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MEMORIES OF MSCHIEF. 



O, the happy days of youth 

 Are fast gaun by. 



GiLFILLAN. 



He must be either a very bad or very wretched man who does not 

 look back with fond pleasure to the days of his boyhood — "the days 

 when hope and life were young " — and bring back from that garden 

 of green memories some fruits so refreshing that now and then a 

 tear shall fall on them like a joy-token, which the heart is willing to 

 drop as the price of its new gladness. Boyhood ! Ah, how racy is 

 the very word — how suggestive of impulsive generosity — of hearty 

 abandonment — of wild, hilarious joy — so brimful and excessive, that 

 it scruples at no mischief so its mood be served, and will dare any- 

 thing to gratify its individuality. How unlike girlhood, too — how 

 contrasted with the quiet refinement which marks the woman even in 

 the bud. Noise, confusion, nonsense, and unbounded laughter, with 

 an innate love of mischief, which no philosophy can account for, form 

 the elementary traits of boy-life : but the girl steals away to her 

 beads, her doll, and her skipping rope — dreading to be thought a 

 " romp," and looking suspiciously on any manifestations of boister- 

 ousness in any of her fellows. 



Boys are boys, and not little men. They are all alike except as 

 to the colour of the hair and pinafore. They all inherit the same 

 pride, the same " devil-may-care " ambition, the same spirit of mis- 

 chief, and the same freemasonry of mutual confidence in all affairs 

 relating to the government of the boy-world. Where is the boy 

 who is willing to be outdone by a playmate ? Where is the boy who 

 -will acknowledge to being beaten in a fight with one of another 

 school? Wherever such an one is to be found, guard him well, for 

 fear he should grow up silly. It is positively astonishing what hair- 

 breadth ventures boys will engage in merely to gratify some pride of 

 rivalry, or satisfy the eternal longing of a boy "to do something." 

 In fact, there is nothing within the range of possibility which a boy 



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