little angels are they love a boy's game, and if they can through some
lucky accident participate in one it is to scream and shudder and fight,
indeed like the females of the species. No break here between these
little mothers of doll-babies and the bloody mothers of the French
Revolution, or of dusky, naked, barbarian children of a primitive day!

Boys love the chase. And that chase depends upon environment. For want
of wild game they will harry a poor miserable tom-cat with sticks and
stones. I belonged once to a gang of young ruffians who chased the
neighbor's chickens, killed them with clubs, and cooked them in tin
cans, over a hidden fire. Boys love nothing so much as to chase a
squirrel or a frightened little chipmunk back and forth along a rail
fence. They brandish their sticks, run and yell, dart to and fro, like
young Indians. They rob bird's nests, steal the eggs, pierce them and
blow them. They capture the young birds, and are not above killing the
parents that fly frantically to the rescue. I knew of boys who ground
captured birds to death on a grindstone. Who has not seen a boy fling
stones at a helpless hop-toad?

As boys grow older to the age of reading they select, or at least love
best, those stories of bloodshed and violence. Stevenson wrote that boys
read for some element of the brute instinct in them. His two wonderful
books _Treasure Island_ and _Kidnapped_ are full of fight and the
killing of men. _Robinson Crusoe_ is the only great boy's book I ever
read that did not owe its charm to fighting. But still did not old
Crusoe fight to live on his lonely island? And this wonderful tale is
full of hunting, and has at the end the battle with cannibals.

When lads grow up they become hunters, almost without exception, at
least in spirit if not in deed. Early days and environment decide
whether or not a man becomes a hunter. In all my life I have met only
two grown men who did not care to go prowling and hunting in the woods
with a gun. An exception proves a great deal, but all the same most men,
whether they have a chance or not, love to hunt. Hunters, therefore,
there are of many degrees. Hunters of the lowly cotton-tail and the
woodland squirrel; hunters of quail, woodcock, and grouse; hunters of
wild ducks and geese; hunters of foxes--the red-coated English and the
homespun clad American; hunters--which is a kinder name for trappers--of
beaver, marten, otter, mink, all the furred animals; hunters of