hoes
for good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings. Life
has a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none so
ecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast of
our mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then from
the heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, and
cousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leaps
as wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their arms
in June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of the
earlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, his
races; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leave
the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is
all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the
earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they
shall not be thankless, nor she a step-mother any more.

About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, which
you were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and before
you had got used to your new running weight. When you struck your toe
against a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hopped
about a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.
Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,
till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as
soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet
about it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.

With the races came the other plays which involved running, like
hide-and-go-whoop, and tag, and dog-on-wood, and horse, which I dare say
the boys of other times and other wheres know by different names. The
Smith-house neighborhood was a famous place for them all, both because
there were such lots of boys, and because there were so many sheds and
stables where you could hide, and everything. There was a town pump
there for you, so that you would not have to go into the house for a
drink when you got thirsty, and perhaps be set to doing something; and
there were plenty of boards for teeter and see-saw; and somehow that
neighborhood seemed to understand boys, and did not molest them in any
way. In a vacant lot behind one of the houses there was a whirligig,
that you could ride on and get sick in about a minute; it was splendid.
There wa