— 
TOUCHES OF NATURE 65 
There is such a freedom from responsibility and 
from worldly wisdom, —it is heavenly wisdom. 
There is no sentiment in children, because there is 
no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about them yet, 
—not a leaf or twig. Until he is well into his 
teens, and sometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod 
before the fruit has developed,— indefinite, succu- 
lent, rich in possibilities which are only vaguely 
outlined. He is a pericarp merely. How rudi- 
mental are all his ideas! I knew a boy who began 
his school composition on swallows by saying there 
were two kinds of swallows,—chimney swallows 
and swallows, 
Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from 
the first, more definite and “translatable.” 
XVII 
Who will write the natural history of the boy? 
One of the first points to be taken account of is his 
clannishness. The boys of one neighborhood are 
always pitted against those of an adjoining neigh- 
borhood, or of one end of the town against those 
of the other end. A bridge, a river, a railroad 
track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hos- 
tile tribes. The boys that go up the road from the 
country school hoot derisively at those that go down 
the road, and not infrequently add the insult of 
stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting 
and the missiles with interest. 
Often there is open war, and the boys meet and 
have regular battles. A few years since, the boys 
