tty
Spanish song. I told him I was rejoiced to find him in such good
spirits, and asked him if he had not been having a jolly romp with the
American carpenter's son, who lived in the Chinese house close by. My
question seemed to afflict him with puzzled surprise;--he half smiled,
as if not quite sure but I might be jesting.

"Oh, no, indeed! I have never played with him; I do not know him; I
never play with any boys here. Oh, no, indeed!"

"But why not, Ferdy? What! a whole month in this tiresome tent, and
not make the acquaintance of your nearest neighbor,--such a sturdy,
hearty chunk of a fellow as that is?--I have no doubt he's
good-natured, too, for he's fat and funny, tough and independent.
Besides, he's a carpenter's son, you know; so there's a chance to
borrow a saw to make the dog-house with. Who knows but his father will
take a fancy to you,--I'm sure he is very likely to,--and make you a
church dog-house, steeple and all complete and painted, and much finer
than Charley Saunders's martin-box?"

"Oh, I should like to, so much! And perhaps he has a Newfoundlander
with a bushy tail and a brass collar,--that would be nicer than a
kangaroo. But--but"--looking comically bothered,--"I never knew a
carpenter's son in my life. I am sure my father would not give me
permission,--I am sure he would be very angry, if I asked him. Are
they not very disagreeable, that sort of boys? Don't they swear, and
tear their clothes, and fight, and sing vulgar songs, and tell lies,
and sit down in the middle of the street?"

Merciful Heaven! thought I,--here's a crying shame! here's an
interesting case for professors of moral hygiene! An apt, intelligent
little man, with an empty mind, and a by-no-means overloaded stomach,
I'll engage,--with a pride-paralyzed father, and a beer-bewitched
slattern of a mother,--with his living to get, in San Francisco, too,
and the world to make friends with,--who has never enjoyed the
peculiar advantages to be derived from the society of little dirty
boys, never been admitted to the felicity of popular songs, nor
exercised his pluck in a rough-and-tumble, nor ventilated himself in
wholesome "giddy, giddy, gout,"--to whom dirt-pies are a fable!

"Ferdy," said I, "I'll talk with your father myself. But tell me, now,
what makes you so happy to-day."

"My father got a letter this morning,"--a mail had just arrived; it
brought no smile or tear for me,--no parallelogram of tragedy or
comedy in statio