se them all for
bait, which was the only use their Creator seemed to have designed them
for; but they had vaguely understood that people somewhere ate them, or
something like them, though they had never known even the name of
lobsters; and they always intended to get their mothers to have them
cooked for them. None of them ever did.

They could sometimes, under high favor of fortune, push a dog into the
Hydraulic, or get him to jump in after a stick; and then have the
excitement of following him from one culvert to another, till he found a
foothold and scrambled out. Once my boy saw a chicken cock sailing
serenely down the currant; he was told that he had been given brandy,
and that brandy would enable a chicken to swim; but probably this was
not true. Another time, a tremendous time, a boy was standing at the
brink of a culvert, when one of his mates dared another to push him in.
In those days the boys attached peculiar ideas of dishonor to taking a
dare. They said, and in some sort they believed, that a boy who would
take a dare would steal sheep. I do not now see why this should follow.
In this case, the high spirit who was challenged felt nothing base in
running up behind his unsuspecting friend and popping him into the
water, and I have no doubt the victim considered the affair in the right
light when he found that it was a dare. He drifted under the culvert,
and when he came out he swiftly scaled the wall below, and took after
the boy who had pushed him in; of course this one had the start. No
great harm was done; everybody could swim, and a boy's summer costume in
that hot climate was made up of a shirt and trousers and a straw hat; no
boy who had any regard for his social standing wore shoes or stockings,
and as they were all pretty proud, they all went barefoot from April
till October.

The custom of going barefoot must have come from the South, where it
used to be so common, and also from the primitive pioneer times which
were so near my boy's time, fifty years ago. The South characterized the
thinking and feeling of the Boy's Town, far more than the North. Most of
the people were of Southern extraction, from Kentucky or Virginia, when
they were not from Pennsylvania or New Jersey. There might have been
other New England families, but the boys only knew of one--that of the
blacksmith whose shop they liked to haunt. His children were heard to
dispute about an animal they had seen, and one of them said, "Tell y