TOUCHES OF NATURE 67 
of all sizes had collected upon the bridge. The 
new-comer was presently challenged by the boys of 
his own age to jump with them. This he readily 
did, and cleared their farthest mark. Then he gave 
them a sample of his stone-throwing, and at this 
pastime he also far surpassed his competitors. Be- 
fore long, the feeling of the crowd began to set 
against him, showing itself first in the smaller fry, 
who began half playfully to throw pebbles and 
lumps of dry earth at him. Then they would run 
up slyly and strike him with sticks. Presently the 
large ones began to tease him in like manner, till 
the contagion of hostility spread, and the whole 
pack was arrayed against the strange boy. He kept 
them at bay for a few moments with his stick, till, 
the feeling mounting higher and higher, he broke 
through their ranks, and fled precipitately toward 
home, with the throng of little and big at his heels. 
Gradually the girls and smaller boys dropped behind, 
till at the end of the first fifty rods only two boys 
of about his own size, with wrath and determination 
in their faces, kept up the pursuit. But to these 
he added the final insult of beating them at run- 
ning also, and reached, much blown, a point beyond 
which they refused to follow. 
The world the boy lives in is separate and dis- 
tinct from the world the man lives in. It is a 
world inhabited only by boys. No events are im- 
portant or of any moment save those affecting boys. 
How they ignore the presence of their elders on the 
street, shouting out their invitations, their appoint- 
