which might be
permitted; but even this was uncommon, and most of the boys saw the
affair in the true light, and would not take part in it, though it was
considered fair to knock apples off a tree that hung over the fence; and
if you were out walnutting you might get over the fence in extreme
cases, and help yourself. If the owner of the orchard was supposed to be
stingy you might do it to plague him. But the standard of honesty was
chivalrously high among those boys; and I believe that if ever we have
the equality in this world which so many good men have hoped for, theft
will be unknown. Dishonesty was rare even among men in the Boy's Town,
because there was neither wealth nor poverty there, and all had enough
and few too much.

XIX.

THE TOWN ITSELF.

OF course I do not mean to tell what the town was as men knew it, but
only as it appeared to the boys who made use of its opportunities for
having fun. The civic centre was the court-house, with the county
buildings about it in the court-house yard; and the great thing in the
court-house was the town clock. It was more important in the boys'
esteem than even the wooden woman, who had a sword in one hand and a
pair of scales in the other. Her eyes were blinded; and the boys
believed that she would be as high as a house if she stood on the
ground. She was above the clock, which was so far up in the air, against
the summer sky which was always blue, that it made your neck ache to
look up at it; and the bell was so large that once when my boy was a
very little fellow, and was in the belfry with his brother, to see if
they could get some of the pigeons that nested there, and the clock
began to strike, it almost smote him dead with the terror of its sound,
and he felt his heart quiver with the vibration of the air between the
strokes. It seemed to him that he should never live to get down; and he
never knew how he did get down. He could remember being in the
court-house after that, one night when a wandering professor gave an
exhibition in the court-room, and showed the effects of laughing-gas on
such men and boys as were willing to breathe it. It was the same gas
that dentists now give when they draw teeth; but it was then used to
make people merry and truthful, to make them laugh and say just what
they thought. My boy was too young to know whether it did either; but he
was exactly the right age, when on another night there was a large
picture of Death on a Pale