n 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