--climbing,
walking fences, singing, giving yodels and yells, whistling,
imitating the movements of animals, "taking people off," courting
danger, affecting courage, are some of its common forms. I saw a boy
upon one such occasion stand on the railroad track until by the
barest margin he escaped death by a passenger engine. One writer
gives an account of a boy who sat on the end of a cross-tie and was
killed by a passing train. This tendency to show off for love's sake,
together with the inability to make any direct declaration, is well
illustrated in the love affair of Piggy Pennington, King of
Boyville.[10] "Time and time again had Piggy tried to make some sign
to let his feelings be known, but every time he had failed. Lying in
wait for her at corners, and suddenly breaking upon her with a glory
of backward and forward somersaults did not convey the state of his
heart. Hanging by his heels from an apple tree limb over the sidewalk
in front of her, unexpectedly, did not tell the tender tale for which
his lips could find no words. And the nearest that he could come to
an expression of the longing in his breast was to cut her initials in
the ice beside his own when she came weaving and wobbling past on
some other boy's arm. But she would not look at the initials, and the
chirography of his skates was so indistinct that it required a key;
and, everything put together, poor Piggy was no nearer a declaration
at the end of the winter than he had been at the beginning of autumn.
So only one heart beat with but a single thought, and the other took
motto candy and valentines and red apples and picture cards and other
tokens of esteem from other boys, and beat on with any number of
thoughts, entirely immaterial to the uses of this narrative." This
"showing-off" in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skillful,
purposive and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult male
and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their love
relations.

Another kind of indirection that is very interesting is that of a boy
who ostensibly is talking to one, but everything which he is saying
is intended for another. This is sometimes extended into a sort of
pleasant teasing and scuffling in which the very one whom he wants to
touch is very carefully avoided. A further phase of the same thing is
shown by the embrace or caress that is given to one while the
emotional discharge goes out to some one else; as for example, a boy
under the