"grieving away the Holy Spirit." He therefore hid away the paper in
a table-drawer, intending to read it when the revival should be over.
Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was not to be found,
and John never knew what "time" Lexington made nor anything about the
race. This was to him a serious loss, but by no means so deep as another
feeling that remained with him; for when his little world returned to
its ordinary course, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehension
of his own separateness from other people, in his insensibility to the
revival. Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pity
that there was no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
him is not a "scheme."

XVII. WAR

Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. The scientists
who want to study the primitive man, and have so much difficulty in
finding one anywhere in this sophisticated age, couldn't do better than
to devote their attention to the common country-boy. He has the primal,
vigorous instincts and impulses of the African savage, without any of
the vices inherited from a civilization long ago decayed or developed in
an unrestrained barbaric society. You want to catch your boy young, and
study him before he has either virtues or vices, in order to understand
the primitive man.

Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before
children were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with the
word "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing, and
war. The military instinct, which is the special mark of barbarism, is
strong in him. It arises not alone from his love of fighting, for the
boy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, but from his fondness for
display,--the same that a corporal or a general feels in decking himself
in tinsel and tawdry colors and strutting about in view of the female
sex. Half the pleasure in going out to murder another man with a gun
would be wanting if one did not wear feathers and gold-lace and stripes
on his pantaloons. The law also takes this view of it, and will not
permit men to shoot each other in plain clothes. And the world also
makes some curious distinctions in the art of killing. To kill people
with arrows is barbarous; to kill them with smooth-bores and flintlock
muskets is semi-civilized; to kill them with breech-loading rifles is
civilized. That nation is the most civilized which has the appliances to