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negro minstrel dialogues, — and nothing else. The literary 

 material is either intensely stupid, or spiced to the highest de- 

 gree with sensation. The stories are about hunting, Indian 

 warfare, California desperado life, pirates, wild sea adventure, 

 highwaymen, crimes and horrible accidents, horrors (tortures 

 and snake stories), gamblers, practical jokes, the life of vaga- 

 bond boys, and the wild behavior of dissipated boys in great 

 cities. This catalogue is exhaustive. There are no other 

 stories. The dialogue is short, sharp, and continuous. It is 

 broken by the minimum of description and by no preaching. 

 It is almost entirely in slang of the most exaggerated kind, and 

 of every variety, — that of the sea, of California, and of the 

 Bowery; of negroes, 'Dutchmen,* Yankees, Chinese, and In- 

 dians, to say nothing of that of a score of the most irregular 

 and questionable occupations ever followed by men. When 

 the stories even nominally treat of school-life, they say nothing 

 of school-life. There is simply a succession of practical jokes, 

 mischief, outrages, heroic but impossible feats, fightmg, and 

 horrors, but nothing about the business of school, any more 

 than if the house in which the boys live were a summer board- 

 ing-house. The sensational incidents in these stories are intro- 

 duced by force, apparently for the mere purpose of producing 

 a highly spiced mixture. 



One type of hero who figures largely in these stories is the 

 vagabond boy, in the streets of a great city, in the Kocky 

 Mountains, or at sea. Sometimes he has some cleverness in 

 singing, or dancing, or ventriloquism, or negro acting, and he 

 gains a precarious living while roving about. This vagabond 

 life of adventure is represented as interesting and enticing, and, 

 when the hero rises from vagabond life to flash life, that is 

 represented as success. Kespectable home life, on the other 

 hand, is not depicted at all, and is only referred to as stupid 

 and below the ambition of a clever youth. Industry and econ- 

 omy in some regular pursuit, or in study, are never mentioned 

 at all. Generosity does not consist in even luxurious expend- 

 iture, but in wasting money. The type seems to be that of the 

 gambler, one day ' flush ' and wasteful, another day ruined and 

 in misery. 



There is atiot-her type of boy who sometimes furnishes the 



