l he had found one, and kept at it till it overcame him.
The spirit of the boy's world is not wicked, but merely savage, as I
have often said in this book; it is the spirit of not knowing better.
That is, the prevailing spirit is so. Here and there a boy does know
better, but he is seldom a leader among boys; and usually he is ashamed
of knowing better, and rarely tries to do better than the rest. He would
like to please his father and mother, but he dreads the other boys and
what they will say; and so the light of home fades from his ignorant
soul, and leaves him in the outer darkness of the street. It may be that
it must be so; but it seems a great pity; and it seems somehow as if the
father and the mother might keep with him in some word, some thought,
and be there to help him against himself, whenever he is weak and
wavering. The trouble is that the father and mother are too often
children in their way, and little more fit to be the guide than he.

But while I am owning to a good deal that seems to me lamentably wrong
in the behavior of the Boy's Town boys, I ought to remember one or two
things to their credit. They had an ideal of honor, false enough as far
as resenting insult went, but true in some other things. They were
always respectful to women, and if a boy's mother ever appeared among
them, to interfere in behalf of her boy when they were abusing him, they
felt the indecorum, but they were careful not to let her feel it. They
would not have dreamed of uttering a rude or impudent word to her; they
obeyed her, and they were even eager to serve her, if she asked a favor
of them.

For the most part, also, they were truthful, and they only told lies
when they felt obliged to do so, as when they had been in swimming and
said they had not, or as when they wanted to get away from some of the
boys, or did not wish the whole crowd to know what they were doing. But
they were generally shamefaced in these lies; and the fellows who could
lie boldly and stick to it were few. In the abstract lying was held in
such contempt that if any boy said you were a liar you must strike him.
That was not to be borne for an instant, any more than if he had called
you a thief.

I never knew a boy who was even reputed to have stolen anything, among
all the boys, high and low, who met together and played in a perfect
social equality; and cheating in any game was despised. To break bounds,
to invade an orchard or garden, was an adventure