MEMORIES OE MISCHIEF. 
281 
Boys are boys, and not little men. They are all alike, 
except as to the colour of the hair and knickerbockers. 
They all inherit the same pride, the same “ devil-may- 
care ” ambition, the same spirit of mischief, 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 will not do, 
let the consequence be what it may, provided there is no 
unmistakeable criminality ; and then you learn what an 
honest nature lurks beneath that Puck’s grinning coun¬ 
tenance, resting on its own self-trust, and to be neither 
bought nor sold. 
With what pleasure did we prepare our little sailing- 
boats, and our pack-thread fishing-tackle, dreaming all 
the while of Eobinson Crusoe and the desolate island, 
and entertaining, much to our parents* sorrow, serious 
thoughts of “ going to sea"—a threat that every boy 
indulges in when he has read that most seductive of 
books, and gained sufficient knowledge of navigation to 
send his sailing-boat'safely across a river. There was 
one out-door sport of ours for which we can never for¬ 
give ourself—it was so thoroughly mischievous—and 
that was, throwing a bench-ball at the church clock, a 
