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 



