare say the
+boy who invented the marine-engine governor, and who wished to be a
+pirate, would just as soon have been a bandit of the Osage. In those
+days Oregon had just been opened to settlers, and the boys all wanted to
+go and live in Oregon, where you could stand in your door and shoot deer
+and wild turkey, while a salmon big enough to pull you in was tugging
+away at the line you had set in the river that ran before the
+log-cabin.
+
+If they could, the boys would rather have been Indians than anything
+else, but, as there was really no hope of this whatever, they were
+willing to be settlers, and fight the Indians. They had rather a mixed
+mind about them in the mean time, but perhaps they were not unlike other
+idolaters in both fearing and adoring their idols; perhaps they came
+pretty near being Indians in that, and certainly they came nearer than
+they knew. When they played war, and the war was between the whites and
+the Indians, it was almost as low a thing to be white as it was to be
+British when there were Americans on the other side; in either case you
+had to be beaten. The boys lived in the desire, if not the hope, of some
+time seeing an Indian, and they made the most of the Indians in the
+circus, whom they knew to be just white men dressed up; but none of them
+dreamed that what really happened one day could ever happen. This was at
+the arrival of several canal-boat loads of genuine Indians from the
+Wyandot Reservation in the northwestern part of the State, on their way
+to new lands beyond the Mississippi. The boys' fathers must have known
+that these Indians were coming, but it just shows how stupid the most of
+fathers are, that they never told the boys about it. All at once there
+the Indians were, as if the canal-boats had dropped with them out of
+heaven. There they were, crowding the decks, in their blankets and
+moccasins, braves and squaws and pappooses, standing about or squatting
+in groups, not saying anything, and looking exactly like the pictures.
+The squaws had the pappooses on their backs, and the men and boys had
+bows and arrows in their hands; and as soon as the boats landed the
+Indians, all except the squaws and pappooses, came ashore, and went up
+to the courthouse yard, and began to shoot with their bows and arrows.
+It almost made the boys crazy.
+
+[Illustration: ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE]
+
+Of course they would have liked to have the Indians shoot at birds, or
+some game, but they were mighty glad to have them shoot at cents and
+bits and quarters that anybody could stick up in the ground. The Indians
+would all shoot at the mark till some one hit it, and the one who hit it
+had the money, whatever it was. The boys ran and brought back the
+arrows; and they were so proud to do this that I wonder they lived
+through it. My boy was too bashful to bring the Indians their arrows; he
+could only stand apart and long to approach the filthy savages, whom he
+revered; to have touched the border of one of their blankets would have
+been too much. Some of them were rather handsome, and two or three of
+the Indian boys were so pretty that the Boy's Town boys said they were
+girls. They were of all ages, from old, withered men to children of six
+or seven, but they were all alike grave and unsmiling; the old men were
+not a whit more dignified than the children, and the children did not
+enter into their sport with more zeal and ardor than the wrinkled sages
+who shared it. In fact they were, old and young alike, savages, and the
+boys who looked on and envied them were savages in their ideal of a
+world where people spent their lives in hunting and fishing and ranging
+the woods, and never grew up into the toils and cares that can alone
+make men of boys. They wished to escape these, as many foolish persons
+do among civilized nations, and they thought if they could only escape
+them they would be happy; they did not know that they would be merely
+savage, and that the great difference between a savage and a civilized
+man is work. They would all have been willing to follow these Indians
+away into the Far West, where they were going, and be barbarians for the
+rest of their days; and the wonder is that some of the fellows did not
+try it.
+
+
+
+
+GUNS
+
+
+After the red men had flitted away like red leaves, their memory
+remained with the boys, and a plague of bows and arrows raged among
+them, and it was a good while before they calmed down to their old
+desire of having a gun. But they came back to that at last, for that was
+the normal desire of every boy in the Boy's Town who was not a girl-boy,
+and there were mighty few girl-boys there. Up to a certain point a
+pistol would do, especially if you had bullet-moulds, and could run
+bullets to shoot out of it; only your mother would be sure to see you
+running them, and just as likely as not would be so scared that she
+would say you must not shoot bullets. Then you would have to use
+buckshot, if you could get them anywhere near the right size, or small
+marbles; but a pistol was always a makeshift, and you never could hit
+anything with it, not even a board fence; it always kicked, or burst, or
+something.
+
+Very few boys ever came to have a gun, though they all expected to have
+one. But seven or eight boys would go hunting with one shot-gun, and
+take turn-about shooting; some of the little fellows never got to shoot
+at all, but they could run and see whether the big boys had hit anything
+when they fired, and that was something. This was my boy's privilege for
+a long time before he had a gun of his own, and he went patiently with
+his elder brother, and never expected to fire the gun, except, perhaps,
+to shoot the load off before they got back to town; they were not
+allowed to bring the gun home loaded. It was a gun that was pretty safe
+for anything in front of it, but you never could tell what it was going
+to do. It began by being simply an old gun-barrel, which my boy's
+brother bought of another boy who was sick of it for a fip, as the
+half-real piece was called, and it went on till it got a lock from one
+gunsmith and a stock from another, and was a complete gun. But this took
+time; perhaps a month; for the gunsmiths would only work at it in their
+leisure; they were delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay
+for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made
+himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as
+straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a
+little twist to one side, so that one of the jour printers said it was a
+first-rate gun to shoot round a corner with. Then he made himself a
+powder-flask out of an ox-horn that he got and boiled till it was soft
+(it smelt the whole house up), and then scraped thin with a piece of
+glass; it hung at his side; and he carried his shot in his pantaloons
+pocket. He went hunting with this gun for a good many years, but he had
+never shot anything with it, when his uncle gave him a smooth-bore
+rifle, and he in turn gave his gun to my boy, who must then have been
+nearly ten years old.
+
+It seemed to him that he was quite old enough to have a gun; but he was
+mortified the very next morning after he got it by a citizen who thought
+differently. He had risen at daybreak to go out and shoot kildees on the
+Common, and he was hurrying along with his gun on his shoulder when the
+citizen stopped him and asked him what he was going to do with that gun.
+He said to shoot kildees, and he added that it was his gun. This seemed
+to surprise the citizen even more than the boy could have wished. He
+asked him if he did not think he was a pretty small boy to have a gun;
+and he took the gun from him, and examined it thoughtfully, and then
+handed it back to the boy, who felt himself getting smaller all the
+time. The man went his way without saying anything more, but his
+behavior was somehow so sarcastic that the boy had no pleasure in his
+sport that morning; partly, perhaps, because he found no kildees to
+shoot at on the Common. He only fired off his gun once or twice at a
+fence, and then he sneaked home with it through alleys and by-ways, and
+whenever he met a person he hurried by for fear the person would find
+him too small to have a gun.
+
+Afterward he came to have a bolder spirit about it, and he went hunting
+with it a good deal. It was a very curious kind of gun; you had to snap
+a good many caps on it, sometimes, before the load would go off; and
+sometimes it would hang fire, and then seem to recollect itself, and go
+off, maybe, just when you were going to take it down from your shoulder.
+The barrel was so crooked that it could not shoot straight, but this was
+not the only reason why the boy never hit anything with it. He could not
+shut his left eye and keep his right eye open; so he had to take aim
+with both eyes, or else with the left eye, which was worse yet, till one
+day when he was playing shinny (or hockey) at school, and got a blow
+over his left eye from a shinny-stick. At first he thought his eye was
+put out; he could not see for the blood that poured into it from the cut
+above it. He ran homeward wild with fear, but on the way he stopped at a
+pump to wash away the blood, and then he found his eye was safe. It
+suddenly came into his mind to try if he could not shut that eye now,
+and keep the right one open. He found that he could do it perfectly; by
+help of his handkerchief, he stanched his wound, and made himself
+presentable, with the glassy pool before the pump for a mirror, and went
+joyfully back to school. He kept trying his left eye, to make sure it
+had not lost its new-found art, and as soon as school was out he hurried
+home to share the joyful news with his family.
+
+He went hunting the very next Saturday, and at the first shot he killed
+a bird. It was a suicidal sap-sucker, which had suffered him to steal
+upon it so close that it could not escape even the vagaries of that
+wandering gun-barrel, and was blown into such small pieces that the boy
+could bring only a few feathers of it away. In the evening, when his
+father came home, he showed him these trophies of the chase, and boasted
+of his exploit with the minutest detail. His father asked him whether he
+had expected to eat this sap-sucker, if he could have got enough of it
+together. He said no, sap-suckers were not good to eat. "Then you took
+its poor little life merely for the pleasure of killing it," said the
+father. "Was it a great pleasure to see it die?" The boy hung his head
+in shame and silence; it seemed to him that he would never go hunting
+again. Of course he did go hunting often afterward, but his brother and
+he kept faithfully to the rule of never killing anything that they did
+not want to eat. To be sure, they gave themselves a wide range; they
+were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even
+blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were
+some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked
+to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor
+robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept
+about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to
+shoot them. They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves,
+which used to light on the Basin bank, and pick up the grain scattered
+there from the boats and wagons.
+
+There were a good many things you could do with a gun: you could fire
+your ramrod out of it, and see it sail through the air; you could fill
+the muzzle up with water, on top of a charge, and send the water in a
+straight column at a fence. The boys all believed that you could fire
+that column of water right through a man, and they always wanted to try
+whether it would go through a cow, but they were afraid the owner of the
+cow would find it out. There was a good deal of pleasure in cleaning
+your gun when it got so foul that your ramrod stuck in it and you could
+hardly get it out. You poured hot water into the muzzle and blew it
+through the nipple, till it began to show clear; then you wiped it dry
+with soft rags wound on your gun-screw, and then oiled it with greasy
+tow. Sometimes the tow would get loose from the screw, and stay in the
+barrel, and then you would have to pick enough powder in at the nipple
+to blow it out. Of course I am talking of the old muzzle-loading
+shot-gun, which I dare say the boys never use nowadays.
+
+But the great pleasure of all, in hunting, was getting home tired and
+footsore in the evening, and smelling the supper almost as soon as you
+came in sight of the house. There was nearly always hot biscuit for
+supper, with steak, and with coffee such as nobody but a boy's mother
+ever knew how to make; and just as likely as not there was some kind of
+preserves; at any rate, there was apple-butter. You could hardly take
+the time to wash the powder-grime off your hands and face before you
+rushed to the table; and if you had brought home a yellowhammer you left
+it with your gun on the back porch, and perhaps the cat got it and saved
+you the trouble of cleaning it. A cat can clean a bird a good deal
+quicker than a boy can, and she does not hate to do it half as badly.
+
+Next to the pleasure of getting home from hunting late was the pleasure
+of starting early, as my boy and his brother sometimes did, to shoot
+ducks on the Little Reservoir in the fall. His brother had an
+alarm-clock, which he set at about four, and he was up the instant it
+rang, and pulling my boy out of bed, where he would rather have stayed
+than shot the largest mallard duck in the world. They raked the ashes
+off the bed of coals in the fireplace, and while the embers ticked and
+bristled, and flung out little showers of sparks, they hustled on their
+clothes, and ran down the back stairs into the yard with their guns.
+
+Tip, the dog, was already waiting for them there, for he seemed to know
+they were going that morning, and he began whimpering for joy, and
+twisting himself sideways up against them, and nearly wagging his tail
+off; and licking their hands and faces, and kissing their guns all over;
+he was about crazy. When they started, he knew where they were going,
+and he rushed ahead through the silent little sleeping town, and led the
+way across the wide Commons, where the cows lay in dim bulks on the
+grass, and the geese waddled out of his way with wild, clamorous cries,
+till they came in sight of the Reservoir. Then Tip fell back with my boy
+and let the elder brother go ahead, for he always had a right to the
+first shot; and while he dodged down behind the bank, and crept along to
+the place where the ducks usually were, my boy kept a hold on Tip's
+collar, and took in the beautiful mystery of the early morning. The
+place so familiar by day was estranged to his eyes in that pale light,
+and he was glad of old Tip's company, for it seemed a time when there
+might very well be ghosts about. The water stretched a sheet of smooth,
+gray silver, with little tufts of mist on its surface, and through these
+at last he could see the ducks softly gliding to and fro, and he could
+catch some dreamy sound from them. His heart stood still and then jumped
+wildly in his breast, as the still air was startled with the rush of
+wings, and the water broke with the plunge of other flocks arriving.
+Then he began to make those bets with himself that a boy hopes he will
+lose: he bet that his brother would not hit any of them; he bet that he
+did not even see them; he bet that if he did see them and got a shot at
+them, they would not come back so that he could get a chance himself to
+kill any. It seemed to him that he had to wait an hour, and just when he
+was going to hollo, and tell his brother where the ducks were, the old
+smooth-bore sent out a red flash and a white puff before he heard the
+report; Tip tore loose from his grasp; and he heard the splashing rise
+of the ducks, and the hurtling rush of their wings; and he ran forward,
+yelling, "How many did you hit? Where are they? Where are you? Are they
+coming back? It's my turn now!" and making an outcry that would have
+frightened away a fleet of ironclads, but much less a flock of ducks.
+
+One shot always ended the morning's sport, and there were always good
+reasons why this shot never killed anything.
+
+
+
+
+NUTTING
+
+
+The woods were pretty full of the kind of hickory-trees called pignuts,
+and the boys gathered the nuts, and even ate their small, bitter
+kernels; and around the Poor-House woods there were some shag-barks, but
+the boys did not go for them because of the bull and the crazy people.
+Their great and constant reliance in foraging was the abundance of black
+walnuts which grew everywhere, along the roads and on the river-banks,
+as well as in the woods and the pastures. Long before it was time to go
+walnutting, the boys began knocking off the nuts and trying whether they
+were ripe enough; and just as soon as the kernels began to fill out, the
+fellows began making walnut wagons. I do not know why it was thought
+necessary to have a wagon to gather walnuts, but I know that it was, and
+that a boy had to make a new wagon every year.
+
+No boy's walnut wagon could last till the next year; it did very well if
+it lasted till the next day. He had to make it nearly all with his
+pocket-knife. He could use a saw to block the wheels out of a pine
+board, and he could use a hatchet to rough off the corners of the
+blocks, but he had to use his knife to give them any sort of roundness,
+and they were not very round then; they were apt to be oval in shape,
+and they always wabbled. He whittled the axles out with his knife, and
+he made the hubs with it. He could get a tongue ready-made if he used a
+broom-handle or a hoop-pole, but that had in either case to be whittled
+so it could be fastened to the wagon; he even bored the linchpin holes
+with his knife if he could not get a gimlet; and if he could not get an
+auger, he bored the holes through the wheels with a red-hot poker, and
+then whittled them large enough with his knife. He had to use pine for
+nearly everything, because any other wood was too hard to whittle; and
+then the pine was always splitting. It split in the axles when he was
+making the linchpin holes, and the wheels had to be kept on by linchpins
+that were tied in; the wheels themselves split, and had to be
+strengthened by slats nailed across the rifts. The wagon-bed was a
+candle-box nailed to the axles, and that kept the front axle tight, so
+that it took the whole width of a street to turn a very little wagon in
+without upsetting.
+
+When the wagon was all done, the boy who owned it started off with his
+brothers, or some other boys who had no wagon, to gather walnuts. He
+started early in the morning of some bright autumn day while the frost
+still bearded the grass in the back-yard, and bristled on the fence-tops
+and the roof of the woodshed, and hurried off to the woods so as to get
+there before the other boys had got the walnuts. The best place for them
+was in some woods-pasture where the trees stood free of one another, and
+around them, in among the tall, frosty grass, the tumbled nuts lay
+scattered in groups of twos and threes, or fives, some still
+yellowish-green in their hulls, and some black, but all sending up to
+the nostrils of the delighted boy the incense of their clean, keen,
+wild-woody smell, to be a memory forever.
+
+[Illustration: NUTTING]
+
+The leaves had dropped from the trees overhead, and the branches
+outlined themselves against the blue sky, and dangled from their outer
+stems clusters of the unfallen fruit, as large as oranges, and only
+wanting a touch to send them plumping down into the grass where
+sometimes their fat hulls burst, and the nuts almost leaped into the
+boy's hands. The boys ran, some of them to gather the fallen nuts, and
+others to get clubs and rocks to beat them from the trees; one was sure
+to throw off his jacket and kick off his shoes and climb the tree to
+shake every limb where a walnut was still clinging. When they had got
+them all heaped up like a pile of grape-shot at the foot of the tree,
+they began to hull them, with blows of a stick, or with stones, and to
+pick the nuts from the hulls, where the grubs were battening on their
+assured ripeness, and to toss them into a little heap, a very little
+heap indeed compared with the bulk of that they came from. The boys
+gloried in getting as much walnut stain on their hands as they could,
+for it would not wash off, and it showed for days that they had been
+walnutting; sometimes they got to staining one another's faces with the
+juice, and pretending they were Indians.
+
+The sun rose higher and higher, and burned the frost from the grass, and
+while the boys worked and yelled and chattered they got hotter and
+hotter, and began to take off their shoes and stockings, till every one
+of them was barefoot. Then, about three or four o'clock, they would
+start homeward, with half a bushel of walnuts in their wagon, and their
+shoes and stockings piled in on top of them. That is, if they had good
+luck. In a story, they would always have had good luck, and always gone
+home with half a bushel of walnuts; but this is a history, and so I have
+to own that they usually went home with about two quarts of walnuts
+rattling round under their shoes and stockings in the bottom of the
+wagon. They usually had no such easy time getting them as they always
+would in a story; they did not find them under the trees, or ready to
+drop off, but they had to knock them off with about six or seven clubs
+or rocks to every walnut, and they had to pound the hulls so hard to get
+the nuts out that sometimes they cracked the nuts. That was because they
+usually went walnutting before the walnuts were ripe. But they made just
+as much preparation for drying the nuts on the woodshed roof whether
+they got half a gallon or half a bushel; for they did not intend to stop
+gathering them till they had two or three barrels. They nailed a cleat
+across the roof to keep them from rolling off, and they spread them out
+thin, so that they could look more than they were, and dry better. They
+said they were going to keep them for Christmas, but they had to try
+pretty nearly every hour or so whether they were getting dry, and in
+about three days they were all eaten up.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRE-ENGINES
+
+
+There were two fire-engines in the Boy's Town; but there seemed to be
+something always the matter with them, so that they would not work, if
+there was a fire. When there was no fire, the companies sometimes pulled
+them up through the town to the Basin bank, and practised with them
+against the roofs and fronts of the pork-houses. It was almost as good
+as a muster to see the firemen in their red shirts and black trousers,
+dragging the engine at a run, two and two together, one on each side of
+the rope.
+
+My boy would have liked to speak to a fireman, but he never dared; and
+the foreman of the _Neptune_, which was the larger and feebler of the
+engines, was a figure of such worshipful splendor in his eyes that he
+felt as if he could not be just a common human being. He was a
+storekeeper, to begin with, and he was tall and slim, and his black
+trousers fitted him like a glove; he had a patent-leather helmet, and a
+brass speaking-trumpet, and he gave all his orders through this. It did
+not make any difference how close he was to the men, he shouted
+everything through the trumpet; and when they manned the brakes and
+began to pump, he roared at them, "Down on her, down on her, boys!" so
+that you would have thought the _Neptune_ could put out the world if it
+was burning up. Instead of that there was usually a feeble splutter from
+the nozzle, and sometimes none at all, even if the hose did not break;
+it was fun to see the hose break.
+
+The _Neptune_ was a favorite with the boys, though they believed that
+the _Tremont_ could squirt farther, and they had a belief in its quiet
+efficiency which was fostered by its reticence in public. It was small
+and black, but the _Neptune_ was large, and painted of a gay color lit
+up with gilding that sent the blood leaping through a boy's veins. The
+boys knew the _Neptune_ was out of order, but they were always expecting
+it would come right, and in the mean time they felt that it was an honor
+to the town, and they followed it as proudly back to the engine-house
+after one of its magnificent failures as if it had been a magnificent
+success. The boys were always making magnificent failures themselves,
+and they could feel for the _Neptune_.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS
+
+
+The boys made a very careful study of the circus bills, and when the
+circus came they held the performance to a strict account for any
+difference between the feats and their representation. For a fortnight
+beforehand they worked themselves up for the arrival of the circus into
+a fever of fear and hope, for it was always a question with a great many
+whether they could get their fathers to give them the money to go in.
+The full price was two bits, and the half-price was a bit, or a Spanish
+real, then a commoner coin than the American dime in the West; and every
+boy, for that time only, wished to be little enough to look young enough
+to go in for a bit. Editors of newspapers had a free ticket for every
+member of their families; and my boy was sure of going to the circus
+from the first rumor of its coming. But he was none the less deeply
+thrilled by the coming event, and he was up early on the morning of the
+great day, to go out and meet the circus procession beyond the
+corporation line.
+
+I do not really know how boys live through the wonder and the glory of
+such a sight. Once there were two chariots--one held the band in
+red-and-blue uniforms, and was drawn by eighteen piebald horses; and the
+other was drawn by a troop of Shetland ponies, and carried in a vast
+mythical sea-shell little boys in spangled tights and little girls in
+the gauze skirts and wings of fairies. There was not a flaw in this
+splendor to the young eyes that gloated on it, and that followed it in
+rapture through every turn and winding of its course in the Boy's Town;
+nor in the magnificence of the actors and actresses, who came riding two
+by two in their circus dresses after the chariots, and looking some
+haughty and contemptuous, and others quiet and even bored, as if it were
+nothing to be part of such a procession. The boys tried to make them out
+by the pictures and names on the bills: which was Rivers, the
+bareback-rider, and which was O'Dale, the champion tumbler; which was
+the India-rubber man, which the ring-master, which the clown.
+
+Covered with dust, gasping with the fatigue of a three hours' run beside
+the procession, but fresh at heart as in the beginning, they arrived
+with it on the Commons, where the tent-wagons were already drawn up, and
+the ring was made, and mighty men were driving the iron-headed
+tent-stakes, and stretching the ropes of the great skeleton of the
+pavilion which they were just going to clothe with canvas. The boys were
+not allowed to come anywhere near, except three or four who got leave to
+fetch water from a neighboring well, and thought themselves richly paid
+with half-price tickets. The other boys were proud to pass a word with
+them as they went by with their brimming buckets; fellows who had money
+to go in would have been glad to carry water just for the glory of
+coming close to the circus men. They stood about in twos and threes, and
+lay upon the grass in groups debating whether a tan-bark ring was better
+than a saw-dust ring; there were different opinions. They came as near
+the wagons as they dared, and looked at the circus horses munching hay
+from the tail-boards, just like common horses. The wagons were left
+standing outside of the tent; but when it was up, the horses were taken
+into the dressing-room, and then the boys, with many a backward look at
+the wide spread of canvas, and the flags and streamers floating over it
+from the centre-pole (the centre-pole was revered almost like a
+distinguished personage), ran home to dinner so as to get back good and
+early, and be among the first to go in.
+
+All round, before the circus doors were open, the doorkeepers of the
+side-shows were inviting people to come in and see the giants and fat
+woman and boa-constrictors, and there were stands for peanuts and candy
+and lemonade; the vendors cried, "Ice-cold lemonade, from fifteen
+hundred miles under ground! Walk up, roll up, tumble up, any way you get
+up!" The boys thought this brilliant drolling, but they had no time to
+listen after the doors were open, and they had no money to spend on
+side-shows or dainties anyway. Inside the tent they found it dark and
+cool, and their hearts thumped in their throats with the wild joy of
+being there; they recognized one another with amaze, as if they had not
+met for years, and the excitement kept growing as other fellows came in.
+It was lots of fun, too, watching the country-jakes, as the boys called
+the farmer-folk, and seeing how green they looked, and now some of them
+tried to act smart with the circus men that came round with oranges to
+sell. But the great thing was to see whether fellows that said they were
+going to hook in really got in. The boys held it to be a high and
+creditable thing to hook into a show of any kind, but hooking into a
+circus was something that a fellow ought to be held in special honor for
+doing. He ran great risks, and if he escaped the vigilance of the
+massive circus man who patrolled the outside of the tent with a cow-hide
+and a bulldog, perhaps he merited the fame he was sure to win.
+
+I do not know where boys get some of the notions of morality that govern
+them. These notions are like the sports and plays that a boy leaves off
+as he gets older to the boys that are younger. He outgrows them, and
+other boys grow into them, and then outgrow them as he did. Perhaps they
+come down to the boyhood of our time from the boyhood of the race, and
+the unwritten laws of conduct may have prevailed among the earliest
+Aryans on the plains of Asia that I now find so strange in a retrospect
+of the Boy's Town.
+
+The standard of honor there was, in a certain way, very high among the
+boys; they would have despised a thief as he deserved, and I cannot
+remember one of them who might not have been safely trusted. None of
+them would have taken an apple out of a market-wagon, or stolen a melon
+from a farmer who came to town with it; but they would all have thought
+it fun, if not right, to rob an orchard or hook a watermelon out of a
+patch. This would have been a foray into the enemy's country, and the
+fruit of the adventure would have been the same as the plunder of a
+city, or the capture of a vessel belonging to him on the high seas. In
+the same way, if one of the boys had seen a circus man drop a quarter,
+he would have hurried to give it back to him, but he would only have
+been proud to hook into the circus man's show, and the other fellows
+would have been proud of his exploit, too, as something that did honor
+to them all. As a person who enclosed bounds and forbade trespass, the
+circus man constituted himself the enemy of every boy who respected
+himself, and challenged him to practise any sort of strategy. There was
+not a boy in the crowd that my boy went with who would have been allowed
+to hook into a circus by his parents; yet hooking in was an ideal that
+was cherished among them, that was talked of, and that was even
+sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, when a fellow really hooked
+in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid, one of the fellows could
+not stand it. He asked him just how and where he got in, and then he
+went to the door, and got back his money from the doorkeeper upon the
+plea that he did not feel well; and in five or ten minutes he was back
+among the boys, a hero of such moral grandeur as would be hard to
+describe. Not one of the fellows saw him as he really was--a little
+lying, thievish scoundrel. Not even my boy saw him so, though he had on
+some other point of personal honesty the most fantastic scruples.
+
+The boys liked to be at the circus early so as to make sure of the grand
+entry of the performers into the ring, where they caracoled round on
+horseback, and gave a delicious foretaste of the wonders to come. The
+fellows were united in this, but upon other matters feeling
+varied--some liked tumbling best; some the slack-rope; some
+bareback-riding; some the feats of tossing knives and balls and catching
+them. There never was more than one ring in those days; and you were not
+tempted to break your neck and set your eyes forever askew, by trying to
+watch all the things that went on at once in two or three rings.
+
+The boys did not miss the smallest feats of any performance, and they
+enjoyed them every one, not equally, but fully. They had their
+preferences, of course, as I have hinted; and one of the most popular
+acts was that where a horse has been trained to misbehave, so that
+nobody can mount him; and after the actors have tried him, the
+ring-master turns to the audience, and asks if some gentleman among them
+wants to try it. Nobody stirs, till at last a tipsy country-jake is seen
+making his way down from one of the top seats toward the ring. He can
+hardly walk, he is so drunk, and the clown has to help him across the
+ring-board, and even then he trips and rolls over on the saw-dust, and
+has to be pulled to his feet. When they bring him up to the horse, he
+falls against it; and the little fellows think he will certainly get
+killed. But the big boys tell the little fellows to shut up and watch
+out. The ring-master and the clown manage to get the country-jake on to
+the broad platform on the horse's back, and then the ring-master cracks
+his whip, and the two supes who have been holding the horse's head let
+go, and the horse begins cantering round the ring. The little fellows
+are just sure the country-jake is going to fall off, he reels and
+totters so; but the big boys tell them to keep watching out; and pretty
+soon the country-jake begins to straighten up. He begins to unbutton his
+long gray overcoat, and then he takes it off and throws it into the
+ring, where one of the supes catches it. Then he sticks a short pipe
+into his mouth, and pulls on an old wool hat, and flourishes a stick
+that the supe throws to him, and you see that he is an Irishman just
+come across the sea; and then off goes another coat, and he comes out a
+British soldier in white duck trousers and red coat. That comes off, and
+he is an American sailor, with his hands on his hips, dancing a
+horn-pipe. Suddenly away flash wig and beard and false-face, the
+pantaloons are stripped off with the same movement, the actor stoops for
+the reins lying on the horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatest
+three-horse rider in the world, nimbly capers on the broad pad, and
+kisses his hand to the shouting and cheering spectators as he dashes
+from the ring past the braying and bellowing brass-band into the
+dressing-room!
+
+The big boys have known all along that he was not a real country-jake;
+but when the trained mule begins, and shakes everybody off, just like
+the horse, and another country-jake gets up, and offers to bet that he
+can ride that mule, nobody can tell whether he is a real country-jake or
+not. This is always the last thing in the performance, and the boys have
+seen with heavy hearts many signs openly betokening the end which they
+knew was at hand. The actors have come out of the dressing-room door,
+some in their every-day clothes, and some with just overcoats on over
+their circus-dresses, and they lounge about near the bandstand watching
+the performance in the ring. Some of the people are already getting up
+to go out, and stand for this last act, and will not mind the shouts of
+"Down in front! Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke out
+their bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance of
+anything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardly
+into the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astride
+the mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking,
+rearing. He sticks on, and everybody cheers him, and the owner of the
+mule begins to get mad and to make it do more things to shake the
+country-jake off. At last, with one convulsive spring, it flings him
+from its back, and dashes into the dressing-room, while the country-jake
+picks himself up and vanishes among the crowd.
+
+A man mounted on a platform in the ring is imploring the ladies and
+gentlemen to keep their seats, and to buy tickets for the negro-minstrel
+entertainment which is to follow, but which is not included in the price
+of admission. The boys would like to stay, but they have not the money,
+and they go out clamoring over the performance, and trying to decide
+which was the best feat. As to which was the best actor, there is never
+any question; it is the clown, who showed by the way he turned a double
+somersault that he can do anything, and who chooses to be clown simply
+because he is too great a creature to enter into rivalry with the other
+actors.
+
+There will be another performance in the evening, with real fights
+outside between the circus men and the country-jakes, and perhaps some
+of the Basin rounders, but the boys do not expect to come; that would be
+too much. The boy's brother once stayed away in the afternoon, and went
+at night with one of the jour printers; but he was not able to report
+that the show was better than it was in the afternoon. He did not get
+home till nearly ten o'clock, though, and he saw the sides of the tent
+dropped before the people got out; that was a great thing; and what was
+greater yet, and reflected a kind of splendor on the boy at second hand,
+was that the jour printer and the clown turned out to be old friends.
+After the circus, the boy actually saw them standing near the
+centre-pole talking together; and the next day the jour showed the
+grease that had dripped on his coat from the candles. Otherwise the boy
+might have thought it was a dream, that some one he knew had talked on
+equal terms with the clown. The boys were always intending to stay up
+and see the circus go out of town, and they would have done so, but
+their mothers would not let them. This may have been one reason why none
+of them ever ran off with a circus.
+
+As soon as a circus had been in town, the boys began to have circuses of
+their own, and to practise for them. Everywhere you could see boys
+upside down, walking on their hands or standing on them with their legs
+dangling over, or stayed against house walls. It was easy to stand on
+your head; one boy stood on his head so much that he had to have it
+shaved, in the brain-fever that he got from standing on it; but that did
+not stop the other fellows. Another boy fell head downward from a rail
+where he was skinning-the-cat, and nearly broke his neck, and made it so
+sore that it was stiff ever so long. Another boy, who was playing
+Samson, almost had his leg torn off by the fellows that were pulling at
+it with a hook; and he did have the leg of his pantaloons torn off.
+Nothing could stop the boys but time, or some other play coming in; and
+circuses lasted a good while. Some of the boys learned to turn
+hand-springs; anybody could turn cart-wheels; one fellow, across the
+river, could just run along and throw a somersault and light on his
+feet; lots of fellows could light on their backs; but if you had a
+spring-board, or shavings under a bank, like those by the turning-shop,
+you could practise for somersaults pretty safely.
+
+All the time you were practising you were forming your circus company.
+The great trouble was not that any boy minded paying five or ten pins to
+come in, but that so many fellows wanted to belong there were hardly any
+left to form an audience. You could get girls, but even as spectators
+girls were a little _too_ despicable; they did not know anything; they
+had no sense; if a fellow got hurt they cried. Then another thing was,
+where to have the circus. Of course it was simply hopeless to think of a
+tent, and a boy's circus was very glad to get a barn. The boy whose
+father owned the barn had to get it for the circus without his father
+knowing it; and just as likely as not his mother would hear the noise
+and come out and break the whole thing up while you were in the very
+middle of it. Then there were all sorts of anxieties and perplexities
+about the dress. You could do something by turning your roundabout
+inside out, and rolling your trousers up as far as they would go; but
+what a fellow wanted to make him a real circus-actor was a long pair of
+white cotton stockings, and I never knew a fellow that got a pair; I
+heard of many a fellow who was said to have got a pair; but when you
+came down to the fact, they vanished like ghosts when you try to verify
+them. I believe the fellows always expected to get them out of a
+bureau-drawer or the clothes-line at home, but failed. In most other
+ways, a boy's circus was always a failure, like most other things boys
+undertake. They usually broke up under the strain of rivalry; everybody
+wanted to be the clown or ring-master; or else the boy they got the barn
+of behaved badly, and went into the house crying, and all the fellows
+had to run.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PASSING SHOWS
+
+
+There were only two kinds of show known by that name in the Boy's Town:
+a nigger show, or a performance of burnt-cork minstrels; and an animal
+show, or a strolling menagerie; and the boys always meant a menagerie
+when they spoke of a show, unless they said just what sort of show. The
+only perfect joy on earth in the way of an entertainment, of course, was
+a circus, but after the circus the show came unquestionably next. It
+made a processional entry into the town almost as impressive as the
+circus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation line
+in the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or five
+camels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession,
+the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, and
+then the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips and
+contemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, with
+pictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild beasts and
+birds inside; lions first, then tigers (never meaner than Royal Bengal
+ones, which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards,
+then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears
+and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle;
+and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise, and all the
+rest.
+
+From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camels to get
+what good they could out of the scenes in which these hidden wonders
+were dramatized in acts of rapine or the chase, but they always came
+forward to the elephants and camels again. Even with them they had to
+endure a degree of denial, for although you could see most of the
+camels' figures, the elephants were so heavily draped that it was a kind
+of disappointment to look at them. The boys kept as close as they could,
+and came as near getting under the elephants' feet as the keepers would
+allow; but, after all, they were driven off a good deal and had to keep
+stealing back. They gave the elephants apples and bits of cracker and
+cake, and some tried to put tobacco into their trunks, though they knew
+very well that it was nearly certain death to do so; for any elephant
+that was deceived that way would recognize the boy that did it, and kill
+him the next time he came, if it was twenty years afterward. The boys
+used to believe that the Miami bridge would break down under the
+elephants if they tried to cross it, and they would have liked to see it
+do it, but no one ever saw it, perhaps because the elephants always
+waded the river. Some boys had seen them wading it, and stopping to
+drink and squirt the water out of their trunks. If an elephant got a boy
+that had given him tobacco into the river, he would squirt water on him
+till he drowned him. Still, some boys always tried to give the
+elephants tobacco, just to see how they would act for the time being.
+
+A show was not so much in favor as a circus, because there was so little
+performance in the ring. You could go round and look at the animals,
+mostly very sleepy in their cages, but you were not allowed to poke them
+through the bars, or anything; and when you took your seat there was
+nothing much till Herr Driesbach entered the lions' cage, and began to
+make them jump over his whip. It was some pleasure to see him put his
+head between the jaws of the great African King of Beasts, but the lion
+never did anything to him, and so the act wanted a true dramatic climax.
+The boys would really rather have seen a bareback-rider, like James
+Rivers, turn a back-somersault and light on his horse's crupper, any
+time, though they respected Herr Driesbach, too; they did not care much
+for a woman who once went into the lions' cage and made them jump round.
+
+The boys had their own beliefs about the different animals, and one of
+these concerned the inappeasable ferocity of the zebra. I do not know
+why the zebra should have had this repute, for he certainly never did
+anything to deserve it; but, for the matter of that, he was like all the
+other animals. Bears were not much esteemed, but they would have been if
+they could have been really seen hugging anybody to death. It was
+always hoped that some of the fiercest animals would get away and have
+to be hunted down, and retaken after they had killed a lot of dogs. If
+the elephants, some of them, had gone crazy, it would have been
+something, for then they would have roamed up and down the turnpike
+smashing buggies and wagons, and had to be shot with the six-pound
+cannon that was used to celebrate the Fourth of July with.
+
+Another thing that was against the show was that the animals were fed
+after it was out, and you could not see the tigers tearing their prey
+when the great lumps of beef were thrown them. There was somehow not so
+much chance of hooking into a show as a circus, because the seats did
+not go all round, and you could be seen under the cages as soon as you
+got in under the canvas. I never heard of a boy that hooked into a show;
+perhaps nobody ever tried.
+
+But the great reason of all was that you could not have an animal show
+of your own as you could a circus. You could not get the animals; and no
+boy living could act a camel, or a Royal Bengal tiger, or an elephant so
+as to look the least like one.
+
+Of course you could have negro shows, and the boys often had them; but
+they were not much fun, and you were always getting the black on your
+shirt-sleeves.
+
+
+
+
+THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN
+
+
+A great new experience which now came to the boy was the theatre, which
+he had sometimes heard his father speak of. There had once been a
+theatre in the Boy's Town, when a strolling company came up from
+Cincinnati, and opened for a season in an empty pork-house. But that was
+a long time ago, and, though he had written a tragedy, all that the boy
+knew of a theatre was from a picture in a Sunday-school book where a
+stage scene was given to show what kind of desperate amusements a person
+might come to in middle life if he began by breaking the Sabbath in his
+youth. His brother had once been taken to a theatre in Pittsburg by one
+of their river-going uncles, and he often told about it; but my boy
+formed no conception of the beautiful reality from his accounts of a
+burglar who jumped from a roof and was chased by a watchman with a
+pistol up and down a street with houses painted on a curtain.
+
+The company which came to the Boy's Town in his time was again from
+Cincinnati, and it was under the management of the father and mother of
+two actresses, afterward famous, who were then children, just starting
+upon their career. These pretty little creatures took the leading parts
+in _Bombastes Furioso_ the first night my boy ever saw a play, and he
+instantly fell impartially in love with both of them, and tacitly
+remained their abject slave for a great while after. When the smaller of
+them came out with a large pair of stage boots in one hand and a drawn
+sword in the other, and said:
+
+    "Whoever dares these boots displace
+    Shall meet Bombastes face to face,"
+
+if the boy had not already been bereft of his senses by the melodrama
+preceding the burlesque, he must have been transported by her beauty,
+her grace, her genius. He, indeed, gave her and her sister his heart,
+but his mind was already gone, rapt from him by the adorable pirate
+who fought a losing fight with broadswords, two up and two
+down--click-click, click-click--and died all over the deck of the pirate
+ship in the opening piece. This was called the _Beacon of Death_, and
+the scene represented the forecastle of the pirate ship with a lantern
+dangling from the rigging, to lure unsuspecting merchantmen to their
+doom. Afterward the boy remembered nothing of the story, but a scrap of
+the dialogue meaninglessly remained with him; and when the pirate
+captain appeared with his bloody crew and said, hoarsely, "Let us go
+below and get some brandy!" the boy would have bartered all his hopes
+of bliss to have been that abandoned ruffian. In fact, he always liked,
+and longed to be, the villain, rather than any other person in the play,
+and he so glutted himself with crime of every sort in his tender years
+at the theatre that he afterward came to be very tired of it, and
+avoided the plays and novels that had very marked villains in them.
+
+He was in an ecstasy as soon as the curtain rose that night, and he
+lived somewhere out of his body as long as the playing lasted, which was
+well on to midnight; for in those days the theatre did not meanly put
+the public off with one play, but gave it a heartful and its money's
+worth with three. On his first night my boy saw _The Beacon of Death_,
+_Bombastes Furioso_, and _Black-Eyed Susan_, and he never afterward saw
+less than three plays each night, and he never missed a night, as long
+as the theatre languished in the unfriendly air of that mainly
+Calvinistic community, where the theatre was regarded by most good
+people as the eighth of the seven deadly sins. The whole day long he
+dwelt in a dream of it that blotted out, or rather consumed with more
+effulgent brightness, all the other day-dreams he had dreamed before,
+and his heart almost burst with longing to be a villain like those
+villains on the stage, to have a mustache--a black mustache--such as
+they wore at a time when every one off the stage was clean shaven, and
+somehow to end bloodily, murderously, as became a villain.
+
+I dare say this was not quite a wholesome frame of mind for a boy of ten
+years; but I do not defend it; I only portray it. Being the boy he was,
+he was destined somehow to dwell half the time in a world of dreamery;
+and I have tried to express how, when he had once got enough of villany,
+he reformed his ideals and rather liked virtue.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS
+
+
+Every boy is two or three boys, or twenty or thirty different kinds of
+boys in one; he is all the time living many lives and forming many
+characters; but it is a good thing if he can keep one life and one
+character when he gets to be a man. He may turn out to be like an onion
+when he is grown up, and be nothing but hulls, that you keep peeling
+off, one after another, till you think you have got down to the heart,
+at last, and then you have got down to nothing.
+
+All the boys may have been like my boy in the Boy's Town, in having each
+an inward being that was not the least like their outward being, but
+that somehow seemed to be their real self, whether it truly was so or
+not. But I am certain that this was the case with him, and that while
+he was joyfully sharing the wild sports and conforming to the savage
+usages of the boy's world about him, he was dwelling in a wholly
+different world within him, whose wonders no one else knew. I could not
+tell now these wonders any more than he could have told them then; but
+it was a world of dreams, of hopes, of purposes, which he would have
+been more ashamed to avow for himself than I should be to avow for him.
+It was all vague and vast, and it came out of the books that he read,
+and that filled his soul with their witchery, and often held him aloof
+with their charm in the midst of the plays from which they could not
+lure him wholly away, or at all away. He did not know how or when their
+enchantment began, and he could hardly recall the names of some of them
+afterward.
+
+First of them was Goldsmith's _History of Greece_, which made him an
+Athenian of Pericles' time, and Goldsmith's _History of Rome_, which
+naturalized him in a Roman citizenship chiefly employed in slaying
+tyrants; from the time of Appius Claudius down to the time of Domitian,
+there was hardly a tyrant that he did not slay. After he had read these
+books, not once or twice, but twenty times over, his father thought fit
+to put into his hands _The Travels of Captain Ashe in North America_, to
+encourage, or perhaps to test, his taste for useful reading; but this
+was a failure. The captain's travels were printed with long esses, and
+the boy could make nothing of them, for other reasons. The fancy
+nourished upon
+
+    "The glory that was Greece
+    And the grandeur that was Rome,"
+
+starved amid the robust plenty of the Englishman's criticisms of our
+early manners and customs. Neither could money hire the boy to read
+_Malte-Brun's Geography_, in three large folios, of a thousand pages
+each, for which there was a standing offer of fifty cents from the
+father, who had never been able to read it himself.
+
+But shortly after he failed so miserably with Captain Ashe, the boy came
+into possession of a priceless treasure. It was that little treatise on
+_Greek and Roman Mythology_ which I have mentioned, and which he must
+literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to
+have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it;
+his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the
+boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the
+back part of his grammar, made poems from it for years, and appeared in
+many transfigurations, as this and that god and demigod and hero upon
+imagined occasions in the Boy's Town, to the fancied admiration of all
+the other fellows. I do not know just why he wished to appear to his
+grandmother in a vision; now as Mercury with winged feet, now as Apollo
+with his drawn bow, now as Hercules leaning upon his club and resting
+from his Twelve Labors. Perhaps it was because he thought that his
+grandmother, who used to tell the children about her life in Wales, and
+show them the picture of a castle where she had once slept when she was
+a girl, would appreciate him in these apotheoses. If he believed they
+would make a vivid impression upon the sweet old Quaker lady, no doubt
+he was right.
+
+There was another book which he read about this time, and that was _The
+Greek Soldier_. It was the story of a young Greek, a glorious Athenian,
+who had fought through the Greek war of independence against the Turks,
+and then come to America and published the narrative of his adventures.
+They fired my boy with a retrospective longing to have been present at
+the Battle of Navarino, when the allied ships of the English, French,
+and Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet; but it seemed to him that he
+could not have borne to have the allies impose a king upon the Greeks,
+when they really wanted a republic, and so he was able to console
+himself for having been absent. He did what he could in fighting the war
+over again, and he intended to harden himself for the long struggle by
+sleeping on the floor, as the Greek soldier had done. But the children
+often fell asleep on the floor in the warmth of the hearth-fire; and his
+preparation for the patriotic strife was not distinguishable in its
+practical effect from a reluctance to go to bed at the right hour.
+
+Captain Riley's narrative of his shipwreck on the coast of Africa, and
+his captivity among the Arabs, was a book which my boy and his brother
+prized with a kind of personal interest, because their father told them
+that he had once seen a son of Captain Riley when he went to get his
+appointment of collector at Columbus, and that this son was named
+William Willshire Riley, after the good English merchant, William
+Willshire, who had ransomed Captain Riley. William Willshire seemed to
+them almost the best man who ever lived; though my boy had secretly a
+greater fondness for the Arab, Sidi Hamet, who was kind to Captain Riley
+and kept his brother Seid from ill-treating him whenever he could.
+Probably the boy liked him better because the Arab was more picturesque
+than the Englishman. The whole narrative was very interesting; it had a
+vein of sincere and earnest piety in it which was not its least charm,
+and it was written in a style of old-fashioned stateliness which was not
+without its effect with the boys.
+
+Somehow they did not think of the Arabs in this narrative as of the same
+race and faith with the Arabs of Bagdad and the other places in the
+_Arabian Nights_. They did not think whether these were Mohammedans or
+not; they naturalized them in the fairy world where all boys are
+citizens, and lived with them there upon the same familiar terms as they
+lived with Robinson Crusoe. Their father once told them that _Robinson
+Crusoe_ had robbed the real narrative of Alexander Selkirk of the place
+it ought to have held in the remembrance of the world; and my boy had a
+feeling of guilt in reading it, as if he were making himself the
+accomplice of an impostor.
+
+He liked the _Arabian Nights_, but oddly enough these wonderful tales
+made no such impression on his fancy as the stories in a wretchedly
+inferior book made. He did not know the name of this book, or who wrote
+it; from which I imagine that much of his reading was of the purblind
+sort that ignorant grown-up people do, without any sort of literary
+vision. He read this book perpetually, when he was not reading his
+_Greek and Roman Mythology_; and then suddenly, one day, as happens in
+childhood with so many things, it vanished out of his possession as if
+by magic. Perhaps he lost it; perhaps he lent it; at any rate it was
+gone, and he never got it back, and he never knew what book it was till
+thirty years afterward, when he picked up from a friend's library-table
+a copy of _Gesta Romanorum_, and recognized in this collection of old
+monkish legends the long-missing treasure of his boyhood.
+
+These stories, without beauty of invention, without art of construction
+or character, without spirituality in their crude materialization, which
+were read aloud in the refectories of mediæval cloisters while the monks
+sat at meat, laid a spell upon the soul of the boy that governed his
+life. He conformed his conduct to the principles and maxims which
+actuated the behavior of the shadowy people of these dry-as-dust tales;
+he went about drunk with the fumes of fables about Roman emperors that
+never were, in an empire that never was; and, though they tormented him
+by putting a mixed and impossible civilization in the place of that he
+knew from his Goldsmith, he was quite helpless to break from their
+influence. He was always expecting some wonderful thing to happen to him
+as things happened there in fulfilment of some saying or prophecy; and
+at every trivial moment he made sayings and prophecies for himself,
+which he wished events to fulfil. One Sunday when he was walking in an
+alley behind one of the stores, he found a fur cap that had probably
+fallen out of the store-loft window. He ran home with it, and in his
+simple-hearted rapture he told his mother that as soon as he picked it
+up there came into his mind the words, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and he could hardly wait for Monday to come and
+let him restore the cap to its owner and receive an enduring prosperity
+in reward of his virtue. Heaven knows what form he expected this to
+take; but when he found himself in the store, he lost all courage; his
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a syllable
+of the fine phrases he had made to himself. He laid the cap on the
+counter without a word; the storekeeper came up and took it in his hand.
+"What's this?" he said. "Why, this is ours," and he tossed the cap into
+a loose pile of hats by the showcase, and the boy slunk out, cut to the
+heart and crushed to the dust. It was such a cruel disappointment and
+mortification that it was rather a relief to have his brother mock him,
+and come up and say from time to time, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and then split into a jeering laugh. At least he
+could fight his brother, and, when he ran, could stone him; and he could
+throw quads and quoins, and pieces of riglet at the jour printers when
+the story spread to them, and one of them would begin, "He who
+picketh--"
+
+He could not make anything either of Byron or Cowper; and he did not
+even try to read the little tree-calf volumes of Homer and Virgil which
+his father had in the versions of Pope and Dryden; the small
+copper-plates with which they were illustrated conveyed no suggestion to
+him. Afterward he read Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, and he formed a
+great passion for Pope's _Pastorals_, which he imitated in their easy
+heroics; but till he came to read Longfellow, and Tennyson, and Heine,
+he never read any long poem without more fatigue than pleasure. His
+father used to say that the taste for poetry was an acquired taste, like
+the taste for tomatoes, and that he would come to it yet; but he never
+came to it, or so much of it as some people seemed to do, and he always
+had his sorrowful misgivings as to whether they liked it as much as they
+pretended. I think, too, that it should be a flavor, a spice, a sweet, a
+delicate relish in the high banquet of literature, and never a chief
+dish; and I should not know how to defend my boy for trying to make long
+poems of his own at the very time when he found it so hard to read other
+people's long poems.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+My boy was twelve years old, and was already a swift compositor, though
+he was still so small that he had to stand on a chair to reach the case
+in setting type on Taylor's inaugural message. But what he lacked in
+stature he made up in gravity of demeanor; and he got the name of "The
+Old Man" from the printers as soon as he began to come about the office,
+which he did almost as soon as he could walk. His first attempt in
+literature, an essay on the vain and disappointing nature of human life,
+he set up and printed off himself in his sixth or seventh year; and the
+printing-office was in some sort his home, as well as his school, his
+university. He could no more remember learning to set type than he could
+remember learning to read; and in after-life he could not come within
+smell of the ink, the dusty types, the humid paper, of a printing-office
+without that tender swelling of the heart which so fondly responds to
+any memory-bearing perfume: his youth, his boyhood, almost his infancy
+came back to him in it. He now looked forward eagerly to helping on the
+new paper, and somewhat proudly to living in the larger place the family
+were going to. The moment it was decided he began to tell the boys that
+he was going to live in a city, and he felt that it gave him
+distinction. He had nothing but joy in it, and he did not dream that as
+the time drew near it could be sorrow. But when it came at last, and he
+was to leave the house, the town, the boys, he found himself deathly
+homesick.
+
+The parting days were days of gloom; the parting was an anguish of
+bitter tears. Nothing consoled him but the fact that they were going all
+the way to the new place in a canal-boat, which his father chartered for
+the trip. My boy and his brother had once gone to Cincinnati in a
+canal-boat, with a friendly captain of their acquaintance, and, though
+they were both put to sleep in a berth so narrow that when they turned
+they fell out on the floor, the glory of the adventure remained with
+him, and he could have thought of nothing more delightful than such
+another voyage. The household goods were piled up in the middle of the
+boat, and the family had a cabin forward, which seemed immense to the
+children. They played in it and ran races up and down the long
+canal-boat roof, where their father and mother sometimes put their
+chairs and sat to admire the scenery.
+
+They arrived safely at their journey's end, without any sort of
+accident. They had made the whole forty miles in less than two days, and
+were all as well as when they started, without having suffered for a
+moment from seasickness. The boat drew up at the tow-path just before
+the stable belonging to the house which the father had already taken,
+and the whole family at once began helping the crew put the things
+ashore. The boys thought it would have been a splendid stable to keep
+the pony in, only they had sold the pony; but they saw in an instant
+that it would do for a circus as soon as they could get acquainted with
+enough boys to have one.
+
+The strangeness of the house and street, and the necessity of meeting
+the boys of the neighborhood, and paying with his person for his
+standing among them, kept my boy interested for a time, and he did not
+realize at first how much he missed the Boy's Town and all the familiar
+fellowships there, and all the manifold privileges of the place. Then he
+began to be very homesick, and to be torn with the torment of a divided
+love. His mother, whom he loved so dearly, so tenderly, was here, and
+wherever she was, that was home; and yet home was yonder, far off, at
+the end of those forty inexorable miles, where he had left his life-long
+mates. The first months there was a dumb heartache at the bottom of
+every pleasure and excitement.
+
+After a while he was allowed to revisit the Boy's Town. It could only
+have been three or four months after he had left it, but it already
+seemed a very long time; and he figured himself returning as stage
+heroes do to the scenes of their childhood, after an absence of some
+fifteen years. He fancied that if the boys did not find him grown, they
+would find him somehow changed, and that he would dazzle them with the
+light accumulated by his residence in a city. He was going to stay with
+his grandmother, and he planned to make a long stay; for he was very
+fond of her, and he liked the quiet and comfort of her pleasant house.
+He must have gone back by the canal-packet, but his memory kept no
+record of the fact, and afterward he knew only of having arrived, and of
+searching about in a ghostly fashion for his old comrades. They may have
+been at school; at any rate, he found very few of them; and with them he
+was certainly strange enough; too strange, even. They received him with
+a kind of surprise; and they could not begin playing together at once in
+the old way. He went to all the places that were so dear to him; but he
+felt in them the same kind of refusal, or reluctance, that he felt in
+the boys. His heart began to ache again, he did not quite know why;
+only it ached. When he went up from his grandmother's to look at the
+Faulkner house, he realized that it was no longer home, and he could not
+bear the sight of it. There were other people living in it; strange
+voices sounded from the open doors, strange faces peered from the
+windows.
+
+He came back to his grandmother's, bruised and defeated, and spent the
+morning indoors reading. After dinner he went out again, and hunted up
+that queer earth-spirit who had been so long and closely his only
+friend. He at least was not changed; he was as unwashed and as unkempt
+as ever; but he seemed shy of my poor boy. He had probably never been
+shaken hands with in his life before; he dropped my boy's hand; and they
+stood looking at each other, not knowing what to say. My boy had on his
+best clothes, which he wore so as to affect the Boy's Town boys with the
+full splendor of a city boy. After all, he was not so very splendid, but
+his presence altogether was too much for the earth-spirit, and he
+vanished out of his consciousness like an apparition.
+
+After school was out in the afternoon, he met more of the boys, but none
+of them knew just what to do with him. The place that he had once had in
+their lives was filled; he was an outsider, who might be suffered among
+them, but he was no longer of them. He did not understand this at once,
+nor well know what hurt him. But something was gone that could not be
+called back, something lost that could not be found.
+
+At tea-time his grandfather came home and gravely made him welcome; the
+uncle who was staying with them was jovially kind. But a heavy
+homesickness weighed down the child's heart, which now turned from the
+Boy's Town as longingly as it had turned toward it before.
+
+They all knelt down with the grandfather before they went to the table.
+There had been a good many deaths from cholera during the day, and the
+grandfather prayed for grace and help amid the pestilence that walketh
+in darkness and wasteth at noonday in such a way that the boy felt there
+would be very little of either for him unless he got home at once. All
+through the meal that followed he was trying to find the courage to say
+that he must go home. When he managed to say it, his grandmother and
+aunt tried to comfort and coax him, and his uncle tried to shame him,
+out of his homesickness, to joke it off, to make him laugh. But his
+grandfather's tender heart was moved. He could not endure the child's
+mute misery; he said he must go home if he wished.
+
+In half an hour the boy was on the canal-packet speeding homeward at the
+highest pace of the three-horse team, and the Boy's Town was out of
+sight. He could not sleep for excitement that night, and he came and
+spent the time talking on quite equal terms with the steersman, one of
+the canalers whom he had admired afar in earlier and simpler days. He
+found him a very amiable fellow, by no means haughty, who began to tell
+him funny stories, and who even let him take the helm for a while. The
+rudder-handle was of polished iron, very different from the clumsy
+wooden affair of a freight-boat; and the packet made in a single night
+the distance which the boy's family had been nearly two days in
+travelling when they moved away from the Boy's Town.
+
+He arrived home for breakfast a travelled and experienced person, and
+wholly cured of that longing for his former home that had tormented him
+before he revisited its scenes. He now fully gave himself up to his new
+environment, and looked forward and not backward. I do not mean to say
+that he ceased to love the Boy's Town; that he could not do and never
+did. But he became more and more aware that the past was gone from him
+forever, and that he could not return to it. He did not forget it, but
+cherished its memories the more fondly for that reason.
+
+There was no bitterness in it, and no harm that he could not hope would
+easily be forgiven him. He had often been foolish, and sometimes he had
+been wicked; but he had never been such a little fool or such a little
+sinner but he had wished for more sense and more grace. There are some
+great fools and great sinners who try to believe in after-life that they
+are the manlier men because they have been silly and mischievous boys,
+but he has never believed that. He is glad to have had a boyhood fully
+rounded out with all a boy's interests and pleasures, and he is glad
+that his lines were cast in the Boy's Town; but he knows, or believes he
+knows, that whatever is good in him now came from what was good in him
+then; and he is sure that the town was delightful chiefly because his
+home in it was happy. The town was small, and the boys there were hemmed
+in by their inexperience and ignorance; but the simple home was large
+with vistas that stretched to the ends of the earth, and it was serenely
+bright with a father's reason and warm with a mother's love.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
+
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diff --git a/25383-8.zip b/25383-8.zip
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Boy Life
+       Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Editor: Percival Chubb
+
+Release Date: May 7, 2008 [EBook #25383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOY LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 295px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="295" height="448" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="319" height="448" alt="KITE-TIME" title="" />
+<span class="caption">KITE-TIME</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>BOY LIFE</h1>
+
+<h3>STORIES AND READINGS SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF</h3>
+
+<h2>WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS</h2>
+
+<h4>AND ARRANGED FOR SUPPLEMENTARY<br />
+READING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS BY</h4>
+
+<h3>PERCIVAL CHUBB</h3>
+
+<h4>DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH IN THE<br />
+ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL, NEW YORK</h4>
+
+<h4>ILLUSTRATED</h4>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 126px;">
+<img src="images/symbol.jpg" width="126" height="150" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /><br />
+NEW YORK AND LONDON<br />
+MCMIX</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>HARPER'S MODERN SERIES</h2>
+
+<h3>OF SUPPLEMENTARY READERS FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Each, Illustrated, 16mo, 50 Cents School.</i></h4>
+
+
+<h2>BOY LIFE</h2>
+
+<p>Stories and Readings Selected from the Works of <span class="smcap">William Dean Howells</span>,
+and Arranged by <span class="smcap">Percival Chubb</span>, Director of English in the Ethical
+Culture School, New York.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The literary culture which we are trying to give our boys and
+girls is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+sufficiently national and American....</p>
+
+<p>"Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+distinctively American savor than that of William Dean
+Howells.... The juvenile books of Mr. Howells' contain some of
+the very best pages ever written for the enjoyment of young
+people."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Percival Chubb.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>(<i>Others in Preparation.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p>Copyright, 1909, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.</p>
+
+<p><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p>Published September, 1909.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">I. Adventures in a Boy's Town</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">II. Life in a Boy's Town</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE TOWN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;EARLIEST MEMORIES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;HOME LIFE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE RIVER</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SWIMMING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SKATING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MANNERS AND CUSTOMS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;GIRLS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MOTHERS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A BROTHER</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A FRIEND</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">III. Games and Pastimes</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MARBLES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;RACES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A MEAN TRICK</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;TOPS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;KITES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE BUTLER GUARDS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PETS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;INDIANS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;GUNS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NUTTING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE FIRE-ENGINES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">IV. Glimpses of the Larger World</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PASSING SHOWS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">V. The Last of a Boy's Town</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>KITE-TIME</td><td align='right'><i><a href="#frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT MORNING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE FIRST LOCK</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE BUTLER GUARDS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>NUTTING</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+
+<p>There are two conspicuous faults in the literary culture which we are
+trying to give to our boys and girls in our elementary and secondary
+schools: it is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+sufficiently national and American. Hence it lacks vitality and
+actuality. So little of it is carried over into life because so little
+of it is interpretative of the life that is. It is associated too
+exclusively in the child's mind with things dead and gone&mdash;with the
+Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere,
+the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively
+recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of
+the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the
+Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies
+do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which&mdash;if
+he reads at all&mdash;he is most likely to be concerned: the short story, the
+sketch, and the popular essay of the magazines and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> newspapers; the new
+novel, or the plays which he may see at the theatre. He has not been
+interested in the writers of his own time, and has never been put in the
+way of the best contemporary fiction. Hence the ineffectualness and
+wastefulness of much of our school work: it does not lead forward into
+the life of to-day, nor help the young to judge intelligently of the
+popular books which later on will compete for their favor.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, not a little of the material used in our elementary schools
+is drawn from Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, from Irving and
+Hawthorne; but because it is often studied in a so-called thorough and,
+therefore, very deadly way&mdash;slowly and laboriously for drill, rather
+than briskly for pleasure&mdash;there is comparatively little of it read, and
+almost no sense gained of its being part of a national literature. In
+the high school, owing to the unfortunate domination of the college
+entrance requirements, the situation is not much better. Our students
+leave with a scant and hurried glimpse&mdash;if any glimpse at all&mdash;of
+Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, or of Lowell, Lanier, and Poe; with no
+intimate view of Hawthorne, our great classic; none at all of Parkman
+and Fiske, our historians; or of writers like Howells, James, and Cable,
+or Wilkins, Jewett, and Deland, and a worthy company of story-tellers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may well be on our guard against a vaunting nationalism. It retards
+our culture. There should be no confusion of the second-rate values of
+most of our American products with the supreme values of the greatest
+British classics. We may work, of course, toward an ultimate
+appreciation of these greatest things. We fail, however, in securing
+such appreciation because we have failed to enlist those forms of
+interest which vitalize and stimulate literary studies&mdash;above all, the
+patriotic or national interest. Concord and Cambridge should be dearer,
+as they are nearer, to the young American than even Stratford and
+Abbotsford; Hawthorne should be as familiar as Goldsmith; and Emerson,
+as Addison or Burke. Ordinarily it is not so; and we suffer the
+consequences in the failure of our youth to grasp the spiritual ideals
+and the distinctively American democratic spirit which find expression
+in the greatest work of our literary masters, Emerson and Whitman,
+Lowell and Lanier. Our culture and our nationalism both suffer thereby.
+Our literature suffers also, because we have not an instructed and
+interested public to encourage excellence.</p>
+
+<p>Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+distinctively American savor than that of William Dean Howells; and it
+is to make his delightful writings more widely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> known and more easily
+accessible that this volume of selections from his books for the young
+has been prepared as a reading-book for the elementary school. These
+juvenile books of Mr. Howells contain some of the very best pages ever
+written for the enjoyment of young people. His two books for boys&mdash;<i>A
+Boy's Town</i> and <i>The Flight of Pony Baker</i>&mdash;rank with such favorites as
+<i>Tom Sawyer</i> and <i>The Story of a Bad Boy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These should be introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and
+essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is
+one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and
+distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still,
+from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern
+writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our
+older high-school pupils are anxious to deal with, are alive in his
+books. Our young people should know his <i>Rise of Silas Lapham</i> and <i>A
+Hazard of New Fortunes</i>, as well as his social and literary criticism.
+As stimulating and alluring a volume of selections may be made for
+high-school students as this volume will be, we venture to predict, for
+the younger boys and girls of the elementary school.</p>
+
+<p>In this little book of readings we have made, we believe, an entirely
+legitimate and desirable use of the books named above. <i>A Boy's Town</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span>
+is a series of detachable pictures and episodes into which the boy&mdash;or
+the healthy girl who loves boys' books&mdash;may dip, as the selections here
+given will, we believe, tempt him to do. The same is true of <i>The Flight
+of Pony Baker</i>. The volume is for class-room enjoyment; for happy hours
+of profitable reading&mdash;profitable, because happy. Much of it should be
+read aloud rather than silently, and dramatic justice be done to the
+scenes and conversations which have dramatic quality.</p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Percival Chubb.</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3>ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Just before the circus came, about the end of July, something happened
+that made Pony mean to run off more than anything that ever was. His
+father and mother were coming home from a walk, in the evening; it was
+so hot nobody could stay in the house, and just as they were coming to
+the front steps Pony stole up behind them and tossed a snowball which he
+had got out of the garden at his mother, just for fun. The flower struck
+her very softly on her hair, for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a
+jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh; and then she caught him by the
+arm and boxed his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I
+thought it was a bat!" she said, and she broke out crying and ran into
+the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her,
+"Lucy, Lucy, my dear child!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pony was crying, too, for he did not intend to frighten his mother, and
+when she took his fun as if he had done something wicked he did not know
+what to think. He stole off to bed, and he lay there crying in the dark
+and expecting that she would come to him, as she always did, to have him
+say that he was sorry when he had been wicked, or to tell him that she
+was sorry when she thought she had not been quite fair with him. But she
+did not come, and after a good while his father came and said: "Are you
+awake, Pony? I am sorry your mother misunderstood your fun. But you
+mustn't mind it, dear boy. She's not well, and she's very nervous."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care!" Pony sobbed out. "She won't have a chance to touch me
+again!" For he had made up his mind to run off with the circus which was
+coming the next Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his face away, sobbing, and his father, after standing by his
+bed a moment, went away without saying anything but "Don't forget your
+prayers, Pony. You'll feel differently in the morning, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>Pony fell asleep thinking how he would come back to the Boy's Town with
+the circus when he was grown up, and when he came out in the ring riding
+three horses bareback he would see his father and mother and sisters in
+one of the lower seats. They would not know him, but he would know them,
+and he would send for them to come to the dressing-room, and would be
+very good to them, all but his mother; he would be very cold and stiff
+with her, though he would know that she was prouder of him than all the
+rest put together, and she would go away almost crying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 279px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="279" height="440" alt="HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT
+MORNING" title="" />
+<span class="caption">HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT
+MORNING</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He began being cold and stiff with her the very next morning, although
+she was better than ever to him, and gave him waffles for breakfast with
+unsalted butter, and tried to pet him up. That whole day she kept trying
+to do things for him, but he would scarcely speak to her; and at night
+she came to him and said, "What makes you act so strangely, Pony? Are
+you offended with your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am!" said Pony, haughtily, and he twitched away from where she
+was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning over him.</p>
+
+<p>"On account of last night, Pony?" she asked, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you know well enough," said Pony, and he tried to be disgusted
+with her for being such a hypocrite, but he had to set his teeth hard,
+hard, or he would have broken down crying.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's for that, you mustn't, Pony dear. You don't know how you
+frightened me. When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was a bat, and
+I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I didn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> mean to hurt my poor boy's
+feelings so, and you mustn't mind it any more, Pony."</p>
+
+<p>She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, but he did not move or
+say anything; only, after that he felt more forgiving toward his mother.
+He made up his mind to be good to her along with the rest when he came
+back with the circus. But still he meant to run off with the circus. He
+did not see how he could do anything else, for he had told all the boys
+that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and
+said, "Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like
+running off with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would
+see whether it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.</p>
+
+<p>The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the
+corporation line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and
+knights, the first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a
+band-chariot, all made up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty
+baggage-wagons; but before you got to them there was the greatest thing
+of all. It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was
+shaped like a big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there
+were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus
+clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> seemed
+to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen
+Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough
+to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus
+girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the
+fellows, and they all had to get out of the way then.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
+nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
+word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
+wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after
+that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus
+men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they
+would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt
+brandy would do it, but that would do it, sure.</p>
+
+<p>Pony was scared at first when he heard that most of the circus fellows
+were stolen, but he thought if he went of his own accord he would be all
+right. Still, he did not feel so much like running off with the circus
+as he did before the circus came. He asked Jim Leonard whether the
+circus men made all the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy Hawkins
+and Hen Billard heard him ask, and began to mock him. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> took him up
+between them, one by his arms and the other by the legs, and ran along
+with him, and kept saying, "Does it want to be a great big circus actor?
+Then it shall, so it shall," and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
+careful of you, Pony dear!" till Pony wriggled himself loose and began
+to stone them.</p>
+
+<p>After that they had to let him alone, for when a fellow began to stone
+you in the Boy's Town you had to let him alone, unless you were going to
+whip him, and the fellows only wanted to have a little fun with Pony.
+But what they did made him all the more resolved to run away with the
+circus, just to show them.</p>
+
+<p>He helped to carry water for the circus men's horses, along with the
+boys who earned their admission that way. He had no need to do it,
+because his father was going to take him in, anyway; but Jim Leonard
+said it was the only way to get acquainted with the circus men. Still,
+Pony was afraid to speak to them, and he would not have said a word to
+any of them if it had not been for one of them speaking to him first,
+when he saw him come lugging a great pail of water, and bending far over
+on the right to balance it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," the circus man said to Pony. "If you ever fell into that
+bucket you'd drown, sure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was a big fellow, with funny eyes, and he had a white bulldog at his
+heels; and all the fellows said he was the one who guarded the outside
+of the tent when the circus began, and kept the boys from hooking in
+under the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>Even then Pony would not have had the courage to say anything, but Jim
+Leonard was just behind him with another bucket of water, and he spoke
+up for him. "He wants to go with the circus."</p>
+
+<p>They both set down their buckets, and Pony felt himself turning pale
+when the circus man came toward them. "Wants to go with the circus,
+heigh? Let's have a look at you." He took Pony by the shoulders and
+turned him slowly round, and looked at his nice clothes, and took him by
+the chin. "Orphan?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Pony did not know what to say, but Jim Leonard nodded; perhaps he did
+not know what to say, either; but Pony felt as if they had both told a
+lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Parents living?" The circus man looked at Pony, and Pony had to say
+that they were.</p>
+
+<p>He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could scarcely hear him, and the
+circus man said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's right. When we take an orphan, we want to have his parents
+living, so that we can go and ask them what sort of a boy he is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He looked at Pony in such a friendly, smiling way that Pony took courage
+to ask him whether they would want him to drink burnt brandy.</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"To keep me little."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see." The circus man took off his hat and rubbed his forehead
+with a silk handkerchief, which he threw into the top of his hat before
+he put it on again. "No, I don't know as we will. We're rather short of
+giants just now. How would you like to drink a glass of elephant milk
+every morning and grow into an eight-footer?"</p>
+
+<p>Pony said he didn't know whether he would like to be quite so big; and
+then the circus man said perhaps he would rather go for an India-rubber
+man; that was what they called the contortionists in those days.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's feel of you again." The circus man took hold of Pony and felt his
+joints. "You're put together pretty tight; but I reckon we could make
+you do if you'd let us take you apart with a screw-driver and limber up
+the pieces with rattlesnake oil. Wouldn't like it, heigh? Well, let me
+see!" The circus man thought a moment, and then he said: "How would
+double-somersaults on four horses bareback do?"</p>
+
+<p>Pony said that would do, and then the circus man said: "Well, then,
+we've just hit it, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> our double-somersault, four-horse bareback
+is just going to leave us, and we want a new one right away. Now,
+there's more than one way of joining a circus, but the best way is to
+wait on your front steps with your things all packed up, and the
+procession comes along at about one o'clock in the morning and picks you
+up. Which 'd you rather do?"</p>
+
+<p>Pony pushed his toe into the turf, as he always did when he was ashamed,
+but he made out to say he would rather wait out on the front steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, that's all settled," said the circus man. "We'll be along,"
+and he was going away with his dog, but Tim Leonard called after him:</p>
+
+<p>"You hain't asked him whereabouts he lives?"</p>
+
+<p>The circus man kept on, and he said, without looking around, "Oh, that's
+all right. We've got somebody that looks after that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the magician," Jim Leonard whispered to Pony, and they walked
+away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN</h2>
+
+
+<p>A crowd of the fellows had been waiting to know what the boys had been
+talking about to the circus man, but Jim Leonard said, "Don't you tell,
+Pony Baker!" and he started to run,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and that made Pony run, too, and
+they both ran till they got away from the fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"You have got to keep it a secret; for if a lot of fellows find it out
+the constable'll get to know it, and he'll be watching out around the
+corner of your house, and when the procession comes along and he sees
+you're really going he'll take you up, and keep you in jail till your
+father comes and bails you out. Now, you mind!"</p>
+
+<p>Pony said, "Oh, I won't tell anybody," and when Jim Leonard said that if
+a circus man was to feel <i>him</i> over, that way, and act so kind of
+pleasant and friendly, he would be too proud to speak to anybody, Pony
+confessed that he knew it was a great thing all the time.</p>
+
+<p>"The way'll be," said Jim Leonard, "to keep in with him, and he'll keep
+the others from picking on you; they'll be afraid to, on account of his
+dog. You'll see, he'll be the one to come for you to-night; and if the
+constable is there the dog won't let him touch you. I never thought of
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps on account of thinking of it now Jim Leonard felt free to tell
+the other fellows how Pony was going to run off, for when a crowd of
+them came along he told them. They said it was splendid, and they said
+that if they could make their mothers let them, or if they could get out
+of the house without their mothers knowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> it, they were going to sit
+up with Pony and watch out for the procession, and bid him good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner-time he found out that his father was going to take him and
+all his sisters to the circus, and his father and mother were so nice to
+him, asking him about the procession and everything, that his heart
+ached at the thought of running away from home and leaving them. But now
+he had to do it; the circus man was coming for him, and he could not
+back out; he did not know what would happen if he did. It seemed to him
+as if his mother had done everything she could to make it harder for
+him. She had stewed chicken for dinner, with plenty of gravy, and hot
+biscuits to sop in, and peach preserves afterward; and she kept helping
+him to more, because she said boys that followed the circus around got
+dreadfully hungry. The eating seemed to keep his heart down; it was
+trying to get into his throat all the time; and he knew that she was
+being good to him, but if he had not known it he would have believed his
+mother was just doing it to mock him.</p>
+
+<p>Pony had to go to the circus with his father and sisters, and to get on
+his shoes and a clean collar. But a crowd of the fellows were there at
+the tent door to watch out whether the circus man would say anything to
+him when he went in; and Jim Leonard rubbed against him, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the man
+passed with his dog and did not even look at Pony, and said: "He's just
+pretending. He don't want your father to know. He'll be round for you,
+sure. I saw him kind of smile to one of the other circus men."</p>
+
+<p>It was a splendid circus, and there were more things than Pony ever saw
+in a circus before. But instead of hating to have it over, it seemed to
+him that it would never come to an end. He kept thinking and thinking,
+and wondering whether he would like to be a circus actor; and when the
+one came out who rode four horses bareback and stood on his head on the
+last horse, and drove with the reins in his teeth, Pony thought that he
+never could learn to do it; and if he could not learn he did not know
+what the circus men would say to him. It seemed to him that it was very
+strange he had not told that circus man that he didn't know whether he
+could do it or not; but he had not, and now it was too late.</p>
+
+<p>A boy came around calling lemonade, and Pony's father bought some for
+each of the children, but Pony could hardly taste his.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you, Pony? Are you sick?" his father asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't care for any; that's all. I'm well," said Pony; but he felt
+very miserable.</p>
+
+<p>After supper Jim Leonard came round and went up to Pony's room with him
+to help him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> pack, and he was so gay about it and said he only wished
+<i>he</i> was going, that Pony cheered up a little. Jim had brought a large
+square of checked gingham that he said he did not believe his mother
+would ever want, and that he would tell her he had taken if she asked
+for it. He said it would be the very thing for Pony to carry his clothes
+in, for it was light and strong and would hold a lot. He helped Pony to
+choose his things out of his bureau drawers: a pair of stockings and a
+pair of white pantaloons and a blue roundabout, and a collar, and two
+handkerchiefs. That was all he said Pony would need, because he would
+have his circus clothes right away, and there was no use taking things
+that he would never wear.</p>
+
+<p>Jim did these up in the square of gingham, and he tied it across
+cater-cornered twice, in double knots, and showed Pony how he could put
+his hand through and carry it just as easy. He hid it under the bed for
+him, and he told Pony that if he was in Pony's place he should go to bed
+right away or pretty soon, so that nobody would think anything, and
+maybe he could get some sleep before he got up and went down to wait on
+the front steps for the circus to come along. He promised to be there
+with the other boys and keep them from fooling or making a noise, or
+doing anything to wake his father up,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> or make the constable come. "You
+see, Pony," he said, "if you can run off this year, and come back with
+the circus next year, then a whole lot of fellows can run off. Don't you
+see that?"</p>
+
+<p>Pony said he saw that, but he said he wished some of the other fellows
+were going now, because he did not know any of the circus boys and he
+was afraid he might feel kind of lonesome. But Jim Leonard said he would
+soon get acquainted, and, anyway, a year would go before he knew it, and
+then if the other fellows could get off he would have plenty of company.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Jim Leonard was gone Pony undressed and got into bed. He was
+not sleepy, but he thought maybe it would be just as well to rest a
+little while before the circus procession came along for him; and,
+anyway, he could not bear to go down-stairs and be with the family when
+he was going to leave them so soon, and not come back for a whole year.</p>
+
+<p>After a good while, or about the time he usually came in from playing,
+he heard his mother saying: "Where in the world is Pony? Has he come in
+yet? Have you seen him, girls? Pony! Pony!" she called.</p>
+
+<p>But somehow Pony could not get his voice up out of his throat; he wanted
+to answer her, but he could not speak. He heard her say, "Go out to the
+front steps, girls, and see if you can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> see him," and then he heard her
+coming up the stairs; and she came into his room, and when she saw him
+lying there in bed, she said: "Why, I believe in my heart the child's
+asleep! Pony! Are you awake?"</p>
+
+<p>Pony made out to say no, and his mother said: "My! what a fright you
+gave me! Why didn't you answer me? Are you sick, Pony? Your father said
+you didn't seem well at the circus; and you didn't eat any supper,
+hardly."</p>
+
+<p>Pony said he was first-rate, but he spoke very low, and his mother came
+up and sat down on the side of his bed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, child?" She bent over and felt his forehead. "No,
+you haven't got a bit of fever," she said, and she kissed him, and began
+to tumble his short black hair in the way she had, and she got one of
+his hands between her two, and kept rubbing it. "But you've had a long,
+tiresome day, and that's why you've gone to bed, I suppose. But if you
+feel the least sick, Pony, I'll send for the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>Pony said he was not sick at all; just tired; and that was true; he felt
+as if he never wanted to get up again.</p>
+
+<p>His mother put her arm under his neck, and pressed her face close down
+to his, and said very low: "Pony dear, you don't feel hard toward your
+mother for what she did the other night?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He knew she meant boxing his ears, when he was not to blame, and he
+said: "Oh no," and then he threw his arms round her neck and cried; and
+she told him not to cry, and that she would never do such a thing again;
+but she was really so frightened she did not know what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>When he quieted down, she said: "Now say your prayers, Pony, 'Our
+Father,'" and she said, "Our Father" all through with him, and after
+that, "Now I lay me," just as when he was a very little fellow. After
+they had finished she stooped over and kissed him again, and when he
+turned his face into his pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her
+hand for about a minute. Then she went away.</p>
+
+<p>Pony could hear them stirring about for a good while down-stairs. His
+father came in from uptown at last, and asked: "Has Pony come in?"</p>
+
+<p>And his mother said; "Yes, he's up in bed. I wouldn't disturb him,
+Henry. He's asleep by this time."</p>
+
+<p>His father said: "I don't know what to make of the boy. If he keeps on
+acting so strangely I shall have the doctor see him in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Pony felt dreadfully to think how far away from them he should be in the
+morning, and he would have given anything if he could have gone down to
+his father and mother and told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> them what he was going to do. But it did
+not seem as if he could.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then he dozed off, but he thought
+it was hardly a minute before he heard the circus band, and knew that
+the procession was coming for him. He jumped out of bed and put on his
+things as fast as he could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to
+it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to
+keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down to the front door without
+seeming to touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front
+steps he saw the circus magician coming along. By that time the music
+had stopped and Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a
+tall, peaked hat, like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so
+wide in the black glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched
+them out, for he seemed to be groping along that way, with his wand in
+one hand, like a blind man.</p>
+
+<p>He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking voice, "It's all glory; it's
+all glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to
+get back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him,
+but when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere;
+nothing but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to
+shrink up so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his
+wide goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the
+doctor were standing by him looking down at him, and the doctor said:</p>
+
+<p>"He has been walking in his sleep; he must be bled," and he got out his
+lancet, when Pony heard his mother calling: "Pony, Pony! What's the
+matter? Have you got the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found it was
+just morning.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was shining in at his window, and it made him so glad to think
+that by this time the circus was far away and he was not with it, that
+he hardly knew what to do.</p>
+
+<p>He was not very well for two or three days afterward, and his mother let
+him stay out of school to see whether he was really going to be sick or
+not. When he went back most of the fellows had forgotten that he had
+been going to run off with the circus. Some of them that happened to
+think of it plagued him a little and asked how he liked being a circus
+actor.</p>
+
+<p>Hen Billard was the worst; he said he reckoned the circus magician got
+scared when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and told the circus men that
+they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason
+why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to
+wait on the front steps,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Pony dear?" But after that he was pretty good
+to him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend
+that Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up to see.</p>
+
+<p>Pony himself could never be exactly sure whether he had waited on the
+front steps and seen the circus magician or not. Sometimes it seemed all
+of it like a dream, and sometimes only part of it. Jim Leonard tried to
+help him make it out, but they could not. He said it was a pity he had
+overslept himself, for if he had come to bid Pony good-bye, the way he
+said, then he could have told just how much of it was a dream and how
+much was not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jim Leonard's stable used to stand on the flat near the river, and on a
+rise of ground above it stood Jim Leonard's log-cabin. The boys called
+it Jim Leonard's log-cabin, but it was really his mother's, and the
+stable was hers, too. It was a log stable, but up where the gable began
+the logs stopped, and it was weather-boarded the rest of the way, and
+the roof was shingled.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Leonard said it was all logs once, and that the roof was loose
+clapboards, held down by logs that ran across them, like the roofs in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+the early times, before there were shingles or nails, or anything, in
+the country. But none of the oldest boys had ever seen it like that, and
+you had to take Jim Leonard's word for it if you wanted to believe it.
+The little fellows nearly all did; but everybody said afterward it was a
+good thing for Jim Leonard that it was not that kind of roof when he had
+his hair-breadth escape on it. He said himself that he would not have
+cared if it had been; but that was when it was all over, and his mother
+had whipped him, and everything, and he was telling the boys about it.</p>
+
+<p>He said that in his Pirate Book lots of fellows on rafts got to land
+when they were shipwrecked, and that the old-fashioned roof would have
+been just like a raft, anyway, and he could have steered it right across
+the river to Delorac's Island as easy! Pony Baker thought very likely he
+could, but Hen Billard said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why didn't you do it, with the kind of a roof you had?"</p>
+
+<p>Some of the boys mocked Jim Leonard; but a good many of them thought he
+could have done it if he could have got into the eddy that there was
+over by the island. If he could have landed there, once, he could have
+camped out and lived on fish till the river fell.</p>
+
+<p>It was that spring, about fifty-four years ago,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> when the freshet, which
+always came in the spring, was the worst that anybody could remember.
+The country above the Boy's Town was under water for miles and miles.
+The river-bottoms were flooded so that the corn had to be all planted
+over again when the water went down. The freshet tore away pieces of
+orchard, and apple-trees in bloom came sailing along with logs and
+fence-rails and chicken-coops, and pretty soon dead cows and horses.
+There was a dog chained to a dog-kennel that went by, howling awfully;
+the boys would have given anything if they could have saved him, but the
+yellow river whirled him out of sight behind the middle pier of the
+bridge, which everybody was watching from the bank, expecting it to go
+any minute. The water was up within four or five feet of the bridge, and
+the boys believed that if a good big log had come along and hit it, the
+bridge would have been knocked loose from its piers and carried down the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it would, and perhaps it would not. The boys all ran to watch it
+as soon as school was out, and stayed till they had to go to supper.
+After supper some of their mothers let them come back and stay till
+bedtime, if they would promise to keep a full yard back from the edge of
+the bank. They could not be sure just how much a yard was, and they
+nearly all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> sat down on the edge and let their legs hang over.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Leonard was there, holloing and running up and down the bank, and
+showing the other boys things away out in the river that nobody else
+could see; he said he saw a man out there. He had not been to supper,
+and he had not been to school all day, which might have been the reason
+why he would rather stay with the men and watch the bridge than go home
+to supper; his mother would have been waiting for him with a sucker from
+the pear-tree. He told the boys that while they were gone he went out
+with one of the men on the bridge as far as the middle pier, and it
+shook like a leaf; he showed with his hand how it shook.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Leonard was a fellow who believed he did all kinds of things that he
+would like to have done; and the big boys just laughed. That made Jim
+Leonard mad, and he said that as soon as the bridge began to go, he was
+going to run out on it and go with it; and then they would see whether
+he was a liar or not! They mocked him and danced round him till he
+cried. But Pony Baker, who had come with his father, believed that Jim
+Leonard would really have done it; and at any rate, he felt sorry for
+him when Jim cried.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed later than any of the little fellows, because his father was
+with him, and even all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> big boys had gone home except Hen Billard,
+when Pony left Jim Leonard on the bank and stumbled sleepily away, with
+his hand in his father's.</p>
+
+<p>When Pony was gone, Hen Billard said: "Well, going to stay all night,
+Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>And Jim Leonard answered back, as cross as could be, "Yes, I am!" And he
+said the men who were sitting up to watch the bridge were going to give
+him some of their coffee, and that would keep him awake. But perhaps he
+thought this because he wanted some coffee so badly. He was awfully
+hungry, for he had not had anything since breakfast, except a piece of
+bread-and-butter that he got Pony Baker to bring him in his pocket when
+he came down from school at noontime.</p>
+
+<p>Hen Billard said, "Well, I suppose I won't see you any more, Jim;
+good-bye," and went away laughing; and after a while one of the men saw
+Jim Leonard hanging about, and asked him what he wanted there at that
+time of night; and Jim could not say he wanted coffee, and so there was
+nothing for him to do but go. There was nowhere for him to go but home,
+and he sneaked off in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>When he came in sight of the cabin he could not tell whether he would
+rather have his mother waiting for him with a whipping and some supper,
+or get to bed somehow with neither. He climbed softly over the back
+fence and crept up to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> back door, but it was fast; then he crept
+round to the front door, and that was fast, too. There was no light in
+the house, and it was perfectly still.</p>
+
+<p>All of a sudden it struck him that he could sleep in the stable-loft,
+and he thought what a fool he was not to have thought of it before. The
+notion brightened him up so that he got the gourd that hung beside the
+well-curb and took it out to the stable with him; for now he remembered
+that the cow would be there, unless she was in somebody's garden-patch
+or cornfield.</p>
+
+<p>He noticed as he walked down toward the stable that the freshet had come
+up over the flat, and just before the door he had to wade. But he was in
+his bare feet, and he did not care; if he thought anything, he thought
+that his mother would not come out to milk till the water went down, and
+he would be safe till then from the whipping he must take, sooner or
+later, for playing hooky.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, the old cow was in the stable, and she gave Jim Leonard a
+snort of welcome and then lowed anxiously. He fumbled through the dark
+to her side, and began to milk her. She had been milked only a few hours
+before, and so he got only a gourdful from her. But it was all
+strippings, and rich as cream, and it was smoking warm. It seemed to Jim
+Leonard that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> it went down to his very toes when he poured it into his
+throat, and it made him feel so good that he did not know what to do.</p>
+
+<p>There really was not anything for him to do but to climb up into the
+loft by the ladder in the corner of the stable, and lie down on the old
+last year's fodder. The rich, warm milk made Jim Leonard awfully sleepy,
+and he dropped off almost as soon as his head touched the cornstalks.
+The last thing he remembered was the hoarse roar of the freshet outside,
+and that was a lulling music in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing he knew, and he hardly knew that, was a soft, jolting,
+sinking motion, first to one side and then to the other; then he seemed
+to be going down, down, straight down, and then to be drifting off into
+space. He rubbed his eyes and found it was full daylight, although it
+was the daylight of early morning; and while he lay looking out of the
+stable-loft window and trying to make out what it all meant, he felt a
+wash of cold water along his back, and his bed of fodder melted away
+under him and around him, and some loose planks of the loft floor swam
+weltering out of the window. Then he knew what had happened. The flood
+had stolen up while he slept, and sapped the walls of the stable; the
+logs had given way, one after another, and had let him down, with the
+roof, into the water.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He got to his feet as well as he could, and floundered over the rising
+and falling boards to the window in the floating gable. One look outside
+showed him his mother's log-cabin safe on its rise of ground, and at the
+corner the old cow, that must have escaped through the stable door he
+had left open, and passed the night among the cabbages. She seemed to
+catch sight of Jim Leonard when he put his head out, and she lowed to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Leonard did not stop to make any answer. He clambered out of the
+window and up onto the ridge of the roof, and there, in the company of a
+large gray rat, he set out on the strangest voyage a boy ever made. In a
+few moments the current swept him out into the middle of the river, and
+he was sailing down between his native shore on one side and Delorac's
+Island on the other.</p>
+
+<p>All round him seethed and swirled the yellow flood in eddies and
+ripples, where drift of all sorts danced and raced. His vessel, such as
+it was, seemed seaworthy enough. It held securely together, fitting like
+a low, wide cup over the water, and perhaps finding some buoyancy from
+the air imprisoned in it above the window. But Jim Leonard was not
+satisfied, and so far from being proud of his adventure, he was
+frightened worse even than the rat which shared it. As soon as he could
+get his voice, he began to shout for help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> to the houses on the empty
+shores, which seemed to fly backward on both sides while he lay still on
+the gulf that swashed around him, and tried to drown his voice before it
+swallowed him up. At the same time the bridge, which had looked so far
+off when he first saw it, was rushing swiftly toward him, and getting
+nearer and nearer.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered what had become of all the people and all the boys. He
+thought that if he were safe there on shore he should not be sleeping in
+bed while somebody was out in the river on a roof, with nothing but a
+rat to care whether he got drowned or not.</p>
+
+<p>Where was Hen Billard, that always made fun so; or Archy Hawkins, that
+pretended to be so good-natured; or Pony Baker, that seemed to like a
+fellow so much? He began to call for them by name: "Hen Billard&mdash;<i>O</i>
+Hen! Help, help! Archy Hawkins&mdash;<i>O</i> Archy! I'm drowning! Pony, Pony&mdash;<i>O</i>
+Pony! Don't you <i>see</i> me, Pony?"</p>
+
+<p>He could see the top of Pony Baker's house, and he thought what a good,
+kind man Pony's father was. Surely <i>he</i> would try to save him; and Jim
+Leonard began to yell: "O Mr. Baker! Look here, Mr. Baker! It's Jim
+Leonard, and I'm floating down the river on a roof! Save me, Mr. Baker,
+save me! Help, help, somebody! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Fire!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this time he was about crazy, and did not half know what he was
+saying. Just in front of where Hen Billard's grandmother lived, on the
+street that ran along the top of the bank, the roof got caught in the
+branches of a tree which had drifted down and stuck in the bottom of the
+river so that the branches waved up and down as the current swashed
+through them. Jim Leonard was glad of anything that would stop the roof,
+and at first he thought he would get off on the tree. That was what the
+rat did. Perhaps the rat thought Jim Leonard really was crazy and he had
+better let him have the roof to himself; but the rat saw that he had
+made a mistake, and he jumped back again after he had swung up and down
+on a limb two or three times. Jim Leonard felt awfully when the rat
+first got into the tree, for he remembered how it said in the Pirate
+Book that rats always leave a sinking ship, and now he believed that he
+certainly was gone. But that only made him hollo the louder, and he
+holloed so loud that at last he made somebody hear.</p>
+
+<p>It was Hen Billard's grandmother, and she put her head out of the window
+with her nightcap on, to see what the matter was. Jim Leonard caught
+sight of her, and he screamed: "Fire, fire, fire! I'm drownding, Mrs.
+Billard! Oh, do somebody come!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hen Billard's grandmother just gave one yell of "Fire! The world's
+a-burnin' up, Hen Billard, and you layin' there sleepin' and not helpin'
+a bit! Somebody's out there in the river!" and she rushed into the room
+where Hen was, and shook him.</p>
+
+<p>He bounced out of bed and pulled on his pantaloons, and was down-stairs
+in a minute. He ran bareheaded over to the bank, and when Jim Leonard
+saw him coming he holloed ten times as loud: "It's me, Hen! It's Jim
+Leonard! Oh, do get somebody to come out and save me! Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Hen heard that, and felt sure it was not a dream, which he
+did in about half a second, he began to yell, too, and to say: "How did
+you get there? Fire, fire, fire! What are you on? Fire! Are you in a
+tree, or what? Fire, fire! Are you in a flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If
+I had a skiff&mdash;fire!"</p>
+
+<p>He kept racing up and down the bank, and back and forth between the bank
+and the houses. The river was almost up to the top of the bank, and it
+looked a mile wide. Down at the bridge you could hardly see any light
+between the water and the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty soon people began to look out of their doors and windows, and Hen
+Billard's grandmother kept screaming: "The world's a-burnin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> up! The
+river's on fire!" Then boys came out of their houses; and then men with
+no hats on; and then women and girls, with their hair half down. The
+fire-bells began to ring, and in less than five minutes both the fire
+companies were on the shore, with the men at the brakes and the foremen
+of the companies holloing through their trumpets.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jim Leonard saw what a good thing it was that he had thought of
+holloing fire. He felt sure now that they would save him somehow, and he
+made up his mind to save the rat, too, and pet it, and maybe go around
+and exhibit it. He would name it Bolivar; it was just the color of the
+elephant Bolivar that came to the Boy's Town every year. These things
+whirled through his brain while he watched two men setting out in a
+skiff toward him.</p>
+
+<p>They started from the shore a little above him, and they meant to row
+slanting across to his tree, but the current, when they got fairly into
+it, swept them far below, and they were glad to row back to land again
+without ever getting anywhere near him. At the same time, the tree-top
+where his roof was caught was pulled southward by a sudden rush of the
+torrent; it opened, and the roof slipped out, with Jim Leonard and the
+rat on it. They both joined in one squeal of despair as the river leaped
+forward with them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> and a dreadful "Oh!" went up from the people on the
+bank.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the firemen had run down to the bridge when they saw that the
+skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the
+window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand.
+It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men
+used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw
+Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to.
+He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on
+it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and
+pull it up to the pier. The strongest current set close in around the
+middle pier, and the roof would have to pass on one side or the other.
+That was what Blue Bob argued out in his mind when he decided that the
+skiff would never reach Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could not
+save him that way, nothing could save him.</p>
+
+<p>Blue Bob must have had a last name, but none of the little fellows knew
+what it was. Everybody called him Blue Bob because he had such a thick,
+black beard that when he was just shaved his face looked perfectly blue.
+He knew all about the river and its ways, and if it had been of any use
+to go out with a boat, he would have gone. That was what all the boys
+said, when they followed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him getting out
+on the pier. He was the only person that the watchman had let go on the
+bridge for two days.</p>
+
+<p>The water was up within three feet of the floor, and if Jim Leonard's
+roof slipped by Blue Bob's guard and passed under the bridge, it would
+scrape Jim Leonard off, and that would be the last of him.</p>
+
+<p>All the time the roof was coming nearer the bridge, sometimes slower,
+sometimes faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the current; once
+it seemed almost to stop, and swayed completely round; then it just
+darted forward.</p>
+
+<p>Blue Bob stood on the very point of the pier, where the strong
+stone-work divided the current, and held his hooked pole ready to make a
+clutch at the roof, whichever side it took. Jim Leonard saw him there,
+but although he had been holloing and yelling and crying all the time,
+now he was still. He wanted to say, "O Bob, save me!" but he could not
+make a sound.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him that Bob was going to miss him when he made a lunge at
+the roof on the right side of the pier; it seemed to him that the roof
+was going down the left side; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then
+it gave a loud crack and went to pieces, and flung itself away upon the
+whirling and dancing flood. At first Jim Leonard thought he had gone
+with it; but it was only the rat that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> tried to run up Blue Bob's pole,
+and slipped off into the water; and then somehow Jim was hanging onto
+Blue Bob's hands and scrambling onto the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Blue Bob always said he never saw any rat, and a good many people said
+there never was any rat on the roof with Jim Leonard; they said that he
+just made the rat up.</p>
+
+<p>He did not mention the rat himself for several days; he told Pony Baker
+that he did not think of it at first, he was so excited.</p>
+
+<p>Pony asked his father what he thought, and Pony's father said that it
+might have been the kind of rat that people see when they have been
+drinking too much, and that Blue Bob had not seen it because he had
+signed the temperance pledge.</p>
+
+<p>But this was a good while after. At the time the people saw Jim Leonard
+standing safe with Blue Bob on the pier, they set up a regular election
+cheer, and they would have believed anything Jim Leonard said. They all
+agreed that Blue Bob had a right to go home with Jim and take him to his
+mother, for he had saved Jim's life, and he ought to have the credit of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Before this, and while everybody supposed that Jim Leonard would surely
+be drowned, some of the people had gone up to his mother's cabin to
+prepare her for the worst. She did not seem to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> understand exactly, and
+she kept round getting breakfast, with her old clay pipe in her mouth;
+but when she got it through her head, she made an awful face, and
+dropped her pipe on the door-stone and broke it; and then she threw her
+check apron over her head and sat down and cried.</p>
+
+<p>But it took so long for her to come to this that the people had not got
+over comforting her and trying to make her believe that it was all for
+the best, when Blue Bob came up through the bars with his hand on Jim's
+shoulder, and about all the boys in town tagging after them.</p>
+
+<p>Jim's mother heard the hurrahing and pulled off her apron, and saw that
+Jim was safe and sound there before her. She gave him a look that made
+him slip round behind Blue Bob, and she went in and got a table-knife,
+and she came out and went to the pear-tree and cut a sucker.</p>
+
+<p>She said, "I'll learn that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he's got a
+decent bed in the house!" and then she started to come toward Jim
+Leonard.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3>LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE TOWN</h2>
+
+
+<p>I call it a Boy's Town because I wish it to appear to the reader as a
+town appears to a boy from his third to his eleventh year, when he
+seldom, if ever, catches a glimpse of life much higher than the middle
+of a man, and has the most distorted and mistaken views of most
+things.... Some people remain in this condition as long as they live,
+and keep the ignorance of childhood, after they have lost its innocence;
+heaven has been shut, but the earth is still a prison to them. These
+will not know what I mean by much that I shall have to say; but I hope
+that the ungrown-up children will, and that the boys of to-day will like
+to know what a boy of forty years ago was like, even if he had no very
+exciting adventures or thread-bare escapes; perhaps I mean hair-breadth
+escapes; but it is the same thing&mdash;they have been used so often. I shall
+try to describe him very minutely in his daily doings and dreamings, and
+it may amuse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> them to compare these doings and dreamings with their own.
+For convenience, I shall call this boy, my boy; but I hope he might have
+been almost anybody's boy; and I mean him sometimes for a boy in
+general, as well as a boy in particular.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/i002.jpg" width="430" height="336" alt="THE FIRST LOCK" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE FIRST LOCK</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It seems to me that my Boy's Town was a town peculiarly adapted for a
+boy to be a boy in. It had a river, the great Miami River, which was as
+blue as the sky when it was not as yellow as gold; and it had another
+river, called the Old River, which was the Miami's former channel, and
+which held an island in its sluggish loop; the boys called it The
+Island; and it must have been about the size of Australia; perhaps it
+was not so large. Then this town had a Canal, and a Canal-Basin, and a
+First Lock and a Second Lock; you could walk out to the First Lock, but
+the Second Lock was at the edge of the known world, and, when my boy was
+very little, the biggest boy had never been beyond it. Then it had a
+Hydraulic, which brought the waters of Old River for mill-power through
+the heart of the town, from a Big Reservoir and a Little Reservoir; the
+Big Reservoir was as far off as the Second Lock, and the Hydraulic ran
+under mysterious culverts at every street-crossing. All these streams
+and courses had fish in them at all seasons, and all summer long they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>had boys in them, and now and then a boy in winter, when the thin ice
+of the mild Southern Ohio winter let him through with his skates. Then
+there were the Commons: a wide expanse of open fields, where the cows
+were pastured, and the boys flew their kites, and ran races, and
+practised for their circuses in the tan-bark rings of the real circuses.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>EARLIEST MEMORIES</h2>
+
+
+<p>Some of my boy's memories reach a time earlier than his third year, and
+relate to the little Ohio River hamlet where he was born, and where his
+mother's people, who were river-faring folk, all lived. Every two or
+three years the river rose and flooded the village; and his
+grandmother's household was taken out of the second-story window in a
+skiff; but no one minded a trivial inconvenience like that, any more
+than the Romans have minded the annual freshet of the Tiber for the last
+three or four thousand years. When the waters went down the family
+returned and scrubbed out the five or six inches of rich mud they had
+left. In the mean time it was a godsend to all boys of an age to enjoy
+it; but it was nothing out of the order of Providence. So, if my boy
+ever saw a freshet, it naturally made no impression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> upon him. What he
+remembered was something much more important, and that was waking up one
+morning and seeing a peach-tree in bloom through the window beside his
+bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very
+earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom
+without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Over the spot where the little house once stood a railroad has drawn its
+erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built
+up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree
+glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender,
+pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward
+in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a
+reminiscence of that dim past, and the little coal-smoky town on the
+banks of the Ohio.</p>
+
+<p>Perversely blended with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse
+of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up
+and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never
+have seen him so; he may have had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the vision at second hand; but it is
+certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as
+likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One
+of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to
+the southward, and had sent out a yawl and captured him, and brought him
+home. He began a checkered career of uselessness when they were ferrying
+him over from Wheeling in a skiff, by trying to help wear the pantaloons
+of the boy who was holding him; he put one of his fore-legs in at the
+watch-pocket; but it was disagreeable to the boy and ruinous to the
+trousers. He grew very tame, and butted children over, right and left,
+in the village streets; and he behaved like one of the family whenever
+he got into a house; he ate the sugar out of the bowl on the table, and
+plundered the pantry of its sweet cakes. One day a dog got after him,
+and he jumped over the river-bank and broke his leg, and had to be shot.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>HOME LIFE</h2>
+
+
+<p>The house gave even to him a sense of space unknown before, and he could
+recall his mother's satisfaction in it. He has often been back there in
+dreams, and found it on the old scale of grandeur; but no doubt it was a
+very simple affair. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> fortunes of a Whig editor in a place so
+overwhelmingly Democratic as the Boy's Town were not such as could have
+warranted his living in a palace; and he must have been poor, as the
+world goes now. But the family always lived in abundance, and in their
+way they belonged to the employing class; that is, the father had men to
+work for him. On the other hand, he worked with them; and the boys, as
+they grew old enough, were taught to work with them, too. My boy grew
+old enough very young; and was put to use in the printing-office before
+he was ten years of age. This was not altogether because he was needed
+there, I dare say, but because it was part of his father's Swedenborgian
+philosophy that every one should fulfil a use; I do not know that when
+the boy wanted to go swimming, or hunting, or skating, it consoled him
+much to reflect that the angels in the highest heaven delighted in uses;
+nevertheless, it was good for him to be of use, though maybe not so much
+use.</p>
+
+<p>If his mother did her own work, with help only now and then from a hired
+girl, that was the custom of the time and country; and her memory was
+always the more reverend to him, because whenever he looked back at her
+in those dim years, he saw her about some of those household offices
+which are so beautiful to a child. She was always the best and tenderest
+mother, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> her love had the heavenly art of making each child feel
+itself the most important, while she was partial to none. In spite of
+her busy days she followed their father in his religion and literature,
+and at night, when her long toil was over, she sat with the children and
+listened while he read aloud.</p>
+
+<p>The first book my boy remembered to have heard him read was Moore's
+<i>Lalla Rookh</i>, of which he formed but a vague notion, though while he
+struggled after its meaning he took all its music in, and began at once
+to make rhymes of his own. He had no conception of literature except the
+pleasure there was in making it; and he had no outlook into the world of
+it, which must have been pretty open to his father. The father read
+aloud some of Dickens' Christmas stories, then new; and the boy had a
+good deal of trouble with the <i>Haunted Man</i>. One rarest night of all,
+the family sat up till two o'clock, listening to a novel that my boy
+long ago forgot the name of, if he ever knew its name. It was all about
+a will, forged or lost, and there was a great scene in court, and after
+that the mother declared that she could not go to bed till she heard the
+end. His own first reading was in history. At nine years of age he read
+the history of Greece, and the history of Rome, and he knew that
+Goldsmith wrote them. One night his father told the boys all about Don
+Quixote;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> and a little while after he gave my boy the book. He read it
+over and over again; but he did not suppose it was a novel. It was his
+elder brother who read novels, and a novel was like <i>Handy Andy</i>, or
+<i>Harry Lorrequer</i>, or the <i>Bride of Lammermoor</i>. His brother had another
+novel which they preferred to either; it was in Harper's old "Library of
+Select Novels," and was called <i>Alamance; or, the Great and Final
+Experiment</i>, and it was about the life of some sort of community in
+North Carolina. It bewitched them, and though my boy could not afterward
+recall a single fact or figure in it, he could bring before his mind's
+eye every trait of its outward aspect.</p>
+
+<p>All this went along with great and continued political excitement, and
+with some glimpses of the social problem. It was very simple then;
+nobody was very rich, and nobody was in want; but somehow, as the boy
+grew older, he began to discover that there were differences, even in
+the little world about him; some were higher and some were lower. From
+the first he was taught by precept and example to take the side of the
+lower. As the children were denied oftener than they were indulged, the
+margin of their own abundance must have been narrower than they ever
+knew then; but if they had been of the most prosperous, their bent in
+this matter would have been the same. Once there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> church festival,
+or something of that sort, and there was a good deal of the provision
+left over, which it was decided should be given to the poor. This was
+very easy, but it was not so easy to find the poor whom it should be
+given to. At last a hard-working widow was chosen to receive it; the
+ladies carried it to her front door and gave it her, and she carried it
+to her back door and threw it into the alley. No doubt she had enough
+without it, but there were circumstances of indignity or patronage
+attending the gift which were recognized in my boy's home, and which
+helped afterward to make him doubtful of all giving, except the
+humblest, and restive with a world in which there need be any giving at
+all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE RIVER</h2>
+
+
+<p>It seems to me that the best way to get at the heart of any boy's town
+is to take its different watercourses and follow them into it.</p>
+
+<p>The house where my boy first lived was not far from the river, and he
+must have seen it often before he noticed it. But he was not aware of it
+till he found it under the bridge. Without the river there could not
+have been a bridge; the fact of the bridge may have made him look for
+the river; but the bridge is foremost in his mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> It is a long, wooden
+tunnel, with two roadways, and a foot-path on either side of these;
+there is a toll-house at each end, and from one to the other it is about
+as far as from the Earth to the planet Mars. On the western shore of the
+river is a smaller town than the Boy's Town, and in the perspective the
+entrance of the bridge on that side is like a dim little doorway. The
+timbers are of a hugeness to strike fear into the heart of the boldest
+little boy; and there is something awful even about the dust in the
+roadways; soft and thrillingly cool to the boy's bare feet, it lies
+thick in a perpetual twilight, streaked at intervals by the sun that
+slants in at the high, narrow windows under the roof; it has a certain
+potent, musty smell. The bridge has three piers, and at low water
+hardier adventurers than he wade out to the middle pier; some heroes
+even fish there, standing all day on the loose rocks about the base of
+the pier. He shudders to see them, and aches with wonder how they will
+get ashore. Once he is there when a big boy wades back from the middle
+pier, where he has been to rob a goose's nest; he has some loose silver
+change in his wet hand, and my boy understands that it has come out of
+one of the goose eggs. This fact, which he never thought of questioning,
+gets mixed up in his mind with an idea of riches, of treasure-trove, in
+the cellar of an old house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> that has been torn down near the end of the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>The river had its own climate, and this climate was of course much such
+a climate as the boys, for whom nature intended the river, would have
+chosen. I do not believe it was ever winter there, though it was
+sometimes late autumn, so that the boys could have some use for the
+caves they dug at the top of the bank, with a hole coming through the
+turf, to let out the smoke of the fires they built inside. They had the
+joy of choking and blackening over these flues, and they intended to
+live on corn and potatoes borrowed from the household stores of the boy
+whose house was nearest. They never got so far as to parch the corn or
+to bake the potatoes in their caves, but there was the fire, and the
+draught was magnificent. The light of the red flames painted the little,
+happy, foolish faces, so long since wrinkled and grizzled with age, or
+mouldered away to dust, as the boys huddled before them under the bank,
+and fed them with the drift, or stood patient of the heat and cold in
+the afternoon light of some vast Saturday waning to nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>The river-climate, with these autumnal intervals, was made up of a
+quick, eventful springtime, followed by the calm of a cloudless summer
+that seemed never to end. But the spring, short as it was, had its great
+attractions, and chief of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> was the freshet which it brought to the
+river. They would hear somehow that the river was rising, and then the
+boys, who had never connected its rise with the rains they must have
+been having, would all go down to its banks and watch the swelling
+waters. These would be yellow and thick, and the boiling current would
+have smooth, oily eddies, where pieces of drift would whirl round and
+round, and then escape and slip down the stream. There were saw-logs and
+whole trees with their branching tops, lengths of fence and hen-coops
+and pig-pens; once there was a stable; and if the flood continued, there
+began to come swollen bodies of horses and cattle. This must have meant
+serious loss to the people living on the river-bottoms above, but the
+boys counted it all gain. They cheered the objects as they floated by,
+and they were breathless with the excitement of seeing the men who
+caught fence-rails and cord-wood, and even saw-logs, with iron prongs at
+the points of long poles, as they stood on some jutting point of shore
+and stretched far out over the flood. The boys exulted in the turbid
+spread of the stream, which filled its low western banks and stole over
+their tops, and washed into all the hollow places along its shores, and
+shone among the trunks of the sycamores on Delorac's Island, which was
+almost of the geographical importance of The Island in Old River. When
+the water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> began to go down their hearts sank with it; and they gave up
+the hope of seeing the bridge carried away. Once the river rose to
+within a few feet of it, so that if the right piece of drift had been
+there to do its duty, the bridge might have been torn from its piers and
+swept down the raging tide into those unknown gulfs to the southward.
+Many a time they went to bed full of hope that it would at least happen
+in the night, and woke to learn with shame and grief in the morning that
+the bridge was still there, and the river was falling. It was a little
+comfort to know that some of the big boys had almost seen it go,
+watching as far into the night as nine o'clock with the men who sat up
+near the bridge till daylight: men of leisure and public spirit, but not
+perhaps the leading citizens.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SWIMMING</h2>
+
+
+<p>There must have been a tedious time between the going down of the flood
+and the first days when the water was warm enough for swimming; but it
+left no trace. The boys are standing on the shore while the freshet
+rushes by, and then they are in the water, splashing, diving, ducking;
+it is like that; so that I do not know just how to get in that period of
+fishing which must always have come between. There were not many fish in
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> part of the Miami; my boy's experience was full of the ignominy of
+catching shiners and suckers, or, at the best, mudcats, as they called
+the yellow catfish; but there were boys, of those who cursed and swore,
+who caught sunfish, as they called the bream; and there were men who
+were reputed to catch at will, as it were, silvercats and river-bass.
+They fished with minnows, which they kept in battered tin buckets that
+they did not allow you even to touch, or hardly to look at; my boy
+scarcely breathed in their presence; when one of them got up to cast his
+line in a new place, the boys all ran, and then came slowly back. These
+men often carried a flask of liquid that had the property, when taken
+inwardly, of keeping the damp out. The boys respected them for their
+ability to drink whiskey, and thought it a fit and honorable thing that
+they should now and then fall into the river over the brinks where they
+had set their poles. But they disappear like persons in a dream, and
+their fishing-time vanishes with them, and the swimming-time is in full
+possession of the river, and of all the other waters of the Boy's Town.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="336" height="419" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The swimming-holes in the river were the greatest favorites. My boy
+could not remember when he began to go into them, though it certainly
+was before he could swim. There was a time when he was afraid of getting
+in over his head; but he did not know just when he learned to swim, any
+more than he knew when he learned to read; he could not swim, and then
+he could swim; he could not read, and then he could read; but I dare say
+the reading came somewhat before the swimming. Yet the swimming must
+have come very early, and certainly it was kept up with continual
+practise; he swam quite as much as he read; perhaps more. The boys had
+deep swimming-holes and shallow ones; and over the deep ones there was
+always a spring-board, from which they threw somersaults, or dived
+straight down into the depths, where there were warm and cold currents
+mysteriously interwoven. They believed that these deep holes were
+infested by water-snakes, though they never saw any, and they expected
+to be bitten by snapping-turtles, though this never happened. Fiery
+dragons could not have kept them out; gallynippers, whatever they were,
+certainly did not; they were believed to abound at the bottom of the
+deep holes; but the boys never stayed long in the deep holes, and they
+preferred the shallow places, where the river broke into a long ripple
+(they called it riffle) on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> its gravelly bed, and where they could at
+once soak and bask in the musical rush of the sunlit waters. I have
+heard people in New England blame all the Western rivers for being
+yellow and turbid; but I know that after the spring floods, when the
+Miami had settled down to its summer business with the boys, it was as
+clear and as blue as if it were spilled out of the summer sky. The boys
+liked the riffle because they could stay in so long there, and there
+were little land-locked pools and shallows, where the water was even
+warmer, and they could stay in longer. At most places under the banks
+there was clay of different colors, which they used for war-paint in
+their Indian fights; and after they had their Indian fights they could
+rush screaming and clattering into the riffle. When the stream had
+washed them clean down to their red sunburn or their leathern tan, they
+could paint up again and have more Indian fights.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder what sign the boys who read this have for challenging or
+inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used
+to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the
+forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did
+this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when
+they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when
+they just pretended they did not want some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> one to know. They really had
+to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at
+all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and
+as they all <i>had</i> to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort
+of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since
+this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one
+time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the
+fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a
+boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about
+going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard
+fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then
+they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made
+this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on
+wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came
+upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public
+opinion in the boy's world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their
+honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts;
+and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As
+the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if
+you were such a miscreant, and there was some boy you hated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> you stole
+up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in one arm or both arms of his
+shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into your heart, you soaked the knot
+in water, and pounded it with a stone.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad to know that in the days when he was thoughtless and senseless
+enough, my boy never was guilty of any degree of this meanness. It was
+his brother, I suppose, who taught him to abhor it; and perhaps it was
+his own suffering from it in part; for he, too, sometimes shed bitter
+tears over such a knot, as I have seen hapless little wretches do,
+tearing at it with their nails and gnawing at it with their teeth,
+knowing that the time was passing when they could hope to hide the fact
+that they had been in swimming, and foreseeing no remedy but to cut off
+the sleeve above the knot, or else put on their clothes without the
+shirt, and trust to untying the knot when it got dry.</p>
+
+<p>There must have been a lurking anxiety in all the boys' hearts when they
+went in without leave, or, as my boy was apt to do, when explicitly
+forbidden. He was not apt at lying, I dare say, and so he took the
+course of open disobedience. He could not see the danger that filled the
+home hearts with fear for him, and he must have often broken the law and
+been forgiven, before Justice one day appeared for him on the river-bank
+and called him away from his stolen joys. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> an awful moment, and
+it covered him with shame before his mates, who heartlessly rejoiced, as
+children do, in the doom which they are escaping. That sin, at least, he
+fully expiated; and I will whisper to the young people here at the end
+of the chapter that somehow, soon or late, our sins do overtake us, and
+insist upon being paid for. That is not the best reason for not sinning,
+but it is well to know it, and to believe it in our acts as well as our
+thoughts. You will find people to tell you that things only happen so
+and so. It may be; only, I know that no good thing ever happened to
+happen to me when I had done wrong.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SKATING</h2>
+
+
+<p>I am afraid that the young people will think I am telling them too much
+about swimming. But in the Boy's Town the boys really led a kind of
+amphibious life, and as long as the long summer lasted they were almost
+as much in the water as on the land. The Basin, however, unlike the
+river, had a winter as well as a summer climate, and one of the very
+first things that my boy could remember was being on the ice there. He
+learned to skate, but he did not know when, any more than he knew just
+the moment of learning to read or to swim. He became passionately fond
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> skating, and kept at it all day long when there was ice for it,
+which was not often in those soft winters. They made a very little ice
+go a long way in the Boy's Town; and began to use it for skating as soon
+as there was a glazing of it on the Basin. None of them ever got drowned
+there; though a boy would often start from one bank and go flying to the
+other, trusting his speed to save him, while the thin sheet sank and
+swayed, but never actually broke under him. Usually the ice was not
+thick enough to have a fire built on it; and it must have been on ice
+which was just strong enough to bear that my boy skated all one bitter
+afternoon at Old River, without a fire to warm by. At first his feet
+were very cold, and then they gradually felt less cold, and at last he
+did not feel them at all. He thought this very nice, and he told one of
+the big boys. "Why, your feet are frozen!" said the big boy, and he
+dragged off my boy's skates, and the little one ran all the long mile
+home, crazed with terror, and not knowing what moment his feet might
+drop off there in the road. His mother plunged them in a bowl of
+ice-cold water, and then rubbed them with flannel, and so thawed them
+out; but that could not save him from the pain of their coming to: it
+was intense, and there must have been a time afterward when he did not
+use his feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His skates themselves were of a sort that I am afraid boys would smile
+at nowadays. When you went to get a pair of skates forty or fifty years
+ago, you did not make your choice between a Barney &amp; Berry and an Acme,
+which fastened on with the turn of a screw or the twist of a clamp. You
+found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with
+guttered blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps
+curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an
+acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that
+skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass
+acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your
+skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about
+while he pierced the wood with strap-holes; or else you managed to bore
+them through with a hot iron yourself. Then you took them to a saddler,
+and got him to make straps for them; that is, if you were rich, and your
+father let you have a quarter to pay for the job. If not, you put
+strings through, and tied your skates on. They were always coming off,
+or getting crosswise of your foot, or feeble-mindedly slumping down on
+one side of the wood; but it did not matter, if you had a fire on the
+ice, fed with old barrels and boards and cooper's shavings, and could
+sit round it with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> your skates on, and talk and tell stones, between
+your flights and races afar; and come whizzing back to it from the
+frozen distance, and glide, with one foot lifted, almost among the
+embers.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MANNERS AND CUSTOMS</h2>
+
+
+<p>I sometimes wonder how much these have changed since my boy's time. Of
+course they differ somewhat from generation to generation, and from East
+to West and North to South, but not so much, I believe, as grown people
+are apt to think. Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of
+the laws that govern grown-up communities, and it has its unwritten
+usages, which are handed down from old to young, and perpetuated on the
+same level of years, and are lived into and lived out of, but are
+binding, through all personal vicissitudes, upon the great body of boys
+between six and twelve years old. No boy can violate them without losing
+his standing among the other boys, and he cannot enter into their world
+without coming under them. He must do this, and must not do that; he
+obeys, but he does not know why, any more than the far-off savages from
+whom his customs seem mostly to have come. His world is all in and
+through the world of men and women, but no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> man or woman can get into it
+any more than if it were a world of invisible beings. It has its own
+ideals and superstitions, and these are often of a ferocity, a
+depravity, scarcely credible in after-life. It is a great pity that
+fathers and mothers cannot penetrate that world; but they cannot, and it
+is only by accident that they can catch some glimpse of what goes on in
+it. No doubt it will be civilized in time, but it will be very slowly;
+and in the mean while it is only in some of its milder manners and
+customs that the boy's world can be studied.</p>
+
+<p>The first great law was that, whatever happened to you through another
+boy, whatever hurt or harm he did you, you were to right yourself upon
+his person if you could; but if he was too big, and you could not hope
+to revenge yourself, then you were to bear the wrong, not only for that
+time, but for as many times as he chose to inflict it. To tell the
+teacher or your mother, or to betray your tormentor to any one outside
+of the boys' world, was to prove yourself a cry-baby, without honor or
+self-respect, and unfit to go with the other fellows. They would have
+the right to mock you, to point at you, and call "E-e-e, e-e-e, e-e-e!"
+at you, till you fought them. After that, whether you whipped them or
+not, there began to be some feeling in your favor again, and they had to
+stop.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every boy who came to town from somewhere else, or who moved into a new
+neighborhood, had to fight the old residents. There was no reason for
+this, except that he was a stranger, and there appeared to be no other
+means of making his acquaintance. If he was generally whipped he became
+subject to the local tribe, as the Delawares were to the Iroquois in the
+last century; if he whipped the other boys, then they adopted him into
+their tribe, and he became a leader among them. When you moved away from
+a neighborhood you did not lose all your rights in it; you did not have
+to fight when you went back to see the boys, or anything; but if one of
+them met you in your new precincts you might have to try conclusions
+with him; and perhaps, if he was a boy who had been in the habit of
+whipping you, you were quite ready to do so. When my boy's family left
+the Smith house, one of the boys from that neighborhood came up to see
+him at the Falconer house, and tried to carry things with a high hand,
+as he always had done. Then my boy fought him, quite as if he were not a
+Delaware and the other boy not an Iroquois, with sovereign rights over
+him. My boy was beaten, but the difference was that, if he had not been
+on new ground, he would have been beaten without daring to fight. His
+mother witnessed the combat, and came out and shamed him for his
+behavior,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and had in the other boy, and made them friends over some
+sugar-cakes. But after that the boys of the Smith neighborhood
+understood that my boy would not be whipped without fighting. The home
+instruction was all against fighting; my boy was taught that it was not
+only wicked but foolish; that if it was wrong to strike, it was just as
+wrong to strike back; that two wrongs never made a right, and so on. But
+all this was not of the least effect with a hot temper amid the trials
+and perplexities of life in the Boy's Town.</p>
+
+<p>Their fights were mostly informal scuffles, on and off in a flash, and
+conducted with none of the ceremony which I have read of concerning the
+fights of English boys. It was believed that some of the fellows knew
+how to box, and all the fellows intended to learn, but nobody ever did.
+The fights sprang usually out of some trouble of the moment; but at
+times they were arranged to settle some question of moral or physical
+superiority. Then one boy put a chip on his shoulder and dared the other
+to knock it off. It took a great while to bring the champions to blows,
+and I have known the mere preparatory insults of a fight of this kind to
+wear out the spirit of the combatants and the patience of the
+spectators, so that not a blow was struck, finally, and the whole affair
+fell through.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GIRLS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy
+went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would
+have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have scorned to
+play with one. Of course, while they were very little, they played with
+girls; and after they began to be big boys, eleven or twelve years old,
+they began to pay girls some attention; but for the rest they simply
+left them out of the question, except at parties, when the games obliged
+them to take some notice of the girls. Even then, however, it was not
+good form for a boy to be greatly interested in them; and he had to
+conceal any little fancy he had about this girl or that unless he wanted
+to be considered soft by the other fellows. When they were having fun
+they did not want to have any girls around; but in the back-yard a boy
+might play teeter or seesaw, or some such thing, with his sisters and
+their friends, without necessarily losing caste, though such things were
+not encouraged. On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them
+against anything that he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not
+have to verify the fact that anything had been said or done; you merely
+had to hear that it had.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MOTHERS</h2>
+
+
+<p>The boys had very little to do with the inside of one another's houses.
+They would follow a boy to his door, and wait for him to come out; and
+they would sometimes get him to go in and ask his mother for crullers or
+sugar-cakes; when they came to see him they never went indoors for him,
+but stood on the sidewalk and called him with a peculiar cry, something
+like "E-oo-we, e-oo-we!" and threw stones at trees, or anything, till he
+came out. If he did not come after a reasonable time, they knew he was
+not there, or that his mother would not let him come. A fellow was kept
+in that way, now and then. If a fellow's mother came to the door the
+boys always ran.</p>
+
+<p>The mother represented the family sovereignty; the father was seldom
+seen, and he counted for little or nothing among the outside boys. It
+was the mother who could say whether a boy might go fishing or in
+swimming, and she was held a good mother or not according as she
+habitually said yes or no. There was no other standard of goodness for
+mothers in the boy's world, and could be none; and a bad mother might be
+outwitted by any device that the other boys could suggest to her boy.
+Such a boy was always willing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> to listen to any suggestion, and no boy
+took it hard if the other fellows made fun when their plan got him into
+trouble at home. If a boy came out after some such experience with his
+face wet, and his eyes red, and his lips swollen, of course you had to
+laugh; he expected it, and you expected him to stone you for laughing.</p>
+
+<p>When a boy's mother had company, he went and hid till the guests were
+gone, or only came out of concealment to get some sort of shy lunch. If
+the other fellows' mothers were there, he might be a little bolder, and
+bring out cake from the second table. But he had to be pretty careful
+how he conformed to any of the usages of grown-up society. A fellow who
+brushed his hair, and put on shoes, and came into the parlor when there
+was company, was not well seen among the fellows; he was regarded in
+some degree as a girl-boy; a boy who wished to stand well with other
+boys kept in the woodshed, and only went in as far as the kitchen to get
+things for his guests in the back-yard. Yet there were mothers who would
+make a boy put on a collar when they had company, and disgrace him
+before the world by making him stay round and help; they acted as if
+they had no sense and no pity; but such mothers were rare.</p>
+
+<p>Most mothers yielded to public opinion and let their boys leave the
+house, and wear just what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> they always wore. I have told how little they
+wore in summer. Of course in winter they had to put on more things. In
+those days knickerbockers were unknown, and if a boy had appeared in
+short pants and long stockings he would have been thought dressed like a
+circus-actor. Boys wore long pantaloons, like men, as soon as they put
+off skirts, and they wore jackets or roundabouts such as the English
+boys still wear at Eton. When the cold weather came they had to put on
+shoes and stockings, or rather long-legged boots, such as are seen now
+only among lumbermen and teamsters in the country. Most of the fellows
+had stoga boots, as heavy as iron and as hard; they were splendid to
+skate in, they kept your ankles so stiff. Sometimes they greased them to
+keep the water out; but they never blacked them except on Sunday, and
+before Saturday they were as red as a rusty stovepipe. At night they
+were always so wet that you could not get them off without a boot-jack,
+and you could hardly do it anyway; sometimes you got your brother to
+help you off with them, and then he pulled you all round the room. In
+the morning they were dry, but just as hard as stone, and you had to
+soap the heel of your woollen sock (which your grandmother had knitted
+for you, or maybe some of your aunts) before you could get your foot in,
+and sometimes the ears of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the boot that you pulled it on by would give
+way, and you would have to stamp your foot in and kick the toe against
+the mop-board. Then you gasped and limped round, with your feet like
+fire, till you could get out and limber your boots up in some water
+somewhere. About noon your chilblains began.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried to give some notion of the general distribution of comfort,
+which was never riches, in the Boy's Town; but I am afraid that I could
+not paint the simplicity of things there truly without being
+misunderstood in these days of great splendor and great squalor.
+Everybody had enough, but nobody had too much; the richest man in town
+might be worth twenty thousand dollars. There were distinctions among
+the grown people, and no doubt there were the social cruelties which are
+the modern expression of the savage spirit otherwise repressed by
+civilization; but these were unknown among the boys. Savages they were,
+but not that kind of savages. They valued a boy for his character and
+prowess, and it did not matter in the least that he was ragged and
+dirty. Their mothers might not allow him the run of their kitchens quite
+so freely as some other boys, but the boys went with him just the same,
+and they never noticed how little he was washed and dressed. The best of
+them had not an overcoat; and underclothing was unknown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> among them.
+When a boy had buttoned up his roundabout, and put on his mittens, and
+tied his comforter round his neck and over his ears, he was warmly
+dressed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A BROTHER</h2>
+
+
+<p>My boy was often kept from being a fool, and worse, by that elder
+brother of his; and I advise every boy to have an elder brother. Have a
+brother about four years older than yourself, I should say; and if your
+temper is hot, and your disposition revengeful, and you are a vain and
+ridiculous dreamer at the same time that you are eager to excel in feats
+of strength and games of skill, and to do everything that the other
+fellows do, and are ashamed to be better than the worst boy in the
+crowd, your brother can be of the greatest use to you, with his larger
+experience and wisdom. My boy's brother seemed to have an ideal of
+usefulness, while my boy only had an ideal of glory&mdash;to wish to help
+others, while my boy only wished to help himself. My boy would as soon
+have thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother's
+doing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice,
+of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which he
+wished to make shine before men in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> their fulfilment. His brother was
+always doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only did
+for himself; he had a very gray mustache before he began to have any
+conception of the fact that he was sent into the world to serve and to
+suffer, as well as to rule and enjoy. But his brother seemed to know
+this instinctively; he bore the yoke in his youth, patiently if not
+willingly; he shared the anxieties as he parted the cares of his father
+and mother. Yet he was a boy among boys, too; he loved to swim, to
+skate, to fish, to forage, and passionately, above all, he loved to
+hunt; but in everything he held himself in check, that he might hold the
+younger boys in check; and my boy often repaid his conscientious
+vigilance with hard words and hard names, such as embitter even the most
+self-forgiving memories. He kept mechanically within certain laws, and
+though in his rage he hurled every other name at his brother, he would
+not call him a fool, because then he would be in danger of hell-fire. If
+he had known just what Raca meant, he might have called him Raca, for he
+was not so much afraid of the council; but, as it was, his brother
+escaped that insult, and held through all a rein upon him, and governed
+him through his scruples as well as his fears.</p>
+
+<p>His brother was full of inventions and enterprises beyond most other
+boys, and his undertakings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> came to the same end of nothingness that
+awaits all boyish endeavor. He intended to make fireworks and sell them;
+he meant to raise silkworms; he prepared to take the contract of
+clearing the new cemetery grounds of stumps by blasting them out with
+gunpowder. Besides this, he had a plan with another big boy for making
+money, by getting slabs from the saw-mill, and sawing them up into
+stove-wood, and selling them to the cooks of canal-boats. The only
+trouble was that the cooks would not buy the fuel, even when the boys
+had a half-cord of it all nicely piled up on the canal-bank; they would
+rather come ashore after dark and take it for nothing. He had a good
+many other schemes for getting rich that failed; and he wanted to go to
+California and dig gold; only his mother would not consent. He really
+did save the Canal-Basin once, when the banks began to give way after a
+long rain. He saw the break beginning, and ran to tell his father, who
+had the fire-bells rung. The fire companies came rushing to the rescue,
+but as they could not put the Basin out with their engines, they all got
+shovels and kept it in. They did not do this before it had overflowed
+the street, and run into the cellars of the nearest houses. The water
+stood two feet deep in the kitchen of my boy's house, and the yard was
+flooded so that the boys made rafts and navigated it for a whole day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+My boy's brother got drenched to the skin in the rain, and lots of
+fellows fell off the rafts.</p>
+
+<p>He belonged to a military company of big boys that had real wooden guns,
+such as the little boys never could get, and silk oil-cloth caps, and
+nankeen roundabouts, and white pantaloons with black stripes down the
+legs; and once they marched out to a boy's that had a father that had a
+farm, and he gave them all a free dinner in an arbor before the house:
+bread-and-butter, and apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, and
+peaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about the
+Mexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got a
+farmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy place
+there was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured.
+They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fort
+about fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher than their
+heads, but they got so eager to have the works stormed that they could
+not wait, and they commenced having the battle when they had the walls
+only breast high. There were going to be two parties: one to attack the
+fort, and the other to defend it, and they were just going to throw
+sods; but one boy had a real shot-gun, that he was to load up with
+powder and fire off when the battle got to the worst, so as to have it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+more like a battle. He thought it would be more like yet if he put in a
+few shot, and he did it on his own hook. It was a splendid gun, but it
+would not stand cocked long, and he was resting it on the wall of the
+fort, ready to fire when the storming-party came on, throwing sods and
+yelling and holloing; and all at once his gun went off, and a cow that
+was grazing broadside to the fort gave a frightened bellow, and put up
+her tail, and started for home. When they found out that the gun, if not
+the boy, had shot a cow, the Mexicans and Americans both took to their
+heels; and it was a good thing they did so, for as soon as that cow got
+home, and the owner found out by the blood on her that she had been
+shot, though it was only a very slight wound, he was so mad that he did
+not know what to do, and very likely he would have half killed those
+boys if he had caught them. He got a plough, and he went out to their
+fort, and he ploughed it all down flat, so that not one sod remained
+upon another.</p>
+
+<p>My boy's brother went to all sorts of places that my boy was too shy to
+go to; and he associated with much older boys, but there was one boy
+who, as I have said, was the dear friend of both of them, and that was
+the boy who came to learn the trade in their father's printing-office,
+and who began an historical romance at the time my boy began his great
+Moorish novel. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> first day he came he was put to roll, or ink, the
+types, while my boy's brother worked the press, and all day long my boy,
+from where he was setting type, could hear him telling the story of a
+book he had read. It was about a person named Monte Cristo, who was a
+count, and who could do anything. My boy listened with a gnawing
+literary jealousy of a boy who had read a book that he had never heard
+of. He tried to think whether it sounded as if it were as great a book
+as the <i>Conquest of Granada</i>, or <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>; and for a time he
+kept aloof from this boy because of his envy. Afterward they came
+together on <i>Don Quixote</i>, but though my boy came to have quite a
+passionate fondness for him, he was long in getting rid of his grudge
+against him for his knowledge of <i>Monte Cristo</i>. He was as great a
+laugher as my boy and his brother, and he liked the same sports, so that
+two by two, or all three together, they had no end of jokes and fun. He
+became the editor of a country newspaper, with varying fortunes but
+steadfast principles, and when the war broke out he went as a private
+soldier. He soon rose to be an officer, and fought bravely in many
+battles. Then he came back to a country-newspaper office where, ever
+after, he continued to fight the battles of right against wrong, till he
+died not long ago at his post of duty&mdash;a true, generous, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> lofty
+soul. He was one of those boys who grow into the men who seem commoner
+in America than elsewhere, and who succeed far beyond our millionaires
+and statesmen in realizing the ideal of America in their nobly simple
+lives. If his story could be faithfully written out, word for word, deed
+for deed, it would be far more thrilling than that of Monte Cristo, or
+any hero of romance; and so would the common story of any common life.
+But we cannot tell these stories, somehow.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A FRIEND</h2>
+
+
+<p>My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at
+school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning
+in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. I
+dare say it was a sense of his kinship with Nature that took my boy with
+him, and rested his soul from all its wild dreams and vain imaginings.
+He was like a piece of the genial earth, with no more hint of toiling or
+spinning in him; willing for anything, but passive, and without force or
+aim. He lived in a belated log-cabin that stood in the edge of a
+cornfield on the river-bank, and he seemed, one day when my boy went to
+find him there, to have a mother, who smoked a cob-pipe, and two or
+three large sisters who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> hulked about in the one dim, low room. But the
+boys had very little to do with each other's houses, or, for that
+matter, with each other's yards. His friend seldom entered my boy's
+gate, and never his door; for with all the toleration his father felt
+for every manner of human creature, he could not see what good the boy
+was to get from this queer companion. It is certain that he got no harm;
+for his companion was too vague and void even to think evil. Socially,
+he was as low as the ground under foot, but morally he was as good as
+any boy in the Boy's Town, and he had no bad impulses. He had no
+impulses at all, in fact, and of his own motion he never did anything,
+or seemed to think anything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply
+appeared in the neighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence
+till he came out. He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other
+fellows did, but waited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off
+with wherever my boy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never
+any will but to go in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did
+not even fish; and I suppose that money could not have hired him to run
+races. He played marbles, but not very well, and he did not care much
+for the game. The two boys soaked themselves in the river together, and
+then they lay on the sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+my boy could not have talked to him about any of the things that were in
+his books, or the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must
+rather have soothed against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of
+his fantastic spirit, and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax
+and easy aimlessness. Their friendship was not only more innocent than
+any other friendship my boy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved
+each other, and that was all; and why people love one another there is
+never any satisfactory telling. But this friend of his must have had
+great natural good in him; and if I could find a man of the make of that
+boy I am sure I should love him.</p>
+
+<p>My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it was
+often made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; so
+that in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been to
+him. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he was
+ignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I am
+not able to say now just how he worked his friend up to the point of
+coming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, and
+putting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and my
+boy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendship
+with him before the whole school. This was not easy, for though
+everybody knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> how much the two were together, it was a different thing
+to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to
+help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He
+struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from
+the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one
+half-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiled
+their simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the old
+ground of perfect trust and affection. Perhaps the kindly earth-spirit
+had instinctively felt a wound from the shame my boy had tried to brave
+out, and shrank from their former friendship without quite knowing why.
+Perhaps it was my boy who learned to realize that there could be little
+in common but their common humanity between them, and could not go back
+to that. At any rate, their friendship declined from this point; and it
+seems to me, somehow, a pity.</p>
+
+<p>Among the boys who were between my boy and his brother in age was one
+whom all the boys liked, because he was clever with everybody, with
+little boys as well as big boys. He was a laughing, pleasant fellow,
+always ready for fun, but he never did mean things, and he had an open
+face that made a friend of every one who saw him. He had a father that
+had a house with a lightning-rod, so that if you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> in it when there
+was a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boy
+once proved by being in it when there was a thunder-storm and not
+getting struck. This in itself was a great merit, and there were
+grape-arbors and peach-trees in his yard which added to his popularity,
+with cling-stone peaches almost as big as oranges on them. He was a
+fellow who could take you home to meals whenever he wanted to, and he
+liked to have boys stay all night with him; his mother was as clever as
+he was, and even the sight of his father did not make the fellows want
+to go and hide. His father was so clever that he went home with my boy
+one night about midnight when the boy had come to pass the night with
+his boys, and the youngest of them had said he always had the nightmare
+and walked in his sleep, and as likely as not he might kill you before
+he knew it. My boy tried to sleep, but the more he reflected upon his
+chances of getting through the night alive the smaller they seemed; and
+so he woke up his potential murderer from the sweetest and soundest
+slumber, and said he was going home, but he was afraid; and the boy had
+to go and wake his father. Very few fathers would have dressed up and
+gone home with a boy at midnight, and perhaps this one did so only
+because the mother made him; but it shows how clever the whole family
+was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was their oldest boy whom my boy and his brother chiefly went with
+before that boy who knew about <i>Monte Cristo</i> came to learn the trade in
+their father's office. One Saturday in July they three spent the whole
+day together. It was just the time when the apples are as big as walnuts
+on the trees, and a boy wants to try whether any of them are going to be
+sweet or not. The boys tried a great many of them, in an old orchard
+thrown open for building-lots behind my boy's yard; but they could not
+find any that were not sour; or that they could eat till they thought of
+putting salt on them; if you put salt on it, you could eat any kind of
+green apple, whether it was going to be a sweet kind or not. They went
+up to the Basin bank and got lots of salt out of the holes in the
+barrels lying there, and then they ate all the apples they could hold,
+and after that they cut limber sticks off the trees, and sharpened the
+points, and stuck apples on them and threw them. You could send an apple
+almost out of sight that way, and you could scare a dog almost as far as
+you could see him.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday my boy and his brother went to school, but the other boy was
+not there, and in the afternoon they heard he was sick. Then, toward the
+end of the week they heard that he had the flux; and on Friday, just
+before school let out, the teacher&mdash;it was the one that whipped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> so, and
+that the fellows all liked&mdash;rapped on his desk, and began to speak very
+solemnly to the scholars. He told them that their little mate, whom they
+had played with and studied with, was lying very sick, so very sick that
+it was expected he would die; and then he read them a serious lesson
+about life and death, and tried to make them feel how passing and
+uncertain all things were, and resolve to live so that they need never
+be afraid to die.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the fellows cried, and the next day some of them went to see the
+dying boy, and my boy went with them. His spirit was stricken to the
+earth, when he saw his gay, kind playmate lying there, white as the
+pillow under his wasted face, in which his sunken blue eyes showed large
+and strange. The sick boy did not say anything that the other boys could
+hear, but they could see the wan smile that came to his dry lips, and
+the light come sadly into his eyes, when his mother asked him if he knew
+this one or that; and they could not bear it, and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>In a few days they heard that he was dead, and one afternoon school did
+not keep, so that the boys might go to the funeral. Most of them walked
+in the procession; but some of them were waiting beside the open grave,
+that was dug near the grave of that man who believed there was a hole
+through the earth from pole to pole, and had a perforated stone globe on
+top of his monument.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<h3>GAMES AND PASTIMES</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2>MARBLES</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and went
+in a stated order. The first thing in the spring, as soon as the frost
+began to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played till
+the weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left it
+off. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but any
+boy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbles
+he won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out in
+the morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or a
+brown marble of the lowest value, and come home at night with a
+pocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters and
+bull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was not
+approved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness of
+his heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
+too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
+playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
+before he gave it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
+the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
+base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
+round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
+five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
+was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
+knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
+fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
+at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
+your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with
+the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw
+cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly
+every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from
+resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster
+of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate,
+and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were
+always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that
+of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether
+a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay when he
+shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> on the ground, in
+shooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble against
+another and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" before
+the other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of the
+ring, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gambling
+and the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, and
+began again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings when
+school let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with a
+stick, but when there was a great hurry, or there was no stick handy,
+the side of a fellow's boot would do, and the hollows for knucks were
+always bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to
+wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made
+for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a
+citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his walking
+round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia sense for
+amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense was smart.</p>
+
+
+<p>RACES</p>
+
+<p>When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their shoes
+for good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> Life
+has a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none so
+ecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast of
+our mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then from
+the heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, and
+cousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leaps
+as wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their arms
+in June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of the
+earlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, his
+races; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leave
+the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is
+all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the
+earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they
+shall not be thankless, nor she a stepmother any more.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 303px;">
+<img src="images/i004.jpg" width="303" height="448" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, which
+you were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and before
+you had got used to your new running weight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> When you struck your toe
+against a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hopped
+about a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.
+Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,
+till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as
+soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet
+about it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A MEAN TRICK</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were shade-trees all along the street, that you could climb if you
+wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had run yourself
+out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctly remembered that
+under one of these trees his elder brother first broached to him that
+awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and applied to their own lives the
+moral of <i>The Trippings of Tom Pepper</i>; he remembered how a conviction
+of the righteousness of the scheme sank into his soul, and he could not
+withhold his consent. Under the same tree, and very likely at the same
+time, a solemn conclave of boys, all the boys there were, discussed the
+feasibility of tying a tin can to a dog's tail, and seeing how he would
+act. They had all heard of the thing, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> none of them had seen it; and
+it was not so much a question of whether you ought to do a thing that on
+the very face of it would be so much fun, and if it did not amuse the
+dog as highly as anybody, could certainly do him no harm, as it was a
+question of whose dog you should get to take the dog's part in the
+sport. It was held that an old dog would probably not keep still long
+enough for you to tie the can on; he would have his suspicions; or else
+he would not run when the can was tied on, but very likely just go and
+lie down somewhere. The lot finally fell to a young yellow dog belonging
+to one of the boys, and the owner at once ran home to get him, and
+easily lured him back to the other boys with flatteries and caresses.
+The flatteries and caresses were not needed, for a dog is always glad to
+go with boys, upon any pretext, and so far from thinking that he does
+them a favor, he feels himself greatly honored. But I dare say the boy
+had a guilty fear that if his dog had known why he was invited to be of
+that party of boys, he might have pleaded a previous engagement. As it
+was, he came joyfully, and allowed the can to be tied to his tail
+without misgiving. If there had been any question with the boys as to
+whether he would enter fully into the spirit of the affair, it must have
+been instantly dissipated by the dogs behavior when he felt the loop
+tighten on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> his tail, and looked round to see what the matter was. The
+boys hardly had a chance to cheer him before he flashed out of sight
+round the corner, and they hardly had time to think before he flashed
+into sight again from the other direction. He whizzed along the ground,
+and the can hurtled in the air, but there was no other sound, and the
+cheers died away on the boys' lips. The boy who owned the dog began to
+cry, and the other fellows began to blame him for not stopping the dog.
+But he might as well have tried to stop a streak of lightning; the only
+thing you could do was to keep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it
+was successful beyond the wildest dreams of its projectors, though it
+would have been a sort of relief if the dog had taken some other road,
+for variety, or had even reversed his course. But he kept on as he
+began, and by a common impulse the boys made up their minds to abandon
+the whole affair to him. They all ran home and hid, or else walked about
+and tried to ignore it. But at this point the grown-up people began to
+be interested; the mothers came to their doors to see what was the
+matter. Yet even the mothers were powerless in a case like that, and the
+enthusiast had to be left to his fate. He was found under a barn at
+last, breathless, almost lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who
+untied the can from his tail. Eventually he got well again, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> lived
+to be a solemn warning to the boys; he was touchingly distrustful of
+their advances for a time, but he finally forgot and forgave everything.
+They did not forget, and they never tried tying a tin can to a dog's
+tail again, among all the things they tried and kept trying. Once was
+enough; and they never even liked to talk of it, the sight was so awful.
+They were really fond of the dog, and if they could have thought he
+would take the matter so seriously, they would not have tried to have
+that kind of fun with him. It cured them of ever wanting to have that
+kind of fun with any dog.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TOPS</h2>
+
+
+<p>As the weather softened, tops came in some weeks after marbles went out,
+and just after foot-races were over, and a little before swimming began.
+At first the boys bought their tops at the stores, but after a while the
+boy whose father had the turning-shop on the Hydraulic learned to turn
+their tops, and did it for nothing, which was cheaper than buying tops,
+especially as he furnished the wood, too, and you only had to get the
+metal peg yourself. I believe he was the same boy who wanted to be a
+pirate and ended by inventing a steam-governor. He was very ingenious,
+and he knew how to turn a top out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> beech or maple that would outspin
+anything you could get in a store. The boys usually chose a firm, smooth
+piece of sidewalk, under one of the big trees in the Smith neighborhood,
+and spun their tops there. A fellow launched his top into the ring, and
+the rest waited till it began to go to sleep&mdash;that is, to settle in one
+place, and straighten up and spin silently, as if standing still. Then
+any fellow had a right to peg at it with his top, and if he hit it, he
+won it; and if he split it, as sometimes happened, the fellow that owned
+it had to give him a top. The boys came with their pockets bulged out
+with tops, but before long they had to go for more tops to that boy who
+could turn them. From this it was but another step to go to the shop
+with him and look on while he turned the tops; and then in process of
+time the boys discovered that the smooth floor of the shop was a better
+place to fight tops than the best piece of sidewalk. They would have
+given whole Saturdays to the sport there, but when they got to holloing
+too loudly the boy's father would come up, and then they would all run.
+It was considered mean in him, but the boy himself was awfully clever,
+and the first thing the fellows knew they were back there again. Some
+few of the boys had humming-tops, but though these pleased by their
+noise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> against the
+good old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind up
+with a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flat
+button held between your forefinger and middle finger. Some of the boys
+had a very pretty art in the twirl they gave the top, and could control
+its course, somewhat as a skilful pitcher can govern that of a baseball.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>KITES</h2>
+
+
+<p>I do not know why a certain play went out, but suddenly the fellows who
+had been playing ball, or marbles, or tops, would find themselves
+playing something else. Kites came in just about the time of the
+greatest heat in summer, and lasted a good while; but could not have
+lasted as long as the heat, which began about the first of June, and
+kept on well through September; no play could last so long as that, and
+I suppose kite-flying must have died into swimming after the Fourth of
+July. The kites were of various shapes: bow kites, two-stick kites, and
+house kites. A bow kite could be made with half a barrel hoop carried
+over the top of a cross, but it was troublesome to make, and it did not
+fly very well, and somehow it was thought to look babyish; but it was
+held in greater respect than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> two-stick kite, which only the
+smallest boys played with, and which was made by fastening two sticks in
+the form of a cross. Any fellow more than six years old who appeared on
+the Commons with a two-stick kite would have been met with jeers, as a
+kind of girl.</p>
+
+<p>The favorite kite, the kite that balanced best, took the wind best, and
+flew best, and that would stand all day when you got it up, was the
+house kite, which was made of three sticks, and shaped nearly in the
+form of the gable of a gambrel-roofed house, only smaller at the base
+than at the point where the roof would begin. The outline of all these
+kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a string carried taut
+from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes
+the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes
+they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them.
+The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an
+inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of
+the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his
+brother could usually get paste from the printing-office; and when they
+could not they would make it by mixing flour and water cream-thick, and
+slowly boiling it. That was a paste that would hold till the cows came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+home, the boys said, and my boy was courted for his skill in making it.
+But after the kite was pasted, and dried in the sun, or behind the
+kitchen stove, if you were in very much of a hurry (and you nearly
+always were), it had to be hung, with belly-bands and tail-bands; that
+is, with strings carried from stick to stick over the face and at the
+bottom, to attach the cord for flying it and to fasten on the tail by.
+This took a good deal of art, and unless it were well done the kite
+would not balance, but would be always pitching and darting. Then the
+tail had to be of just the right weight; if it was too heavy the kite
+kept sinking, even after you got it up where otherwise it would stand;
+if too light, the kite would dart, and dash itself to pieces on the
+ground. A very pretty tail was made by tying twists of paper across a
+string a foot apart, till there were enough to balance the kite; but
+this sort of tail was apt to get tangled, and the best tail was made of
+a long streamer of cotton rags, with a gay tuft of dog-fennel at the
+end. Dog-fennel was added or taken away till just the right weight was
+got; and when this was done, after several experimental tests, the kite
+was laid flat on its face in the middle of the road, or on a long
+stretch of smooth grass; the bands were arranged, and the tail stretched
+carefully out behind, where it would not catch on bushes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> You unwound a
+great length of twine, running backward, and letting the twine slip
+swiftly through your hands till you had run enough out; then you seized
+the ball, and with one look over your shoulder to see that all was
+right, started swiftly forward. The kite reared itself from the ground,
+and swaying gracefully from side to side, rose slowly into the air, with
+its long tail climbing after it till the fennel tuft swung free. If
+there was not much surface wind you might have to run a little way, but
+as soon as the kite caught the upper currents it straightened itself,
+pulled the twine taut, and steadily mounted, while you gave it more and
+more twine; if the breeze was strong, the cord burned as it ran through
+your hands; till at last the kite stood still in the sky, at such a
+height that the cord holding it sometimes melted out of sight in the
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>If it was a hot July day the sky would be full of kites, and the Commons
+would be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, or
+winding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of their
+voices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, at
+least, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.
+Besides the wild debate of the rival excellences of the different kites,
+there were always quarrels from getting the strings crossed; for, as the
+boys<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> got their kites up, they drew together for company and for an
+easier comparison of their merits. It was only a mean boy who would try
+to cross another fellow's string; but sometimes accidents would happen;
+two kites would become entangled and both would have to be hauled in,
+while their owners cried and scolded, and the other fellows cheered and
+laughed. Now and then the tail of a kite would part midway, and then the
+kite would begin to dart violently from side to side, and then to whirl
+round and round in swifter and narrower circles till it dashed itself to
+the ground. Sometimes the kite-string would break, and the kite would
+waver and fall like a bird shot in the wing; and the owner of the kite,
+and all the fellows who had no kites, would run to get it where it came
+down, perhaps a mile or more away. It usually came down in a tree, and
+they had to climb for it; but sometimes it lodged so high that no one
+could reach it; and then it was slowly beaten and washed away in the
+winds and rains, and its long tail left streaming all winter from the
+naked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on the
+Commons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but a
+vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped
+to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their
+kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> round the edges of
+their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the
+kite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if you
+put your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers.
+The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, so
+as to slip over the string, which would be pulled level long enough to
+give the messenger a good start, and then released, when the wind would
+catch the little circle, and drive it up the long curving incline till
+it reached the kite.</p>
+
+<p>It was thought a great thing in a kite to pull, and it was a favor to
+another boy to let him take hold of your string and feel how your kite
+pulled. If you wanted to play mumble-the-peg, or anything, while your
+kite was up, you tied it to a stake in the ground, or gave it to some
+other fellow to hold; there were always lots of fellows eager to hold
+it. But you had to be careful how you let a little fellow hold it; for,
+if it was a very powerful kite, it would take him up. It was not certain
+just how strong a kite had to be to take a small boy up, and nobody had
+ever seen a kite do it, but everybody expected to see it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE BUTLER GUARDS</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Butler Guards were the finest military company in the world. I do
+not believe there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> was a fellow in the Boy's Town who even tried to
+imagine a more splendid body of troops: when they talked of them, as
+they did a great deal, it was simply to revel in the recognition of
+their perfection. I forget just what their uniform was, but there were
+white pantaloons in it, and a tuft of white-and-red cockerel plumes that
+almost covered the front of the hat, and swayed when the soldier walked,
+and blew in the wind. I think the coat was gray, and the skirts were
+buttoned back with buff, but I will not be sure of this; and somehow I
+cannot say how the officers differed from the privates in dress; it was
+impossible for them to be more magnificent. They walked backward in
+front of the platoons, with their swords drawn, and held in their
+white-gloved hands at hilt and point, and kept holloing,
+"Shoulder-r-r&mdash;arms! Carry&mdash;arms! Present&mdash;arms!" and then faced round,
+and walked a few steps forward, till they could think of something else
+to make the soldiers do.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<img src="images/butler.jpg" width="319" height="450" alt="THE BUTLER GUARDS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE BUTLER GUARDS</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every boy intended to belong to the Butler Guards when he grew up; and
+he would have given anything to be the drummer or the marker. These were
+both boys, and they were just as much dressed up as the Guards
+themselves, only they had caps instead of hats with plumes. It was
+strange that the other fellows somehow did not know who these boys were;
+but they never knew, or at least my boy never knew. They thought more of
+the marker than of the drummer; for the marker carried a little flag,
+and when the officers holloed out, "By the left flank&mdash;left! Wheel!" he
+set his flag against his shoulder, and stood marking time with his feet
+till the soldiers all got by him, and then he ran up to the front rank,
+with the flag fluttering behind him. The fellows used to wonder how he
+got to be marker, and to plan how they could get to be markers in other
+companies, if not in the Butler Guards. There were other companies that
+used to come to town on the Fourth of July and Muster Day, from smaller
+places round about; and some of them had richer uniforms: one company
+had blue coats with gold epaulets, and gold braid going down in loops on
+the sides of their legs; all the soldiers, of course, had braid straight
+down the outer seams of their pantaloons. One Muster Day a captain of
+one of the country companies came home with my boy's father to dinner;
+he was in full uniform, and he put his plumed helmet down on the entry
+table just like any other hat.</p>
+
+<p>There was a company of Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called
+them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe,
+and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said
+for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> Dutch
+officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de
+hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot&mdash;<i>links, links, links!</i>" (left, left,
+left!). But the boys honored even these imperfect intelligences so much
+in their quality of soldiers that they would any of them have been proud
+to be marker in the Dutch company; and they followed the Dutchmen round
+in their march as fondly as any other body of troops. Of course, school
+let out when there was a regular muster, and the boys gave the whole day
+to it; but I do not know just when the Muster Day came. They fired the
+cannon a good deal on the river-bank, and they must have camped
+somewhere near the town, though no recollection of tents remained in my
+boy's mind. He believed with the rest of the boys that the right way to
+fire the cannon was to get it so hot you need not touch it off, but just
+keep your thumb on the touch-hole, and take it away when you wanted the
+cannon to go off. Once he saw the soldiers ram the piece full of
+dog-fennel on top of the usual charge, and then he expected the cannon
+to burst. But it only roared away as usual.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PETS</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/i005.jpg" width="448" height="302" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As there are no longer any Whig boys in the world, the coon can no
+longer be kept anywhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> as a political emblem, I dare say. Even in my
+boy's time the boys kept coons just for the pleasure of it, and without
+meaning to elect Whig governors and presidents with them. I do not know
+how they got them&mdash;they traded for them, perhaps, with fellows in the
+country that had caught them, or perhaps their fathers bought them in
+market; some people thought they were very good to eat, and, like
+poultry and other things for the table, they may have been brought alive
+to market. But, anyhow, when a boy had a coon, he had to have a
+store-box turned open side down to keep it in, behind the house; and he
+had to have a little door in the box to pull the coon out through when
+he wanted to show it to other boys, or to look at it himself, which he
+did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> forty or fifty times a day, when he first got it. He had to have a
+small collar for the coon, and a little chain, because the coon would
+gnaw through a string in a minute. The coon himself never seemed to take
+much interest in keeping a coon, or to see much fun or sense in it. He
+liked to stay inside his box, where he had a bed of hay, and whenever
+the boy pulled him out, he did his best to bite the boy. He had no
+tricks; his temper was bad; and there was nothing about him except the
+rings round his tail and his political principles that anybody could
+care for. He never did anything but bite, and try to get away, or else
+run back into his box, which smelled, pretty soon, like an animal-show;
+he would not even let a fellow see him eat.</p>
+
+<p>My boy's brother had a coon, which he kept a good while, at a time when
+there was no election, for the mere satisfaction of keeping a coon.
+During his captivity the coon bit his keeper repeatedly through the
+thumb, and upon the whole seemed to prefer him to any other food; I do
+not really know what coons eat in a wild state, but this captive coon
+tasted the blood of nearly that whole family of children. Besides biting
+and getting away, he never did the slightest thing worth remembering; as
+there was no election, he did not even take part in a Whig procession.
+He got away two or three times. The first thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> his owner would know
+when he pulled the chain out was that there was no coon at the end of
+it, and then he would have to poke round the inside of the box pretty
+carefully with a stick, so as not to get bitten; after that he would
+have to see which tree the coon had gone up. It was usually the tall
+locust-tree in front of the house, and in about half a second all the
+boys in town would be there, telling the owner of the coon how to get
+him. Of course the only way was to climb for the coon, which would be
+out at the point of a high and slender limb, and would bite you awfully,
+even if the limb did not break under you, while the boys kept whooping
+and yelling and holloing out what to do, and Tip the dog just howled
+with excitement. I do not know how that coon was ever caught, but I know
+that the last time he got away he was not found during the day, but
+after nightfall he was discovered by moonlight in the locust-tree. His
+owner climbed for him, but the coon kept shifting about, and getting
+higher and higher, and at last he had to be left till morning. In the
+morning he was not there, nor anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>It had been expected, perhaps, that Tip would watch him, and grab him if
+he came down, and Tip would have done it probably if he had kept awake.
+He was a dog of the greatest courage, and he was especially fond of
+hunting. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> been bitten oftener by that coon than anybody but the
+coon's owner, but he did not care for biting. He was always getting
+bitten by rats, but he was the greatest dog for rats that there almost
+ever was. The boys hunted rats with him at night, when they came out of
+the stables that backed down to the Hydraulic, for water; and a dog who
+liked above all things to lie asleep on the back-step, by day, and would
+no more think of chasing a pig out of the garden than he would think of
+sitting up all night with a coon, would get frantic about rats, and
+would perfectly wear himself out hunting them on land and in the water,
+and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of
+hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he
+would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would
+lift his hind legs off the ground.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how he came into that family, but I believe he was given
+to it full grown by somebody. It was some time after my boy failed to
+buy what he called a Confoundland dog, from a colored boy who had it for
+sale, a pretty puppy with white and black spots which he had quite set
+his heart on; but Tip more than consoled him. Tip was of no particular
+breed, and he had no personal beauty; he was of the color of a mouse or
+an elephant, and his tail was without the smallest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> grace; it was smooth
+and round, but it was so strong that he could pull a boy all over the
+town by it, and usually did; and he had the best, and kindest, and
+truest ugly old face in the world. He loved the whole human race, and as
+a watch-dog he was a failure through his trustful nature; he would no
+more have bitten a person than he would have bitten a pig; but where
+other dogs were concerned, he was a lion. He might be lying fast asleep
+in the back-yard, and he usually was, but if a dog passed the front of
+the house under a wagon, he would be up and after that dog before you
+knew what you were about. He seemed to want to fight country dogs the
+worst, but any strange dog would do. A good half the time he would come
+off best; but, however he came off, he returned to the back-yard with
+his tongue hanging out, and wagging his tail in good-humor with all the
+world. Nothing could stop him, however, where strange dogs were
+concerned. He was a Whig dog, of course, as any one could tell by his
+name, which was Tippecanoe in full, and was given him because it was the
+nickname of General Harrison, the great Whig who won the battle of
+Tippecanoe. The boys' Henry Clay Club used him to pull the little wagon
+that they went about in singing Whig songs, and he would pull five or
+six boys, guided simply by a stick which he held in his mouth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+which a boy held on either side of him. But if he caught sight of a dog
+that he did not know, he would drop that stick and start for that dog as
+far off as he could see him, spilling the Henry Clay Club out of the
+wagon piecemeal as he went, and never stopping till he mixed up the
+strange dog in a fight where it would have been hard to tell which was
+either champion and which was the club wagon. When the fight was over
+Tip would come smilingly back to the fragments of the Henry Clay Club,
+with pieces of the vehicle sticking about him, and profess himself, in a
+dog's way, ready to go on with the concert.</p>
+
+<p>Any crowd of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or
+hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town,
+and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind,
+it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of
+character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he
+grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would
+move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no
+reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it
+is certain that he no longer showed his early ardor. He joined the
+Free-Soil movement in 1848, and supported Van Buren and Adams,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> but
+without the zeal he had shown for Henry Clay. Once a year, as long as
+the family lived in the Boy's Town, the children were anxious about Tip
+when the dog-law was put in force, and the constables went round
+shooting all the dogs that were found running at large without muzzles.
+At this time, when Tip was in danger of going mad and biting people, he
+showed a most unseasonable activity, and could hardly be kept in bounds.
+A dog whose sole delight at other moments was to bask in the summer sun,
+or dream by the winter fire, would now rouse himself to an interest in
+everything that was going on in the dangerous world, and make forays
+into it at all unguarded points. The only thing to do was to muzzle him,
+and this was done by my boy's brother with a piece of heavy twine, in
+such a manner as to interfere with Tip's happiness as little as
+possible. It was a muzzle that need not be removed for either eating,
+drinking, or fighting; but it satisfied the law, and Tip always came
+safely through the dog-days, perhaps by favor or affection with the
+officers who were so inexorable with some dogs.</p>
+
+<p>While Tip was still in his prime the family of children was further
+enriched by the possession of a goat; but this did not belong to the
+whole family, or it was, at least nominally, the property of that eldest
+brother they all looked up to. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> do not know how they came by the goat,
+any more than I know how they came by Tip; I only know that there came a
+time when it was already in the family, and that before it was got rid
+of it was a presence there was no mistaking. Nobody who has not kept a
+goat can have any notion of how many different kinds of mischief a goat
+can get into, without seeming to try, either, but merely by following
+the impulses of its own goatishness. This one was a nanny-goat, and it
+answered to the name of Nanny with an intelligence that was otherwise
+wholly employed in making trouble. It went up and down stairs, from
+cellar to garret, and in and out of all the rooms, like anybody, with a
+faint, cynical indifference in the glance of its cold gray eyes that
+gave no hint of its purposes or performances. In the chambers it chewed
+the sheets and pillow-cases on the beds, and in the dining-room, if it
+found nothing else, it would do its best to eat the table-cloth.
+Washing-day was a perfect feast for it, for then it would banquet on the
+shirt-sleeves and stockings that dangled from the clothes-line, and
+simply glut itself with the family linen and cotton. In default of these
+dainties, Nanny would gladly eat a chip-hat; she was not proud; she
+would eat a split-basket, if there was nothing else at hand. Once she
+got up on the kitchen table, and had a perfect orgy with a lot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of
+fresh-baked pumpkin-pies she found there; she cleaned all the pumpkin so
+neatly out of the pastry shells that, if there had been any more pumpkin
+left, they could have been filled up again, and nobody could have told
+the difference. The grandmother, who was visiting in the house at the
+time, declared to the mother that it would serve the father and the boys
+just right if she did fill these very shells up and give them to the
+father and the boys to eat. But I believe this was not done, and it was
+only suggested in a moment of awful exasperation, and because it was the
+father who was to blame for letting the boys keep the goat. The mother
+was always saying that the goat should not stay in the house another
+day, but she had not the heart to insist on its banishment, the children
+were so fond of it. I do not know why they were fond of it, for it never
+showed them the least affection, but was always taking the most unfair
+advantages of them, and it would butt them over whenever it got the
+chance. It would try to butt them into the well when they leaned down to
+pull up the bucket from the curb; and if it came out of the house, and
+saw a boy cracking nuts at the low flat stone the children had in the
+back-yard to crack nuts on, it would pretend that the boy was making
+motions to insult it, and before he knew what he was about it would fly
+at him and send him spinning head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> over heels. It was not of the least
+use in the world, and could not be, but the children were allowed to
+keep it till, one fatal day, when the mother had a number of other
+ladies to tea, as the fashion used to be in small towns, when they sat
+down to a comfortable gossip over dainty dishes of stewed chicken, hot
+biscuit, peach-preserves, sweet tomato-pickles, and pound-cake. That day
+they all laid off their bonnets on the hall table, and the goat, after
+demurely waiting and watching with its faded eyes, which saw everything
+and seemed to see nothing, discerned a golden opportunity, and began to
+make such a supper of bonnet-ribbons as perhaps never fell to a goat's
+lot in life before. It was detected in its stolen joys just as it had
+chewed the ribbon of a best bonnet up to the bonnet, and was chased into
+the back-yard; but, as it had swallowed the ribbon without being able to
+swallow the bonnet, it carried that with it. The boy who specially owned
+the goat ran it down in a frenzy of horror and apprehension, and managed
+to unravel the ribbon from its throat, and get back the bonnet. Then he
+took the bonnet in and laid it carefully down on the table again, and
+decided that it would be best not to say anything about the affair. But
+such a thing as that could not be kept. The goat was known at once to
+have done the mischief; and this time it was really sent away. All<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> the
+children mourned it, and the boy who owned it the most used to go to the
+house of the people who took it, and who had a high board fence round
+their yard, and try to catch sight of it through the cracks. When he
+called "Nanny!" it answered him instantly with a plaintive "Baa!" and
+then, after a vain interchange of lamentations, he had to come away, and
+console himself as he could with the pets that were left him.</p>
+
+<p>But all were trifling joys, except maybe Tip and Nanny, compared with
+the pony which the boys owned in common, and which was the greatest
+thing that ever came into their lives. I cannot tell just how their
+father came to buy it for them, or where he got it; but I dare say he
+thought they were about old enough for a pony, and might as well have
+one. It was a Mexican pony, and as it appeared on the scene just after
+the Mexican war, some volunteer may have brought it home. One volunteer
+brought home a Mexican dog, that was smooth and hairless, with a skin
+like an elephant, and that was always shivering round with the cold; he
+was not otherwise a remarkable dog, and I do not know that he ever felt
+even the warmth of friendship among the boys; his manners were reserved
+and his temper seemed doubtful. But the pony never had any trouble with
+the climate of Southern Ohio (which is indeed hot enough to fry a
+salamander in summer);<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> and though his temper was no better than other
+ponies', he was perfectly approachable. I mean that he was approachable
+from the side, for it was not well to get where he could bite you or
+kick you. He was of a bright sorrel color, and he had a brand on one
+haunch.</p>
+
+<p>My boy had an ideal of a pony, conceived from pictures in his
+reading-books at school, that held its head high and arched its neck,
+and he strove by means of checks and martingales to make this real pony
+conform to the illustrations. But it was of no use; the real pony held
+his neck straight out like a ewe, or, if reined up, like a camel, and he
+hung his big head at the end of it with no regard whatever for the
+ideal. His caparison was another mortification and failure. What the boy
+wanted was an English saddle, embroidered on the morocco seat in crimson
+silk, and furnished with shining steel stirrups. What he had was the
+framework of a Mexican saddle, covered with rawhide, and cushioned with
+a blanket; the stirrups were Mexican, too, and clumsily fashioned out of
+wood. The boys were always talking about getting their father to get
+them a pad, but they never did it, and they managed as they could with
+the saddle they had. For the most part they preferred to ride the pony
+barebacked, for then they could ride him double, and when they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> first
+got him they all wanted to ride him so much that they had to ride him
+double. They kept him going the whole day long; but after a while they
+calmed down enough to take him one at a time, and to let him have a
+chance for his meals.</p>
+
+<p>They had no regular stable, and the father left the boys to fit part of
+the cow-shed up for the pony, which they did by throwing part of the
+hen-coop open into it. The pigeon-cots were just over his head, and he
+never could have complained of being lonesome. At first everybody wanted
+to feed him as well as ride him, and if he had been allowed time for it
+he might have eaten himself to death, or if he had not always tried to
+bite you or kick you when you came in with his corn. After a while the
+boys got so they forgot him, and nobody wanted to go out and feed the
+pony, especially after dark; but he knew how to take care of himself,
+and when he had eaten up everything there was in the cow-shed he would
+break out and eat up everything there was in the yard.</p>
+
+<p>The boys got lots of good out of him. When you were once on his back you
+were pretty safe, for he was so lazy that he would not think of running
+away, and there was no danger unless he bounced you off when he trotted;
+he had a hard trot. The boys wanted to ride him standing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> up, like
+circus-actors, and the pony did not mind, but the boys could not stay
+on, though they practised a good deal, turn about, when the other
+fellows were riding their horses, standing up, on the Commons. He was
+not of much use in Indian fights, for he could seldom be lashed into a
+gallop, and a pony that proposed to walk through an Indian fight was
+ridiculous. Still, with the help of imagination, my boy employed him in
+some scenes of wild Arab life, and hurled the Moorish javelin from him
+in mid-career, when the pony was flying along at the mad pace of a
+canal-boat. The pony early gave the boys to understand that they could
+get very little out of him in the way of herding the family cow. He
+would let them ride him to the pasture, and he would keep up with the
+cow on the way home, when she walked, but if they wanted anything more
+than that they must get some other pony. They tried to use him in
+carrying papers, but the subscribers objected to having him ridden up to
+their front doors over the sidewalk, and they had to give it up.</p>
+
+<p>When he became an old story, and there was no competition for him among
+the brothers, my boy sometimes took him into the woods, and rode him in
+the wandering bridle-paths, with a thrilling sense of adventure. He did
+not like to be alone there, and he oftener had the company of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> a boy who
+was learning the trade in his father's printing-office. This boy was
+just between him and his elder brother in age, and he was the good
+comrade of both; all the family loved him, and made him one of them, and
+my boy was fond of him because they had some tastes in common that were
+not very common among the other boys. They liked the same books, and
+they both began to write historical romances. My boy's romance was
+founded on facts of the Conquest of Granada, which he had read of again
+and again in Washington Irving, with a passionate pity for the Moors,
+and yet with pride in the grave and noble Spaniards. He would have given
+almost anything to be a Spaniard, and he lived in a dream of some day
+sallying out upon the Vega before Granada, in silk and steel, with an
+Arabian charger under him that champed its bit. In the mean time he did
+what he could with the family pony, and he had long rides in the woods
+with the other boy, who used to get his father's horse when he was not
+using it on Sunday, and race with him through the dangling wild
+grape-vines and pawpaw thickets, and over the reedy levels of the river,
+their hearts both bounding with the same high hopes of a world that
+could never come true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>INDIANS</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was not a boy in the Boy's Town who would not gladly have turned
+from the town and lived in the woods if his mother had let him; and in
+every vague plan of running off the forest had its place as a city of
+refuge from pursuit and recapture. The pioneer days were still so close
+to those times that the love of solitary adventure which took the boys'
+fathers into the sylvan wastes of the great West might well have burned
+in the boys' hearts; and if their ideal of life was the free life of the
+woods, no doubt it was because their near ancestors had lived it. At any
+rate, that was their ideal, and they were always talking among
+themselves of how they would go farther West when they grew up, and be
+trappers and hunters. I do not remember any boy but one who meant to be
+a sailor; they lived too hopelessly far from the sea; and I dare say the
+boy who invented the marine-engine governor, and who wished to be a
+pirate, would just as soon have been a bandit of the Osage. In those
+days Oregon had just been opened to settlers, and the boys all wanted to
+go and live in Oregon, where you could stand in your door and shoot deer
+and wild turkey, while a salmon big enough to pull you in was tugging
+away at the line you had set in the river that ran before the
+log-cabin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If they could, the boys would rather have been Indians than anything
+else, but, as there was really no hope of this whatever, they were
+willing to be settlers, and fight the Indians. They had rather a mixed
+mind about them in the mean time, but perhaps they were not unlike other
+idolaters in both fearing and adoring their idols; perhaps they came
+pretty near being Indians in that, and certainly they came nearer than
+they knew. When they played war, and the war was between the whites and
+the Indians, it was almost as low a thing to be white as it was to be
+British when there were Americans on the other side; in either case you
+had to be beaten. The boys lived in the desire, if not the hope, of some
+time seeing an Indian, and they made the most of the Indians in the
+circus, whom they knew to be just white men dressed up; but none of them
+dreamed that what really happened one day could ever happen. This was at
+the arrival of several canal-boat loads of genuine Indians from the
+Wyandot Reservation in the northwestern part of the State, on their way
+to new lands beyond the Mississippi. The boys' fathers must have known
+that these Indians were coming, but it just shows how stupid the most of
+fathers are, that they never told the boys about it. All at once there
+the Indians were, as if the canal-boats had dropped with them out of
+heaven. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> they were, crowding the decks, in their blankets and
+moccasins, braves and squaws and pappooses, standing about or squatting
+in groups, not saying anything, and looking exactly like the pictures.
+The squaws had the pappooses on their backs, and the men and boys had
+bows and arrows in their hands; and as soon as the boats landed the
+Indians, all except the squaws and pappooses, came ashore, and went up
+to the courthouse yard, and began to shoot with their bows and arrows.
+It almost made the boys crazy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 305px;">
+<img src="images/i006.jpg" width="305" height="448" alt="ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course they would have liked to have the Indians shoot at birds, or
+some game, but they were mighty glad to have them shoot at cents and
+bits and quarters that anybody could stick up in the ground. The Indians
+would all shoot at the mark till some one hit it, and the one who hit it
+had the money, whatever it was. The boys ran and brought back the
+arrows; and they were so proud to do this that I wonder they lived
+through it. My boy was too bashful to bring the Indians their arrows; he
+could only stand apart and long to approach the filthy savages, whom he
+revered; to have touched the border of one of their blankets would have
+been too much. Some of them were rather handsome, and two or three of
+the Indian boys were so pretty that the Boy's Town boys said they were
+girls. They were of all ages, from old, withered men to children of six
+or seven, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> they were all alike grave and unsmiling; the old men were
+not a whit more dignified than the children, and the children did not
+enter into their sport with more zeal and ardor than the wrinkled sages
+who shared it. In fact they were, old and young alike, savages, and the
+boys who looked on and envied them were savages in their ideal of a
+world where people spent their lives in hunting and fishing and ranging
+the woods, and never grew up into the toils and cares that can alone
+make men of boys. They wished to escape these, as many foolish persons
+do among civilized nations, and they thought if they could only escape
+them they would be happy; they did not know that they would be merely
+savage, and that the great difference between a savage and a civilized
+man is work. They would all have been willing to follow these Indians
+away into the Far West, where they were going, and be barbarians for the
+rest of their days; and the wonder is that some of the fellows did not
+try it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GUNS</h2>
+
+
+<p>After the red men had flitted away like red leaves, their memory
+remained with the boys, and a plague of bows and arrows raged among
+them, and it was a good while before they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> calmed down to their old
+desire of having a gun. But they came back to that at last, for that was
+the normal desire of every boy in the Boy's Town who was not a girl-boy,
+and there were mighty few girl-boys there. Up to a certain point a
+pistol would do, especially if you had bullet-moulds, and could run
+bullets to shoot out of it; only your mother would be sure to see you
+running them, and just as likely as not would be so scared that she
+would say you must not shoot bullets. Then you would have to use
+buckshot, if you could get them anywhere near the right size, or small
+marbles; but a pistol was always a makeshift, and you never could hit
+anything with it, not even a board fence; it always kicked, or burst, or
+something.</p>
+
+<p>Very few boys ever came to have a gun, though they all expected to have
+one. But seven or eight boys would go hunting with one shot-gun, and
+take turn-about shooting; some of the little fellows never got to shoot
+at all, but they could run and see whether the big boys had hit anything
+when they fired, and that was something. This was my boy's privilege for
+a long time before he had a gun of his own, and he went patiently with
+his elder brother, and never expected to fire the gun, except, perhaps,
+to shoot the load off before they got back to town; they were not
+allowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> to bring the gun home loaded. It was a gun that was pretty safe
+for anything in front of it, but you never could tell what it was going
+to do. It began by being simply an old gun-barrel, which my boy's
+brother bought of another boy who was sick of it for a fip, as the
+half-real piece was called, and it went on till it got a lock from one
+gunsmith and a stock from another, and was a complete gun. But this took
+time; perhaps a month; for the gunsmiths would only work at it in their
+leisure; they were delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay
+for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made
+himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as
+straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a
+little twist to one side, so that one of the jour printers said it was a
+first-rate gun to shoot round a corner with. Then he made himself a
+powder-flask out of an ox-horn that he got and boiled till it was soft
+(it smelt the whole house up), and then scraped thin with a piece of
+glass; it hung at his side; and he carried his shot in his pantaloons
+pocket. He went hunting with this gun for a good many years, but he had
+never shot anything with it, when his uncle gave him a smooth-bore
+rifle, and he in turn gave his gun to my boy, who must then have been
+nearly ten years old.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him that he was quite old enough to have a gun; but he was
+mortified the very next morning after he got it by a citizen who thought
+differently. He had risen at daybreak to go out and shoot kildees on the
+Common, and he was hurrying along with his gun on his shoulder when the
+citizen stopped him and asked him what he was going to do with that gun.
+He said to shoot kildees, and he added that it was his gun. This seemed
+to surprise the citizen even more than the boy could have wished. He
+asked him if he did not think he was a pretty small boy to have a gun;
+and he took the gun from him, and examined it thoughtfully, and then
+handed it back to the boy, who felt himself getting smaller all the
+time. The man went his way without saying anything more, but his
+behavior was somehow so sarcastic that the boy had no pleasure in his
+sport that morning; partly, perhaps, because he found no kildees to
+shoot at on the Common. He only fired off his gun once or twice at a
+fence, and then he sneaked home with it through alleys and by-ways, and
+whenever he met a person he hurried by for fear the person would find
+him too small to have a gun.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward he came to have a bolder spirit about it, and he went hunting
+with it a good deal. It was a very curious kind of gun; you had to snap
+a good many caps on it, sometimes, before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> load would go off; and
+sometimes it would hang fire, and then seem to recollect itself, and go
+off, maybe, just when you were going to take it down from your shoulder.
+The barrel was so crooked that it could not shoot straight, but this was
+not the only reason why the boy never hit anything with it. He could not
+shut his left eye and keep his right eye open; so he had to take aim
+with both eyes, or else with the left eye, which was worse yet, till one
+day when he was playing shinny (or hockey) at school, and got a blow
+over his left eye from a shinny-stick. At first he thought his eye was
+put out; he could not see for the blood that poured into it from the cut
+above it. He ran homeward wild with fear, but on the way he stopped at a
+pump to wash away the blood, and then he found his eye was safe. It
+suddenly came into his mind to try if he could not shut that eye now,
+and keep the right one open. He found that he could do it perfectly; by
+help of his handkerchief, he stanched his wound, and made himself
+presentable, with the glassy pool before the pump for a mirror, and went
+joyfully back to school. He kept trying his left eye, to make sure it
+had not lost its new-found art, and as soon as school was out he hurried
+home to share the joyful news with his family.</p>
+
+<p>He went hunting the very next Saturday, and at the first shot he killed
+a bird. It was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> suicidal sap-sucker, which had suffered him to steal
+upon it so close that it could not escape even the vagaries of that
+wandering gun-barrel, and was blown into such small pieces that the boy
+could bring only a few feathers of it away. In the evening, when his
+father came home, he showed him these trophies of the chase, and boasted
+of his exploit with the minutest detail. His father asked him whether he
+had expected to eat this sap-sucker, if he could have got enough of it
+together. He said no, sap-suckers were not good to eat. "Then you took
+its poor little life merely for the pleasure of killing it," said the
+father. "Was it a great pleasure to see it die?" The boy hung his head
+in shame and silence; it seemed to him that he would never go hunting
+again. Of course he did go hunting often afterward, but his brother and
+he kept faithfully to the rule of never killing anything that they did
+not want to eat. To be sure, they gave themselves a wide range; they
+were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even
+blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were
+some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked
+to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor
+robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept
+about the house, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to
+shoot them. They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves,
+which used to light on the Basin bank, and pick up the grain scattered
+there from the boats and wagons.</p>
+
+<p>There were a good many things you could do with a gun: you could fire
+your ramrod out of it, and see it sail through the air; you could fill
+the muzzle up with water, on top of a charge, and send the water in a
+straight column at a fence. The boys all believed that you could fire
+that column of water right through a man, and they always wanted to try
+whether it would go through a cow, but they were afraid the owner of the
+cow would find it out. There was a good deal of pleasure in cleaning
+your gun when it got so foul that your ramrod stuck in it and you could
+hardly get it out. You poured hot water into the muzzle and blew it
+through the nipple, till it began to show clear; then you wiped it dry
+with soft rags wound on your gun-screw, and then oiled it with greasy
+tow. Sometimes the tow would get loose from the screw, and stay in the
+barrel, and then you would have to pick enough powder in at the nipple
+to blow it out. Of course I am talking of the old muzzle-loading
+shot-gun, which I dare say the boys never use nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>But the great pleasure of all, in hunting, was getting home tired and
+footsore in the evening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and smelling the supper almost as soon as you
+came in sight of the house. There was nearly always hot biscuit for
+supper, with steak, and with coffee such as nobody but a boy's mother
+ever knew how to make; and just as likely as not there was some kind of
+preserves; at any rate, there was apple-butter. You could hardly take
+the time to wash the powder-grime off your hands and face before you
+rushed to the table; and if you had brought home a yellowhammer you left
+it with your gun on the back porch, and perhaps the cat got it and saved
+you the trouble of cleaning it. A cat can clean a bird a good deal
+quicker than a boy can, and she does not hate to do it half as badly.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the pleasure of getting home from hunting late was the pleasure
+of starting early, as my boy and his brother sometimes did, to shoot
+ducks on the Little Reservoir in the fall. His brother had an
+alarm-clock, which he set at about four, and he was up the instant it
+rang, and pulling my boy out of bed, where he would rather have stayed
+than shot the largest mallard duck in the world. They raked the ashes
+off the bed of coals in the fireplace, and while the embers ticked and
+bristled, and flung out little showers of sparks, they hustled on their
+clothes, and ran down the back stairs into the yard with their guns.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tip, the dog, was already waiting for them there, for he seemed to know
+they were going that morning, and he began whimpering for joy, and
+twisting himself sideways up against them, and nearly wagging his tail
+off; and licking their hands and faces, and kissing their guns all over;
+he was about crazy. When they started, he knew where they were going,
+and he rushed ahead through the silent little sleeping town, and led the
+way across the wide Commons, where the cows lay in dim bulks on the
+grass, and the geese waddled out of his way with wild, clamorous cries,
+till they came in sight of the Reservoir. Then Tip fell back with my boy
+and let the elder brother go ahead, for he always had a right to the
+first shot; and while he dodged down behind the bank, and crept along to
+the place where the ducks usually were, my boy kept a hold on Tip's
+collar, and took in the beautiful mystery of the early morning. The
+place so familiar by day was estranged to his eyes in that pale light,
+and he was glad of old Tip's company, for it seemed a time when there
+might very well be ghosts about. The water stretched a sheet of smooth,
+gray silver, with little tufts of mist on its surface, and through these
+at last he could see the ducks softly gliding to and fro, and he could
+catch some dreamy sound from them. His heart stood still and then jumped
+wildly in his breast, as the still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> air was startled with the rush of
+wings, and the water broke with the plunge of other flocks arriving.
+Then he began to make those bets with himself that a boy hopes he will
+lose: he bet that his brother would not hit any of them; he bet that he
+did not even see them; he bet that if he did see them and got a shot at
+them, they would not come back so that he could get a chance himself to
+kill any. It seemed to him that he had to wait an hour, and just when he
+was going to hollo, and tell his brother where the ducks were, the old
+smooth-bore sent out a red flash and a white puff before he heard the
+report; Tip tore loose from his grasp; and he heard the splashing rise
+of the ducks, and the hurtling rush of their wings; and he ran forward,
+yelling, "How many did you hit? Where are they? Where are you? Are they
+coming back? It's my turn now!" and making an outcry that would have
+frightened away a fleet of ironclads, but much less a flock of ducks.</p>
+
+<p>One shot always ended the morning's sport, and there were always good
+reasons why this shot never killed anything.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>NUTTING</h2>
+
+
+<p>The woods were pretty full of the kind of hickory-trees called pignuts,
+and the boys gathered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the nuts, and even ate their small, bitter
+kernels; and around the Poor-House woods there were some shag-barks, but
+the boys did not go for them because of the bull and the crazy people.
+Their great and constant reliance in foraging was the abundance of black
+walnuts which grew everywhere, along the roads and on the river-banks,
+as well as in the woods and the pastures. Long before it was time to go
+walnutting, the boys began knocking off the nuts and trying whether they
+were ripe enough; and just as soon as the kernels began to fill out, the
+fellows began making walnut wagons. I do not know why it was thought
+necessary to have a wagon to gather walnuts, but I know that it was, and
+that a boy had to make a new wagon every year.</p>
+
+<p>No boy's walnut wagon could last till the next year; it did very well if
+it lasted till the next day. He had to make it nearly all with his
+pocket-knife. He could use a saw to block the wheels out of a pine
+board, and he could use a hatchet to rough off the corners of the
+blocks, but he had to use his knife to give them any sort of roundness,
+and they were not very round then; they were apt to be oval in shape,
+and they always wabbled. He whittled the axles out with his knife, and
+he made the hubs with it. He could get a tongue ready-made if he used a
+broom-handle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> or a hoop-pole, but that had in either case to be whittled
+so it could be fastened to the wagon; he even bored the linchpin holes
+with his knife if he could not get a gimlet; and if he could not get an
+auger, he bored the holes through the wheels with a red-hot poker, and
+then whittled them large enough with his knife. He had to use pine for
+nearly everything, because any other wood was too hard to whittle; and
+then the pine was always splitting. It split in the axles when he was
+making the linchpin holes, and the wheels had to be kept on by linchpins
+that were tied in; the wheels themselves split, and had to be
+strengthened by slats nailed across the rifts. The wagon-bed was a
+candle-box nailed to the axles, and that kept the front axle tight, so
+that it took the whole width of a street to turn a very little wagon in
+without upsetting.</p>
+
+<p>When the wagon was all done, the boy who owned it started off with his
+brothers, or some other boys who had no wagon, to gather walnuts. He
+started early in the morning of some bright autumn day while the frost
+still bearded the grass in the back-yard, and bristled on the fence-tops
+and the roof of the woodshed, and hurried off to the woods so as to get
+there before the other boys had got the walnuts. The best place for them
+was in some woods-pasture where the trees stood free of one another, and
+around them, in among the tall, frosty grass, the tumbled nuts lay
+scattered in groups of twos and threes, or fives, some still
+yellowish-green in their hulls, and some black, but all sending up to
+the nostrils of the delighted boy the incense of their clean, keen,
+wild-woody smell, to be a memory forever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 287px;">
+<img src="images/i007.jpg" width="287" height="448" alt="NUTTING" title="" />
+<span class="caption">NUTTING</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The leaves had dropped from the trees overhead, and the branches
+outlined themselves against the blue sky, and dangled from their outer
+stems clusters of the unfallen fruit, as large as oranges, and only
+wanting a touch to send them plumping down into the grass where
+sometimes their fat hulls burst, and the nuts almost leaped into the
+boy's hands. The boys ran, some of them to gather the fallen nuts, and
+others to get clubs and rocks to beat them from the trees; one was sure
+to throw off his jacket and kick off his shoes and climb the tree to
+shake every limb where a walnut was still clinging. When they had got
+them all heaped up like a pile of grape-shot at the foot of the tree,
+they began to hull them, with blows of a stick, or with stones, and to
+pick the nuts from the hulls, where the grubs were battening on their
+assured ripeness, and to toss them into a little heap, a very little
+heap indeed compared with the bulk of that they came from. The boys
+gloried in getting as much walnut stain on their hands as they could,
+for it would not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> wash off, and it showed for days that they had been
+walnutting; sometimes they got to staining one another's faces with the
+juice, and pretending they were Indians.</p>
+
+<p>The sun rose higher and higher, and burned the frost from the grass, and
+while the boys worked and yelled and chattered they got hotter and
+hotter, and began to take off their shoes and stockings, till every one
+of them was barefoot. Then, about three or four o'clock, they would
+start homeward, with half a bushel of walnuts in their wagon, and their
+shoes and stockings piled in on top of them. That is, if they had good
+luck. In a story, they would always have had good luck, and always gone
+home with half a bushel of walnuts; but this is a history, and so I have
+to own that they usually went home with about two quarts of walnuts
+rattling round under their shoes and stockings in the bottom of the
+wagon. They usually had no such easy time getting them as they always
+would in a story; they did not find them under the trees, or ready to
+drop off, but they had to knock them off with about six or seven clubs
+or rocks to every walnut, and they had to pound the hulls so hard to get
+the nuts out that sometimes they cracked the nuts. That was because they
+usually went walnutting before the walnuts were ripe. But they made just
+as much preparation for drying the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> nuts on the woodshed roof whether
+they got half a gallon or half a bushel; for they did not intend to stop
+gathering them till they had two or three barrels. They nailed a cleat
+across the roof to keep them from rolling off, and they spread them out
+thin, so that they could look more than they were, and dry better. They
+said they were going to keep them for Christmas, but they had to try
+pretty nearly every hour or so whether they were getting dry, and in
+about three days they were all eaten up.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE FIRE-ENGINES</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were two fire-engines in the Boy's Town; but there seemed to be
+something always the matter with them, so that they would not work, if
+there was a fire. When there was no fire, the companies sometimes pulled
+them up through the town to the Basin bank, and practised with them
+against the roofs and fronts of the pork-houses. It was almost as good
+as a muster to see the firemen in their red shirts and black trousers,
+dragging the engine at a run, two and two together, one on each side of
+the rope.</p>
+
+<p>My boy would have liked to speak to a fireman, but he never dared; and
+the foreman of the <i>Neptune</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> which was the larger and feebler of the
+engines, was a figure of such worshipful splendor in his eyes that he
+felt as if he could not be just a common human being. He was a
+storekeeper, to begin with, and he was tall and slim, and his black
+trousers fitted him like a glove; he had a patent-leather helmet, and a
+brass speaking-trumpet, and he gave all his orders through this. It did
+not make any difference how close he was to the men, he shouted
+everything through the trumpet; and when they manned the brakes and
+began to pump, he roared at them, "Down on her, down on her, boys!" so
+that you would have thought the <i>Neptune</i> could put out the world if it
+was burning up. Instead of that there was usually a feeble splutter from
+the nozzle, and sometimes none at all, even if the hose did not break;
+it was fun to see the hose break.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Neptune</i> was a favorite with the boys, though they believed that
+the <i>Tremont</i> could squirt farther, and they had a belief in its quiet
+efficiency which was fostered by its reticence in public. It was small
+and black, but the <i>Neptune</i> was large, and painted of a gay color lit
+up with gilding that sent the blood leaping through a boy's veins. The
+boys knew the <i>Neptune</i> was out of order, but they were always expecting
+it would come right, and in the mean time they felt that it was an honor
+to the town, and they followed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> it as proudly back to the engine-house
+after one of its magnificent failures as if it had been a magnificent
+success. The boys were always making magnificent failures themselves,
+and they could feel for the <i>Neptune</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS</h2>
+
+
+<p>The boys made a very careful study of the circus bills, and when the
+circus came they held the performance to a strict account for any
+difference between the feats and their representation. For a fortnight
+beforehand they worked themselves up for the arrival of the circus into
+a fever of fear and hope, for it was always a question with a great many
+whether they could get their fathers to give them the money to go in.
+The full price was two bits, and the half-price was a bit, or a Spanish
+real, then a commoner coin than the American dime in the West; and every
+boy, for that time only, wished to be little enough to look young enough
+to go in for a bit. Editors of newspapers had a free ticket for every
+member of their families; and my boy was sure of going to the circus
+from the first rumor of its coming. But he was none the less deeply
+thrilled by the coming event, and he was up early on the morning of the
+great day, to go out and meet the circus procession beyond the
+corporation line.</p>
+
+<p>I do not really know how boys live through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> wonder and the glory of
+such a sight. Once there were two chariots&mdash;one held the band in
+red-and-blue uniforms, and was drawn by eighteen piebald horses; and the
+other was drawn by a troop of Shetland ponies, and carried in a vast
+mythical sea-shell little boys in spangled tights and little girls in
+the gauze skirts and wings of fairies. There was not a flaw in this
+splendor to the young eyes that gloated on it, and that followed it in
+rapture through every turn and winding of its course in the Boy's Town;
+nor in the magnificence of the actors and actresses, who came riding two
+by two in their circus dresses after the chariots, and looking some
+haughty and contemptuous, and others quiet and even bored, as if it were
+nothing to be part of such a procession. The boys tried to make them out
+by the pictures and names on the bills: which was Rivers, the
+bareback-rider, and which was O'Dale, the champion tumbler; which was
+the India-rubber man, which the ring-master, which the clown.</p>
+
+<p>Covered with dust, gasping with the fatigue of a three hours' run beside
+the procession, but fresh at heart as in the beginning, they arrived
+with it on the Commons, where the tent-wagons were already drawn up, and
+the ring was made, and mighty men were driving the iron-headed
+tent-stakes, and stretching the ropes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> the great skeleton of the
+pavilion which they were just going to clothe with canvas. The boys were
+not allowed to come anywhere near, except three or four who got leave to
+fetch water from a neighboring well, and thought themselves richly paid
+with half-price tickets. The other boys were proud to pass a word with
+them as they went by with their brimming buckets; fellows who had money
+to go in would have been glad to carry water just for the glory of
+coming close to the circus men. They stood about in twos and threes, and
+lay upon the grass in groups debating whether a tan-bark ring was better
+than a saw-dust ring; there were different opinions. They came as near
+the wagons as they dared, and looked at the circus horses munching hay
+from the tail-boards, just like common horses. The wagons were left
+standing outside of the tent; but when it was up, the horses were taken
+into the dressing-room, and then the boys, with many a backward look at
+the wide spread of canvas, and the flags and streamers floating over it
+from the centre-pole (the centre-pole was revered almost like a
+distinguished personage), ran home to dinner so as to get back good and
+early, and be among the first to go in.</p>
+
+<p>All round, before the circus doors were open, the doorkeepers of the
+side-shows were inviting people to come in and see the giants and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> fat
+woman and boa-constrictors, and there were stands for peanuts and candy
+and lemonade; the vendors cried, "Ice-cold lemonade, from fifteen
+hundred miles under ground! Walk up, roll up, tumble up, any way you get
+up!" The boys thought this brilliant drolling, but they had no time to
+listen after the doors were open, and they had no money to spend on
+side-shows or dainties anyway. Inside the tent they found it dark and
+cool, and their hearts thumped in their throats with the wild joy of
+being there; they recognized one another with amaze, as if they had not
+met for years, and the excitement kept growing as other fellows came in.
+It was lots of fun, too, watching the country-jakes, as the boys called
+the farmer-folk, and seeing how green they looked, and now some of them
+tried to act smart with the circus men that came round with oranges to
+sell. But the great thing was to see whether fellows that said they were
+going to hook in really got in. The boys held it to be a high and
+creditable thing to hook into a show of any kind, but hooking into a
+circus was something that a fellow ought to be held in special honor for
+doing. He ran great risks, and if he escaped the vigilance of the
+massive circus man who patrolled the outside of the tent with a cow-hide
+and a bulldog, perhaps he merited the fame he was sure to win.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I do not know where boys get some of the notions of morality that govern
+them. These notions are like the sports and plays that a boy leaves off
+as he gets older to the boys that are younger. He outgrows them, and
+other boys grow into them, and then outgrow them as he did. Perhaps they
+come down to the boyhood of our time from the boyhood of the race, and
+the unwritten laws of conduct may have prevailed among the earliest
+Aryans on the plains of Asia that I now find so strange in a retrospect
+of the Boy's Town.</p>
+
+<p>The standard of honor there was, in a certain way, very high among the
+boys; they would have despised a thief as he deserved, and I cannot
+remember one of them who might not have been safely trusted. None of
+them would have taken an apple out of a market-wagon, or stolen a melon
+from a farmer who came to town with it; but they would all have thought
+it fun, if not right, to rob an orchard or hook a watermelon out of a
+patch. This would have been a foray into the enemy's country, and the
+fruit of the adventure would have been the same as the plunder of a
+city, or the capture of a vessel belonging to him on the high seas. In
+the same way, if one of the boys had seen a circus man drop a quarter,
+he would have hurried to give it back to him, but he would only have
+been proud to hook into the circus man's show, and the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> fellows
+would have been proud of his exploit, too, as something that did honor
+to them all. As a person who enclosed bounds and forbade trespass, the
+circus man constituted himself the enemy of every boy who respected
+himself, and challenged him to practise any sort of strategy. There was
+not a boy in the crowd that my boy went with who would have been allowed
+to hook into a circus by his parents; yet hooking in was an ideal that
+was cherished among them, that was talked of, and that was even
+sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, when a fellow really hooked
+in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid, one of the fellows could
+not stand it. He asked him just how and where he got in, and then he
+went to the door, and got back his money from the doorkeeper upon the
+plea that he did not feel well; and in five or ten minutes he was back
+among the boys, a hero of such moral grandeur as would be hard to
+describe. Not one of the fellows saw him as he really was&mdash;a little
+lying, thievish scoundrel. Not even my boy saw him so, though he had on
+some other point of personal honesty the most fantastic scruples.</p>
+
+<p>The boys liked to be at the circus early so as to make sure of the grand
+entry of the performers into the ring, where they caracoled round on
+horseback, and gave a delicious foretaste of the wonders to come. The
+fellows were united in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> this, but upon other matters feeling
+varied&mdash;some liked tumbling best; some the slack-rope; some
+bareback-riding; some the feats of tossing knives and balls and catching
+them. There never was more than one ring in those days; and you were not
+tempted to break your neck and set your eyes forever askew, by trying to
+watch all the things that went on at once in two or three rings.</p>
+
+<p>The boys did not miss the smallest feats of any performance, and they
+enjoyed them every one, not equally, but fully. They had their
+preferences, of course, as I have hinted; and one of the most popular
+acts was that where a horse has been trained to misbehave, so that
+nobody can mount him; and after the actors have tried him, the
+ring-master turns to the audience, and asks if some gentleman among them
+wants to try it. Nobody stirs, till at last a tipsy country-jake is seen
+making his way down from one of the top seats toward the ring. He can
+hardly walk, he is so drunk, and the clown has to help him across the
+ring-board, and even then he trips and rolls over on the saw-dust, and
+has to be pulled to his feet. When they bring him up to the horse, he
+falls against it; and the little fellows think he will certainly get
+killed. But the big boys tell the little fellows to shut up and watch
+out. The ring-master and the clown manage to get the country-jake on to
+the broad platform on the horse's back,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> and then the ring-master cracks
+his whip, and the two supes who have been holding the horse's head let
+go, and the horse begins cantering round the ring. The little fellows
+are just sure the country-jake is going to fall off, he reels and
+totters so; but the big boys tell them to keep watching out; and pretty
+soon the country-jake begins to straighten up. He begins to unbutton his
+long gray overcoat, and then he takes it off and throws it into the
+ring, where one of the supes catches it. Then he sticks a short pipe
+into his mouth, and pulls on an old wool hat, and flourishes a stick
+that the supe throws to him, and you see that he is an Irishman just
+come across the sea; and then off goes another coat, and he comes out a
+British soldier in white duck trousers and red coat. That comes off, and
+he is an American sailor, with his hands on his hips, dancing a
+horn-pipe. Suddenly away flash wig and beard and false-face, the
+pantaloons are stripped off with the same movement, the actor stoops for
+the reins lying on the horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatest
+three-horse rider in the world, nimbly capers on the broad pad, and
+kisses his hand to the shouting and cheering spectators as he dashes
+from the ring past the braying and bellowing brass-band into the
+dressing-room!</p>
+
+<p>The big boys have known all along that he was not a real country-jake;
+but when the trained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> mule begins, and shakes everybody off, just like
+the horse, and another country-jake gets up, and offers to bet that he
+can ride that mule, nobody can tell whether he is a real country-jake or
+not. This is always the last thing in the performance, and the boys have
+seen with heavy hearts many signs openly betokening the end which they
+knew was at hand. The actors have come out of the dressing-room door,
+some in their every-day clothes, and some with just overcoats on over
+their circus-dresses, and they lounge about near the bandstand watching
+the performance in the ring. Some of the people are already getting up
+to go out, and stand for this last act, and will not mind the shouts of
+"Down in front! Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke out
+their bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance of
+anything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardly
+into the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astride
+the mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking,
+rearing. He sticks on, and everybody cheers him, and the owner of the
+mule begins to get mad and to make it do more things to shake the
+country-jake off. At last, with one convulsive spring, it flings him
+from its back, and dashes into the dressing-room, while the country-jake
+picks himself up and vanishes among the crowd.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A man mounted on a platform in the ring is imploring the ladies and
+gentlemen to keep their seats, and to buy tickets for the negro-minstrel
+entertainment which is to follow, but which is not included in the price
+of admission. The boys would like to stay, but they have not the money,
+and they go out clamoring over the performance, and trying to decide
+which was the best feat. As to which was the best actor, there is never
+any question; it is the clown, who showed by the way he turned a double
+somersault that he can do anything, and who chooses to be clown simply
+because he is too great a creature to enter into rivalry with the other
+actors.</p>
+
+<p>There will be another performance in the evening, with real fights
+outside between the circus men and the country-jakes, and perhaps some
+of the Basin rounders, but the boys do not expect to come; that would be
+too much. The boy's brother once stayed away in the afternoon, and went
+at night with one of the jour printers; but he was not able to report
+that the show was better than it was in the afternoon. He did not get
+home till nearly ten o'clock, though, and he saw the sides of the tent
+dropped before the people got out; that was a great thing; and what was
+greater yet, and reflected a kind of splendor on the boy at second hand,
+was that the jour printer and the clown turned out to be old friends.
+After<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> the circus, the boy actually saw them standing near the
+centre-pole talking together; and the next day the jour showed the
+grease that had dripped on his coat from the candles. Otherwise the boy
+might have thought it was a dream, that some one he knew had talked on
+equal terms with the clown. The boys were always intending to stay up
+and see the circus go out of town, and they would have done so, but
+their mothers would not let them. This may have been one reason why none
+of them ever ran off with a circus.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as a circus had been in town, the boys began to have circuses of
+their own, and to practise for them. Everywhere you could see boys
+upside down, walking on their hands or standing on them with their legs
+dangling over, or stayed against house walls. It was easy to stand on
+your head; one boy stood on his head so much that he had to have it
+shaved, in the brain-fever that he got from standing on it; but that did
+not stop the other fellows. Another boy fell head downward from a rail
+where he was skinning-the-cat, and nearly broke his neck, and made it so
+sore that it was stiff ever so long. Another boy, who was playing
+Samson, almost had his leg torn off by the fellows that were pulling at
+it with a hook; and he did have the leg of his pantaloons torn off.
+Nothing could stop the boys but time, or some other play coming in; and
+circuses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> lasted a good while. Some of the boys learned to turn
+hand-springs; anybody could turn cart-wheels; one fellow, across the
+river, could just run along and throw a somersault and light on his
+feet; lots of fellows could light on their backs; but if you had a
+spring-board, or shavings under a bank, like those by the turning-shop,
+you could practise for somersaults pretty safely.</p>
+
+<p>All the time you were practising you were forming your circus company.
+The great trouble was not that any boy minded paying five or ten pins to
+come in, but that so many fellows wanted to belong there were hardly any
+left to form an audience. You could get girls, but even as spectators
+girls were a little <i>too</i> despicable; they did not know anything; they
+had no sense; if a fellow got hurt they cried. Then another thing was,
+where to have the circus. Of course it was simply hopeless to think of a
+tent, and a boy's circus was very glad to get a barn. The boy whose
+father owned the barn had to get it for the circus without his father
+knowing it; and just as likely as not his mother would hear the noise
+and come out and break the whole thing up while you were in the very
+middle of it. Then there were all sorts of anxieties and perplexities
+about the dress. You could do something by turning your roundabout
+inside out, and rolling your trousers up as far as they would go; but
+what a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> fellow wanted to make him a real circus-actor was a long pair of
+white cotton stockings, and I never knew a fellow that got a pair; I
+heard of many a fellow who was said to have got a pair; but when you
+came down to the fact, they vanished like ghosts when you try to verify
+them. I believe the fellows always expected to get them out of a
+bureau-drawer or the clothes-line at home, but failed. In most other
+ways, a boy's circus was always a failure, like most other things boys
+undertake. They usually broke up under the strain of rivalry; everybody
+wanted to be the clown or ring-master; or else the boy they got the barn
+of behaved badly, and went into the house crying, and all the fellows
+had to run.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/i008.jpg" width="600" height="212" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PASSING SHOWS</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were only two kinds of show known by that name in the Boy's Town:
+a nigger show, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> a performance of burnt-cork minstrels; and an animal
+show, or a strolling menagerie; and the boys always meant a menagerie
+when they spoke of a show, unless they said just what sort of show. The
+only perfect joy on earth in the way of an entertainment, of course, was
+a circus, but after the circus the show came unquestionably next. It
+made a processional entry into the town almost as impressive as the
+circus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation line
+in the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or five
+camels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession,
+the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, and
+then the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips and
+contemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, with
+pictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild beasts and
+birds inside; lions first, then tigers (never meaner than Royal Bengal
+ones, which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards,
+then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears
+and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle;
+and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise, and all the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camels to get
+what good they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> could out of the scenes in which these hidden wonders
+were dramatized in acts of rapine or the chase, but they always came
+forward to the elephants and camels again. Even with them they had to
+endure a degree of denial, for although you could see most of the
+camels' figures, the elephants were so heavily draped that it was a kind
+of disappointment to look at them. The boys kept as close as they could,
+and came as near getting under the elephants' feet as the keepers would
+allow; but, after all, they were driven off a good deal and had to keep
+stealing back. They gave the elephants apples and bits of cracker and
+cake, and some tried to put tobacco into their trunks, though they knew
+very well that it was nearly certain death to do so; for any elephant
+that was deceived that way would recognize the boy that did it, and kill
+him the next time he came, if it was twenty years afterward. The boys
+used to believe that the Miami bridge would break down under the
+elephants if they tried to cross it, and they would have liked to see it
+do it, but no one ever saw it, perhaps because the elephants always
+waded the river. Some boys had seen them wading it, and stopping to
+drink and squirt the water out of their trunks. If an elephant got a boy
+that had given him tobacco into the river, he would squirt water on him
+till he drowned him. Still, some boys always tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> give the
+elephants tobacco, just to see how they would act for the time being.</p>
+
+<p>A show was not so much in favor as a circus, because there was so little
+performance in the ring. You could go round and look at the animals,
+mostly very sleepy in their cages, but you were not allowed to poke them
+through the bars, or anything; and when you took your seat there was
+nothing much till Herr Driesbach entered the lions' cage, and began to
+make them jump over his whip. It was some pleasure to see him put his
+head between the jaws of the great African King of Beasts, but the lion
+never did anything to him, and so the act wanted a true dramatic climax.
+The boys would really rather have seen a bareback-rider, like James
+Rivers, turn a back-somersault and light on his horse's crupper, any
+time, though they respected Herr Driesbach, too; they did not care much
+for a woman who once went into the lions' cage and made them jump round.</p>
+
+<p>The boys had their own beliefs about the different animals, and one of
+these concerned the inappeasable ferocity of the zebra. I do not know
+why the zebra should have had this repute, for he certainly never did
+anything to deserve it; but, for the matter of that, he was like all the
+other animals. Bears were not much esteemed, but they would have been if
+they could have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> been really seen hugging anybody to death. It was
+always hoped that some of the fiercest animals would get away and have
+to be hunted down, and retaken after they had killed a lot of dogs. If
+the elephants, some of them, had gone crazy, it would have been
+something, for then they would have roamed up and down the turnpike
+smashing buggies and wagons, and had to be shot with the six-pound
+cannon that was used to celebrate the Fourth of July with.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing that was against the show was that the animals were fed
+after it was out, and you could not see the tigers tearing their prey
+when the great lumps of beef were thrown them. There was somehow not so
+much chance of hooking into a show as a circus, because the seats did
+not go all round, and you could be seen under the cages as soon as you
+got in under the canvas. I never heard of a boy that hooked into a show;
+perhaps nobody ever tried.</p>
+
+<p>But the great reason of all was that you could not have an animal show
+of your own as you could a circus. You could not get the animals; and no
+boy living could act a camel, or a Royal Bengal tiger, or an elephant so
+as to look the least like one.</p>
+
+<p>Of course you could have negro shows, and the boys often had them; but
+they were not much fun, and you were always getting the black on your
+shirt-sleeves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN</h2>
+
+
+<p>A great new experience which now came to the boy was the theatre, which
+he had sometimes heard his father speak of. There had once been a
+theatre in the Boy's Town, when a strolling company came up from
+Cincinnati, and opened for a season in an empty pork-house. But that was
+a long time ago, and, though he had written a tragedy, all that the boy
+knew of a theatre was from a picture in a Sunday-school book where a
+stage scene was given to show what kind of desperate amusements a person
+might come to in middle life if he began by breaking the Sabbath in his
+youth. His brother had once been taken to a theatre in Pittsburg by one
+of their river-going uncles, and he often told about it; but my boy
+formed no conception of the beautiful reality from his accounts of a
+burglar who jumped from a roof and was chased by a watchman with a
+pistol up and down a street with houses painted on a curtain.</p>
+
+<p>The company which came to the Boy's Town in his time was again from
+Cincinnati, and it was under the management of the father and mother of
+two actresses, afterward famous, who were then children, just starting
+upon their career. These pretty little creatures took the leading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> parts
+in <i>Bombastes Furioso</i> the first night my boy ever saw a play, and he
+instantly fell impartially in love with both of them, and tacitly
+remained their abject slave for a great while after. When the smaller of
+them came out with a large pair of stage boots in one hand and a drawn
+sword in the other, and said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Whoever dares these boots displace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall meet Bombastes face to face,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>if the boy had not already been bereft of his senses by the melodrama
+preceding the burlesque, he must have been transported by her beauty,
+her grace, her genius. He, indeed, gave her and her sister his heart,
+but his mind was already gone, rapt from him by the adorable pirate who
+fought a losing fight with broadswords, two up and two
+down&mdash;click-click, click-click&mdash;and died all over the deck of the pirate
+ship in the opening piece. This was called the <i>Beacon of Death</i>, and
+the scene represented the forecastle of the pirate ship with a lantern
+dangling from the rigging, to lure unsuspecting merchantmen to their
+doom. Afterward the boy remembered nothing of the story, but a scrap of
+the dialogue meaninglessly remained with him; and when the pirate
+captain appeared with his bloody crew and said, hoarsely, "Let us go
+below and get some brandy!" the boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> would have bartered all his hopes
+of bliss to have been that abandoned ruffian. In fact, he always liked,
+and longed to be, the villain, rather than any other person in the play,
+and he so glutted himself with crime of every sort in his tender years
+at the theatre that he afterward came to be very tired of it, and
+avoided the plays and novels that had very marked villains in them.</p>
+
+<p>He was in an ecstasy as soon as the curtain rose that night, and he
+lived somewhere out of his body as long as the playing lasted, which was
+well on to midnight; for in those days the theatre did not meanly put
+the public off with one play, but gave it a heartful and its money's
+worth with three. On his first night my boy saw <i>The Beacon of Death</i>,
+<i>Bombastes Furioso</i>, and <i>Black-Eyed Susan</i>, and he never afterward saw
+less than three plays each night, and he never missed a night, as long
+as the theatre languished in the unfriendly air of that mainly
+Calvinistic community, where the theatre was regarded by most good
+people as the eighth of the seven deadly sins. The whole day long he
+dwelt in a dream of it that blotted out, or rather consumed with more
+effulgent brightness, all the other day-dreams he had dreamed before,
+and his heart almost burst with longing to be a villain like those
+villains on the stage, to have a mustache&mdash;a black mustache&mdash;such as
+they wore at a time when every one off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> the stage was clean shaven, and
+somehow to end bloodily, murderously, as became a villain.</p>
+
+<p>I dare say this was not quite a wholesome frame of mind for a boy of ten
+years; but I do not defend it; I only portray it. Being the boy he was,
+he was destined somehow to dwell half the time in a world of dreamery;
+and I have tried to express how, when he had once got enough of villany,
+he reformed his ideals and rather liked virtue.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Every boy is two or three boys, or twenty or thirty different kinds of
+boys in one; he is all the time living many lives and forming many
+characters; but it is a good thing if he can keep one life and one
+character when he gets to be a man. He may turn out to be like an onion
+when he is grown up, and be nothing but hulls, that you keep peeling
+off, one after another, till you think you have got down to the heart,
+at last, and then you have got down to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>All the boys may have been like my boy in the Boy's Town, in having each
+an inward being that was not the least like their outward being, but
+that somehow seemed to be their real self, whether it truly was so or
+not. But I am certain that this was the case with him, and that while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+he was joyfully sharing the wild sports and conforming to the savage
+usages of the boy's world about him, he was dwelling in a wholly
+different world within him, whose wonders no one else knew. I could not
+tell now these wonders any more than he could have told them then; but
+it was a world of dreams, of hopes, of purposes, which he would have
+been more ashamed to avow for himself than I should be to avow for him.
+It was all vague and vast, and it came out of the books that he read,
+and that filled his soul with their witchery, and often held him aloof
+with their charm in the midst of the plays from which they could not
+lure him wholly away, or at all away. He did not know how or when their
+enchantment began, and he could hardly recall the names of some of them
+afterward.</p>
+
+<p>First of them was Goldsmith's <i>History of Greece</i>, which made him an
+Athenian of Pericles' time, and Goldsmith's <i>History of Rome</i>, which
+naturalized him in a Roman citizenship chiefly employed in slaying
+tyrants; from the time of Appius Claudius down to the time of Domitian,
+there was hardly a tyrant that he did not slay. After he had read these
+books, not once or twice, but twenty times over, his father thought fit
+to put into his hands <i>The Travels of Captain Ashe in North America</i>, to
+encourage, or perhaps to test, his taste for useful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> reading; but this
+was a failure. The captain's travels were printed with long esses, and
+the boy could make nothing of them, for other reasons. The fancy
+nourished upon</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The glory that was Greece<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the grandeur that was Rome,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>starved amid the robust plenty of the Englishman's criticisms of our
+early manners and customs. Neither could money hire the boy to read
+<i>Malte-Brun's Geography</i>, in three large folios, of a thousand pages
+each, for which there was a standing offer of fifty cents from the
+father, who had never been able to read it himself.</p>
+
+<p>But shortly after he failed so miserably with Captain Ashe, the boy came
+into possession of a priceless treasure. It was that little treatise on
+<i>Greek and Roman Mythology</i> which I have mentioned, and which he must
+literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to
+have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it;
+his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the
+boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the
+back part of his grammar, made poems from it for years, and appeared in
+many transfigurations, as this and that god and demigod and hero upon
+imagined occasions in the Boy's Town, to the fancied admiration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> of all
+the other fellows. I do not know just why he wished to appear to his
+grandmother in a vision; now as Mercury with winged feet, now as Apollo
+with his drawn bow, now as Hercules leaning upon his club and resting
+from his Twelve Labors. Perhaps it was because he thought that his
+grandmother, who used to tell the children about her life in Wales, and
+show them the picture of a castle where she had once slept when she was
+a girl, would appreciate him in these apotheoses. If he believed they
+would make a vivid impression upon the sweet old Quaker lady, no doubt
+he was right.</p>
+
+<p>There was another book which he read about this time, and that was <i>The
+Greek Soldier</i>. It was the story of a young Greek, a glorious Athenian,
+who had fought through the Greek war of independence against the Turks,
+and then come to America and published the narrative of his adventures.
+They fired my boy with a retrospective longing to have been present at
+the Battle of Navarino, when the allied ships of the English, French,
+and Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet; but it seemed to him that he
+could not have borne to have the allies impose a king upon the Greeks,
+when they really wanted a republic, and so he was able to console
+himself for having been absent. He did what he could in fighting the war
+over again, and he intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> to harden himself for the long struggle by
+sleeping on the floor, as the Greek soldier had done. But the children
+often fell asleep on the floor in the warmth of the hearth-fire; and his
+preparation for the patriotic strife was not distinguishable in its
+practical effect from a reluctance to go to bed at the right hour.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Riley's narrative of his shipwreck on the coast of Africa, and
+his captivity among the Arabs, was a book which my boy and his brother
+prized with a kind of personal interest, because their father told them
+that he had once seen a son of Captain Riley when he went to get his
+appointment of collector at Columbus, and that this son was named
+William Willshire Riley, after the good English merchant, William
+Willshire, who had ransomed Captain Riley. William Willshire seemed to
+them almost the best man who ever lived; though my boy had secretly a
+greater fondness for the Arab, Sidi Hamet, who was kind to Captain Riley
+and kept his brother Seid from ill-treating him whenever he could.
+Probably the boy liked him better because the Arab was more picturesque
+than the Englishman. The whole narrative was very interesting; it had a
+vein of sincere and earnest piety in it which was not its least charm,
+and it was written in a style of old-fashioned stateliness which was not
+without its effect with the boys.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Somehow they did not think of the Arabs in this narrative as of the same
+race and faith with the Arabs of Bagdad and the other places in the
+<i>Arabian Nights</i>. They did not think whether these were Mohammedans or
+not; they naturalized them in the fairy world where all boys are
+citizens, and lived with them there upon the same familiar terms as they
+lived with Robinson Crusoe. Their father once told them that <i>Robinson
+Crusoe</i> had robbed the real narrative of Alexander Selkirk of the place
+it ought to have held in the remembrance of the world; and my boy had a
+feeling of guilt in reading it, as if he were making himself the
+accomplice of an impostor.</p>
+
+<p>He liked the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, but oddly enough these wonderful tales
+made no such impression on his fancy as the stories in a wretchedly
+inferior book made. He did not know the name of this book, or who wrote
+it; from which I imagine that much of his reading was of the purblind
+sort that ignorant grown-up people do, without any sort of literary
+vision. He read this book perpetually, when he was not reading his
+<i>Greek and Roman Mythology</i>; and then suddenly, one day, as happens in
+childhood with so many things, it vanished out of his possession as if
+by magic. Perhaps he lost it; perhaps he lent it; at any rate it was
+gone, and he never got it back, and he never knew what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> book it was till
+thirty years afterward, when he picked up from a friend's library-table
+a copy of <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, and recognized in this collection of old
+monkish legends the long-missing treasure of his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>These stories, without beauty of invention, without art of construction
+or character, without spirituality in their crude materialization, which
+were read aloud in the refectories of medi&aelig;val cloisters while the monks
+sat at meat, laid a spell upon the soul of the boy that governed his
+life. He conformed his conduct to the principles and maxims which
+actuated the behavior of the shadowy people of these dry-as-dust tales;
+he went about drunk with the fumes of fables about Roman emperors that
+never were, in an empire that never was; and, though they tormented him
+by putting a mixed and impossible civilization in the place of that he
+knew from his Goldsmith, he was quite helpless to break from their
+influence. He was always expecting some wonderful thing to happen to him
+as things happened there in fulfilment of some saying or prophecy; and
+at every trivial moment he made sayings and prophecies for himself,
+which he wished events to fulfil. One Sunday when he was walking in an
+alley behind one of the stores, he found a fur cap that had probably
+fallen out of the store-loft window. He ran home with it, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> in his
+simple-hearted rapture he told his mother that as soon as he picked it
+up there came into his mind the words, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and he could hardly wait for Monday to come and
+let him restore the cap to its owner and receive an enduring prosperity
+in reward of his virtue. Heaven knows what form he expected this to
+take; but when he found himself in the store, he lost all courage; his
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a syllable
+of the fine phrases he had made to himself. He laid the cap on the
+counter without a word; the storekeeper came up and took it in his hand.
+"What's this?" he said. "Why, this is ours," and he tossed the cap into
+a loose pile of hats by the showcase, and the boy slunk out, cut to the
+heart and crushed to the dust. It was such a cruel disappointment and
+mortification that it was rather a relief to have his brother mock him,
+and come up and say from time to time, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and then split into a jeering laugh. At least he
+could fight his brother, and, when he ran, could stone him; and he could
+throw quads and quoins, and pieces of riglet at the jour printers when
+the story spread to them, and one of them would begin, "He who
+picketh&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He could not make anything either of Byron or Cowper; and he did not
+even try to read the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> little tree-calf volumes of Homer and Virgil which
+his father had in the versions of Pope and Dryden; the small
+copper-plates with which they were illustrated conveyed no suggestion to
+him. Afterward he read Goldsmith's <i>Deserted Village</i>, and he formed a
+great passion for Pope's <i>Pastorals</i>, which he imitated in their easy
+heroics; but till he came to read Longfellow, and Tennyson, and Heine,
+he never read any long poem without more fatigue than pleasure. His
+father used to say that the taste for poetry was an acquired taste, like
+the taste for tomatoes, and that he would come to it yet; but he never
+came to it, or so much of it as some people seemed to do, and he always
+had his sorrowful misgivings as to whether they liked it as much as they
+pretended. I think, too, that it should be a flavor, a spice, a sweet, a
+delicate relish in the high banquet of literature, and never a chief
+dish; and I should not know how to defend my boy for trying to make long
+poems of his own at the very time when he found it so hard to read other
+people's long poems.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN</h2>
+
+
+<p>My boy was twelve years old, and was already a swift compositor, though
+he was still so small that he had to stand on a chair to reach the case
+in setting type on Taylor's inaugural message. But what he lacked in
+stature he made up in gravity of demeanor; and he got the name of "The
+Old Man" from the printers as soon as he began to come about the office,
+which he did almost as soon as he could walk. His first attempt in
+literature, an essay on the vain and disappointing nature of human life,
+he set up and printed off himself in his sixth or seventh year; and the
+printing-office was in some sort his home, as well as his school, his
+university. He could no more remember learning to set type than he could
+remember learning to read; and in after-life he could not come within
+smell of the ink, the dusty types, the humid paper, of a printing-office
+without that tender swelling of the heart which so fondly responds to
+any memory-bearing perfume: his youth, his boyhood, almost his infancy
+came back to him in it. He now looked forward eagerly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> to helping on the
+new paper, and somewhat proudly to living in the larger place the family
+were going to. The moment it was decided he began to tell the boys that
+he was going to live in a city, and he felt that it gave him
+distinction. He had nothing but joy in it, and he did not dream that as
+the time drew near it could be sorrow. But when it came at last, and he
+was to leave the house, the town, the boys, he found himself deathly
+homesick.</p>
+
+<p>The parting days were days of gloom; the parting was an anguish of
+bitter tears. Nothing consoled him but the fact that they were going all
+the way to the new place in a canal-boat, which his father chartered for
+the trip. My boy and his brother had once gone to Cincinnati in a
+canal-boat, with a friendly captain of their acquaintance, and, though
+they were both put to sleep in a berth so narrow that when they turned
+they fell out on the floor, the glory of the adventure remained with
+him, and he could have thought of nothing more delightful than such
+another voyage. The household goods were piled up in the middle of the
+boat, and the family had a cabin forward, which seemed immense to the
+children. They played in it and ran races up and down the long
+canal-boat roof, where their father and mother sometimes put their
+chairs and sat to admire the scenery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They arrived safely at their journey's end, without any sort of
+accident. They had made the whole forty miles in less than two days, and
+were all as well as when they started, without having suffered for a
+moment from seasickness. The boat drew up at the tow-path just before
+the stable belonging to the house which the father had already taken,
+and the whole family at once began helping the crew put the things
+ashore. The boys thought it would have been a splendid stable to keep
+the pony in, only they had sold the pony; but they saw in an instant
+that it would do for a circus as soon as they could get acquainted with
+enough boys to have one.</p>
+
+<p>The strangeness of the house and street, and the necessity of meeting
+the boys of the neighborhood, and paying with his person for his
+standing among them, kept my boy interested for a time, and he did not
+realize at first how much he missed the Boy's Town and all the familiar
+fellowships there, and all the manifold privileges of the place. Then he
+began to be very homesick, and to be torn with the torment of a divided
+love. His mother, whom he loved so dearly, so tenderly, was here, and
+wherever she was, that was home; and yet home was yonder, far off, at
+the end of those forty inexorable miles, where he had left his life-long
+mates. The first months<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> there was a dumb heartache at the bottom of
+every pleasure and excitement.</p>
+
+<p>After a while he was allowed to revisit the Boy's Town. It could only
+have been three or four months after he had left it, but it already
+seemed a very long time; and he figured himself returning as stage
+heroes do to the scenes of their childhood, after an absence of some
+fifteen years. He fancied that if the boys did not find him grown, they
+would find him somehow changed, and that he would dazzle them with the
+light accumulated by his residence in a city. He was going to stay with
+his grandmother, and he planned to make a long stay; for he was very
+fond of her, and he liked the quiet and comfort of her pleasant house.
+He must have gone back by the canal-packet, but his memory kept no
+record of the fact, and afterward he knew only of having arrived, and of
+searching about in a ghostly fashion for his old comrades. They may have
+been at school; at any rate, he found very few of them; and with them he
+was certainly strange enough; too strange, even. They received him with
+a kind of surprise; and they could not begin playing together at once in
+the old way. He went to all the places that were so dear to him; but he
+felt in them the same kind of refusal, or reluctance, that he felt in
+the boys. His heart began to ache again, he did not quite know why;
+only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> it ached. When he went up from his grandmother's to look at the
+Faulkner house, he realized that it was no longer home, and he could not
+bear the sight of it. There were other people living in it; strange
+voices sounded from the open doors, strange faces peered from the
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>He came back to his grandmother's, bruised and defeated, and spent the
+morning indoors reading. After dinner he went out again, and hunted up
+that queer earth-spirit who had been so long and closely his only
+friend. He at least was not changed; he was as unwashed and as unkempt
+as ever; but he seemed shy of my poor boy. He had probably never been
+shaken hands with in his life before; he dropped my boy's hand; and they
+stood looking at each other, not knowing what to say. My boy had on his
+best clothes, which he wore so as to affect the Boy's Town boys with the
+full splendor of a city boy. After all, he was not so very splendid, but
+his presence altogether was too much for the earth-spirit, and he
+vanished out of his consciousness like an apparition.</p>
+
+<p>After school was out in the afternoon, he met more of the boys, but none
+of them knew just what to do with him. The place that he had once had in
+their lives was filled; he was an outsider, who might be suffered among
+them, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> he was no longer of them. He did not understand this at once,
+nor well know what hurt him. But something was gone that could not be
+called back, something lost that could not be found.</p>
+
+<p>At tea-time his grandfather came home and gravely made him welcome; the
+uncle who was staying with them was jovially kind. But a heavy
+homesickness weighed down the child's heart, which now turned from the
+Boy's Town as longingly as it had turned toward it before.</p>
+
+<p>They all knelt down with the grandfather before they went to the table.
+There had been a good many deaths from cholera during the day, and the
+grandfather prayed for grace and help amid the pestilence that walketh
+in darkness and wasteth at noonday in such a way that the boy felt there
+would be very little of either for him unless he got home at once. All
+through the meal that followed he was trying to find the courage to say
+that he must go home. When he managed to say it, his grandmother and
+aunt tried to comfort and coax him, and his uncle tried to shame him,
+out of his homesickness, to joke it off, to make him laugh. But his
+grandfather's tender heart was moved. He could not endure the child's
+mute misery; he said he must go home if he wished.</p>
+
+<p>In half an hour the boy was on the canal-packet speeding homeward at the
+highest pace of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> three-horse team, and the Boy's Town was out of
+sight. He could not sleep for excitement that night, and he came and
+spent the time talking on quite equal terms with the steersman, one of
+the canalers whom he had admired afar in earlier and simpler days. He
+found him a very amiable fellow, by no means haughty, who began to tell
+him funny stories, and who even let him take the helm for a while. The
+rudder-handle was of polished iron, very different from the clumsy
+wooden affair of a freight-boat; and the packet made in a single night
+the distance which the boy's family had been nearly two days in
+travelling when they moved away from the Boy's Town.</p>
+
+<p>He arrived home for breakfast a travelled and experienced person, and
+wholly cured of that longing for his former home that had tormented him
+before he revisited its scenes. He now fully gave himself up to his new
+environment, and looked forward and not backward. I do not mean to say
+that he ceased to love the Boy's Town; that he could not do and never
+did. But he became more and more aware that the past was gone from him
+forever, and that he could not return to it. He did not forget it, but
+cherished its memories the more fondly for that reason.</p>
+
+<p>There was no bitterness in it, and no harm that he could not hope would
+easily be forgiven him. He had often been foolish, and sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> he had
+been wicked; but he had never been such a little fool or such a little
+sinner but he had wished for more sense and more grace. There are some
+great fools and great sinners who try to believe in after-life that they
+are the manlier men because they have been silly and mischievous boys,
+but he has never believed that. He is glad to have had a boyhood fully
+rounded out with all a boy's interests and pleasures, and he is glad
+that his lines were cast in the Boy's Town; but he knows, or believes he
+knows, that whatever is good in him now came from what was good in him
+then; and he is sure that the town was delightful chiefly because his
+home in it was happy. The town was small, and the boys there were hemmed
+in by their inexperience and ignorance; but the simple home was large
+with vistas that stretched to the ends of the earth, and it was serenely
+bright with a father's reason and warm with a mother's love.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,4306 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Boy Life
+       Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Editor: Percival Chubb
+
+Release Date: May 7, 2008 [EBook #25383]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOY LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: KITE-TIME]
+
+
+
+
+BOY LIFE
+
+STORIES AND READINGS SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+AND ARRANGED FOR SUPPLEMENTARY
+READING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS BY
+
+PERCIVAL CHUBB
+
+DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH IN THE
+ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL, NEW YORK
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+    NEW YORK AND LONDON
+    MCMIX
+
+
+
+
+HARPER'S MODERN SERIES
+
+OF SUPPLEMENTARY READERS FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
+
+_Each, Illustrated, 16mo, 50 Cents School._
+
+
+BOY LIFE
+
+Stories and Readings Selected from the Works of WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,
+and Arranged by PERCIVAL CHUBB, Director of English in the Ethical
+Culture School, New York.
+
+     "The literary culture which we are trying to give our boys and
+     girls is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+     sufficiently national and American....
+
+     "Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+     distinctively American savor than that of William Dean
+     Howells.... The juvenile books of Mr. Howells' contain some of
+     the very best pages ever written for the enjoyment of young
+     people."--PERCIVAL CHUBB.
+
+(_Others in Preparation._)
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+Published September, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                   PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                         ix
+
+
+I. ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+  HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS           3
+
+  THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN                                                13
+
+  JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE                                  23
+
+
+II. LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+  THE TOWN                                                           41
+
+  EARLIEST MEMORIES                                                  45
+
+  HOME LIFE                                                          47
+
+  THE RIVER                                                          51
+
+  SWIMMING                                                           55
+
+  SKATING                                                            61
+
+  MANNERS AND CUSTOMS                                                64
+
+  GIRLS                                                              68
+
+  MOTHERS                                                            69
+
+  A BROTHER                                                          73
+
+  A FRIEND                                                           79
+
+
+III. GAMES AND PASTIMES
+
+  MARBLES                                                            89
+
+  RACES                                                              91
+
+  A MEAN TRICK                                                       93
+
+  TOPS                                                               96
+
+  KITES                                                              98
+
+  THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 103
+
+  PETS                                                              108
+
+  INDIANS                                                           124
+
+  GUNS                                                              129
+
+  NUTTING                                                           138
+
+  THE FIRE-ENGINES                                                  145
+
+
+IV. GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD
+
+  THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS                                             151
+
+  PASSING SHOWS                                                     163
+
+  THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN                                         168
+
+  THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS                                         171
+
+
+V. THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN                                         183
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+PAGE
+
+KITE-TIME                                              _Frontispiece_
+
+HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE
+VERY NEXT MORNING                                                   5
+
+THE FIRST LOCK                                                     43
+
+THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 105
+
+ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE                                127
+
+NUTTING                                                           141
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+There are two conspicuous faults in the literary culture which we are
+trying to give to our boys and girls in our elementary and secondary
+schools: it is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
+sufficiently national and American. Hence it lacks vitality and
+actuality. So little of it is carried over into life because so little
+of it is interpretative of the life that is. It is associated too
+exclusively in the child's mind with things dead and gone--with the
+Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere,
+the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively
+recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of
+the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the
+Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies
+do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which--if
+he reads at all--he is most likely to be concerned: the short story, the
+sketch, and the popular essay of the magazines and newspapers; the new
+novel, or the plays which he may see at the theatre. He has not been
+interested in the writers of his own time, and has never been put in the
+way of the best contemporary fiction. Hence the ineffectualness and
+wastefulness of much of our school work: it does not lead forward into
+the life of to-day, nor help the young to judge intelligently of the
+popular books which later on will compete for their favor.
+
+To be sure, not a little of the material used in our elementary schools
+is drawn from Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, from Irving and
+Hawthorne; but because it is often studied in a so-called thorough and,
+therefore, very deadly way--slowly and laboriously for drill, rather
+than briskly for pleasure--there is comparatively little of it read, and
+almost no sense gained of its being part of a national literature. In
+the high school, owing to the unfortunate domination of the college
+entrance requirements, the situation is not much better. Our students
+leave with a scant and hurried glimpse--if any glimpse at all--of
+Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, or of Lowell, Lanier, and Poe; with no
+intimate view of Hawthorne, our great classic; none at all of Parkman
+and Fiske, our historians; or of writers like Howells, James, and Cable,
+or Wilkins, Jewett, and Deland, and a worthy company of story-tellers.
+
+We may well be on our guard against a vaunting nationalism. It retards
+our culture. There should be no confusion of the second-rate values of
+most of our American products with the supreme values of the greatest
+British classics. We may work, of course, toward an ultimate
+appreciation of these greatest things. We fail, however, in securing
+such appreciation because we have failed to enlist those forms of
+interest which vitalize and stimulate literary studies--above all, the
+patriotic or national interest. Concord and Cambridge should be dearer,
+as they are nearer, to the young American than even Stratford and
+Abbotsford; Hawthorne should be as familiar as Goldsmith; and Emerson,
+as Addison or Burke. Ordinarily it is not so; and we suffer the
+consequences in the failure of our youth to grasp the spiritual ideals
+and the distinctively American democratic spirit which find expression
+in the greatest work of our literary masters, Emerson and Whitman,
+Lowell and Lanier. Our culture and our nationalism both suffer thereby.
+Our literature suffers also, because we have not an instructed and
+interested public to encourage excellence.
+
+Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
+distinctively American savor than that of William Dean Howells; and it
+is to make his delightful writings more widely known and more easily
+accessible that this volume of selections from his books for the young
+has been prepared as a reading-book for the elementary school. These
+juvenile books of Mr. Howells contain some of the very best pages ever
+written for the enjoyment of young people. His two books for boys--_A
+Boy's Town_ and _The Flight of Pony Baker_--rank with such favorites as
+_Tom Sawyer_ and _The Story of a Bad Boy_.
+
+These should be introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and
+essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is
+one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and
+distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still,
+from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern
+writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our
+older high-school pupils are anxious to deal with, are alive in his
+books. Our young people should know his _Rise of Silas Lapham_ and _A
+Hazard of New Fortunes_, as well as his social and literary criticism.
+As stimulating and alluring a volume of selections may be made for
+high-school students as this volume will be, we venture to predict, for
+the younger boys and girls of the elementary school.
+
+In this little book of readings we have made, we believe, an entirely
+legitimate and desirable use of the books named above. _A Boy's Town_
+is a series of detachable pictures and episodes into which the boy--or
+the healthy girl who loves boys' books--may dip, as the selections here
+given will, we believe, tempt him to do. The same is true of _The Flight
+of Pony Baker_. The volume is for class-room enjoyment; for happy hours
+of profitable reading--profitable, because happy. Much of it should be
+read aloud rather than silently, and dramatic justice be done to the
+scenes and conversations which have dramatic quality.
+
+                              PERCIVAL CHUBB.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS
+
+
+Just before the circus came, about the end of July, something happened
+that made Pony mean to run off more than anything that ever was. His
+father and mother were coming home from a walk, in the evening; it was
+so hot nobody could stay in the house, and just as they were coming to
+the front steps Pony stole up behind them and tossed a snowball which he
+had got out of the garden at his mother, just for fun. The flower struck
+her very softly on her hair, for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a
+jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh; and then she caught him by the
+arm and boxed his ears.
+
+"Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I
+thought it was a bat!" she said, and she broke out crying and ran into
+the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her,
+"Lucy, Lucy, my dear child!"
+
+Pony was crying, too, for he did not intend to frighten his mother, and
+when she took his fun as if he had done something wicked he did not know
+what to think. He stole off to bed, and he lay there crying in the dark
+and expecting that she would come to him, as she always did, to have him
+say that he was sorry when he had been wicked, or to tell him that she
+was sorry when she thought she had not been quite fair with him. But she
+did not come, and after a good while his father came and said: "Are you
+awake, Pony? I am sorry your mother misunderstood your fun. But you
+mustn't mind it, dear boy. She's not well, and she's very nervous."
+
+"I don't care!" Pony sobbed out. "She won't have a chance to touch me
+again!" For he had made up his mind to run off with the circus which was
+coming the next Tuesday.
+
+He turned his face away, sobbing, and his father, after standing by his
+bed a moment, went away without saying anything but "Don't forget your
+prayers, Pony. You'll feel differently in the morning, I hope."
+
+Pony fell asleep thinking how he would come back to the Boy's Town with
+the circus when he was grown up, and when he came out in the ring riding
+three horses bareback he would see his father and mother and sisters in
+one of the lower seats. They would not know him, but he would know them,
+and he would send for them to come to the dressing-room, and would be
+very good to them, all but his mother; he would be very cold and stiff
+with her, though he would know that she was prouder of him than all the
+rest put together, and she would go away almost crying.
+
+[Illustration: HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT
+MORNING]
+
+He began being cold and stiff with her the very next morning, although
+she was better than ever to him, and gave him waffles for breakfast with
+unsalted butter, and tried to pet him up. That whole day she kept trying
+to do things for him, but he would scarcely speak to her; and at night
+she came to him and said, "What makes you act so strangely, Pony? Are
+you offended with your mother?"
+
+"Yes, I am!" said Pony, haughtily, and he twitched away from where she
+was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning over him.
+
+"On account of last night, Pony?" she asked, softly.
+
+"I reckon you know well enough," said Pony, and he tried to be disgusted
+with her for being such a hypocrite, but he had to set his teeth hard,
+hard, or he would have broken down crying.
+
+"If it's for that, you mustn't, Pony dear. You don't know how you
+frightened me. When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was a bat, and
+I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I didn't mean to hurt my poor boy's
+feelings so, and you mustn't mind it any more, Pony."
+
+She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, but he did not move or
+say anything; only, after that he felt more forgiving toward his mother.
+He made up his mind to be good to her along with the rest when he came
+back with the circus. But still he meant to run off with the circus. He
+did not see how he could do anything else, for he had told all the boys
+that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and
+said, "Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like
+running off with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would
+see whether it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.
+
+The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the
+corporation line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and
+knights, the first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a
+band-chariot, all made up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty
+baggage-wagons; but before you got to them there was the greatest thing
+of all. It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was
+shaped like a big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there
+were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus
+clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed
+to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen
+Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough
+to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus
+girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the
+fellows, and they all had to get out of the way then.
+
+Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
+nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
+word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
+wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after
+that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus
+men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they
+would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt
+brandy would do it, but that would do it, sure.
+
+Pony was scared at first when he heard that most of the circus fellows
+were stolen, but he thought if he went of his own accord he would be all
+right. Still, he did not feel so much like running off with the circus
+as he did before the circus came. He asked Jim Leonard whether the
+circus men made all the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy Hawkins
+and Hen Billard heard him ask, and began to mock him. They took him up
+between them, one by his arms and the other by the legs, and ran along
+with him, and kept saying, "Does it want to be a great big circus actor?
+Then it shall, so it shall," and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
+careful of you, Pony dear!" till Pony wriggled himself loose and began
+to stone them.
+
+After that they had to let him alone, for when a fellow began to stone
+you in the Boy's Town you had to let him alone, unless you were going to
+whip him, and the fellows only wanted to have a little fun with Pony.
+But what they did made him all the more resolved to run away with the
+circus, just to show them.
+
+He helped to carry water for the circus men's horses, along with the
+boys who earned their admission that way. He had no need to do it,
+because his father was going to take him in, anyway; but Jim Leonard
+said it was the only way to get acquainted with the circus men. Still,
+Pony was afraid to speak to them, and he would not have said a word to
+any of them if it had not been for one of them speaking to him first,
+when he saw him come lugging a great pail of water, and bending far over
+on the right to balance it.
+
+"That's right," the circus man said to Pony. "If you ever fell into that
+bucket you'd drown, sure."
+
+He was a big fellow, with funny eyes, and he had a white bulldog at his
+heels; and all the fellows said he was the one who guarded the outside
+of the tent when the circus began, and kept the boys from hooking in
+under the curtain.
+
+Even then Pony would not have had the courage to say anything, but Jim
+Leonard was just behind him with another bucket of water, and he spoke
+up for him. "He wants to go with the circus."
+
+They both set down their buckets, and Pony felt himself turning pale
+when the circus man came toward them. "Wants to go with the circus,
+heigh? Let's have a look at you." He took Pony by the shoulders and
+turned him slowly round, and looked at his nice clothes, and took him by
+the chin. "Orphan?" he asked.
+
+Pony did not know what to say, but Jim Leonard nodded; perhaps he did
+not know what to say, either; but Pony felt as if they had both told a
+lie.
+
+"Parents living?" The circus man looked at Pony, and Pony had to say
+that they were.
+
+He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could scarcely hear him, and the
+circus man said:
+
+"Well, that's right. When we take an orphan, we want to have his parents
+living, so that we can go and ask them what sort of a boy he is."
+
+He looked at Pony in such a friendly, smiling way that Pony took courage
+to ask him whether they would want him to drink burnt brandy.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To keep me little."
+
+"Oh, I see." The circus man took off his hat and rubbed his forehead
+with a silk handkerchief, which he threw into the top of his hat before
+he put it on again. "No, I don't know as we will. We're rather short of
+giants just now. How would you like to drink a glass of elephant milk
+every morning and grow into an eight-footer?"
+
+Pony said he didn't know whether he would like to be quite so big; and
+then the circus man said perhaps he would rather go for an India-rubber
+man; that was what they called the contortionists in those days.
+
+"Let's feel of you again." The circus man took hold of Pony and felt his
+joints. "You're put together pretty tight; but I reckon we could make
+you do if you'd let us take you apart with a screw-driver and limber up
+the pieces with rattlesnake oil. Wouldn't like it, heigh? Well, let me
+see!" The circus man thought a moment, and then he said: "How would
+double-somersaults on four horses bareback do?"
+
+Pony said that would do, and then the circus man said: "Well, then,
+we've just hit it, because our double-somersault, four-horse bareback
+is just going to leave us, and we want a new one right away. Now,
+there's more than one way of joining a circus, but the best way is to
+wait on your front steps with your things all packed up, and the
+procession comes along at about one o'clock in the morning and picks you
+up. Which'd you rather do?"
+
+Pony pushed his toe into the turf, as he always did when he was ashamed,
+but he made out to say he would rather wait out on the front steps.
+
+"Well, then, that's all settled," said the circus man. "We'll be along,"
+and he was going away with his dog, but Tim Leonard called after him:
+
+"You hain't asked him whereabouts he lives?"
+
+The circus man kept on, and he said, without looking around, "Oh, that's
+all right. We've got somebody that looks after that."
+
+"It's the magician," Jim Leonard whispered to Pony, and they walked
+away.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN
+
+
+A crowd of the fellows had been waiting to know what the boys had been
+talking about to the circus man, but Jim Leonard said, "Don't you tell,
+Pony Baker!" and he started to run, and that made Pony run, too, and
+they both ran till they got away from the fellows.
+
+"You have got to keep it a secret; for if a lot of fellows find it out
+the constable'll get to know it, and he'll be watching out around the
+corner of your house, and when the procession comes along and he sees
+you're really going he'll take you up, and keep you in jail till your
+father comes and bails you out. Now, you mind!"
+
+Pony said, "Oh, I won't tell anybody," and when Jim Leonard said that if
+a circus man was to feel _him_ over, that way, and act so kind of
+pleasant and friendly, he would be too proud to speak to anybody, Pony
+confessed that he knew it was a great thing all the time.
+
+"The way'll be," said Jim Leonard, "to keep in with him, and he'll keep
+the others from picking on you; they'll be afraid to, on account of his
+dog. You'll see, he'll be the one to come for you to-night; and if the
+constable is there the dog won't let him touch you. I never thought of
+that."
+
+Perhaps on account of thinking of it now Jim Leonard felt free to tell
+the other fellows how Pony was going to run off, for when a crowd of
+them came along he told them. They said it was splendid, and they said
+that if they could make their mothers let them, or if they could get out
+of the house without their mothers knowing it, they were going to sit
+up with Pony and watch out for the procession, and bid him good-bye.
+
+At dinner-time he found out that his father was going to take him and
+all his sisters to the circus, and his father and mother were so nice to
+him, asking him about the procession and everything, that his heart
+ached at the thought of running away from home and leaving them. But now
+he had to do it; the circus man was coming for him, and he could not
+back out; he did not know what would happen if he did. It seemed to him
+as if his mother had done everything she could to make it harder for
+him. She had stewed chicken for dinner, with plenty of gravy, and hot
+biscuits to sop in, and peach preserves afterward; and she kept helping
+him to more, because she said boys that followed the circus around got
+dreadfully hungry. The eating seemed to keep his heart down; it was
+trying to get into his throat all the time; and he knew that she was
+being good to him, but if he had not known it he would have believed his
+mother was just doing it to mock him.
+
+Pony had to go to the circus with his father and sisters, and to get on
+his shoes and a clean collar. But a crowd of the fellows were there at
+the tent door to watch out whether the circus man would say anything to
+him when he went in; and Jim Leonard rubbed against him, when the man
+passed with his dog and did not even look at Pony, and said: "He's just
+pretending. He don't want your father to know. He'll be round for you,
+sure. I saw him kind of smile to one of the other circus men."
+
+It was a splendid circus, and there were more things than Pony ever saw
+in a circus before. But instead of hating to have it over, it seemed to
+him that it would never come to an end. He kept thinking and thinking,
+and wondering whether he would like to be a circus actor; and when the
+one came out who rode four horses bareback and stood on his head on the
+last horse, and drove with the reins in his teeth, Pony thought that he
+never could learn to do it; and if he could not learn he did not know
+what the circus men would say to him. It seemed to him that it was very
+strange he had not told that circus man that he didn't know whether he
+could do it or not; but he had not, and now it was too late.
+
+A boy came around calling lemonade, and Pony's father bought some for
+each of the children, but Pony could hardly taste his.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Pony? Are you sick?" his father asked.
+
+"No. I don't care for any; that's all. I'm well," said Pony; but he felt
+very miserable.
+
+After supper Jim Leonard came round and went up to Pony's room with him
+to help him pack, and he was so gay about it and said he only wished
+_he_ was going, that Pony cheered up a little. Jim had brought a large
+square of checked gingham that he said he did not believe his mother
+would ever want, and that he would tell her he had taken if she asked
+for it. He said it would be the very thing for Pony to carry his clothes
+in, for it was light and strong and would hold a lot. He helped Pony to
+choose his things out of his bureau drawers: a pair of stockings and a
+pair of white pantaloons and a blue roundabout, and a collar, and two
+handkerchiefs. That was all he said Pony would need, because he would
+have his circus clothes right away, and there was no use taking things
+that he would never wear.
+
+Jim did these up in the square of gingham, and he tied it across
+cater-cornered twice, in double knots, and showed Pony how he could put
+his hand through and carry it just as easy. He hid it under the bed for
+him, and he told Pony that if he was in Pony's place he should go to bed
+right away or pretty soon, so that nobody would think anything, and
+maybe he could get some sleep before he got up and went down to wait on
+the front steps for the circus to come along. He promised to be there
+with the other boys and keep them from fooling or making a noise, or
+doing anything to wake his father up, or make the constable come. "You
+see, Pony," he said, "if you can run off this year, and come back with
+the circus next year, then a whole lot of fellows can run off. Don't you
+see that?"
+
+Pony said he saw that, but he said he wished some of the other fellows
+were going now, because he did not know any of the circus boys and he
+was afraid he might feel kind of lonesome. But Jim Leonard said he would
+soon get acquainted, and, anyway, a year would go before he knew it, and
+then if the other fellows could get off he would have plenty of company.
+
+As soon as Jim Leonard was gone Pony undressed and got into bed. He was
+not sleepy, but he thought maybe it would be just as well to rest a
+little while before the circus procession came along for him; and,
+anyway, he could not bear to go down-stairs and be with the family when
+he was going to leave them so soon, and not come back for a whole year.
+
+After a good while, or about the time he usually came in from playing,
+he heard his mother saying: "Where in the world is Pony? Has he come in
+yet? Have you seen him, girls? Pony! Pony!" she called.
+
+But somehow Pony could not get his voice up out of his throat; he wanted
+to answer her, but he could not speak. He heard her say, "Go out to the
+front steps, girls, and see if you can see him," and then he heard her
+coming up the stairs; and she came into his room, and when she saw him
+lying there in bed, she said: "Why, I believe in my heart the child's
+asleep! Pony! Are you awake?"
+
+Pony made out to say no, and his mother said: "My! what a fright you
+gave me! Why didn't you answer me? Are you sick, Pony? Your father said
+you didn't seem well at the circus; and you didn't eat any supper,
+hardly."
+
+Pony said he was first-rate, but he spoke very low, and his mother came
+up and sat down on the side of his bed.
+
+"What is the matter, child?" She bent over and felt his forehead. "No,
+you haven't got a bit of fever," she said, and she kissed him, and began
+to tumble his short black hair in the way she had, and she got one of
+his hands between her two, and kept rubbing it. "But you've had a long,
+tiresome day, and that's why you've gone to bed, I suppose. But if you
+feel the least sick, Pony, I'll send for the doctor."
+
+Pony said he was not sick at all; just tired; and that was true; he felt
+as if he never wanted to get up again.
+
+His mother put her arm under his neck, and pressed her face close down
+to his, and said very low: "Pony dear, you don't feel hard toward your
+mother for what she did the other night?"
+
+He knew she meant boxing his ears, when he was not to blame, and he
+said: "Oh no," and then he threw his arms round her neck and cried; and
+she told him not to cry, and that she would never do such a thing again;
+but she was really so frightened she did not know what she was doing.
+
+When he quieted down, she said: "Now say your prayers, Pony, 'Our
+Father,'" and she said, "Our Father" all through with him, and after
+that, "Now I lay me," just as when he was a very little fellow. After
+they had finished she stooped over and kissed him again, and when he
+turned his face into his pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her
+hand for about a minute. Then she went away.
+
+Pony could hear them stirring about for a good while down-stairs. His
+father came in from uptown at last, and asked: "Has Pony come in?"
+
+And his mother said; "Yes, he's up in bed. I wouldn't disturb him,
+Henry. He's asleep by this time."
+
+His father said: "I don't know what to make of the boy. If he keeps on
+acting so strangely I shall have the doctor see him in the morning."
+
+Pony felt dreadfully to think how far away from them he should be in the
+morning, and he would have given anything if he could have gone down to
+his father and mother and told them what he was going to do. But it did
+not seem as if he could.
+
+By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then he dozed off, but he thought
+it was hardly a minute before he heard the circus band, and knew that
+the procession was coming for him. He jumped out of bed and put on his
+things as fast as he could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to
+it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to
+keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down to the front door without
+seeming to touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front
+steps he saw the circus magician coming along. By that time the music
+had stopped and Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a
+tall, peaked hat, like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so
+wide in the black glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched
+them out, for he seemed to be groping along that way, with his wand in
+one hand, like a blind man.
+
+He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking voice, "It's all glory; it's
+all glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to
+get back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him,
+but when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere;
+nothing but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to
+shrink up so little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his
+wide goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the
+doctor were standing by him looking down at him, and the doctor said:
+
+"He has been walking in his sleep; he must be bled," and he got out his
+lancet, when Pony heard his mother calling: "Pony, Pony! What's the
+matter? Have you got the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found it was
+just morning.
+
+The sun was shining in at his window, and it made him so glad to think
+that by this time the circus was far away and he was not with it, that
+he hardly knew what to do.
+
+He was not very well for two or three days afterward, and his mother let
+him stay out of school to see whether he was really going to be sick or
+not. When he went back most of the fellows had forgotten that he had
+been going to run off with the circus. Some of them that happened to
+think of it plagued him a little and asked how he liked being a circus
+actor.
+
+Hen Billard was the worst; he said he reckoned the circus magician got
+scared when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and told the circus men that
+they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason
+why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to
+wait on the front steps, Pony dear?" But after that he was pretty good
+to him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend
+that Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up to see.
+
+Pony himself could never be exactly sure whether he had waited on the
+front steps and seen the circus magician or not. Sometimes it seemed all
+of it like a dream, and sometimes only part of it. Jim Leonard tried to
+help him make it out, but they could not. He said it was a pity he had
+overslept himself, for if he had come to bid Pony good-bye, the way he
+said, then he could have told just how much of it was a dream and how
+much was not.
+
+
+
+
+JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE
+
+
+Jim Leonard's stable used to stand on the flat near the river, and on a
+rise of ground above it stood Jim Leonard's log-cabin. The boys called
+it Jim Leonard's log-cabin, but it was really his mother's, and the
+stable was hers, too. It was a log stable, but up where the gable began
+the logs stopped, and it was weather-boarded the rest of the way, and
+the roof was shingled.
+
+Jim Leonard said it was all logs once, and that the roof was loose
+clapboards, held down by logs that ran across them, like the roofs in
+the early times, before there were shingles or nails, or anything, in
+the country. But none of the oldest boys had ever seen it like that, and
+you had to take Jim Leonard's word for it if you wanted to believe it.
+The little fellows nearly all did; but everybody said afterward it was a
+good thing for Jim Leonard that it was not that kind of roof when he had
+his hair-breadth escape on it. He said himself that he would not have
+cared if it had been; but that was when it was all over, and his mother
+had whipped him, and everything, and he was telling the boys about it.
+
+He said that in his Pirate Book lots of fellows on rafts got to land
+when they were shipwrecked, and that the old-fashioned roof would have
+been just like a raft, anyway, and he could have steered it right across
+the river to Delorac's Island as easy! Pony Baker thought very likely he
+could, but Hen Billard said:
+
+"Well, why didn't you do it, with the kind of a roof you had?"
+
+Some of the boys mocked Jim Leonard; but a good many of them thought he
+could have done it if he could have got into the eddy that there was
+over by the island. If he could have landed there, once, he could have
+camped out and lived on fish till the river fell.
+
+It was that spring, about fifty-four years ago, when the freshet, which
+always came in the spring, was the worst that anybody could remember.
+The country above the Boy's Town was under water for miles and miles.
+The river-bottoms were flooded so that the corn had to be all planted
+over again when the water went down. The freshet tore away pieces of
+orchard, and apple-trees in bloom came sailing along with logs and
+fence-rails and chicken-coops, and pretty soon dead cows and horses.
+There was a dog chained to a dog-kennel that went by, howling awfully;
+the boys would have given anything if they could have saved him, but the
+yellow river whirled him out of sight behind the middle pier of the
+bridge, which everybody was watching from the bank, expecting it to go
+any minute. The water was up within four or five feet of the bridge, and
+the boys believed that if a good big log had come along and hit it, the
+bridge would have been knocked loose from its piers and carried down the
+river.
+
+Perhaps it would, and perhaps it would not. The boys all ran to watch it
+as soon as school was out, and stayed till they had to go to supper.
+After supper some of their mothers let them come back and stay till
+bedtime, if they would promise to keep a full yard back from the edge of
+the bank. They could not be sure just how much a yard was, and they
+nearly all sat down on the edge and let their legs hang over.
+
+Jim Leonard was there, holloing and running up and down the bank, and
+showing the other boys things away out in the river that nobody else
+could see; he said he saw a man out there. He had not been to supper,
+and he had not been to school all day, which might have been the reason
+why he would rather stay with the men and watch the bridge than go home
+to supper; his mother would have been waiting for him with a sucker from
+the pear-tree. He told the boys that while they were gone he went out
+with one of the men on the bridge as far as the middle pier, and it
+shook like a leaf; he showed with his hand how it shook.
+
+Jim Leonard was a fellow who believed he did all kinds of things that he
+would like to have done; and the big boys just laughed. That made Jim
+Leonard mad, and he said that as soon as the bridge began to go, he was
+going to run out on it and go with it; and then they would see whether
+he was a liar or not! They mocked him and danced round him till he
+cried. But Pony Baker, who had come with his father, believed that Jim
+Leonard would really have done it; and at any rate, he felt sorry for
+him when Jim cried.
+
+He stayed later than any of the little fellows, because his father was
+with him, and even all the big boys had gone home except Hen Billard,
+when Pony left Jim Leonard on the bank and stumbled sleepily away, with
+his hand in his father's.
+
+When Pony was gone, Hen Billard said: "Well, going to stay all night,
+Jim?"
+
+And Jim Leonard answered back, as cross as could be, "Yes, I am!" And he
+said the men who were sitting up to watch the bridge were going to give
+him some of their coffee, and that would keep him awake. But perhaps he
+thought this because he wanted some coffee so badly. He was awfully
+hungry, for he had not had anything since breakfast, except a piece of
+bread-and-butter that he got Pony Baker to bring him in his pocket when
+he came down from school at noontime.
+
+Hen Billard said, "Well, I suppose I won't see you any more, Jim;
+good-bye," and went away laughing; and after a while one of the men saw
+Jim Leonard hanging about, and asked him what he wanted there at that
+time of night; and Jim could not say he wanted coffee, and so there was
+nothing for him to do but go. There was nowhere for him to go but home,
+and he sneaked off in the dark.
+
+When he came in sight of the cabin he could not tell whether he would
+rather have his mother waiting for him with a whipping and some supper,
+or get to bed somehow with neither. He climbed softly over the back
+fence and crept up to the back door, but it was fast; then he crept
+round to the front door, and that was fast, too. There was no light in
+the house, and it was perfectly still.
+
+All of a sudden it struck him that he could sleep in the stable-loft,
+and he thought what a fool he was not to have thought of it before. The
+notion brightened him up so that he got the gourd that hung beside the
+well-curb and took it out to the stable with him; for now he remembered
+that the cow would be there, unless she was in somebody's garden-patch
+or cornfield.
+
+He noticed as he walked down toward the stable that the freshet had come
+up over the flat, and just before the door he had to wade. But he was in
+his bare feet, and he did not care; if he thought anything, he thought
+that his mother would not come out to milk till the water went down, and
+he would be safe till then from the whipping he must take, sooner or
+later, for playing hooky.
+
+Sure enough, the old cow was in the stable, and she gave Jim Leonard a
+snort of welcome and then lowed anxiously. He fumbled through the dark
+to her side, and began to milk her. She had been milked only a few hours
+before, and so he got only a gourdful from her. But it was all
+strippings, and rich as cream, and it was smoking warm. It seemed to Jim
+Leonard that it went down to his very toes when he poured it into his
+throat, and it made him feel so good that he did not know what to do.
+
+There really was not anything for him to do but to climb up into the
+loft by the ladder in the corner of the stable, and lie down on the old
+last year's fodder. The rich, warm milk made Jim Leonard awfully sleepy,
+and he dropped off almost as soon as his head touched the cornstalks.
+The last thing he remembered was the hoarse roar of the freshet outside,
+and that was a lulling music in his ears.
+
+The next thing he knew, and he hardly knew that, was a soft, jolting,
+sinking motion, first to one side and then to the other; then he seemed
+to be going down, down, straight down, and then to be drifting off into
+space. He rubbed his eyes and found it was full daylight, although it
+was the daylight of early morning; and while he lay looking out of the
+stable-loft window and trying to make out what it all meant, he felt a
+wash of cold water along his back, and his bed of fodder melted away
+under him and around him, and some loose planks of the loft floor swam
+weltering out of the window. Then he knew what had happened. The flood
+had stolen up while he slept, and sapped the walls of the stable; the
+logs had given way, one after another, and had let him down, with the
+roof, into the water.
+
+He got to his feet as well as he could, and floundered over the rising
+and falling boards to the window in the floating gable. One look outside
+showed him his mother's log-cabin safe on its rise of ground, and at the
+corner the old cow, that must have escaped through the stable door he
+had left open, and passed the night among the cabbages. She seemed to
+catch sight of Jim Leonard when he put his head out, and she lowed to
+him.
+
+Jim Leonard did not stop to make any answer. He clambered out of the
+window and up onto the ridge of the roof, and there, in the company of a
+large gray rat, he set out on the strangest voyage a boy ever made. In a
+few moments the current swept him out into the middle of the river, and
+he was sailing down between his native shore on one side and Delorac's
+Island on the other.
+
+All round him seethed and swirled the yellow flood in eddies and
+ripples, where drift of all sorts danced and raced. His vessel, such as
+it was, seemed seaworthy enough. It held securely together, fitting like
+a low, wide cup over the water, and perhaps finding some buoyancy from
+the air imprisoned in it above the window. But Jim Leonard was not
+satisfied, and so far from being proud of his adventure, he was
+frightened worse even than the rat which shared it. As soon as he could
+get his voice, he began to shout for help to the houses on the empty
+shores, which seemed to fly backward on both sides while he lay still on
+the gulf that swashed around him, and tried to drown his voice before it
+swallowed him up. At the same time the bridge, which had looked so far
+off when he first saw it, was rushing swiftly toward him, and getting
+nearer and nearer.
+
+He wondered what had become of all the people and all the boys. He
+thought that if he were safe there on shore he should not be sleeping in
+bed while somebody was out in the river on a roof, with nothing but a
+rat to care whether he got drowned or not.
+
+Where was Hen Billard, that always made fun so; or Archy Hawkins, that
+pretended to be so good-natured; or Pony Baker, that seemed to like a
+fellow so much? He began to call for them by name: "Hen Billard--_O_
+Hen! Help, help! Archy Hawkins--_O_ Archy! I'm drowning! Pony, Pony--_O_
+Pony! Don't you _see_ me, Pony?"
+
+He could see the top of Pony Baker's house, and he thought what a good,
+kind man Pony's father was. Surely _he_ would try to save him; and Jim
+Leonard began to yell: "O Mr. Baker! Look here, Mr. Baker! It's Jim
+Leonard, and I'm floating down the river on a roof! Save me, Mr. Baker,
+save me! Help, help, somebody! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Fire!"
+
+By this time he was about crazy, and did not half know what he was
+saying. Just in front of where Hen Billard's grandmother lived, on the
+street that ran along the top of the bank, the roof got caught in the
+branches of a tree which had drifted down and stuck in the bottom of the
+river so that the branches waved up and down as the current swashed
+through them. Jim Leonard was glad of anything that would stop the roof,
+and at first he thought he would get off on the tree. That was what the
+rat did. Perhaps the rat thought Jim Leonard really was crazy and he had
+better let him have the roof to himself; but the rat saw that he had
+made a mistake, and he jumped back again after he had swung up and down
+on a limb two or three times. Jim Leonard felt awfully when the rat
+first got into the tree, for he remembered how it said in the Pirate
+Book that rats always leave a sinking ship, and now he believed that he
+certainly was gone. But that only made him hollo the louder, and he
+holloed so loud that at last he made somebody hear.
+
+It was Hen Billard's grandmother, and she put her head out of the window
+with her nightcap on, to see what the matter was. Jim Leonard caught
+sight of her, and he screamed: "Fire, fire, fire! I'm drownding, Mrs.
+Billard! Oh, do somebody come!"
+
+Hen Billard's grandmother just gave one yell of "Fire! The world's
+a-burnin' up, Hen Billard, and you layin' there sleepin' and not helpin'
+a bit! Somebody's out there in the river!" and she rushed into the room
+where Hen was, and shook him.
+
+He bounced out of bed and pulled on his pantaloons, and was down-stairs
+in a minute. He ran bareheaded over to the bank, and when Jim Leonard
+saw him coming he holloed ten times as loud: "It's me, Hen! It's Jim
+Leonard! Oh, do get somebody to come out and save me! Fire!"
+
+As soon as Hen heard that, and felt sure it was not a dream, which he
+did in about half a second, he began to yell, too, and to say: "How did
+you get there? Fire, fire, fire! What are you on? Fire! Are you in a
+tree, or what? Fire, fire! Are you in a flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If
+I had a skiff--fire!"
+
+He kept racing up and down the bank, and back and forth between the bank
+and the houses. The river was almost up to the top of the bank, and it
+looked a mile wide. Down at the bridge you could hardly see any light
+between the water and the bridge.
+
+Pretty soon people began to look out of their doors and windows, and Hen
+Billard's grandmother kept screaming: "The world's a-burnin' up! The
+river's on fire!" Then boys came out of their houses; and then men with
+no hats on; and then women and girls, with their hair half down. The
+fire-bells began to ring, and in less than five minutes both the fire
+companies were on the shore, with the men at the brakes and the foremen
+of the companies holloing through their trumpets.
+
+Then Jim Leonard saw what a good thing it was that he had thought of
+holloing fire. He felt sure now that they would save him somehow, and he
+made up his mind to save the rat, too, and pet it, and maybe go around
+and exhibit it. He would name it Bolivar; it was just the color of the
+elephant Bolivar that came to the Boy's Town every year. These things
+whirled through his brain while he watched two men setting out in a
+skiff toward him.
+
+They started from the shore a little above him, and they meant to row
+slanting across to his tree, but the current, when they got fairly into
+it, swept them far below, and they were glad to row back to land again
+without ever getting anywhere near him. At the same time, the tree-top
+where his roof was caught was pulled southward by a sudden rush of the
+torrent; it opened, and the roof slipped out, with Jim Leonard and the
+rat on it. They both joined in one squeal of despair as the river leaped
+forward with them, and a dreadful "Oh!" went up from the people on the
+bank.
+
+Some of the firemen had run down to the bridge when they saw that the
+skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the
+window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand.
+It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men
+used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw
+Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to.
+He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on
+it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and
+pull it up to the pier. The strongest current set close in around the
+middle pier, and the roof would have to pass on one side or the other.
+That was what Blue Bob argued out in his mind when he decided that the
+skiff would never reach Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could not
+save him that way, nothing could save him.
+
+Blue Bob must have had a last name, but none of the little fellows knew
+what it was. Everybody called him Blue Bob because he had such a thick,
+black beard that when he was just shaved his face looked perfectly blue.
+He knew all about the river and its ways, and if it had been of any use
+to go out with a boat, he would have gone. That was what all the boys
+said, when they followed Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him getting out
+on the pier. He was the only person that the watchman had let go on the
+bridge for two days.
+
+The water was up within three feet of the floor, and if Jim Leonard's
+roof slipped by Blue Bob's guard and passed under the bridge, it would
+scrape Jim Leonard off, and that would be the last of him.
+
+All the time the roof was coming nearer the bridge, sometimes slower,
+sometimes faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the current; once
+it seemed almost to stop, and swayed completely round; then it just
+darted forward.
+
+Blue Bob stood on the very point of the pier, where the strong
+stone-work divided the current, and held his hooked pole ready to make a
+clutch at the roof, whichever side it took. Jim Leonard saw him there,
+but although he had been holloing and yelling and crying all the time,
+now he was still. He wanted to say, "O Bob, save me!" but he could not
+make a sound.
+
+It seemed to him that Bob was going to miss him when he made a lunge at
+the roof on the right side of the pier; it seemed to him that the roof
+was going down the left side; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then
+it gave a loud crack and went to pieces, and flung itself away upon the
+whirling and dancing flood. At first Jim Leonard thought he had gone
+with it; but it was only the rat that tried to run up Blue Bob's pole,
+and slipped off into the water; and then somehow Jim was hanging onto
+Blue Bob's hands and scrambling onto the bridge.
+
+Blue Bob always said he never saw any rat, and a good many people said
+there never was any rat on the roof with Jim Leonard; they said that he
+just made the rat up.
+
+He did not mention the rat himself for several days; he told Pony Baker
+that he did not think of it at first, he was so excited.
+
+Pony asked his father what he thought, and Pony's father said that it
+might have been the kind of rat that people see when they have been
+drinking too much, and that Blue Bob had not seen it because he had
+signed the temperance pledge.
+
+But this was a good while after. At the time the people saw Jim Leonard
+standing safe with Blue Bob on the pier, they set up a regular election
+cheer, and they would have believed anything Jim Leonard said. They all
+agreed that Blue Bob had a right to go home with Jim and take him to his
+mother, for he had saved Jim's life, and he ought to have the credit of
+it.
+
+Before this, and while everybody supposed that Jim Leonard would surely
+be drowned, some of the people had gone up to his mother's cabin to
+prepare her for the worst. She did not seem to understand exactly, and
+she kept round getting breakfast, with her old clay pipe in her mouth;
+but when she got it through her head, she made an awful face, and
+dropped her pipe on the door-stone and broke it; and then she threw her
+check apron over her head and sat down and cried.
+
+But it took so long for her to come to this that the people had not got
+over comforting her and trying to make her believe that it was all for
+the best, when Blue Bob came up through the bars with his hand on Jim's
+shoulder, and about all the boys in town tagging after them.
+
+Jim's mother heard the hurrahing and pulled off her apron, and saw that
+Jim was safe and sound there before her. She gave him a look that made
+him slip round behind Blue Bob, and she went in and got a table-knife,
+and she came out and went to the pear-tree and cut a sucker.
+
+She said, "I'll learn that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he's got a
+decent bed in the house!" and then she started to come toward Jim
+Leonard.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+THE TOWN
+
+
+I call it a Boy's Town because I wish it to appear to the reader as a
+town appears to a boy from his third to his eleventh year, when he
+seldom, if ever, catches a glimpse of life much higher than the middle
+of a man, and has the most distorted and mistaken views of most
+things.... Some people remain in this condition as long as they live,
+and keep the ignorance of childhood, after they have lost its innocence;
+heaven has been shut, but the earth is still a prison to them. These
+will not know what I mean by much that I shall have to say; but I hope
+that the ungrown-up children will, and that the boys of to-day will like
+to know what a boy of forty years ago was like, even if he had no very
+exciting adventures or thread-bare escapes; perhaps I mean hair-breadth
+escapes; but it is the same thing--they have been used so often. I shall
+try to describe him very minutely in his daily doings and dreamings, and
+it may amuse them to compare these doings and dreamings with their own.
+For convenience, I shall call this boy, my boy; but I hope he might have
+been almost anybody's boy; and I mean him sometimes for a boy in
+general, as well as a boy in particular.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIRST LOCK]
+
+It seems to me that my Boy's Town was a town peculiarly adapted for a
+boy to be a boy in. It had a river, the great Miami River, which was as
+blue as the sky when it was not as yellow as gold; and it had another
+river, called the Old River, which was the Miami's former channel, and
+which held an island in its sluggish loop; the boys called it The
+Island; and it must have been about the size of Australia; perhaps it
+was not so large. Then this town had a Canal, and a Canal-Basin, and a
+First Lock and a Second Lock; you could walk out to the First Lock, but
+the Second Lock was at the edge of the known world, and, when my boy was
+very little, the biggest boy had never been beyond it. Then it had a
+Hydraulic, which brought the waters of Old River for mill-power through
+the heart of the town, from a Big Reservoir and a Little Reservoir; the
+Big Reservoir was as far off as the Second Lock, and the Hydraulic ran
+under mysterious culverts at every street-crossing. All these streams
+and courses had fish in them at all seasons, and all summer long they
+had boys in them, and now and then a boy in winter, when the thin ice
+of the mild Southern Ohio winter let him through with his skates. Then
+there were the Commons: a wide expanse of open fields, where the cows
+were pastured, and the boys flew their kites, and ran races, and
+practised for their circuses in the tan-bark rings of the real circuses.
+
+
+
+
+EARLIEST MEMORIES
+
+
+Some of my boy's memories reach a time earlier than his third year, and
+relate to the little Ohio River hamlet where he was born, and where his
+mother's people, who were river-faring folk, all lived. Every two or
+three years the river rose and flooded the village; and his
+grandmother's household was taken out of the second-story window in a
+skiff; but no one minded a trivial inconvenience like that, any more
+than the Romans have minded the annual freshet of the Tiber for the last
+three or four thousand years. When the waters went down the family
+returned and scrubbed out the five or six inches of rich mud they had
+left. In the mean time it was a godsend to all boys of an age to enjoy
+it; but it was nothing out of the order of Providence. So, if my boy
+ever saw a freshet, it naturally made no impression upon him. What he
+remembered was something much more important, and that was waking up one
+morning and seeing a peach-tree in bloom through the window beside his
+bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very
+earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom
+without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that
+
+    "Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
+
+Over the spot where the little house once stood a railroad has drawn its
+erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built
+up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree
+glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender,
+pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward
+in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a
+reminiscence of that dim past, and the little coal-smoky town on the
+banks of the Ohio.
+
+Perversely blended with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse
+of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up
+and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never
+have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is
+certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as
+likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One
+of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to
+the southward, and had sent out a yawl and captured him, and brought him
+home. He began a checkered career of uselessness when they were ferrying
+him over from Wheeling in a skiff, by trying to help wear the pantaloons
+of the boy who was holding him; he put one of his fore-legs in at the
+watch-pocket; but it was disagreeable to the boy and ruinous to the
+trousers. He grew very tame, and butted children over, right and left,
+in the village streets; and he behaved like one of the family whenever
+he got into a house; he ate the sugar out of the bowl on the table, and
+plundered the pantry of its sweet cakes. One day a dog got after him,
+and he jumped over the river-bank and broke his leg, and had to be shot.
+
+
+
+
+HOME LIFE
+
+
+The house gave even to him a sense of space unknown before, and he could
+recall his mother's satisfaction in it. He has often been back there in
+dreams, and found it on the old scale of grandeur; but no doubt it was a
+very simple affair. The fortunes of a Whig editor in a place so
+overwhelmingly Democratic as the Boy's Town were not such as could have
+warranted his living in a palace; and he must have been poor, as the
+world goes now. But the family always lived in abundance, and in their
+way they belonged to the employing class; that is, the father had men to
+work for him. On the other hand, he worked with them; and the boys, as
+they grew old enough, were taught to work with them, too. My boy grew
+old enough very young; and was put to use in the printing-office before
+he was ten years of age. This was not altogether because he was needed
+there, I dare say, but because it was part of his father's Swedenborgian
+philosophy that every one should fulfil a use; I do not know that when
+the boy wanted to go swimming, or hunting, or skating, it consoled him
+much to reflect that the angels in the highest heaven delighted in uses;
+nevertheless, it was good for him to be of use, though maybe not so much
+use.
+
+If his mother did her own work, with help only now and then from a hired
+girl, that was the custom of the time and country; and her memory was
+always the more reverend to him, because whenever he looked back at her
+in those dim years, he saw her about some of those household offices
+which are so beautiful to a child. She was always the best and tenderest
+mother, and her love had the heavenly art of making each child feel
+itself the most important, while she was partial to none. In spite of
+her busy days she followed their father in his religion and literature,
+and at night, when her long toil was over, she sat with the children and
+listened while he read aloud.
+
+The first book my boy remembered to have heard him read was Moore's
+_Lalla Rookh_, of which he formed but a vague notion, though while he
+struggled after its meaning he took all its music in, and began at once
+to make rhymes of his own. He had no conception of literature except the
+pleasure there was in making it; and he had no outlook into the world of
+it, which must have been pretty open to his father. The father read
+aloud some of Dickens' Christmas stories, then new; and the boy had a
+good deal of trouble with the _Haunted Man_. One rarest night of all,
+the family sat up till two o'clock, listening to a novel that my boy
+long ago forgot the name of, if he ever knew its name. It was all about
+a will, forged or lost, and there was a great scene in court, and after
+that the mother declared that she could not go to bed till she heard the
+end. His own first reading was in history. At nine years of age he read
+the history of Greece, and the history of Rome, and he knew that
+Goldsmith wrote them. One night his father told the boys all about Don
+Quixote; and a little while after he gave my boy the book. He read it
+over and over again; but he did not suppose it was a novel. It was his
+elder brother who read novels, and a novel was like _Handy Andy_, or
+_Harry Lorrequer_, or the _Bride of Lammermoor_. His brother had another
+novel which they preferred to either; it was in Harper's old "Library of
+Select Novels," and was called _Alamance; or, the Great and Final
+Experiment_, and it was about the life of some sort of community in
+North Carolina. It bewitched them, and though my boy could not afterward
+recall a single fact or figure in it, he could bring before his mind's
+eye every trait of its outward aspect.
+
+All this went along with great and continued political excitement, and
+with some glimpses of the social problem. It was very simple then;
+nobody was very rich, and nobody was in want; but somehow, as the boy
+grew older, he began to discover that there were differences, even in
+the little world about him; some were higher and some were lower. From
+the first he was taught by precept and example to take the side of the
+lower. As the children were denied oftener than they were indulged, the
+margin of their own abundance must have been narrower than they ever
+knew then; but if they had been of the most prosperous, their bent in
+this matter would have been the same. Once there was a church festival,
+or something of that sort, and there was a good deal of the provision
+left over, which it was decided should be given to the poor. This was
+very easy, but it was not so easy to find the poor whom it should be
+given to. At last a hard-working widow was chosen to receive it; the
+ladies carried it to her front door and gave it her, and she carried it
+to her back door and threw it into the alley. No doubt she had enough
+without it, but there were circumstances of indignity or patronage
+attending the gift which were recognized in my boy's home, and which
+helped afterward to make him doubtful of all giving, except the
+humblest, and restive with a world in which there need be any giving at
+all.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER
+
+
+It seems to me that the best way to get at the heart of any boy's town
+is to take its different watercourses and follow them into it.
+
+The house where my boy first lived was not far from the river, and he
+must have seen it often before he noticed it. But he was not aware of it
+till he found it under the bridge. Without the river there could not
+have been a bridge; the fact of the bridge may have made him look for
+the river; but the bridge is foremost in his mind. It is a long, wooden
+tunnel, with two roadways, and a foot-path on either side of these;
+there is a toll-house at each end, and from one to the other it is about
+as far as from the Earth to the planet Mars. On the western shore of the
+river is a smaller town than the Boy's Town, and in the perspective the
+entrance of the bridge on that side is like a dim little doorway. The
+timbers are of a hugeness to strike fear into the heart of the boldest
+little boy; and there is something awful even about the dust in the
+roadways; soft and thrillingly cool to the boy's bare feet, it lies
+thick in a perpetual twilight, streaked at intervals by the sun that
+slants in at the high, narrow windows under the roof; it has a certain
+potent, musty smell. The bridge has three piers, and at low water
+hardier adventurers than he wade out to the middle pier; some heroes
+even fish there, standing all day on the loose rocks about the base of
+the pier. He shudders to see them, and aches with wonder how they will
+get ashore. Once he is there when a big boy wades back from the middle
+pier, where he has been to rob a goose's nest; he has some loose silver
+change in his wet hand, and my boy understands that it has come out of
+one of the goose eggs. This fact, which he never thought of questioning,
+gets mixed up in his mind with an idea of riches, of treasure-trove, in
+the cellar of an old house that has been torn down near the end of the
+bridge.
+
+The river had its own climate, and this climate was of course much such
+a climate as the boys, for whom nature intended the river, would have
+chosen. I do not believe it was ever winter there, though it was
+sometimes late autumn, so that the boys could have some use for the
+caves they dug at the top of the bank, with a hole coming through the
+turf, to let out the smoke of the fires they built inside. They had the
+joy of choking and blackening over these flues, and they intended to
+live on corn and potatoes borrowed from the household stores of the boy
+whose house was nearest. They never got so far as to parch the corn or
+to bake the potatoes in their caves, but there was the fire, and the
+draught was magnificent. The light of the red flames painted the little,
+happy, foolish faces, so long since wrinkled and grizzled with age, or
+mouldered away to dust, as the boys huddled before them under the bank,
+and fed them with the drift, or stood patient of the heat and cold in
+the afternoon light of some vast Saturday waning to nightfall.
+
+The river-climate, with these autumnal intervals, was made up of a
+quick, eventful springtime, followed by the calm of a cloudless summer
+that seemed never to end. But the spring, short as it was, had its great
+attractions, and chief of these was the freshet which it brought to the
+river. They would hear somehow that the river was rising, and then the
+boys, who had never connected its rise with the rains they must have
+been having, would all go down to its banks and watch the swelling
+waters. These would be yellow and thick, and the boiling current would
+have smooth, oily eddies, where pieces of drift would whirl round and
+round, and then escape and slip down the stream. There were saw-logs and
+whole trees with their branching tops, lengths of fence and hen-coops
+and pig-pens; once there was a stable; and if the flood continued, there
+began to come swollen bodies of horses and cattle. This must have meant
+serious loss to the people living on the river-bottoms above, but the
+boys counted it all gain. They cheered the objects as they floated by,
+and they were breathless with the excitement of seeing the men who
+caught fence-rails and cord-wood, and even saw-logs, with iron prongs at
+the points of long poles, as they stood on some jutting point of shore
+and stretched far out over the flood. The boys exulted in the turbid
+spread of the stream, which filled its low western banks and stole over
+their tops, and washed into all the hollow places along its shores, and
+shone among the trunks of the sycamores on Delorac's Island, which was
+almost of the geographical importance of The Island in Old River. When
+the water began to go down their hearts sank with it; and they gave up
+the hope of seeing the bridge carried away. Once the river rose to
+within a few feet of it, so that if the right piece of drift had been
+there to do its duty, the bridge might have been torn from its piers and
+swept down the raging tide into those unknown gulfs to the southward.
+Many a time they went to bed full of hope that it would at least happen
+in the night, and woke to learn with shame and grief in the morning that
+the bridge was still there, and the river was falling. It was a little
+comfort to know that some of the big boys had almost seen it go,
+watching as far into the night as nine o'clock with the men who sat up
+near the bridge till daylight: men of leisure and public spirit, but not
+perhaps the leading citizens.
+
+
+
+
+SWIMMING
+
+
+There must have been a tedious time between the going down of the flood
+and the first days when the water was warm enough for swimming; but it
+left no trace. The boys are standing on the shore while the freshet
+rushes by, and then they are in the water, splashing, diving, ducking;
+it is like that; so that I do not know just how to get in that period of
+fishing which must always have come between. There were not many fish in
+that part of the Miami; my boy's experience was full of the ignominy of
+catching shiners and suckers, or, at the best, mudcats, as they called
+the yellow catfish; but there were boys, of those who cursed and swore,
+who caught sunfish, as they called the bream; and there were men who
+were reputed to catch at will, as it were, silvercats and river-bass.
+They fished with minnows, which they kept in battered tin buckets that
+they did not allow you even to touch, or hardly to look at; my boy
+scarcely breathed in their presence; when one of them got up to cast his
+line in a new place, the boys all ran, and then came slowly back. These
+men often carried a flask of liquid that had the property, when taken
+inwardly, of keeping the damp out. The boys respected them for their
+ability to drink whiskey, and thought it a fit and honorable thing that
+they should now and then fall into the river over the brinks where they
+had set their poles. But they disappear like persons in a dream, and
+their fishing-time vanishes with them, and the swimming-time is in full
+possession of the river, and of all the other waters of the Boy's Town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The swimming-holes in the river were the greatest favorites. My boy
+could not remember when he began to go into them, though it certainly
+was before he could swim. There was a time when he was afraid of getting
+in over his head; but he did not know just when he learned to swim, any
+more than he knew when he learned to read; he could not swim, and then
+he could swim; he could not read, and then he could read; but I dare say
+the reading came somewhat before the swimming. Yet the swimming must
+have come very early, and certainly it was kept up with continual
+practise; he swam quite as much as he read; perhaps more. The boys had
+deep swimming-holes and shallow ones; and over the deep ones there was
+always a spring-board, from which they threw somersaults, or dived
+straight down into the depths, where there were warm and cold currents
+mysteriously interwoven. They believed that these deep holes were
+infested by water-snakes, though they never saw any, and they expected
+to be bitten by snapping-turtles, though this never happened. Fiery
+dragons could not have kept them out; gallynippers, whatever they were,
+certainly did not; they were believed to abound at the bottom of the
+deep holes; but the boys never stayed long in the deep holes, and they
+preferred the shallow places, where the river broke into a long ripple
+(they called it riffle) on its gravelly bed, and where they could at
+once soak and bask in the musical rush of the sunlit waters. I have
+heard people in New England blame all the Western rivers for being
+yellow and turbid; but I know that after the spring floods, when the
+Miami had settled down to its summer business with the boys, it was as
+clear and as blue as if it were spilled out of the summer sky. The boys
+liked the riffle because they could stay in so long there, and there
+were little land-locked pools and shallows, where the water was even
+warmer, and they could stay in longer. At most places under the banks
+there was clay of different colors, which they used for war-paint in
+their Indian fights; and after they had their Indian fights they could
+rush screaming and clattering into the riffle. When the stream had
+washed them clean down to their red sunburn or their leathern tan, they
+could paint up again and have more Indian fights.
+
+I wonder what sign the boys who read this have for challenging or
+inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used
+to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the
+forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did
+this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when
+they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when
+they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had
+to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at
+all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and
+as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort
+of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since
+this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one
+time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the
+fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a
+boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about
+going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard
+fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then
+they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made
+this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on
+wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came
+upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public
+opinion in the boy's world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their
+honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts;
+and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As
+the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if
+you were such a miscreant, and there was some boy you hated, you stole
+up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in one arm or both arms of his
+shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into your heart, you soaked the knot
+in water, and pounded it with a stone.
+
+I am glad to know that in the days when he was thoughtless and senseless
+enough, my boy never was guilty of any degree of this meanness. It was
+his brother, I suppose, who taught him to abhor it; and perhaps it was
+his own suffering from it in part; for he, too, sometimes shed bitter
+tears over such a knot, as I have seen hapless little wretches do,
+tearing at it with their nails and gnawing at it with their teeth,
+knowing that the time was passing when they could hope to hide the fact
+that they had been in swimming, and foreseeing no remedy but to cut off
+the sleeve above the knot, or else put on their clothes without the
+shirt, and trust to untying the knot when it got dry.
+
+There must have been a lurking anxiety in all the boys' hearts when they
+went in without leave, or, as my boy was apt to do, when explicitly
+forbidden. He was not apt at lying, I dare say, and so he took the
+course of open disobedience. He could not see the danger that filled the
+home hearts with fear for him, and he must have often broken the law and
+been forgiven, before Justice one day appeared for him on the river-bank
+and called him away from his stolen joys. It was an awful moment, and
+it covered him with shame before his mates, who heartlessly rejoiced, as
+children do, in the doom which they are escaping. That sin, at least, he
+fully expiated; and I will whisper to the young people here at the end
+of the chapter that somehow, soon or late, our sins do overtake us, and
+insist upon being paid for. That is not the best reason for not sinning,
+but it is well to know it, and to believe it in our acts as well as our
+thoughts. You will find people to tell you that things only happen so
+and so. It may be; only, I know that no good thing ever happened to
+happen to me when I had done wrong.
+
+
+
+
+SKATING
+
+
+I am afraid that the young people will think I am telling them too much
+about swimming. But in the Boy's Town the boys really led a kind of
+amphibious life, and as long as the long summer lasted they were almost
+as much in the water as on the land. The Basin, however, unlike the
+river, had a winter as well as a summer climate, and one of the very
+first things that my boy could remember was being on the ice there. He
+learned to skate, but he did not know when, any more than he knew just
+the moment of learning to read or to swim. He became passionately fond
+of skating, and kept at it all day long when there was ice for it,
+which was not often in those soft winters. They made a very little ice
+go a long way in the Boy's Town; and began to use it for skating as soon
+as there was a glazing of it on the Basin. None of them ever got drowned
+there; though a boy would often start from one bank and go flying to the
+other, trusting his speed to save him, while the thin sheet sank and
+swayed, but never actually broke under him. Usually the ice was not
+thick enough to have a fire built on it; and it must have been on ice
+which was just strong enough to bear that my boy skated all one bitter
+afternoon at Old River, without a fire to warm by. At first his feet
+were very cold, and then they gradually felt less cold, and at last he
+did not feel them at all. He thought this very nice, and he told one of
+the big boys. "Why, your feet are frozen!" said the big boy, and he
+dragged off my boy's skates, and the little one ran all the long mile
+home, crazed with terror, and not knowing what moment his feet might
+drop off there in the road. His mother plunged them in a bowl of
+ice-cold water, and then rubbed them with flannel, and so thawed them
+out; but that could not save him from the pain of their coming to: it
+was intense, and there must have been a time afterward when he did not
+use his feet.
+
+His skates themselves were of a sort that I am afraid boys would smile
+at nowadays. When you went to get a pair of skates forty or fifty years
+ago, you did not make your choice between a Barney & Berry and an Acme,
+which fastened on with the turn of a screw or the twist of a clamp. You
+found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with
+guttered blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps
+curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an
+acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that
+skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass
+acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your
+skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about
+while he pierced the wood with strap-holes; or else you managed to bore
+them through with a hot iron yourself. Then you took them to a saddler,
+and got him to make straps for them; that is, if you were rich, and your
+father let you have a quarter to pay for the job. If not, you put
+strings through, and tied your skates on. They were always coming off,
+or getting crosswise of your foot, or feeble-mindedly slumping down on
+one side of the wood; but it did not matter, if you had a fire on the
+ice, fed with old barrels and boards and cooper's shavings, and could
+sit round it with your skates on, and talk and tell stones, between
+your flights and races afar; and come whizzing back to it from the
+frozen distance, and glide, with one foot lifted, almost among the
+embers.
+
+
+
+
+MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
+
+
+I sometimes wonder how much these have changed since my boy's time. Of
+course they differ somewhat from generation to generation, and from East
+to West and North to South, but not so much, I believe, as grown people
+are apt to think. Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of
+the laws that govern grown-up communities, and it has its unwritten
+usages, which are handed down from old to young, and perpetuated on the
+same level of years, and are lived into and lived out of, but are
+binding, through all personal vicissitudes, upon the great body of boys
+between six and twelve years old. No boy can violate them without losing
+his standing among the other boys, and he cannot enter into their world
+without coming under them. He must do this, and must not do that; he
+obeys, but he does not know why, any more than the far-off savages from
+whom his customs seem mostly to have come. His world is all in and
+through the world of men and women, but no man or woman can get into it
+any more than if it were a world of invisible beings. It has its own
+ideals and superstitions, and these are often of a ferocity, a
+depravity, scarcely credible in after-life. It is a great pity that
+fathers and mothers cannot penetrate that world; but they cannot, and it
+is only by accident that they can catch some glimpse of what goes on in
+it. No doubt it will be civilized in time, but it will be very slowly;
+and in the mean while it is only in some of its milder manners and
+customs that the boy's world can be studied.
+
+The first great law was that, whatever happened to you through another
+boy, whatever hurt or harm he did you, you were to right yourself upon
+his person if you could; but if he was too big, and you could not hope
+to revenge yourself, then you were to bear the wrong, not only for that
+time, but for as many times as he chose to inflict it. To tell the
+teacher or your mother, or to betray your tormentor to any one outside
+of the boys' world, was to prove yourself a cry-baby, without honor or
+self-respect, and unfit to go with the other fellows. They would have
+the right to mock you, to point at you, and call "E-e-e, e-e-e, e-e-e!"
+at you, till you fought them. After that, whether you whipped them or
+not, there began to be some feeling in your favor again, and they had to
+stop.
+
+Every boy who came to town from somewhere else, or who moved into a new
+neighborhood, had to fight the old residents. There was no reason for
+this, except that he was a stranger, and there appeared to be no other
+means of making his acquaintance. If he was generally whipped he became
+subject to the local tribe, as the Delawares were to the Iroquois in the
+last century; if he whipped the other boys, then they adopted him into
+their tribe, and he became a leader among them. When you moved away from
+a neighborhood you did not lose all your rights in it; you did not have
+to fight when you went back to see the boys, or anything; but if one of
+them met you in your new precincts you might have to try conclusions
+with him; and perhaps, if he was a boy who had been in the habit of
+whipping you, you were quite ready to do so. When my boy's family left
+the Smith house, one of the boys from that neighborhood came up to see
+him at the Falconer house, and tried to carry things with a high hand,
+as he always had done. Then my boy fought him, quite as if he were not a
+Delaware and the other boy not an Iroquois, with sovereign rights over
+him. My boy was beaten, but the difference was that, if he had not been
+on new ground, he would have been beaten without daring to fight. His
+mother witnessed the combat, and came out and shamed him for his
+behavior, and had in the other boy, and made them friends over some
+sugar-cakes. But after that the boys of the Smith neighborhood
+understood that my boy would not be whipped without fighting. The home
+instruction was all against fighting; my boy was taught that it was not
+only wicked but foolish; that if it was wrong to strike, it was just as
+wrong to strike back; that two wrongs never made a right, and so on. But
+all this was not of the least effect with a hot temper amid the trials
+and perplexities of life in the Boy's Town.
+
+Their fights were mostly informal scuffles, on and off in a flash, and
+conducted with none of the ceremony which I have read of concerning the
+fights of English boys. It was believed that some of the fellows knew
+how to box, and all the fellows intended to learn, but nobody ever did.
+The fights sprang usually out of some trouble of the moment; but at
+times they were arranged to settle some question of moral or physical
+superiority. Then one boy put a chip on his shoulder and dared the other
+to knock it off. It took a great while to bring the champions to blows,
+and I have known the mere preparatory insults of a fight of this kind to
+wear out the spirit of the combatants and the patience of the
+spectators, so that not a blow was struck, finally, and the whole affair
+fell through.
+
+
+
+
+GIRLS
+
+
+Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy
+went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would
+have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have scorned to
+play with one. Of course, while they were very little, they played with
+girls; and after they began to be big boys, eleven or twelve years old,
+they began to pay girls some attention; but for the rest they simply
+left them out of the question, except at parties, when the games obliged
+them to take some notice of the girls. Even then, however, it was not
+good form for a boy to be greatly interested in them; and he had to
+conceal any little fancy he had about this girl or that unless he wanted
+to be considered soft by the other fellows. When they were having fun
+they did not want to have any girls around; but in the back-yard a boy
+might play teeter or seesaw, or some such thing, with his sisters and
+their friends, without necessarily losing caste, though such things were
+not encouraged. On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them
+against anything that he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not
+have to verify the fact that anything had been said or done; you merely
+had to hear that it had.
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS
+
+
+The boys had very little to do with the inside of one another's houses.
+They would follow a boy to his door, and wait for him to come out; and
+they would sometimes get him to go in and ask his mother for crullers or
+sugar-cakes; when they came to see him they never went indoors for him,
+but stood on the sidewalk and called him with a peculiar cry, something
+like "E-oo-we, e-oo-we!" and threw stones at trees, or anything, till he
+came out. If he did not come after a reasonable time, they knew he was
+not there, or that his mother would not let him come. A fellow was kept
+in that way, now and then. If a fellow's mother came to the door the
+boys always ran.
+
+The mother represented the family sovereignty; the father was seldom
+seen, and he counted for little or nothing among the outside boys. It
+was the mother who could say whether a boy might go fishing or in
+swimming, and she was held a good mother or not according as she
+habitually said yes or no. There was no other standard of goodness for
+mothers in the boy's world, and could be none; and a bad mother might be
+outwitted by any device that the other boys could suggest to her boy.
+Such a boy was always willing to listen to any suggestion, and no boy
+took it hard if the other fellows made fun when their plan got him into
+trouble at home. If a boy came out after some such experience with his
+face wet, and his eyes red, and his lips swollen, of course you had to
+laugh; he expected it, and you expected him to stone you for laughing.
+
+When a boy's mother had company, he went and hid till the guests were
+gone, or only came out of concealment to get some sort of shy lunch. If
+the other fellows' mothers were there, he might be a little bolder, and
+bring out cake from the second table. But he had to be pretty careful
+how he conformed to any of the usages of grown-up society. A fellow who
+brushed his hair, and put on shoes, and came into the parlor when there
+was company, was not well seen among the fellows; he was regarded in
+some degree as a girl-boy; a boy who wished to stand well with other
+boys kept in the woodshed, and only went in as far as the kitchen to get
+things for his guests in the back-yard. Yet there were mothers who would
+make a boy put on a collar when they had company, and disgrace him
+before the world by making him stay round and help; they acted as if
+they had no sense and no pity; but such mothers were rare.
+
+Most mothers yielded to public opinion and let their boys leave the
+house, and wear just what they always wore. I have told how little they
+wore in summer. Of course in winter they had to put on more things. In
+those days knickerbockers were unknown, and if a boy had appeared in
+short pants and long stockings he would have been thought dressed like a
+circus-actor. Boys wore long pantaloons, like men, as soon as they put
+off skirts, and they wore jackets or roundabouts such as the English
+boys still wear at Eton. When the cold weather came they had to put on
+shoes and stockings, or rather long-legged boots, such as are seen now
+only among lumbermen and teamsters in the country. Most of the fellows
+had stoga boots, as heavy as iron and as hard; they were splendid to
+skate in, they kept your ankles so stiff. Sometimes they greased them to
+keep the water out; but they never blacked them except on Sunday, and
+before Saturday they were as red as a rusty stovepipe. At night they
+were always so wet that you could not get them off without a boot-jack,
+and you could hardly do it anyway; sometimes you got your brother to
+help you off with them, and then he pulled you all round the room. In
+the morning they were dry, but just as hard as stone, and you had to
+soap the heel of your woollen sock (which your grandmother had knitted
+for you, or maybe some of your aunts) before you could get your foot in,
+and sometimes the ears of the boot that you pulled it on by would give
+way, and you would have to stamp your foot in and kick the toe against
+the mop-board. Then you gasped and limped round, with your feet like
+fire, till you could get out and limber your boots up in some water
+somewhere. About noon your chilblains began.
+
+I have tried to give some notion of the general distribution of comfort,
+which was never riches, in the Boy's Town; but I am afraid that I could
+not paint the simplicity of things there truly without being
+misunderstood in these days of great splendor and great squalor.
+Everybody had enough, but nobody had too much; the richest man in town
+might be worth twenty thousand dollars. There were distinctions among
+the grown people, and no doubt there were the social cruelties which are
+the modern expression of the savage spirit otherwise repressed by
+civilization; but these were unknown among the boys. Savages they were,
+but not that kind of savages. They valued a boy for his character and
+prowess, and it did not matter in the least that he was ragged and
+dirty. Their mothers might not allow him the run of their kitchens quite
+so freely as some other boys, but the boys went with him just the same,
+and they never noticed how little he was washed and dressed. The best of
+them had not an overcoat; and underclothing was unknown among them.
+When a boy had buttoned up his roundabout, and put on his mittens, and
+tied his comforter round his neck and over his ears, he was warmly
+dressed.
+
+
+
+
+A BROTHER
+
+
+My boy was often kept from being a fool, and worse, by that elder
+brother of his; and I advise every boy to have an elder brother. Have a
+brother about four years older than yourself, I should say; and if your
+temper is hot, and your disposition revengeful, and you are a vain and
+ridiculous dreamer at the same time that you are eager to excel in feats
+of strength and games of skill, and to do everything that the other
+fellows do, and are ashamed to be better than the worst boy in the
+crowd, your brother can be of the greatest use to you, with his larger
+experience and wisdom. My boy's brother seemed to have an ideal of
+usefulness, while my boy only had an ideal of glory--to wish to help
+others, while my boy only wished to help himself. My boy would as soon
+have thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother's
+doing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice,
+of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which he
+wished to make shine before men in their fulfilment. His brother was
+always doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only did
+for himself; he had a very gray mustache before he began to have any
+conception of the fact that he was sent into the world to serve and to
+suffer, as well as to rule and enjoy. But his brother seemed to know
+this instinctively; he bore the yoke in his youth, patiently if not
+willingly; he shared the anxieties as he parted the cares of his father
+and mother. Yet he was a boy among boys, too; he loved to swim, to
+skate, to fish, to forage, and passionately, above all, he loved to
+hunt; but in everything he held himself in check, that he might hold the
+younger boys in check; and my boy often repaid his conscientious
+vigilance with hard words and hard names, such as embitter even the most
+self-forgiving memories. He kept mechanically within certain laws, and
+though in his rage he hurled every other name at his brother, he would
+not call him a fool, because then he would be in danger of hell-fire. If
+he had known just what Raca meant, he might have called him Raca, for he
+was not so much afraid of the council; but, as it was, his brother
+escaped that insult, and held through all a rein upon him, and governed
+him through his scruples as well as his fears.
+
+His brother was full of inventions and enterprises beyond most other
+boys, and his undertakings came to the same end of nothingness that
+awaits all boyish endeavor. He intended to make fireworks and sell them;
+he meant to raise silkworms; he prepared to take the contract of
+clearing the new cemetery grounds of stumps by blasting them out with
+gunpowder. Besides this, he had a plan with another big boy for making
+money, by getting slabs from the saw-mill, and sawing them up into
+stove-wood, and selling them to the cooks of canal-boats. The only
+trouble was that the cooks would not buy the fuel, even when the boys
+had a half-cord of it all nicely piled up on the canal-bank; they would
+rather come ashore after dark and take it for nothing. He had a good
+many other schemes for getting rich that failed; and he wanted to go to
+California and dig gold; only his mother would not consent. He really
+did save the Canal-Basin once, when the banks began to give way after a
+long rain. He saw the break beginning, and ran to tell his father, who
+had the fire-bells rung. The fire companies came rushing to the rescue,
+but as they could not put the Basin out with their engines, they all got
+shovels and kept it in. They did not do this before it had overflowed
+the street, and run into the cellars of the nearest houses. The water
+stood two feet deep in the kitchen of my boy's house, and the yard was
+flooded so that the boys made rafts and navigated it for a whole day.
+My boy's brother got drenched to the skin in the rain, and lots of
+fellows fell off the rafts.
+
+He belonged to a military company of big boys that had real wooden guns,
+such as the little boys never could get, and silk oil-cloth caps, and
+nankeen roundabouts, and white pantaloons with black stripes down the
+legs; and once they marched out to a boy's that had a father that had a
+farm, and he gave them all a free dinner in an arbor before the house:
+bread-and-butter, and apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, and
+peaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about the
+Mexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got a
+farmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy place
+there was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured.
+They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fort
+about fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher than their
+heads, but they got so eager to have the works stormed that they could
+not wait, and they commenced having the battle when they had the walls
+only breast high. There were going to be two parties: one to attack the
+fort, and the other to defend it, and they were just going to throw
+sods; but one boy had a real shot-gun, that he was to load up with
+powder and fire off when the battle got to the worst, so as to have it
+more like a battle. He thought it would be more like yet if he put in a
+few shot, and he did it on his own hook. It was a splendid gun, but it
+would not stand cocked long, and he was resting it on the wall of the
+fort, ready to fire when the storming-party came on, throwing sods and
+yelling and holloing; and all at once his gun went off, and a cow that
+was grazing broadside to the fort gave a frightened bellow, and put up
+her tail, and started for home. When they found out that the gun, if not
+the boy, had shot a cow, the Mexicans and Americans both took to their
+heels; and it was a good thing they did so, for as soon as that cow got
+home, and the owner found out by the blood on her that she had been
+shot, though it was only a very slight wound, he was so mad that he did
+not know what to do, and very likely he would have half killed those
+boys if he had caught them. He got a plough, and he went out to their
+fort, and he ploughed it all down flat, so that not one sod remained
+upon another.
+
+My boy's brother went to all sorts of places that my boy was too shy to
+go to; and he associated with much older boys, but there was one boy
+who, as I have said, was the dear friend of both of them, and that was
+the boy who came to learn the trade in their father's printing-office,
+and who began an historical romance at the time my boy began his great
+Moorish novel. The first day he came he was put to roll, or ink, the
+types, while my boy's brother worked the press, and all day long my boy,
+from where he was setting type, could hear him telling the story of a
+book he had read. It was about a person named Monte Cristo, who was a
+count, and who could do anything. My boy listened with a gnawing
+literary jealousy of a boy who had read a book that he had never heard
+of. He tried to think whether it sounded as if it were as great a book
+as the _Conquest of Granada_, or _Gesta Romanorum_; and for a time he
+kept aloof from this boy because of his envy. Afterward they came
+together on _Don Quixote_, but though my boy came to have quite a
+passionate fondness for him, he was long in getting rid of his grudge
+against him for his knowledge of _Monte Cristo_. He was as great a
+laugher as my boy and his brother, and he liked the same sports, so that
+two by two, or all three together, they had no end of jokes and fun. He
+became the editor of a country newspaper, with varying fortunes but
+steadfast principles, and when the war broke out he went as a private
+soldier. He soon rose to be an officer, and fought bravely in many
+battles. Then he came back to a country-newspaper office where, ever
+after, he continued to fight the battles of right against wrong, till he
+died not long ago at his post of duty--a true, generous, and lofty
+soul. He was one of those boys who grow into the men who seem commoner
+in America than elsewhere, and who succeed far beyond our millionaires
+and statesmen in realizing the ideal of America in their nobly simple
+lives. If his story could be faithfully written out, word for word, deed
+for deed, it would be far more thrilling than that of Monte Cristo, or
+any hero of romance; and so would the common story of any common life.
+But we cannot tell these stories, somehow.
+
+
+
+
+A FRIEND
+
+
+My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at
+school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning
+in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. I
+dare say it was a sense of his kinship with Nature that took my boy with
+him, and rested his soul from all its wild dreams and vain imaginings.
+He was like a piece of the genial earth, with no more hint of toiling or
+spinning in him; willing for anything, but passive, and without force or
+aim. He lived in a belated log-cabin that stood in the edge of a
+cornfield on the river-bank, and he seemed, one day when my boy went to
+find him there, to have a mother, who smoked a cob-pipe, and two or
+three large sisters who hulked about in the one dim, low room. But the
+boys had very little to do with each other's houses, or, for that
+matter, with each other's yards. His friend seldom entered my boy's
+gate, and never his door; for with all the toleration his father felt
+for every manner of human creature, he could not see what good the boy
+was to get from this queer companion. It is certain that he got no harm;
+for his companion was too vague and void even to think evil. Socially,
+he was as low as the ground under foot, but morally he was as good as
+any boy in the Boy's Town, and he had no bad impulses. He had no
+impulses at all, in fact, and of his own motion he never did anything,
+or seemed to think anything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply
+appeared in the neighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence
+till he came out. He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other
+fellows did, but waited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off
+with wherever my boy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never
+any will but to go in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did
+not even fish; and I suppose that money could not have hired him to run
+races. He played marbles, but not very well, and he did not care much
+for the game. The two boys soaked themselves in the river together, and
+then they lay on the sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but
+my boy could not have talked to him about any of the things that were in
+his books, or the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must
+rather have soothed against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of
+his fantastic spirit, and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax
+and easy aimlessness. Their friendship was not only more innocent than
+any other friendship my boy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved
+each other, and that was all; and why people love one another there is
+never any satisfactory telling. But this friend of his must have had
+great natural good in him; and if I could find a man of the make of that
+boy I am sure I should love him.
+
+My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it was
+often made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; so
+that in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been to
+him. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he was
+ignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I am
+not able to say now just how he worked his friend up to the point of
+coming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, and
+putting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and my
+boy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendship
+with him before the whole school. This was not easy, for though
+everybody knew how much the two were together, it was a different thing
+to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to
+help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He
+struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from
+the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one
+half-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiled
+their simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the old
+ground of perfect trust and affection. Perhaps the kindly earth-spirit
+had instinctively felt a wound from the shame my boy had tried to brave
+out, and shrank from their former friendship without quite knowing why.
+Perhaps it was my boy who learned to realize that there could be little
+in common but their common humanity between them, and could not go back
+to that. At any rate, their friendship declined from this point; and it
+seems to me, somehow, a pity.
+
+Among the boys who were between my boy and his brother in age was one
+whom all the boys liked, because he was clever with everybody, with
+little boys as well as big boys. He was a laughing, pleasant fellow,
+always ready for fun, but he never did mean things, and he had an open
+face that made a friend of every one who saw him. He had a father that
+had a house with a lightning-rod, so that if you were in it when there
+was a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boy
+once proved by being in it when there was a thunder-storm and not
+getting struck. This in itself was a great merit, and there were
+grape-arbors and peach-trees in his yard which added to his popularity,
+with cling-stone peaches almost as big as oranges on them. He was a
+fellow who could take you home to meals whenever he wanted to, and he
+liked to have boys stay all night with him; his mother was as clever as
+he was, and even the sight of his father did not make the fellows want
+to go and hide. His father was so clever that he went home with my boy
+one night about midnight when the boy had come to pass the night with
+his boys, and the youngest of them had said he always had the nightmare
+and walked in his sleep, and as likely as not he might kill you before
+he knew it. My boy tried to sleep, but the more he reflected upon his
+chances of getting through the night alive the smaller they seemed; and
+so he woke up his potential murderer from the sweetest and soundest
+slumber, and said he was going home, but he was afraid; and the boy had
+to go and wake his father. Very few fathers would have dressed up and
+gone home with a boy at midnight, and perhaps this one did so only
+because the mother made him; but it shows how clever the whole family
+was.
+
+It was their oldest boy whom my boy and his brother chiefly went with
+before that boy who knew about _Monte Cristo_ came to learn the trade in
+their father's office. One Saturday in July they three spent the whole
+day together. It was just the time when the apples are as big as walnuts
+on the trees, and a boy wants to try whether any of them are going to be
+sweet or not. The boys tried a great many of them, in an old orchard
+thrown open for building-lots behind my boy's yard; but they could not
+find any that were not sour; or that they could eat till they thought of
+putting salt on them; if you put salt on it, you could eat any kind of
+green apple, whether it was going to be a sweet kind or not. They went
+up to the Basin bank and got lots of salt out of the holes in the
+barrels lying there, and then they ate all the apples they could hold,
+and after that they cut limber sticks off the trees, and sharpened the
+points, and stuck apples on them and threw them. You could send an apple
+almost out of sight that way, and you could scare a dog almost as far as
+you could see him.
+
+On Monday my boy and his brother went to school, but the other boy was
+not there, and in the afternoon they heard he was sick. Then, toward the
+end of the week they heard that he had the flux; and on Friday, just
+before school let out, the teacher--it was the one that whipped so, and
+that the fellows all liked--rapped on his desk, and began to speak very
+solemnly to the scholars. He told them that their little mate, whom they
+had played with and studied with, was lying very sick, so very sick that
+it was expected he would die; and then he read them a serious lesson
+about life and death, and tried to make them feel how passing and
+uncertain all things were, and resolve to live so that they need never
+be afraid to die.
+
+Some of the fellows cried, and the next day some of them went to see the
+dying boy, and my boy went with them. His spirit was stricken to the
+earth, when he saw his gay, kind playmate lying there, white as the
+pillow under his wasted face, in which his sunken blue eyes showed large
+and strange. The sick boy did not say anything that the other boys could
+hear, but they could see the wan smile that came to his dry lips, and
+the light come sadly into his eyes, when his mother asked him if he knew
+this one or that; and they could not bear it, and went out of the room.
+
+In a few days they heard that he was dead, and one afternoon school did
+not keep, so that the boys might go to the funeral. Most of them walked
+in the procession; but some of them were waiting beside the open grave,
+that was dug near the grave of that man who believed there was a hole
+through the earth from pole to pole, and had a perforated stone globe on
+top of his monument.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+GAMES AND PASTIMES
+
+
+
+
+MARBLES
+
+
+In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and went
+in a stated order. The first thing in the spring, as soon as the frost
+began to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played till
+the weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left it
+off. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but any
+boy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbles
+he won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out in
+the morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or a
+brown marble of the lowest value, and come home at night with a
+pocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters and
+bull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was not
+approved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness of
+his heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
+too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
+playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
+before he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
+the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
+base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
+round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
+five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
+was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
+knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
+fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
+at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
+your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with
+the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw
+cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly
+every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from
+resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster
+of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate,
+and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were
+always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that
+of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether
+a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay when he
+shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground, in
+shooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble against
+another and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" before
+the other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of the
+ring, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gambling
+and the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, and
+began again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings when
+school let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with a
+stick, but when there was a great hurry, or there was no stick handy,
+the side of a fellow's boot would do, and the hollows for knucks were
+always bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to
+wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made
+for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a
+citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his walking
+round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia sense for
+amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense was smart.
+
+
+RACES
+
+When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their shoes
+for good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings. Life
+has a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none so
+ecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast of
+our mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then from
+the heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, and
+cousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leaps
+as wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their arms
+in June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of the
+earlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, his
+races; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leave
+the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is
+all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the
+earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they
+shall not be thankless, nor she a stepmother any more.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, which
+you were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and before
+you had got used to your new running weight. When you struck your toe
+against a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hopped
+about a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.
+Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,
+till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as
+soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet
+about it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.
+
+
+
+
+A MEAN TRICK
+
+
+There were shade-trees all along the street, that you could climb if you
+wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had run yourself
+out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctly remembered that
+under one of these trees his elder brother first broached to him that
+awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and applied to their own lives the
+moral of _The Trippings of Tom Pepper_; he remembered how a conviction
+of the righteousness of the scheme sank into his soul, and he could not
+withhold his consent. Under the same tree, and very likely at the same
+time, a solemn conclave of boys, all the boys there were, discussed the
+feasibility of tying a tin can to a dog's tail, and seeing how he would
+act. They had all heard of the thing, but none of them had seen it; and
+it was not so much a question of whether you ought to do a thing that on
+the very face of it would be so much fun, and if it did not amuse the
+dog as highly as anybody, could certainly do him no harm, as it was a
+question of whose dog you should get to take the dog's part in the
+sport. It was held that an old dog would probably not keep still long
+enough for you to tie the can on; he would have his suspicions; or else
+he would not run when the can was tied on, but very likely just go and
+lie down somewhere. The lot finally fell to a young yellow dog belonging
+to one of the boys, and the owner at once ran home to get him, and
+easily lured him back to the other boys with flatteries and caresses.
+The flatteries and caresses were not needed, for a dog is always glad to
+go with boys, upon any pretext, and so far from thinking that he does
+them a favor, he feels himself greatly honored. But I dare say the boy
+had a guilty fear that if his dog had known why he was invited to be of
+that party of boys, he might have pleaded a previous engagement. As it
+was, he came joyfully, and allowed the can to be tied to his tail
+without misgiving. If there had been any question with the boys as to
+whether he would enter fully into the spirit of the affair, it must have
+been instantly dissipated by the dogs behavior when he felt the loop
+tighten on his tail, and looked round to see what the matter was. The
+boys hardly had a chance to cheer him before he flashed out of sight
+round the corner, and they hardly had time to think before he flashed
+into sight again from the other direction. He whizzed along the ground,
+and the can hurtled in the air, but there was no other sound, and the
+cheers died away on the boys' lips. The boy who owned the dog began to
+cry, and the other fellows began to blame him for not stopping the dog.
+But he might as well have tried to stop a streak of lightning; the only
+thing you could do was to keep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it
+was successful beyond the wildest dreams of its projectors, though it
+would have been a sort of relief if the dog had taken some other road,
+for variety, or had even reversed his course. But he kept on as he
+began, and by a common impulse the boys made up their minds to abandon
+the whole affair to him. They all ran home and hid, or else walked about
+and tried to ignore it. But at this point the grown-up people began to
+be interested; the mothers came to their doors to see what was the
+matter. Yet even the mothers were powerless in a case like that, and the
+enthusiast had to be left to his fate. He was found under a barn at
+last, breathless, almost lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who
+untied the can from his tail. Eventually he got well again, and lived
+to be a solemn warning to the boys; he was touchingly distrustful of
+their advances for a time, but he finally forgot and forgave everything.
+They did not forget, and they never tried tying a tin can to a dog's
+tail again, among all the things they tried and kept trying. Once was
+enough; and they never even liked to talk of it, the sight was so awful.
+They were really fond of the dog, and if they could have thought he
+would take the matter so seriously, they would not have tried to have
+that kind of fun with him. It cured them of ever wanting to have that
+kind of fun with any dog.
+
+
+
+
+TOPS
+
+
+As the weather softened, tops came in some weeks after marbles went out,
+and just after foot-races were over, and a little before swimming began.
+At first the boys bought their tops at the stores, but after a while the
+boy whose father had the turning-shop on the Hydraulic learned to turn
+their tops, and did it for nothing, which was cheaper than buying tops,
+especially as he furnished the wood, too, and you only had to get the
+metal peg yourself. I believe he was the same boy who wanted to be a
+pirate and ended by inventing a steam-governor. He was very ingenious,
+and he knew how to turn a top out of beech or maple that would outspin
+anything you could get in a store. The boys usually chose a firm, smooth
+piece of sidewalk, under one of the big trees in the Smith neighborhood,
+and spun their tops there. A fellow launched his top into the ring, and
+the rest waited till it began to go to sleep--that is, to settle in one
+place, and straighten up and spin silently, as if standing still. Then
+any fellow had a right to peg at it with his top, and if he hit it, he
+won it; and if he split it, as sometimes happened, the fellow that owned
+it had to give him a top. The boys came with their pockets bulged out
+with tops, but before long they had to go for more tops to that boy who
+could turn them. From this it was but another step to go to the shop
+with him and look on while he turned the tops; and then in process of
+time the boys discovered that the smooth floor of the shop was a better
+place to fight tops than the best piece of sidewalk. They would have
+given whole Saturdays to the sport there, but when they got to holloing
+too loudly the boy's father would come up, and then they would all run.
+It was considered mean in him, but the boy himself was awfully clever,
+and the first thing the fellows knew they were back there again. Some
+few of the boys had humming-tops, but though these pleased by their
+noise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head against the
+good old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind up
+with a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flat
+button held between your forefinger and middle finger. Some of the boys
+had a very pretty art in the twirl they gave the top, and could control
+its course, somewhat as a skilful pitcher can govern that of a baseball.
+
+
+
+
+KITES
+
+
+I do not know why a certain play went out, but suddenly the fellows who
+had been playing ball, or marbles, or tops, would find themselves
+playing something else. Kites came in just about the time of the
+greatest heat in summer, and lasted a good while; but could not have
+lasted as long as the heat, which began about the first of June, and
+kept on well through September; no play could last so long as that, and
+I suppose kite-flying must have died into swimming after the Fourth of
+July. The kites were of various shapes: bow kites, two-stick kites, and
+house kites. A bow kite could be made with half a barrel hoop carried
+over the top of a cross, but it was troublesome to make, and it did not
+fly very well, and somehow it was thought to look babyish; but it was
+held in greater respect than the two-stick kite, which only the
+smallest boys played with, and which was made by fastening two sticks in
+the form of a cross. Any fellow more than six years old who appeared on
+the Commons with a two-stick kite would have been met with jeers, as a
+kind of girl.
+
+The favorite kite, the kite that balanced best, took the wind best, and
+flew best, and that would stand all day when you got it up, was the
+house kite, which was made of three sticks, and shaped nearly in the
+form of the gable of a gambrel-roofed house, only smaller at the base
+than at the point where the roof would begin. The outline of all these
+kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a string carried taut
+from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes
+the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes
+they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them.
+The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an
+inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over the string. Most of
+the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; but my boy and his
+brother could usually get paste from the printing-office; and when they
+could not they would make it by mixing flour and water cream-thick, and
+slowly boiling it. That was a paste that would hold till the cows came
+home, the boys said, and my boy was courted for his skill in making it.
+But after the kite was pasted, and dried in the sun, or behind the
+kitchen stove, if you were in very much of a hurry (and you nearly
+always were), it had to be hung, with belly-bands and tail-bands; that
+is, with strings carried from stick to stick over the face and at the
+bottom, to attach the cord for flying it and to fasten on the tail by.
+This took a good deal of art, and unless it were well done the kite
+would not balance, but would be always pitching and darting. Then the
+tail had to be of just the right weight; if it was too heavy the kite
+kept sinking, even after you got it up where otherwise it would stand;
+if too light, the kite would dart, and dash itself to pieces on the
+ground. A very pretty tail was made by tying twists of paper across a
+string a foot apart, till there were enough to balance the kite; but
+this sort of tail was apt to get tangled, and the best tail was made of
+a long streamer of cotton rags, with a gay tuft of dog-fennel at the
+end. Dog-fennel was added or taken away till just the right weight was
+got; and when this was done, after several experimental tests, the kite
+was laid flat on its face in the middle of the road, or on a long
+stretch of smooth grass; the bands were arranged, and the tail stretched
+carefully out behind, where it would not catch on bushes. You unwound a
+great length of twine, running backward, and letting the twine slip
+swiftly through your hands till you had run enough out; then you seized
+the ball, and with one look over your shoulder to see that all was
+right, started swiftly forward. The kite reared itself from the ground,
+and swaying gracefully from side to side, rose slowly into the air, with
+its long tail climbing after it till the fennel tuft swung free. If
+there was not much surface wind you might have to run a little way, but
+as soon as the kite caught the upper currents it straightened itself,
+pulled the twine taut, and steadily mounted, while you gave it more and
+more twine; if the breeze was strong, the cord burned as it ran through
+your hands; till at last the kite stood still in the sky, at such a
+height that the cord holding it sometimes melted out of sight in the
+distance.
+
+If it was a hot July day the sky would be full of kites, and the Commons
+would be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, or
+winding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of their
+voices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, at
+least, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.
+Besides the wild debate of the rival excellences of the different kites,
+there were always quarrels from getting the strings crossed; for, as the
+boys got their kites up, they drew together for company and for an
+easier comparison of their merits. It was only a mean boy who would try
+to cross another fellow's string; but sometimes accidents would happen;
+two kites would become entangled and both would have to be hauled in,
+while their owners cried and scolded, and the other fellows cheered and
+laughed. Now and then the tail of a kite would part midway, and then the
+kite would begin to dart violently from side to side, and then to whirl
+round and round in swifter and narrower circles till it dashed itself to
+the ground. Sometimes the kite-string would break, and the kite would
+waver and fall like a bird shot in the wing; and the owner of the kite,
+and all the fellows who had no kites, would run to get it where it came
+down, perhaps a mile or more away. It usually came down in a tree, and
+they had to climb for it; but sometimes it lodged so high that no one
+could reach it; and then it was slowly beaten and washed away in the
+winds and rains, and its long tail left streaming all winter from the
+naked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on the
+Commons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but a
+vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped
+to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their
+kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges of
+their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the
+kite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if you
+put your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers.
+The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, so
+as to slip over the string, which would be pulled level long enough to
+give the messenger a good start, and then released, when the wind would
+catch the little circle, and drive it up the long curving incline till
+it reached the kite.
+
+It was thought a great thing in a kite to pull, and it was a favor to
+another boy to let him take hold of your string and feel how your kite
+pulled. If you wanted to play mumble-the-peg, or anything, while your
+kite was up, you tied it to a stake in the ground, or gave it to some
+other fellow to hold; there were always lots of fellows eager to hold
+it. But you had to be careful how you let a little fellow hold it; for,
+if it was a very powerful kite, it would take him up. It was not certain
+just how strong a kite had to be to take a small boy up, and nobody had
+ever seen a kite do it, but everybody expected to see it.
+
+
+
+
+THE BUTLER GUARDS
+
+
+The Butler Guards were the finest military company in the world. I do
+not believe there was a fellow in the Boy's Town who even tried to
+imagine a more splendid body of troops: when they talked of them, as
+they did a great deal, it was simply to revel in the recognition of
+their perfection. I forget just what their uniform was, but there were
+white pantaloons in it, and a tuft of white-and-red cockerel plumes that
+almost covered the front of the hat, and swayed when the soldier walked,
+and blew in the wind. I think the coat was gray, and the skirts were
+buttoned back with buff, but I will not be sure of this; and somehow I
+cannot say how the officers differed from the privates in dress; it was
+impossible for them to be more magnificent. They walked backward in
+front of the platoons, with their swords drawn, and held in their
+white-gloved hands at hilt and point, and kept holloing,
+"Shoulder-r-r--arms! Carry--arms! Present--arms!" and then faced round,
+and walked a few steps forward, till they could think of something else
+to make the soldiers do.
+
+[Illustration: THE BUTLER GUARDS]
+
+Every boy intended to belong to the Butler Guards when he grew up; and
+he would have given anything to be the drummer or the marker. These were
+both boys, and they were just as much dressed up as the Guards
+themselves, only they had caps instead of hats with plumes. It was
+strange that the other fellows somehow did not know who these boys were;
+but they never knew, or at least my boy never knew. They thought more of
+the marker than of the drummer; for the marker carried a little flag,
+and when the officers holloed out, "By the left flank--left! Wheel!" he
+set his flag against his shoulder, and stood marking time with his feet
+till the soldiers all got by him, and then he ran up to the front rank,
+with the flag fluttering behind him. The fellows used to wonder how he
+got to be marker, and to plan how they could get to be markers in other
+companies, if not in the Butler Guards. There were other companies that
+used to come to town on the Fourth of July and Muster Day, from smaller
+places round about; and some of them had richer uniforms: one company
+had blue coats with gold epaulets, and gold braid going down in loops on
+the sides of their legs; all the soldiers, of course, had braid straight
+down the outer seams of their pantaloons. One Muster Day a captain of
+one of the country companies came home with my boy's father to dinner;
+he was in full uniform, and he put his plumed helmet down on the entry
+table just like any other hat.
+
+There was a company of Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called
+them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe,
+and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said
+for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the Dutch
+officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de
+hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot--_links, links, links!_" (left, left,
+left!). But the boys honored even these imperfect intelligences so much
+in their quality of soldiers that they would any of them have been proud
+to be marker in the Dutch company; and they followed the Dutchmen round
+in their march as fondly as any other body of troops. Of course, school
+let out when there was a regular muster, and the boys gave the whole day
+to it; but I do not know just when the Muster Day came. They fired the
+cannon a good deal on the river-bank, and they must have camped
+somewhere near the town, though no recollection of tents remained in my
+boy's mind. He believed with the rest of the boys that the right way to
+fire the cannon was to get it so hot you need not touch it off, but just
+keep your thumb on the touch-hole, and take it away when you wanted the
+cannon to go off. Once he saw the soldiers ram the piece full of
+dog-fennel on top of the usual charge, and then he expected the cannon
+to burst. But it only roared away as usual.
+
+
+
+
+PETS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+As there are no longer any Whig boys in the world, the coon can no
+longer be kept anywhere as a political emblem, I dare say. Even in my
+boy's time the boys kept coons just for the pleasure of it, and without
+meaning to elect Whig governors and presidents with them. I do not know
+how they got them--they traded for them, perhaps, with fellows in the
+country that had caught them, or perhaps their fathers bought them in
+market; some people thought they were very good to eat, and, like
+poultry and other things for the table, they may have been brought alive
+to market. But, anyhow, when a boy had a coon, he had to have a
+store-box turned open side down to keep it in, behind the house; and he
+had to have a little door in the box to pull the coon out through when
+he wanted to show it to other boys, or to look at it himself, which he
+did forty or fifty times a day, when he first got it. He had to have a
+small collar for the coon, and a little chain, because the coon would
+gnaw through a string in a minute. The coon himself never seemed to take
+much interest in keeping a coon, or to see much fun or sense in it. He
+liked to stay inside his box, where he had a bed of hay, and whenever
+the boy pulled him out, he did his best to bite the boy. He had no
+tricks; his temper was bad; and there was nothing about him except the
+rings round his tail and his political principles that anybody could
+care for. He never did anything but bite, and try to get away, or else
+run back into his box, which smelled, pretty soon, like an animal-show;
+he would not even let a fellow see him eat.
+
+My boy's brother had a coon, which he kept a good while, at a time when
+there was no election, for the mere satisfaction of keeping a coon.
+During his captivity the coon bit his keeper repeatedly through the
+thumb, and upon the whole seemed to prefer him to any other food; I do
+not really know what coons eat in a wild state, but this captive coon
+tasted the blood of nearly that whole family of children. Besides biting
+and getting away, he never did the slightest thing worth remembering; as
+there was no election, he did not even take part in a Whig procession.
+He got away two or three times. The first thing his owner would know
+when he pulled the chain out was that there was no coon at the end of
+it, and then he would have to poke round the inside of the box pretty
+carefully with a stick, so as not to get bitten; after that he would
+have to see which tree the coon had gone up. It was usually the tall
+locust-tree in front of the house, and in about half a second all the
+boys in town would be there, telling the owner of the coon how to get
+him. Of course the only way was to climb for the coon, which would be
+out at the point of a high and slender limb, and would bite you awfully,
+even if the limb did not break under you, while the boys kept whooping
+and yelling and holloing out what to do, and Tip the dog just howled
+with excitement. I do not know how that coon was ever caught, but I know
+that the last time he got away he was not found during the day, but
+after nightfall he was discovered by moonlight in the locust-tree. His
+owner climbed for him, but the coon kept shifting about, and getting
+higher and higher, and at last he had to be left till morning. In the
+morning he was not there, nor anywhere.
+
+It had been expected, perhaps, that Tip would watch him, and grab him if
+he came down, and Tip would have done it probably if he had kept awake.
+He was a dog of the greatest courage, and he was especially fond of
+hunting. He had been bitten oftener by that coon than anybody but the
+coon's owner, but he did not care for biting. He was always getting
+bitten by rats, but he was the greatest dog for rats that there almost
+ever was. The boys hunted rats with him at night, when they came out of
+the stables that backed down to the Hydraulic, for water; and a dog who
+liked above all things to lie asleep on the back-step, by day, and would
+no more think of chasing a pig out of the garden than he would think of
+sitting up all night with a coon, would get frantic about rats, and
+would perfectly wear himself out hunting them on land and in the water,
+and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of
+hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he
+would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would
+lift his hind legs off the ground.
+
+I do not know how he came into that family, but I believe he was given
+to it full grown by somebody. It was some time after my boy failed to
+buy what he called a Confoundland dog, from a colored boy who had it for
+sale, a pretty puppy with white and black spots which he had quite set
+his heart on; but Tip more than consoled him. Tip was of no particular
+breed, and he had no personal beauty; he was of the color of a mouse or
+an elephant, and his tail was without the smallest grace; it was smooth
+and round, but it was so strong that he could pull a boy all over the
+town by it, and usually did; and he had the best, and kindest, and
+truest ugly old face in the world. He loved the whole human race, and as
+a watch-dog he was a failure through his trustful nature; he would no
+more have bitten a person than he would have bitten a pig; but where
+other dogs were concerned, he was a lion. He might be lying fast asleep
+in the back-yard, and he usually was, but if a dog passed the front of
+the house under a wagon, he would be up and after that dog before you
+knew what you were about. He seemed to want to fight country dogs the
+worst, but any strange dog would do. A good half the time he would come
+off best; but, however he came off, he returned to the back-yard with
+his tongue hanging out, and wagging his tail in good-humor with all the
+world. Nothing could stop him, however, where strange dogs were
+concerned. He was a Whig dog, of course, as any one could tell by his
+name, which was Tippecanoe in full, and was given him because it was the
+nickname of General Harrison, the great Whig who won the battle of
+Tippecanoe. The boys' Henry Clay Club used him to pull the little wagon
+that they went about in singing Whig songs, and he would pull five or
+six boys, guided simply by a stick which he held in his mouth, and
+which a boy held on either side of him. But if he caught sight of a dog
+that he did not know, he would drop that stick and start for that dog as
+far off as he could see him, spilling the Henry Clay Club out of the
+wagon piecemeal as he went, and never stopping till he mixed up the
+strange dog in a fight where it would have been hard to tell which was
+either champion and which was the club wagon. When the fight was over
+Tip would come smilingly back to the fragments of the Henry Clay Club,
+with pieces of the vehicle sticking about him, and profess himself, in a
+dog's way, ready to go on with the concert.
+
+Any crowd of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or
+hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town,
+and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind,
+it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of
+character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he
+grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would
+move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no
+reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it
+is certain that he no longer showed his early ardor. He joined the
+Free-Soil movement in 1848, and supported Van Buren and Adams, but
+without the zeal he had shown for Henry Clay. Once a year, as long as
+the family lived in the Boy's Town, the children were anxious about Tip
+when the dog-law was put in force, and the constables went round
+shooting all the dogs that were found running at large without muzzles.
+At this time, when Tip was in danger of going mad and biting people, he
+showed a most unseasonable activity, and could hardly be kept in bounds.
+A dog whose sole delight at other moments was to bask in the summer sun,
+or dream by the winter fire, would now rouse himself to an interest in
+everything that was going on in the dangerous world, and make forays
+into it at all unguarded points. The only thing to do was to muzzle him,
+and this was done by my boy's brother with a piece of heavy twine, in
+such a manner as to interfere with Tip's happiness as little as
+possible. It was a muzzle that need not be removed for either eating,
+drinking, or fighting; but it satisfied the law, and Tip always came
+safely through the dog-days, perhaps by favor or affection with the
+officers who were so inexorable with some dogs.
+
+While Tip was still in his prime the family of children was further
+enriched by the possession of a goat; but this did not belong to the
+whole family, or it was, at least nominally, the property of that eldest
+brother they all looked up to. I do not know how they came by the goat,
+any more than I know how they came by Tip; I only know that there came a
+time when it was already in the family, and that before it was got rid
+of it was a presence there was no mistaking. Nobody who has not kept a
+goat can have any notion of how many different kinds of mischief a goat
+can get into, without seeming to try, either, but merely by following
+the impulses of its own goatishness. This one was a nanny-goat, and it
+answered to the name of Nanny with an intelligence that was otherwise
+wholly employed in making trouble. It went up and down stairs, from
+cellar to garret, and in and out of all the rooms, like anybody, with a
+faint, cynical indifference in the glance of its cold gray eyes that
+gave no hint of its purposes or performances. In the chambers it chewed
+the sheets and pillow-cases on the beds, and in the dining-room, if it
+found nothing else, it would do its best to eat the table-cloth.
+Washing-day was a perfect feast for it, for then it would banquet on the
+shirt-sleeves and stockings that dangled from the clothes-line, and
+simply glut itself with the family linen and cotton. In default of these
+dainties, Nanny would gladly eat a chip-hat; she was not proud; she
+would eat a split-basket, if there was nothing else at hand. Once she
+got up on the kitchen table, and had a perfect orgy with a lot of
+fresh-baked pumpkin-pies she found there; she cleaned all the pumpkin so
+neatly out of the pastry shells that, if there had been any more pumpkin
+left, they could have been filled up again, and nobody could have told
+the difference. The grandmother, who was visiting in the house at the
+time, declared to the mother that it would serve the father and the boys
+just right if she did fill these very shells up and give them to the
+father and the boys to eat. But I believe this was not done, and it was
+only suggested in a moment of awful exasperation, and because it was the
+father who was to blame for letting the boys keep the goat. The mother
+was always saying that the goat should not stay in the house another
+day, but she had not the heart to insist on its banishment, the children
+were so fond of it. I do not know why they were fond of it, for it never
+showed them the least affection, but was always taking the most unfair
+advantages of them, and it would butt them over whenever it got the
+chance. It would try to butt them into the well when they leaned down to
+pull up the bucket from the curb; and if it came out of the house, and
+saw a boy cracking nuts at the low flat stone the children had in the
+back-yard to crack nuts on, it would pretend that the boy was making
+motions to insult it, and before he knew what he was about it would fly
+at him and send him spinning head over heels. It was not of the least
+use in the world, and could not be, but the children were allowed to
+keep it till, one fatal day, when the mother had a number of other
+ladies to tea, as the fashion used to be in small towns, when they sat
+down to a comfortable gossip over dainty dishes of stewed chicken, hot
+biscuit, peach-preserves, sweet tomato-pickles, and pound-cake. That day
+they all laid off their bonnets on the hall table, and the goat, after
+demurely waiting and watching with its faded eyes, which saw everything
+and seemed to see nothing, discerned a golden opportunity, and began to
+make such a supper of bonnet-ribbons as perhaps never fell to a goat's
+lot in life before. It was detected in its stolen joys just as it had
+chewed the ribbon of a best bonnet up to the bonnet, and was chased into
+the back-yard; but, as it had swallowed the ribbon without being able to
+swallow the bonnet, it carried that with it. The boy who specially owned
+the goat ran it down in a frenzy of horror and apprehension, and managed
+to unravel the ribbon from its throat, and get back the bonnet. Then he
+took the bonnet in and laid it carefully down on the table again, and
+decided that it would be best not to say anything about the affair. But
+such a thing as that could not be kept. The goat was known at once to
+have done the mischief; and this time it was really sent away. All the
+children mourned it, and the boy who owned it the most used to go to the
+house of the people who took it, and who had a high board fence round
+their yard, and try to catch sight of it through the cracks. When he
+called "Nanny!" it answered him instantly with a plaintive "Baa!" and
+then, after a vain interchange of lamentations, he had to come away, and
+console himself as he could with the pets that were left him.
+
+But all were trifling joys, except maybe Tip and Nanny, compared with
+the pony which the boys owned in common, and which was the greatest
+thing that ever came into their lives. I cannot tell just how their
+father came to buy it for them, or where he got it; but I dare say he
+thought they were about old enough for a pony, and might as well have
+one. It was a Mexican pony, and as it appeared on the scene just after
+the Mexican war, some volunteer may have brought it home. One volunteer
+brought home a Mexican dog, that was smooth and hairless, with a skin
+like an elephant, and that was always shivering round with the cold; he
+was not otherwise a remarkable dog, and I do not know that he ever felt
+even the warmth of friendship among the boys; his manners were reserved
+and his temper seemed doubtful. But the pony never had any trouble with
+the climate of Southern Ohio (which is indeed hot enough to fry a
+salamander in summer); and though his temper was no better than other
+ponies', he was perfectly approachable. I mean that he was approachable
+from the side, for it was not well to get where he could bite you or
+kick you. He was of a bright sorrel color, and he had a brand on one
+haunch.
+
+My boy had an ideal of a pony, conceived from pictures in his
+reading-books at school, that held its head high and arched its neck,
+and he strove by means of checks and martingales to make this real pony
+conform to the illustrations. But it was of no use; the real pony held
+his neck straight out like a ewe, or, if reined up, like a camel, and he
+hung his big head at the end of it with no regard whatever for the
+ideal. His caparison was another mortification and failure. What the boy
+wanted was an English saddle, embroidered on the morocco seat in crimson
+silk, and furnished with shining steel stirrups. What he had was the
+framework of a Mexican saddle, covered with rawhide, and cushioned with
+a blanket; the stirrups were Mexican, too, and clumsily fashioned out of
+wood. The boys were always talking about getting their father to get
+them a pad, but they never did it, and they managed as they could with
+the saddle they had. For the most part they preferred to ride the pony
+barebacked, for then they could ride him double, and when they first
+got him they all wanted to ride him so much that they had to ride him
+double. They kept him going the whole day long; but after a while they
+calmed down enough to take him one at a time, and to let him have a
+chance for his meals.
+
+They had no regular stable, and the father left the boys to fit part of
+the cow-shed up for the pony, which they did by throwing part of the
+hen-coop open into it. The pigeon-cots were just over his head, and he
+never could have complained of being lonesome. At first everybody wanted
+to feed him as well as ride him, and if he had been allowed time for it
+he might have eaten himself to death, or if he had not always tried to
+bite you or kick you when you came in with his corn. After a while the
+boys got so they forgot him, and nobody wanted to go out and feed the
+pony, especially after dark; but he knew how to take care of himself,
+and when he had eaten up everything there was in the cow-shed he would
+break out and eat up everything there was in the yard.
+
+The boys got lots of good out of him. When you were once on his back you
+were pretty safe, for he was so lazy that he would not think of running
+away, and there was no danger unless he bounced you off when he trotted;
+he had a hard trot. The boys wanted to ride him standing up, like
+circus-actors, and the pony did not mind, but the boys could not stay
+on, though they practised a good deal, turn about, when the other
+fellows were riding their horses, standing up, on the Commons. He was
+not of much use in Indian fights, for he could seldom be lashed into a
+gallop, and a pony that proposed to walk through an Indian fight was
+ridiculous. Still, with the help of imagination, my boy employed him in
+some scenes of wild Arab life, and hurled the Moorish javelin from him
+in mid-career, when the pony was flying along at the mad pace of a
+canal-boat. The pony early gave the boys to understand that they could
+get very little out of him in the way of herding the family cow. He
+would let them ride him to the pasture, and he would keep up with the
+cow on the way home, when she walked, but if they wanted anything more
+than that they must get some other pony. They tried to use him in
+carrying papers, but the subscribers objected to having him ridden up to
+their front doors over the sidewalk, and they had to give it up.
+
+When he became an old story, and there was no competition for him among
+the brothers, my boy sometimes took him into the woods, and rode him in
+the wandering bridle-paths, with a thrilling sense of adventure. He did
+not like to be alone there, and he oftener had the company of a boy who
+was learning the trade in his father's printing-office. This boy was
+just between him and his elder brother in age, and he was the good
+comrade of both; all the family loved him, and made him one of them, and
+my boy was fond of him because they had some tastes in common that were
+not very common among the other boys. They liked the same books, and
+they both began to write historical romances. My boy's romance was
+founded on facts of the Conquest of Granada, which he had read of again
+and again in Washington Irving, with a passionate pity for the Moors,
+and yet with pride in the grave and noble Spaniards. He would have given
+almost anything to be a Spaniard, and he lived in a dream of some day
+sallying out upon the Vega before Granada, in silk and steel, with an
+Arabian charger under him that champed its bit. In the mean time he did
+what he could with the family pony, and he had long rides in the woods
+with the other boy, who used to get his father's horse when he was not
+using it on Sunday, and race with him through the dangling wild
+grape-vines and pawpaw thickets, and over the reedy levels of the river,
+their hearts both bounding with the same high hopes of a world that
+could never come true.
+
+
+
+
+INDIANS
+
+
+There was not a boy in the Boy's Town who would not gladly have turned
+from the town and lived in the woods if his mother had let him; and in
+every vague plan of running off the forest had its place as a city of
+refuge from pursuit and recapture. The pioneer days were still so close
+to those times that the love of solitary adventure which took the boys'
+fathers into the sylvan wastes of the great West might well have burned
+in the boys' hearts; and if their ideal of life was the free life of the
+woods, no doubt it was because their near ancestors had lived it. At any
+rate, that was their ideal, and they were always talking among
+themselves of how they would go farther West when they grew up, and be
+trappers and hunters. I do not remember any boy but one who meant to be
+a sailor; they lived too hopelessly far from the sea; and I dare say the
+boy who invented the marine-engine governor, and who wished to be a
+pirate, would just as soon have been a bandit of the Osage. In those
+days Oregon had just been opened to settlers, and the boys all wanted to
+go and live in Oregon, where you could stand in your door and shoot deer
+and wild turkey, while a salmon big enough to pull you in was tugging
+away at the line you had set in the river that ran before the
+log-cabin.
+
+If they could, the boys would rather have been Indians than anything
+else, but, as there was really no hope of this whatever, they were
+willing to be settlers, and fight the Indians. They had rather a mixed
+mind about them in the mean time, but perhaps they were not unlike other
+idolaters in both fearing and adoring their idols; perhaps they came
+pretty near being Indians in that, and certainly they came nearer than
+they knew. When they played war, and the war was between the whites and
+the Indians, it was almost as low a thing to be white as it was to be
+British when there were Americans on the other side; in either case you
+had to be beaten. The boys lived in the desire, if not the hope, of some
+time seeing an Indian, and they made the most of the Indians in the
+circus, whom they knew to be just white men dressed up; but none of them
+dreamed that what really happened one day could ever happen. This was at
+the arrival of several canal-boat loads of genuine Indians from the
+Wyandot Reservation in the northwestern part of the State, on their way
+to new lands beyond the Mississippi. The boys' fathers must have known
+that these Indians were coming, but it just shows how stupid the most of
+fathers are, that they never told the boys about it. All at once there
+the Indians were, as if the canal-boats had dropped with them out of
+heaven. There they were, crowding the decks, in their blankets and
+moccasins, braves and squaws and pappooses, standing about or squatting
+in groups, not saying anything, and looking exactly like the pictures.
+The squaws had the pappooses on their backs, and the men and boys had
+bows and arrows in their hands; and as soon as the boats landed the
+Indians, all except the squaws and pappooses, came ashore, and went up
+to the courthouse yard, and began to shoot with their bows and arrows.
+It almost made the boys crazy.
+
+[Illustration: ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE]
+
+Of course they would have liked to have the Indians shoot at birds, or
+some game, but they were mighty glad to have them shoot at cents and
+bits and quarters that anybody could stick up in the ground. The Indians
+would all shoot at the mark till some one hit it, and the one who hit it
+had the money, whatever it was. The boys ran and brought back the
+arrows; and they were so proud to do this that I wonder they lived
+through it. My boy was too bashful to bring the Indians their arrows; he
+could only stand apart and long to approach the filthy savages, whom he
+revered; to have touched the border of one of their blankets would have
+been too much. Some of them were rather handsome, and two or three of
+the Indian boys were so pretty that the Boy's Town boys said they were
+girls. They were of all ages, from old, withered men to children of six
+or seven, but they were all alike grave and unsmiling; the old men were
+not a whit more dignified than the children, and the children did not
+enter into their sport with more zeal and ardor than the wrinkled sages
+who shared it. In fact they were, old and young alike, savages, and the
+boys who looked on and envied them were savages in their ideal of a
+world where people spent their lives in hunting and fishing and ranging
+the woods, and never grew up into the toils and cares that can alone
+make men of boys. They wished to escape these, as many foolish persons
+do among civilized nations, and they thought if they could only escape
+them they would be happy; they did not know that they would be merely
+savage, and that the great difference between a savage and a civilized
+man is work. They would all have been willing to follow these Indians
+away into the Far West, where they were going, and be barbarians for the
+rest of their days; and the wonder is that some of the fellows did not
+try it.
+
+
+
+
+GUNS
+
+
+After the red men had flitted away like red leaves, their memory
+remained with the boys, and a plague of bows and arrows raged among
+them, and it was a good while before they calmed down to their old
+desire of having a gun. But they came back to that at last, for that was
+the normal desire of every boy in the Boy's Town who was not a girl-boy,
+and there were mighty few girl-boys there. Up to a certain point a
+pistol would do, especially if you had bullet-moulds, and could run
+bullets to shoot out of it; only your mother would be sure to see you
+running them, and just as likely as not would be so scared that she
+would say you must not shoot bullets. Then you would have to use
+buckshot, if you could get them anywhere near the right size, or small
+marbles; but a pistol was always a makeshift, and you never could hit
+anything with it, not even a board fence; it always kicked, or burst, or
+something.
+
+Very few boys ever came to have a gun, though they all expected to have
+one. But seven or eight boys would go hunting with one shot-gun, and
+take turn-about shooting; some of the little fellows never got to shoot
+at all, but they could run and see whether the big boys had hit anything
+when they fired, and that was something. This was my boy's privilege for
+a long time before he had a gun of his own, and he went patiently with
+his elder brother, and never expected to fire the gun, except, perhaps,
+to shoot the load off before they got back to town; they were not
+allowed to bring the gun home loaded. It was a gun that was pretty safe
+for anything in front of it, but you never could tell what it was going
+to do. It began by being simply an old gun-barrel, which my boy's
+brother bought of another boy who was sick of it for a fip, as the
+half-real piece was called, and it went on till it got a lock from one
+gunsmith and a stock from another, and was a complete gun. But this took
+time; perhaps a month; for the gunsmiths would only work at it in their
+leisure; they were delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay
+for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made
+himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as
+straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a
+little twist to one side, so that one of the jour printers said it was a
+first-rate gun to shoot round a corner with. Then he made himself a
+powder-flask out of an ox-horn that he got and boiled till it was soft
+(it smelt the whole house up), and then scraped thin with a piece of
+glass; it hung at his side; and he carried his shot in his pantaloons
+pocket. He went hunting with this gun for a good many years, but he had
+never shot anything with it, when his uncle gave him a smooth-bore
+rifle, and he in turn gave his gun to my boy, who must then have been
+nearly ten years old.
+
+It seemed to him that he was quite old enough to have a gun; but he was
+mortified the very next morning after he got it by a citizen who thought
+differently. He had risen at daybreak to go out and shoot kildees on the
+Common, and he was hurrying along with his gun on his shoulder when the
+citizen stopped him and asked him what he was going to do with that gun.
+He said to shoot kildees, and he added that it was his gun. This seemed
+to surprise the citizen even more than the boy could have wished. He
+asked him if he did not think he was a pretty small boy to have a gun;
+and he took the gun from him, and examined it thoughtfully, and then
+handed it back to the boy, who felt himself getting smaller all the
+time. The man went his way without saying anything more, but his
+behavior was somehow so sarcastic that the boy had no pleasure in his
+sport that morning; partly, perhaps, because he found no kildees to
+shoot at on the Common. He only fired off his gun once or twice at a
+fence, and then he sneaked home with it through alleys and by-ways, and
+whenever he met a person he hurried by for fear the person would find
+him too small to have a gun.
+
+Afterward he came to have a bolder spirit about it, and he went hunting
+with it a good deal. It was a very curious kind of gun; you had to snap
+a good many caps on it, sometimes, before the load would go off; and
+sometimes it would hang fire, and then seem to recollect itself, and go
+off, maybe, just when you were going to take it down from your shoulder.
+The barrel was so crooked that it could not shoot straight, but this was
+not the only reason why the boy never hit anything with it. He could not
+shut his left eye and keep his right eye open; so he had to take aim
+with both eyes, or else with the left eye, which was worse yet, till one
+day when he was playing shinny (or hockey) at school, and got a blow
+over his left eye from a shinny-stick. At first he thought his eye was
+put out; he could not see for the blood that poured into it from the cut
+above it. He ran homeward wild with fear, but on the way he stopped at a
+pump to wash away the blood, and then he found his eye was safe. It
+suddenly came into his mind to try if he could not shut that eye now,
+and keep the right one open. He found that he could do it perfectly; by
+help of his handkerchief, he stanched his wound, and made himself
+presentable, with the glassy pool before the pump for a mirror, and went
+joyfully back to school. He kept trying his left eye, to make sure it
+had not lost its new-found art, and as soon as school was out he hurried
+home to share the joyful news with his family.
+
+He went hunting the very next Saturday, and at the first shot he killed
+a bird. It was a suicidal sap-sucker, which had suffered him to steal
+upon it so close that it could not escape even the vagaries of that
+wandering gun-barrel, and was blown into such small pieces that the boy
+could bring only a few feathers of it away. In the evening, when his
+father came home, he showed him these trophies of the chase, and boasted
+of his exploit with the minutest detail. His father asked him whether he
+had expected to eat this sap-sucker, if he could have got enough of it
+together. He said no, sap-suckers were not good to eat. "Then you took
+its poor little life merely for the pleasure of killing it," said the
+father. "Was it a great pleasure to see it die?" The boy hung his head
+in shame and silence; it seemed to him that he would never go hunting
+again. Of course he did go hunting often afterward, but his brother and
+he kept faithfully to the rule of never killing anything that they did
+not want to eat. To be sure, they gave themselves a wide range; they
+were willing to eat almost anything that they could shoot, even
+blackbirds, which were so abundant and so easy to shoot. But there were
+some things which they would have thought it not only wanton but wicked
+to kill, like turtle-doves, which they somehow believed were sacred, nor
+robins either, because robins were hallowed by poetry, and they kept
+about the house, and were almost tame, so that it seemed a shame to
+shoot them. They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves,
+which used to light on the Basin bank, and pick up the grain scattered
+there from the boats and wagons.
+
+There were a good many things you could do with a gun: you could fire
+your ramrod out of it, and see it sail through the air; you could fill
+the muzzle up with water, on top of a charge, and send the water in a
+straight column at a fence. The boys all believed that you could fire
+that column of water right through a man, and they always wanted to try
+whether it would go through a cow, but they were afraid the owner of the
+cow would find it out. There was a good deal of pleasure in cleaning
+your gun when it got so foul that your ramrod stuck in it and you could
+hardly get it out. You poured hot water into the muzzle and blew it
+through the nipple, till it began to show clear; then you wiped it dry
+with soft rags wound on your gun-screw, and then oiled it with greasy
+tow. Sometimes the tow would get loose from the screw, and stay in the
+barrel, and then you would have to pick enough powder in at the nipple
+to blow it out. Of course I am talking of the old muzzle-loading
+shot-gun, which I dare say the boys never use nowadays.
+
+But the great pleasure of all, in hunting, was getting home tired and
+footsore in the evening, and smelling the supper almost as soon as you
+came in sight of the house. There was nearly always hot biscuit for
+supper, with steak, and with coffee such as nobody but a boy's mother
+ever knew how to make; and just as likely as not there was some kind of
+preserves; at any rate, there was apple-butter. You could hardly take
+the time to wash the powder-grime off your hands and face before you
+rushed to the table; and if you had brought home a yellowhammer you left
+it with your gun on the back porch, and perhaps the cat got it and saved
+you the trouble of cleaning it. A cat can clean a bird a good deal
+quicker than a boy can, and she does not hate to do it half as badly.
+
+Next to the pleasure of getting home from hunting late was the pleasure
+of starting early, as my boy and his brother sometimes did, to shoot
+ducks on the Little Reservoir in the fall. His brother had an
+alarm-clock, which he set at about four, and he was up the instant it
+rang, and pulling my boy out of bed, where he would rather have stayed
+than shot the largest mallard duck in the world. They raked the ashes
+off the bed of coals in the fireplace, and while the embers ticked and
+bristled, and flung out little showers of sparks, they hustled on their
+clothes, and ran down the back stairs into the yard with their guns.
+
+Tip, the dog, was already waiting for them there, for he seemed to know
+they were going that morning, and he began whimpering for joy, and
+twisting himself sideways up against them, and nearly wagging his tail
+off; and licking their hands and faces, and kissing their guns all over;
+he was about crazy. When they started, he knew where they were going,
+and he rushed ahead through the silent little sleeping town, and led the
+way across the wide Commons, where the cows lay in dim bulks on the
+grass, and the geese waddled out of his way with wild, clamorous cries,
+till they came in sight of the Reservoir. Then Tip fell back with my boy
+and let the elder brother go ahead, for he always had a right to the
+first shot; and while he dodged down behind the bank, and crept along to
+the place where the ducks usually were, my boy kept a hold on Tip's
+collar, and took in the beautiful mystery of the early morning. The
+place so familiar by day was estranged to his eyes in that pale light,
+and he was glad of old Tip's company, for it seemed a time when there
+might very well be ghosts about. The water stretched a sheet of smooth,
+gray silver, with little tufts of mist on its surface, and through these
+at last he could see the ducks softly gliding to and fro, and he could
+catch some dreamy sound from them. His heart stood still and then jumped
+wildly in his breast, as the still air was startled with the rush of
+wings, and the water broke with the plunge of other flocks arriving.
+Then he began to make those bets with himself that a boy hopes he will
+lose: he bet that his brother would not hit any of them; he bet that he
+did not even see them; he bet that if he did see them and got a shot at
+them, they would not come back so that he could get a chance himself to
+kill any. It seemed to him that he had to wait an hour, and just when he
+was going to hollo, and tell his brother where the ducks were, the old
+smooth-bore sent out a red flash and a white puff before he heard the
+report; Tip tore loose from his grasp; and he heard the splashing rise
+of the ducks, and the hurtling rush of their wings; and he ran forward,
+yelling, "How many did you hit? Where are they? Where are you? Are they
+coming back? It's my turn now!" and making an outcry that would have
+frightened away a fleet of ironclads, but much less a flock of ducks.
+
+One shot always ended the morning's sport, and there were always good
+reasons why this shot never killed anything.
+
+
+
+
+NUTTING
+
+
+The woods were pretty full of the kind of hickory-trees called pignuts,
+and the boys gathered the nuts, and even ate their small, bitter
+kernels; and around the Poor-House woods there were some shag-barks, but
+the boys did not go for them because of the bull and the crazy people.
+Their great and constant reliance in foraging was the abundance of black
+walnuts which grew everywhere, along the roads and on the river-banks,
+as well as in the woods and the pastures. Long before it was time to go
+walnutting, the boys began knocking off the nuts and trying whether they
+were ripe enough; and just as soon as the kernels began to fill out, the
+fellows began making walnut wagons. I do not know why it was thought
+necessary to have a wagon to gather walnuts, but I know that it was, and
+that a boy had to make a new wagon every year.
+
+No boy's walnut wagon could last till the next year; it did very well if
+it lasted till the next day. He had to make it nearly all with his
+pocket-knife. He could use a saw to block the wheels out of a pine
+board, and he could use a hatchet to rough off the corners of the
+blocks, but he had to use his knife to give them any sort of roundness,
+and they were not very round then; they were apt to be oval in shape,
+and they always wabbled. He whittled the axles out with his knife, and
+he made the hubs with it. He could get a tongue ready-made if he used a
+broom-handle or a hoop-pole, but that had in either case to be whittled
+so it could be fastened to the wagon; he even bored the linchpin holes
+with his knife if he could not get a gimlet; and if he could not get an
+auger, he bored the holes through the wheels with a red-hot poker, and
+then whittled them large enough with his knife. He had to use pine for
+nearly everything, because any other wood was too hard to whittle; and
+then the pine was always splitting. It split in the axles when he was
+making the linchpin holes, and the wheels had to be kept on by linchpins
+that were tied in; the wheels themselves split, and had to be
+strengthened by slats nailed across the rifts. The wagon-bed was a
+candle-box nailed to the axles, and that kept the front axle tight, so
+that it took the whole width of a street to turn a very little wagon in
+without upsetting.
+
+When the wagon was all done, the boy who owned it started off with his
+brothers, or some other boys who had no wagon, to gather walnuts. He
+started early in the morning of some bright autumn day while the frost
+still bearded the grass in the back-yard, and bristled on the fence-tops
+and the roof of the woodshed, and hurried off to the woods so as to get
+there before the other boys had got the walnuts. The best place for them
+was in some woods-pasture where the trees stood free of one another, and
+around them, in among the tall, frosty grass, the tumbled nuts lay
+scattered in groups of twos and threes, or fives, some still
+yellowish-green in their hulls, and some black, but all sending up to
+the nostrils of the delighted boy the incense of their clean, keen,
+wild-woody smell, to be a memory forever.
+
+[Illustration: NUTTING]
+
+The leaves had dropped from the trees overhead, and the branches
+outlined themselves against the blue sky, and dangled from their outer
+stems clusters of the unfallen fruit, as large as oranges, and only
+wanting a touch to send them plumping down into the grass where
+sometimes their fat hulls burst, and the nuts almost leaped into the
+boy's hands. The boys ran, some of them to gather the fallen nuts, and
+others to get clubs and rocks to beat them from the trees; one was sure
+to throw off his jacket and kick off his shoes and climb the tree to
+shake every limb where a walnut was still clinging. When they had got
+them all heaped up like a pile of grape-shot at the foot of the tree,
+they began to hull them, with blows of a stick, or with stones, and to
+pick the nuts from the hulls, where the grubs were battening on their
+assured ripeness, and to toss them into a little heap, a very little
+heap indeed compared with the bulk of that they came from. The boys
+gloried in getting as much walnut stain on their hands as they could,
+for it would not wash off, and it showed for days that they had been
+walnutting; sometimes they got to staining one another's faces with the
+juice, and pretending they were Indians.
+
+The sun rose higher and higher, and burned the frost from the grass, and
+while the boys worked and yelled and chattered they got hotter and
+hotter, and began to take off their shoes and stockings, till every one
+of them was barefoot. Then, about three or four o'clock, they would
+start homeward, with half a bushel of walnuts in their wagon, and their
+shoes and stockings piled in on top of them. That is, if they had good
+luck. In a story, they would always have had good luck, and always gone
+home with half a bushel of walnuts; but this is a history, and so I have
+to own that they usually went home with about two quarts of walnuts
+rattling round under their shoes and stockings in the bottom of the
+wagon. They usually had no such easy time getting them as they always
+would in a story; they did not find them under the trees, or ready to
+drop off, but they had to knock them off with about six or seven clubs
+or rocks to every walnut, and they had to pound the hulls so hard to get
+the nuts out that sometimes they cracked the nuts. That was because they
+usually went walnutting before the walnuts were ripe. But they made just
+as much preparation for drying the nuts on the woodshed roof whether
+they got half a gallon or half a bushel; for they did not intend to stop
+gathering them till they had two or three barrels. They nailed a cleat
+across the roof to keep them from rolling off, and they spread them out
+thin, so that they could look more than they were, and dry better. They
+said they were going to keep them for Christmas, but they had to try
+pretty nearly every hour or so whether they were getting dry, and in
+about three days they were all eaten up.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRE-ENGINES
+
+
+There were two fire-engines in the Boy's Town; but there seemed to be
+something always the matter with them, so that they would not work, if
+there was a fire. When there was no fire, the companies sometimes pulled
+them up through the town to the Basin bank, and practised with them
+against the roofs and fronts of the pork-houses. It was almost as good
+as a muster to see the firemen in their red shirts and black trousers,
+dragging the engine at a run, two and two together, one on each side of
+the rope.
+
+My boy would have liked to speak to a fireman, but he never dared; and
+the foreman of the _Neptune_, which was the larger and feebler of the
+engines, was a figure of such worshipful splendor in his eyes that he
+felt as if he could not be just a common human being. He was a
+storekeeper, to begin with, and he was tall and slim, and his black
+trousers fitted him like a glove; he had a patent-leather helmet, and a
+brass speaking-trumpet, and he gave all his orders through this. It did
+not make any difference how close he was to the men, he shouted
+everything through the trumpet; and when they manned the brakes and
+began to pump, he roared at them, "Down on her, down on her, boys!" so
+that you would have thought the _Neptune_ could put out the world if it
+was burning up. Instead of that there was usually a feeble splutter from
+the nozzle, and sometimes none at all, even if the hose did not break;
+it was fun to see the hose break.
+
+The _Neptune_ was a favorite with the boys, though they believed that
+the _Tremont_ could squirt farther, and they had a belief in its quiet
+efficiency which was fostered by its reticence in public. It was small
+and black, but the _Neptune_ was large, and painted of a gay color lit
+up with gilding that sent the blood leaping through a boy's veins. The
+boys knew the _Neptune_ was out of order, but they were always expecting
+it would come right, and in the mean time they felt that it was an honor
+to the town, and they followed it as proudly back to the engine-house
+after one of its magnificent failures as if it had been a magnificent
+success. The boys were always making magnificent failures themselves,
+and they could feel for the _Neptune_.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS
+
+
+The boys made a very careful study of the circus bills, and when the
+circus came they held the performance to a strict account for any
+difference between the feats and their representation. For a fortnight
+beforehand they worked themselves up for the arrival of the circus into
+a fever of fear and hope, for it was always a question with a great many
+whether they could get their fathers to give them the money to go in.
+The full price was two bits, and the half-price was a bit, or a Spanish
+real, then a commoner coin than the American dime in the West; and every
+boy, for that time only, wished to be little enough to look young enough
+to go in for a bit. Editors of newspapers had a free ticket for every
+member of their families; and my boy was sure of going to the circus
+from the first rumor of its coming. But he was none the less deeply
+thrilled by the coming event, and he was up early on the morning of the
+great day, to go out and meet the circus procession beyond the
+corporation line.
+
+I do not really know how boys live through the wonder and the glory of
+such a sight. Once there were two chariots--one held the band in
+red-and-blue uniforms, and was drawn by eighteen piebald horses; and the
+other was drawn by a troop of Shetland ponies, and carried in a vast
+mythical sea-shell little boys in spangled tights and little girls in
+the gauze skirts and wings of fairies. There was not a flaw in this
+splendor to the young eyes that gloated on it, and that followed it in
+rapture through every turn and winding of its course in the Boy's Town;
+nor in the magnificence of the actors and actresses, who came riding two
+by two in their circus dresses after the chariots, and looking some
+haughty and contemptuous, and others quiet and even bored, as if it were
+nothing to be part of such a procession. The boys tried to make them out
+by the pictures and names on the bills: which was Rivers, the
+bareback-rider, and which was O'Dale, the champion tumbler; which was
+the India-rubber man, which the ring-master, which the clown.
+
+Covered with dust, gasping with the fatigue of a three hours' run beside
+the procession, but fresh at heart as in the beginning, they arrived
+with it on the Commons, where the tent-wagons were already drawn up, and
+the ring was made, and mighty men were driving the iron-headed
+tent-stakes, and stretching the ropes of the great skeleton of the
+pavilion which they were just going to clothe with canvas. The boys were
+not allowed to come anywhere near, except three or four who got leave to
+fetch water from a neighboring well, and thought themselves richly paid
+with half-price tickets. The other boys were proud to pass a word with
+them as they went by with their brimming buckets; fellows who had money
+to go in would have been glad to carry water just for the glory of
+coming close to the circus men. They stood about in twos and threes, and
+lay upon the grass in groups debating whether a tan-bark ring was better
+than a saw-dust ring; there were different opinions. They came as near
+the wagons as they dared, and looked at the circus horses munching hay
+from the tail-boards, just like common horses. The wagons were left
+standing outside of the tent; but when it was up, the horses were taken
+into the dressing-room, and then the boys, with many a backward look at
+the wide spread of canvas, and the flags and streamers floating over it
+from the centre-pole (the centre-pole was revered almost like a
+distinguished personage), ran home to dinner so as to get back good and
+early, and be among the first to go in.
+
+All round, before the circus doors were open, the doorkeepers of the
+side-shows were inviting people to come in and see the giants and fat
+woman and boa-constrictors, and there were stands for peanuts and candy
+and lemonade; the vendors cried, "Ice-cold lemonade, from fifteen
+hundred miles under ground! Walk up, roll up, tumble up, any way you get
+up!" The boys thought this brilliant drolling, but they had no time to
+listen after the doors were open, and they had no money to spend on
+side-shows or dainties anyway. Inside the tent they found it dark and
+cool, and their hearts thumped in their throats with the wild joy of
+being there; they recognized one another with amaze, as if they had not
+met for years, and the excitement kept growing as other fellows came in.
+It was lots of fun, too, watching the country-jakes, as the boys called
+the farmer-folk, and seeing how green they looked, and now some of them
+tried to act smart with the circus men that came round with oranges to
+sell. But the great thing was to see whether fellows that said they were
+going to hook in really got in. The boys held it to be a high and
+creditable thing to hook into a show of any kind, but hooking into a
+circus was something that a fellow ought to be held in special honor for
+doing. He ran great risks, and if he escaped the vigilance of the
+massive circus man who patrolled the outside of the tent with a cow-hide
+and a bulldog, perhaps he merited the fame he was sure to win.
+
+I do not know where boys get some of the notions of morality that govern
+them. These notions are like the sports and plays that a boy leaves off
+as he gets older to the boys that are younger. He outgrows them, and
+other boys grow into them, and then outgrow them as he did. Perhaps they
+come down to the boyhood of our time from the boyhood of the race, and
+the unwritten laws of conduct may have prevailed among the earliest
+Aryans on the plains of Asia that I now find so strange in a retrospect
+of the Boy's Town.
+
+The standard of honor there was, in a certain way, very high among the
+boys; they would have despised a thief as he deserved, and I cannot
+remember one of them who might not have been safely trusted. None of
+them would have taken an apple out of a market-wagon, or stolen a melon
+from a farmer who came to town with it; but they would all have thought
+it fun, if not right, to rob an orchard or hook a watermelon out of a
+patch. This would have been a foray into the enemy's country, and the
+fruit of the adventure would have been the same as the plunder of a
+city, or the capture of a vessel belonging to him on the high seas. In
+the same way, if one of the boys had seen a circus man drop a quarter,
+he would have hurried to give it back to him, but he would only have
+been proud to hook into the circus man's show, and the other fellows
+would have been proud of his exploit, too, as something that did honor
+to them all. As a person who enclosed bounds and forbade trespass, the
+circus man constituted himself the enemy of every boy who respected
+himself, and challenged him to practise any sort of strategy. There was
+not a boy in the crowd that my boy went with who would have been allowed
+to hook into a circus by his parents; yet hooking in was an ideal that
+was cherished among them, that was talked of, and that was even
+sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, when a fellow really hooked
+in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid, one of the fellows could
+not stand it. He asked him just how and where he got in, and then he
+went to the door, and got back his money from the doorkeeper upon the
+plea that he did not feel well; and in five or ten minutes he was back
+among the boys, a hero of such moral grandeur as would be hard to
+describe. Not one of the fellows saw him as he really was--a little
+lying, thievish scoundrel. Not even my boy saw him so, though he had on
+some other point of personal honesty the most fantastic scruples.
+
+The boys liked to be at the circus early so as to make sure of the grand
+entry of the performers into the ring, where they caracoled round on
+horseback, and gave a delicious foretaste of the wonders to come. The
+fellows were united in this, but upon other matters feeling
+varied--some liked tumbling best; some the slack-rope; some
+bareback-riding; some the feats of tossing knives and balls and catching
+them. There never was more than one ring in those days; and you were not
+tempted to break your neck and set your eyes forever askew, by trying to
+watch all the things that went on at once in two or three rings.
+
+The boys did not miss the smallest feats of any performance, and they
+enjoyed them every one, not equally, but fully. They had their
+preferences, of course, as I have hinted; and one of the most popular
+acts was that where a horse has been trained to misbehave, so that
+nobody can mount him; and after the actors have tried him, the
+ring-master turns to the audience, and asks if some gentleman among them
+wants to try it. Nobody stirs, till at last a tipsy country-jake is seen
+making his way down from one of the top seats toward the ring. He can
+hardly walk, he is so drunk, and the clown has to help him across the
+ring-board, and even then he trips and rolls over on the saw-dust, and
+has to be pulled to his feet. When they bring him up to the horse, he
+falls against it; and the little fellows think he will certainly get
+killed. But the big boys tell the little fellows to shut up and watch
+out. The ring-master and the clown manage to get the country-jake on to
+the broad platform on the horse's back, and then the ring-master cracks
+his whip, and the two supes who have been holding the horse's head let
+go, and the horse begins cantering round the ring. The little fellows
+are just sure the country-jake is going to fall off, he reels and
+totters so; but the big boys tell them to keep watching out; and pretty
+soon the country-jake begins to straighten up. He begins to unbutton his
+long gray overcoat, and then he takes it off and throws it into the
+ring, where one of the supes catches it. Then he sticks a short pipe
+into his mouth, and pulls on an old wool hat, and flourishes a stick
+that the supe throws to him, and you see that he is an Irishman just
+come across the sea; and then off goes another coat, and he comes out a
+British soldier in white duck trousers and red coat. That comes off, and
+he is an American sailor, with his hands on his hips, dancing a
+horn-pipe. Suddenly away flash wig and beard and false-face, the
+pantaloons are stripped off with the same movement, the actor stoops for
+the reins lying on the horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatest
+three-horse rider in the world, nimbly capers on the broad pad, and
+kisses his hand to the shouting and cheering spectators as he dashes
+from the ring past the braying and bellowing brass-band into the
+dressing-room!
+
+The big boys have known all along that he was not a real country-jake;
+but when the trained mule begins, and shakes everybody off, just like
+the horse, and another country-jake gets up, and offers to bet that he
+can ride that mule, nobody can tell whether he is a real country-jake or
+not. This is always the last thing in the performance, and the boys have
+seen with heavy hearts many signs openly betokening the end which they
+knew was at hand. The actors have come out of the dressing-room door,
+some in their every-day clothes, and some with just overcoats on over
+their circus-dresses, and they lounge about near the bandstand watching
+the performance in the ring. Some of the people are already getting up
+to go out, and stand for this last act, and will not mind the shouts of
+"Down in front! Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke out
+their bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance of
+anything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardly
+into the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astride
+the mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking,
+rearing. He sticks on, and everybody cheers him, and the owner of the
+mule begins to get mad and to make it do more things to shake the
+country-jake off. At last, with one convulsive spring, it flings him
+from its back, and dashes into the dressing-room, while the country-jake
+picks himself up and vanishes among the crowd.
+
+A man mounted on a platform in the ring is imploring the ladies and
+gentlemen to keep their seats, and to buy tickets for the negro-minstrel
+entertainment which is to follow, but which is not included in the price
+of admission. The boys would like to stay, but they have not the money,
+and they go out clamoring over the performance, and trying to decide
+which was the best feat. As to which was the best actor, there is never
+any question; it is the clown, who showed by the way he turned a double
+somersault that he can do anything, and who chooses to be clown simply
+because he is too great a creature to enter into rivalry with the other
+actors.
+
+There will be another performance in the evening, with real fights
+outside between the circus men and the country-jakes, and perhaps some
+of the Basin rounders, but the boys do not expect to come; that would be
+too much. The boy's brother once stayed away in the afternoon, and went
+at night with one of the jour printers; but he was not able to report
+that the show was better than it was in the afternoon. He did not get
+home till nearly ten o'clock, though, and he saw the sides of the tent
+dropped before the people got out; that was a great thing; and what was
+greater yet, and reflected a kind of splendor on the boy at second hand,
+was that the jour printer and the clown turned out to be old friends.
+After the circus, the boy actually saw them standing near the
+centre-pole talking together; and the next day the jour showed the
+grease that had dripped on his coat from the candles. Otherwise the boy
+might have thought it was a dream, that some one he knew had talked on
+equal terms with the clown. The boys were always intending to stay up
+and see the circus go out of town, and they would have done so, but
+their mothers would not let them. This may have been one reason why none
+of them ever ran off with a circus.
+
+As soon as a circus had been in town, the boys began to have circuses of
+their own, and to practise for them. Everywhere you could see boys
+upside down, walking on their hands or standing on them with their legs
+dangling over, or stayed against house walls. It was easy to stand on
+your head; one boy stood on his head so much that he had to have it
+shaved, in the brain-fever that he got from standing on it; but that did
+not stop the other fellows. Another boy fell head downward from a rail
+where he was skinning-the-cat, and nearly broke his neck, and made it so
+sore that it was stiff ever so long. Another boy, who was playing
+Samson, almost had his leg torn off by the fellows that were pulling at
+it with a hook; and he did have the leg of his pantaloons torn off.
+Nothing could stop the boys but time, or some other play coming in; and
+circuses lasted a good while. Some of the boys learned to turn
+hand-springs; anybody could turn cart-wheels; one fellow, across the
+river, could just run along and throw a somersault and light on his
+feet; lots of fellows could light on their backs; but if you had a
+spring-board, or shavings under a bank, like those by the turning-shop,
+you could practise for somersaults pretty safely.
+
+All the time you were practising you were forming your circus company.
+The great trouble was not that any boy minded paying five or ten pins to
+come in, but that so many fellows wanted to belong there were hardly any
+left to form an audience. You could get girls, but even as spectators
+girls were a little _too_ despicable; they did not know anything; they
+had no sense; if a fellow got hurt they cried. Then another thing was,
+where to have the circus. Of course it was simply hopeless to think of a
+tent, and a boy's circus was very glad to get a barn. The boy whose
+father owned the barn had to get it for the circus without his father
+knowing it; and just as likely as not his mother would hear the noise
+and come out and break the whole thing up while you were in the very
+middle of it. Then there were all sorts of anxieties and perplexities
+about the dress. You could do something by turning your roundabout
+inside out, and rolling your trousers up as far as they would go; but
+what a fellow wanted to make him a real circus-actor was a long pair of
+white cotton stockings, and I never knew a fellow that got a pair; I
+heard of many a fellow who was said to have got a pair; but when you
+came down to the fact, they vanished like ghosts when you try to verify
+them. I believe the fellows always expected to get them out of a
+bureau-drawer or the clothes-line at home, but failed. In most other
+ways, a boy's circus was always a failure, like most other things boys
+undertake. They usually broke up under the strain of rivalry; everybody
+wanted to be the clown or ring-master; or else the boy they got the barn
+of behaved badly, and went into the house crying, and all the fellows
+had to run.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PASSING SHOWS
+
+
+There were only two kinds of show known by that name in the Boy's Town:
+a nigger show, or a performance of burnt-cork minstrels; and an animal
+show, or a strolling menagerie; and the boys always meant a menagerie
+when they spoke of a show, unless they said just what sort of show. The
+only perfect joy on earth in the way of an entertainment, of course, was
+a circus, but after the circus the show came unquestionably next. It
+made a processional entry into the town almost as impressive as the
+circus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation line
+in the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or five
+camels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession,
+the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, and
+then the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips and
+contemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, with
+pictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild beasts and
+birds inside; lions first, then tigers (never meaner than Royal Bengal
+ones, which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards,
+then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears
+and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle;
+and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise, and all the
+rest.
+
+From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camels to get
+what good they could out of the scenes in which these hidden wonders
+were dramatized in acts of rapine or the chase, but they always came
+forward to the elephants and camels again. Even with them they had to
+endure a degree of denial, for although you could see most of the
+camels' figures, the elephants were so heavily draped that it was a kind
+of disappointment to look at them. The boys kept as close as they could,
+and came as near getting under the elephants' feet as the keepers would
+allow; but, after all, they were driven off a good deal and had to keep
+stealing back. They gave the elephants apples and bits of cracker and
+cake, and some tried to put tobacco into their trunks, though they knew
+very well that it was nearly certain death to do so; for any elephant
+that was deceived that way would recognize the boy that did it, and kill
+him the next time he came, if it was twenty years afterward. The boys
+used to believe that the Miami bridge would break down under the
+elephants if they tried to cross it, and they would have liked to see it
+do it, but no one ever saw it, perhaps because the elephants always
+waded the river. Some boys had seen them wading it, and stopping to
+drink and squirt the water out of their trunks. If an elephant got a boy
+that had given him tobacco into the river, he would squirt water on him
+till he drowned him. Still, some boys always tried to give the
+elephants tobacco, just to see how they would act for the time being.
+
+A show was not so much in favor as a circus, because there was so little
+performance in the ring. You could go round and look at the animals,
+mostly very sleepy in their cages, but you were not allowed to poke them
+through the bars, or anything; and when you took your seat there was
+nothing much till Herr Driesbach entered the lions' cage, and began to
+make them jump over his whip. It was some pleasure to see him put his
+head between the jaws of the great African King of Beasts, but the lion
+never did anything to him, and so the act wanted a true dramatic climax.
+The boys would really rather have seen a bareback-rider, like James
+Rivers, turn a back-somersault and light on his horse's crupper, any
+time, though they respected Herr Driesbach, too; they did not care much
+for a woman who once went into the lions' cage and made them jump round.
+
+The boys had their own beliefs about the different animals, and one of
+these concerned the inappeasable ferocity of the zebra. I do not know
+why the zebra should have had this repute, for he certainly never did
+anything to deserve it; but, for the matter of that, he was like all the
+other animals. Bears were not much esteemed, but they would have been if
+they could have been really seen hugging anybody to death. It was
+always hoped that some of the fiercest animals would get away and have
+to be hunted down, and retaken after they had killed a lot of dogs. If
+the elephants, some of them, had gone crazy, it would have been
+something, for then they would have roamed up and down the turnpike
+smashing buggies and wagons, and had to be shot with the six-pound
+cannon that was used to celebrate the Fourth of July with.
+
+Another thing that was against the show was that the animals were fed
+after it was out, and you could not see the tigers tearing their prey
+when the great lumps of beef were thrown them. There was somehow not so
+much chance of hooking into a show as a circus, because the seats did
+not go all round, and you could be seen under the cages as soon as you
+got in under the canvas. I never heard of a boy that hooked into a show;
+perhaps nobody ever tried.
+
+But the great reason of all was that you could not have an animal show
+of your own as you could a circus. You could not get the animals; and no
+boy living could act a camel, or a Royal Bengal tiger, or an elephant so
+as to look the least like one.
+
+Of course you could have negro shows, and the boys often had them; but
+they were not much fun, and you were always getting the black on your
+shirt-sleeves.
+
+
+
+
+THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN
+
+
+A great new experience which now came to the boy was the theatre, which
+he had sometimes heard his father speak of. There had once been a
+theatre in the Boy's Town, when a strolling company came up from
+Cincinnati, and opened for a season in an empty pork-house. But that was
+a long time ago, and, though he had written a tragedy, all that the boy
+knew of a theatre was from a picture in a Sunday-school book where a
+stage scene was given to show what kind of desperate amusements a person
+might come to in middle life if he began by breaking the Sabbath in his
+youth. His brother had once been taken to a theatre in Pittsburg by one
+of their river-going uncles, and he often told about it; but my boy
+formed no conception of the beautiful reality from his accounts of a
+burglar who jumped from a roof and was chased by a watchman with a
+pistol up and down a street with houses painted on a curtain.
+
+The company which came to the Boy's Town in his time was again from
+Cincinnati, and it was under the management of the father and mother of
+two actresses, afterward famous, who were then children, just starting
+upon their career. These pretty little creatures took the leading parts
+in _Bombastes Furioso_ the first night my boy ever saw a play, and he
+instantly fell impartially in love with both of them, and tacitly
+remained their abject slave for a great while after. When the smaller of
+them came out with a large pair of stage boots in one hand and a drawn
+sword in the other, and said:
+
+    "Whoever dares these boots displace
+    Shall meet Bombastes face to face,"
+
+if the boy had not already been bereft of his senses by the melodrama
+preceding the burlesque, he must have been transported by her beauty,
+her grace, her genius. He, indeed, gave her and her sister his heart,
+but his mind was already gone, rapt from him by the adorable pirate
+who fought a losing fight with broadswords, two up and two
+down--click-click, click-click--and died all over the deck of the pirate
+ship in the opening piece. This was called the _Beacon of Death_, and
+the scene represented the forecastle of the pirate ship with a lantern
+dangling from the rigging, to lure unsuspecting merchantmen to their
+doom. Afterward the boy remembered nothing of the story, but a scrap of
+the dialogue meaninglessly remained with him; and when the pirate
+captain appeared with his bloody crew and said, hoarsely, "Let us go
+below and get some brandy!" the boy would have bartered all his hopes
+of bliss to have been that abandoned ruffian. In fact, he always liked,
+and longed to be, the villain, rather than any other person in the play,
+and he so glutted himself with crime of every sort in his tender years
+at the theatre that he afterward came to be very tired of it, and
+avoided the plays and novels that had very marked villains in them.
+
+He was in an ecstasy as soon as the curtain rose that night, and he
+lived somewhere out of his body as long as the playing lasted, which was
+well on to midnight; for in those days the theatre did not meanly put
+the public off with one play, but gave it a heartful and its money's
+worth with three. On his first night my boy saw _The Beacon of Death_,
+_Bombastes Furioso_, and _Black-Eyed Susan_, and he never afterward saw
+less than three plays each night, and he never missed a night, as long
+as the theatre languished in the unfriendly air of that mainly
+Calvinistic community, where the theatre was regarded by most good
+people as the eighth of the seven deadly sins. The whole day long he
+dwelt in a dream of it that blotted out, or rather consumed with more
+effulgent brightness, all the other day-dreams he had dreamed before,
+and his heart almost burst with longing to be a villain like those
+villains on the stage, to have a mustache--a black mustache--such as
+they wore at a time when every one off the stage was clean shaven, and
+somehow to end bloodily, murderously, as became a villain.
+
+I dare say this was not quite a wholesome frame of mind for a boy of ten
+years; but I do not defend it; I only portray it. Being the boy he was,
+he was destined somehow to dwell half the time in a world of dreamery;
+and I have tried to express how, when he had once got enough of villany,
+he reformed his ideals and rather liked virtue.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS
+
+
+Every boy is two or three boys, or twenty or thirty different kinds of
+boys in one; he is all the time living many lives and forming many
+characters; but it is a good thing if he can keep one life and one
+character when he gets to be a man. He may turn out to be like an onion
+when he is grown up, and be nothing but hulls, that you keep peeling
+off, one after another, till you think you have got down to the heart,
+at last, and then you have got down to nothing.
+
+All the boys may have been like my boy in the Boy's Town, in having each
+an inward being that was not the least like their outward being, but
+that somehow seemed to be their real self, whether it truly was so or
+not. But I am certain that this was the case with him, and that while
+he was joyfully sharing the wild sports and conforming to the savage
+usages of the boy's world about him, he was dwelling in a wholly
+different world within him, whose wonders no one else knew. I could not
+tell now these wonders any more than he could have told them then; but
+it was a world of dreams, of hopes, of purposes, which he would have
+been more ashamed to avow for himself than I should be to avow for him.
+It was all vague and vast, and it came out of the books that he read,
+and that filled his soul with their witchery, and often held him aloof
+with their charm in the midst of the plays from which they could not
+lure him wholly away, or at all away. He did not know how or when their
+enchantment began, and he could hardly recall the names of some of them
+afterward.
+
+First of them was Goldsmith's _History of Greece_, which made him an
+Athenian of Pericles' time, and Goldsmith's _History of Rome_, which
+naturalized him in a Roman citizenship chiefly employed in slaying
+tyrants; from the time of Appius Claudius down to the time of Domitian,
+there was hardly a tyrant that he did not slay. After he had read these
+books, not once or twice, but twenty times over, his father thought fit
+to put into his hands _The Travels of Captain Ashe in North America_, to
+encourage, or perhaps to test, his taste for useful reading; but this
+was a failure. The captain's travels were printed with long esses, and
+the boy could make nothing of them, for other reasons. The fancy
+nourished upon
+
+    "The glory that was Greece
+    And the grandeur that was Rome,"
+
+starved amid the robust plenty of the Englishman's criticisms of our
+early manners and customs. Neither could money hire the boy to read
+_Malte-Brun's Geography_, in three large folios, of a thousand pages
+each, for which there was a standing offer of fifty cents from the
+father, who had never been able to read it himself.
+
+But shortly after he failed so miserably with Captain Ashe, the boy came
+into possession of a priceless treasure. It was that little treatise on
+_Greek and Roman Mythology_ which I have mentioned, and which he must
+literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to
+have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it;
+his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the
+boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the
+back part of his grammar, made poems from it for years, and appeared in
+many transfigurations, as this and that god and demigod and hero upon
+imagined occasions in the Boy's Town, to the fancied admiration of all
+the other fellows. I do not know just why he wished to appear to his
+grandmother in a vision; now as Mercury with winged feet, now as Apollo
+with his drawn bow, now as Hercules leaning upon his club and resting
+from his Twelve Labors. Perhaps it was because he thought that his
+grandmother, who used to tell the children about her life in Wales, and
+show them the picture of a castle where she had once slept when she was
+a girl, would appreciate him in these apotheoses. If he believed they
+would make a vivid impression upon the sweet old Quaker lady, no doubt
+he was right.
+
+There was another book which he read about this time, and that was _The
+Greek Soldier_. It was the story of a young Greek, a glorious Athenian,
+who had fought through the Greek war of independence against the Turks,
+and then come to America and published the narrative of his adventures.
+They fired my boy with a retrospective longing to have been present at
+the Battle of Navarino, when the allied ships of the English, French,
+and Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet; but it seemed to him that he
+could not have borne to have the allies impose a king upon the Greeks,
+when they really wanted a republic, and so he was able to console
+himself for having been absent. He did what he could in fighting the war
+over again, and he intended to harden himself for the long struggle by
+sleeping on the floor, as the Greek soldier had done. But the children
+often fell asleep on the floor in the warmth of the hearth-fire; and his
+preparation for the patriotic strife was not distinguishable in its
+practical effect from a reluctance to go to bed at the right hour.
+
+Captain Riley's narrative of his shipwreck on the coast of Africa, and
+his captivity among the Arabs, was a book which my boy and his brother
+prized with a kind of personal interest, because their father told them
+that he had once seen a son of Captain Riley when he went to get his
+appointment of collector at Columbus, and that this son was named
+William Willshire Riley, after the good English merchant, William
+Willshire, who had ransomed Captain Riley. William Willshire seemed to
+them almost the best man who ever lived; though my boy had secretly a
+greater fondness for the Arab, Sidi Hamet, who was kind to Captain Riley
+and kept his brother Seid from ill-treating him whenever he could.
+Probably the boy liked him better because the Arab was more picturesque
+than the Englishman. The whole narrative was very interesting; it had a
+vein of sincere and earnest piety in it which was not its least charm,
+and it was written in a style of old-fashioned stateliness which was not
+without its effect with the boys.
+
+Somehow they did not think of the Arabs in this narrative as of the same
+race and faith with the Arabs of Bagdad and the other places in the
+_Arabian Nights_. They did not think whether these were Mohammedans or
+not; they naturalized them in the fairy world where all boys are
+citizens, and lived with them there upon the same familiar terms as they
+lived with Robinson Crusoe. Their father once told them that _Robinson
+Crusoe_ had robbed the real narrative of Alexander Selkirk of the place
+it ought to have held in the remembrance of the world; and my boy had a
+feeling of guilt in reading it, as if he were making himself the
+accomplice of an impostor.
+
+He liked the _Arabian Nights_, but oddly enough these wonderful tales
+made no such impression on his fancy as the stories in a wretchedly
+inferior book made. He did not know the name of this book, or who wrote
+it; from which I imagine that much of his reading was of the purblind
+sort that ignorant grown-up people do, without any sort of literary
+vision. He read this book perpetually, when he was not reading his
+_Greek and Roman Mythology_; and then suddenly, one day, as happens in
+childhood with so many things, it vanished out of his possession as if
+by magic. Perhaps he lost it; perhaps he lent it; at any rate it was
+gone, and he never got it back, and he never knew what book it was till
+thirty years afterward, when he picked up from a friend's library-table
+a copy of _Gesta Romanorum_, and recognized in this collection of old
+monkish legends the long-missing treasure of his boyhood.
+
+These stories, without beauty of invention, without art of construction
+or character, without spirituality in their crude materialization, which
+were read aloud in the refectories of mediaeval cloisters while the monks
+sat at meat, laid a spell upon the soul of the boy that governed his
+life. He conformed his conduct to the principles and maxims which
+actuated the behavior of the shadowy people of these dry-as-dust tales;
+he went about drunk with the fumes of fables about Roman emperors that
+never were, in an empire that never was; and, though they tormented him
+by putting a mixed and impossible civilization in the place of that he
+knew from his Goldsmith, he was quite helpless to break from their
+influence. He was always expecting some wonderful thing to happen to him
+as things happened there in fulfilment of some saying or prophecy; and
+at every trivial moment he made sayings and prophecies for himself,
+which he wished events to fulfil. One Sunday when he was walking in an
+alley behind one of the stores, he found a fur cap that had probably
+fallen out of the store-loft window. He ran home with it, and in his
+simple-hearted rapture he told his mother that as soon as he picked it
+up there came into his mind the words, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and he could hardly wait for Monday to come and
+let him restore the cap to its owner and receive an enduring prosperity
+in reward of his virtue. Heaven knows what form he expected this to
+take; but when he found himself in the store, he lost all courage; his
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a syllable
+of the fine phrases he had made to himself. He laid the cap on the
+counter without a word; the storekeeper came up and took it in his hand.
+"What's this?" he said. "Why, this is ours," and he tossed the cap into
+a loose pile of hats by the showcase, and the boy slunk out, cut to the
+heart and crushed to the dust. It was such a cruel disappointment and
+mortification that it was rather a relief to have his brother mock him,
+and come up and say from time to time, "He who picketh up this cap
+picketh up a fortune," and then split into a jeering laugh. At least he
+could fight his brother, and, when he ran, could stone him; and he could
+throw quads and quoins, and pieces of riglet at the jour printers when
+the story spread to them, and one of them would begin, "He who
+picketh--"
+
+He could not make anything either of Byron or Cowper; and he did not
+even try to read the little tree-calf volumes of Homer and Virgil which
+his father had in the versions of Pope and Dryden; the small
+copper-plates with which they were illustrated conveyed no suggestion to
+him. Afterward he read Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, and he formed a
+great passion for Pope's _Pastorals_, which he imitated in their easy
+heroics; but till he came to read Longfellow, and Tennyson, and Heine,
+he never read any long poem without more fatigue than pleasure. His
+father used to say that the taste for poetry was an acquired taste, like
+the taste for tomatoes, and that he would come to it yet; but he never
+came to it, or so much of it as some people seemed to do, and he always
+had his sorrowful misgivings as to whether they liked it as much as they
+pretended. I think, too, that it should be a flavor, a spice, a sweet, a
+delicate relish in the high banquet of literature, and never a chief
+dish; and I should not know how to defend my boy for trying to make long
+poems of his own at the very time when he found it so hard to read other
+people's long poems.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN
+
+
+My boy was twelve years old, and was already a swift compositor, though
+he was still so small that he had to stand on a chair to reach the case
+in setting type on Taylor's inaugural message. But what he lacked in
+stature he made up in gravity of demeanor; and he got the name of "The
+Old Man" from the printers as soon as he began to come about the office,
+which he did almost as soon as he could walk. His first attempt in
+literature, an essay on the vain and disappointing nature of human life,
+he set up and printed off himself in his sixth or seventh year; and the
+printing-office was in some sort his home, as well as his school, his
+university. He could no more remember learning to set type than he could
+remember learning to read; and in after-life he could not come within
+smell of the ink, the dusty types, the humid paper, of a printing-office
+without that tender swelling of the heart which so fondly responds to
+any memory-bearing perfume: his youth, his boyhood, almost his infancy
+came back to him in it. He now looked forward eagerly to helping on the
+new paper, and somewhat proudly to living in the larger place the family
+were going to. The moment it was decided he began to tell the boys that
+he was going to live in a city, and he felt that it gave him
+distinction. He had nothing but joy in it, and he did not dream that as
+the time drew near it could be sorrow. But when it came at last, and he
+was to leave the house, the town, the boys, he found himself deathly
+homesick.
+
+The parting days were days of gloom; the parting was an anguish of
+bitter tears. Nothing consoled him but the fact that they were going all
+the way to the new place in a canal-boat, which his father chartered for
+the trip. My boy and his brother had once gone to Cincinnati in a
+canal-boat, with a friendly captain of their acquaintance, and, though
+they were both put to sleep in a berth so narrow that when they turned
+they fell out on the floor, the glory of the adventure remained with
+him, and he could have thought of nothing more delightful than such
+another voyage. The household goods were piled up in the middle of the
+boat, and the family had a cabin forward, which seemed immense to the
+children. They played in it and ran races up and down the long
+canal-boat roof, where their father and mother sometimes put their
+chairs and sat to admire the scenery.
+
+They arrived safely at their journey's end, without any sort of
+accident. They had made the whole forty miles in less than two days, and
+were all as well as when they started, without having suffered for a
+moment from seasickness. The boat drew up at the tow-path just before
+the stable belonging to the house which the father had already taken,
+and the whole family at once began helping the crew put the things
+ashore. The boys thought it would have been a splendid stable to keep
+the pony in, only they had sold the pony; but they saw in an instant
+that it would do for a circus as soon as they could get acquainted with
+enough boys to have one.
+
+The strangeness of the house and street, and the necessity of meeting
+the boys of the neighborhood, and paying with his person for his
+standing among them, kept my boy interested for a time, and he did not
+realize at first how much he missed the Boy's Town and all the familiar
+fellowships there, and all the manifold privileges of the place. Then he
+began to be very homesick, and to be torn with the torment of a divided
+love. His mother, whom he loved so dearly, so tenderly, was here, and
+wherever she was, that was home; and yet home was yonder, far off, at
+the end of those forty inexorable miles, where he had left his life-long
+mates. The first months there was a dumb heartache at the bottom of
+every pleasure and excitement.
+
+After a while he was allowed to revisit the Boy's Town. It could only
+have been three or four months after he had left it, but it already
+seemed a very long time; and he figured himself returning as stage
+heroes do to the scenes of their childhood, after an absence of some
+fifteen years. He fancied that if the boys did not find him grown, they
+would find him somehow changed, and that he would dazzle them with the
+light accumulated by his residence in a city. He was going to stay with
+his grandmother, and he planned to make a long stay; for he was very
+fond of her, and he liked the quiet and comfort of her pleasant house.
+He must have gone back by the canal-packet, but his memory kept no
+record of the fact, and afterward he knew only of having arrived, and of
+searching about in a ghostly fashion for his old comrades. They may have
+been at school; at any rate, he found very few of them; and with them he
+was certainly strange enough; too strange, even. They received him with
+a kind of surprise; and they could not begin playing together at once in
+the old way. He went to all the places that were so dear to him; but he
+felt in them the same kind of refusal, or reluctance, that he felt in
+the boys. His heart began to ache again, he did not quite know why;
+only it ached. When he went up from his grandmother's to look at the
+Faulkner house, he realized that it was no longer home, and he could not
+bear the sight of it. There were other people living in it; strange
+voices sounded from the open doors, strange faces peered from the
+windows.
+
+He came back to his grandmother's, bruised and defeated, and spent the
+morning indoors reading. After dinner he went out again, and hunted up
+that queer earth-spirit who had been so long and closely his only
+friend. He at least was not changed; he was as unwashed and as unkempt
+as ever; but he seemed shy of my poor boy. He had probably never been
+shaken hands with in his life before; he dropped my boy's hand; and they
+stood looking at each other, not knowing what to say. My boy had on his
+best clothes, which he wore so as to affect the Boy's Town boys with the
+full splendor of a city boy. After all, he was not so very splendid, but
+his presence altogether was too much for the earth-spirit, and he
+vanished out of his consciousness like an apparition.
+
+After school was out in the afternoon, he met more of the boys, but none
+of them knew just what to do with him. The place that he had once had in
+their lives was filled; he was an outsider, who might be suffered among
+them, but he was no longer of them. He did not understand this at once,
+nor well know what hurt him. But something was gone that could not be
+called back, something lost that could not be found.
+
+At tea-time his grandfather came home and gravely made him welcome; the
+uncle who was staying with them was jovially kind. But a heavy
+homesickness weighed down the child's heart, which now turned from the
+Boy's Town as longingly as it had turned toward it before.
+
+They all knelt down with the grandfather before they went to the table.
+There had been a good many deaths from cholera during the day, and the
+grandfather prayed for grace and help amid the pestilence that walketh
+in darkness and wasteth at noonday in such a way that the boy felt there
+would be very little of either for him unless he got home at once. All
+through the meal that followed he was trying to find the courage to say
+that he must go home. When he managed to say it, his grandmother and
+aunt tried to comfort and coax him, and his uncle tried to shame him,
+out of his homesickness, to joke it off, to make him laugh. But his
+grandfather's tender heart was moved. He could not endure the child's
+mute misery; he said he must go home if he wished.
+
+In half an hour the boy was on the canal-packet speeding homeward at the
+highest pace of the three-horse team, and the Boy's Town was out of
+sight. He could not sleep for excitement that night, and he came and
+spent the time talking on quite equal terms with the steersman, one of
+the canalers whom he had admired afar in earlier and simpler days. He
+found him a very amiable fellow, by no means haughty, who began to tell
+him funny stories, and who even let him take the helm for a while. The
+rudder-handle was of polished iron, very different from the clumsy
+wooden affair of a freight-boat; and the packet made in a single night
+the distance which the boy's family had been nearly two days in
+travelling when they moved away from the Boy's Town.
+
+He arrived home for breakfast a travelled and experienced person, and
+wholly cured of that longing for his former home that had tormented him
+before he revisited its scenes. He now fully gave himself up to his new
+environment, and looked forward and not backward. I do not mean to say
+that he ceased to love the Boy's Town; that he could not do and never
+did. But he became more and more aware that the past was gone from him
+forever, and that he could not return to it. He did not forget it, but
+cherished its memories the more fondly for that reason.
+
+There was no bitterness in it, and no harm that he could not hope would
+easily be forgiven him. He had often been foolish, and sometimes he had
+been wicked; but he had never been such a little fool or such a little
+sinner but he had wished for more sense and more grace. There are some
+great fools and great sinners who try to believe in after-life that they
+are the manlier men because they have been silly and mischievous boys,
+but he has never believed that. He is glad to have had a boyhood fully
+rounded out with all a boy's interests and pleasures, and he is glad
+that his lines were cast in the Boy's Town; but he knows, or believes he
+knows, that whatever is good in him now came from what was good in him
+then; and he is sure that the town was delightful chiefly because his
+home in it was happy. The town was small, and the boys there were hemmed
+in by their inexperience and ignorance; but the simple home was large
+with vistas that stretched to the ends of the earth, and it was serenely
+bright with a father's reason and warm with a mother's love.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Life, by William Dean Howells
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