s hole. But
recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy
rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess?
He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer;
he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entire
self-forgetfulness, and an energy that would overturn the world if
his strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is
absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and
he is his own master for that brief time,--as he never again will be
if he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,--and nobody knows how
old he was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast
projects can be carried out which have been slyly matured during the
school-hours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between the
Indians on one side and the settlers on the other; the military
company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are carried
on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of wind
sufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch.

Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and
enmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot,
after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases
of long credit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys;
boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered
much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if
the explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and
then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The
country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world
than he knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a
copy of the Arabian Nights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page,
and the last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly read
under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents
disapprove of novel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the house
except a pious fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latest
comic almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the
treasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in
the land of enchantment open before him. He tells at home that he
has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has
promised to lend it to him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks the
grandmother; "because, if it is n't tru