fore him, and his father's father, even
back to Adam, who walked thus with God! There is a tincture of iron
that seeps into a boys blood with the ozone of the earth, that can
come to him by no other way. Let him run if he will; Heavens air is a
better elixir than any that the alchemist can mix. What if he roams
the woods and lives for hours in the water? What if he prefers the
barn to the parlor? What if he fights? Does he not take the risk of
the scratched face and the bruises? Should he not be in some measure
the judge of the situation before him when the trouble begins? Boys
have an ugly name for one of their kind who discovers suddenly, in a
crisis of his own making, that he is not allowed to fight. And it were
better to see a boy with a dozen claw-marks down his face than to see
him eat that name in peace.

Now this conclusion may seem barbaric to elders who have to pay for
new clothes to replace the torn ones, And according to their light
perhaps the elders see clearly. But the grown-up people forget that
their wisdom has impaired their vision to see as boys see and to pass
judgment upon things in another sphere.

For Boyville is a Free Town in the monarchy of the world. Its
citizens mind their own business, and they desire travellers in this
waste to do likewise. The notion that spectacled gentry should come
nosing through the streets and alleys of Boyville, studying
the sanitation, which is not of the best, and objecting to the
constitution and by laws,--which were made when the rivers were dug
and the hills piled up,--the notion of an outsider interfering with
the Divine right of boys to eat what they please, to believe what they
please, and, under loyalty to the monarchy of the world, to do what
they please, is repugnant to this free people. Nor does it better
matters when the man behind the spectacles explains that to eat
sheep-sorrel is deleterious; to feed younkers Indian turnip is cruel;
to suck the sap of the young grapevine in spring produces malaria; to
smoke rattan is depraving, and to stuff one's stomach with paw-paws
and wild-grapes is dangerous in the extreme.

For does not the first article of the law of this Free Town expressly
state, that boys shall be absolved from obeying any and all laws
regulating the human stomach, and be free of the penalties thereto
attaching? And again when Wisdom says that the boy shall give up his
superstitions, the boy points to hoary tradition, which says that the