t bay for a few moments with his stick, till, the feeling mounting
higher and higher, he broke through their ranks, and fled precipitately
toward home, with the throng of little and big at his heels. Gradually
the girls and smaller boys dropped behind, till at the end of the
first fifty rods only two boys of about his own size, with wrath and
determination in their faces, kept up the pursuit. But to these he added
the final insult of beating them at running also, and reached, much
blown, a point beyond which they refused to follow.

The world the boy lives in is separate and distinct from the world
the man lives in. It is a world inhabited only by boys. No events are
important or of any moment save those affecting boys. How they
ignore the presence of their elders on the street, shouting out their
invitations, their appointments, their pass-words from our midst, as
from the veriest solitude! They have peculiar calls, whistles, signals,
by which they communicate with each other at long distances, like birds
or wild creatures. And there is as genuine a wildness about these notes
and calls as about those of a fox or a coon.

The boy is a savage, a barbarian, in his taste,--devouring roots,
leaves, bark, unripe fruit; and in the kind of music or discord he
delights in,--of harmony he has no perception. He has his fashions that
spread from city to city. In one of our large cities the rage at one
time was an old tin can with a string attached, out of which they
tortured the most savage and ear-splitting discords. The police were
obliged to interfere and suppress the nuisance. On another occasion, at
Christmas, they all came forth with tin horns, and nearly drove the town
distracted with the hideous uproar.

Another savage trait of the boy is his untruthfulness. Corner him, and
the chances are ten to one he will lie his way out. Conscience is
a plant of slow growth in the boy. If caught in one lie, he invents
another. I know a boy who was in the habit of eating apples in school.
His teacher finally caught him in the act, and, without removing his eye
from him, called him to the middle of the floor.

"I saw you this time," said the teacher.

"Saw me what?" said the boy innocently.

"Bite that apple," replied the teacher.

"No, sir," said the rascal.

"Open your mouth;" and from its depths the teacher, with his thumb and
finger, took out the piece of apple.

"Did n't know it was there," said the boy, unabashed.

Near