in Florence in the good old times. There was a great abundance of the
finest kind of pebbles, from the size of a robin's egg upward, smooth
and shapely, which the boys called rocks. They were always stoning
something, birds, or dogs, or mere inanimate marks, but most of the time
they were stoning one another. They came out of their houses, or
front-yards, and began to throw stones, when they were on perfectly good
terms, and they usually threw stones in parting for the day. They
stoned a boy who left a group singly, and it was lawful for him to throw
stones back at the rest, if the whim took him, when he got a little way
off. With all this stone-throwing, very little harm was done, though now
and then a stone took a boy on the skull, and raised a lump of its own
size. Then the other boys knew, by the roar of rage and pain he set up,
that he had been hit, and ran home and left him to his fate.
Their fights were mostly informal scuffles, on and off in a flash, and
conducted with none of the ceremony which I have read of concerning the
fights of English boys. It was believed that some of the fellows knew
how to box, and all the fellows intended to learn, but nobody ever did.
The fights sprang usually out of some trouble of the moment; but at
times they were arranged to settle some question of moral or physical
superiority. Then one boy put a chip on his shoulder and dared the other
to knock it off. It took a great while to bring the champions to blows,
and I have known the mere preparatory insults of a fight of this kind to
wear out the spirit of the combatants and the patience of the
spectators, so that not a blow was struck, finally, and the whole affair
fell through.
Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy
went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would
have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have scorned to
play with one. Of course while they were very little they played with
girls; and after they began to be big boys, eleven or twelve years old,
they began to pay girls some attention; but for the rest they simply
left them out of the question, except at parties, when the games
obliged them to take some notice of the girls. Even then, however, it
was not good form for a boy to be greatly interested in them; and he had
to conceal any little fancy he had about this girl or that unless he
wanted to be considered soft by the other fellows. When they were having
fun they did not want to have any girls around; but in the back-yard a
boy might play teeter or seesaw, or some such thing, with his sisters
and their friends, without necessarily losing caste, though such things
were not encouraged. On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them
against anything that he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not
have to verify the fact that anything had been said or done; you merely
had to hear that it had. It once fell to my boy to avenge such a
reported wrong from a boy who had not many friends in school, a timid
creature whom the mere accusation frightened half out of his wits, and
who wildly protested his innocence. He ran, and my boy followed with the
other boys after him, till they overtook the culprit and brought him to
bay against a high board fence; and there my boy struck him in his
imploring face. He tried to feel like a righteous champion, but he felt
like a brutal ruffian. He long had the sight of that terrified, weeping
face, and with shame and sickness of heart he cowered before it. It was
pretty nearly the last of his fighting; and though he came off victor,
he felt that he would rather be beaten himself than do another such act
of justice. In fact, it seems best to be very careful how we try to do
justice in this world, and mostly to leave retribution of all kinds to
God, who really knows about things; and content ourselves as much as
possible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.
The boys had very little to do with the inside of one another's houses.
They would follow a boy to his door, and wait for him to come out; and
they would sometimes get him to go in and ask his mother for crullers or
sugar-cakes; when they came to see him they never went indoors for him,
but stood on the sidewalk and called him with a peculiar cry, something
like "E-oo-we, e-oo-we!" and threw stones at trees, or anything, till he
came out. If he did not come, after a reasonable time, they knew he was
not there, or that his mother would not let him come. A fellow was kept
in that way, now and then. If a fellow's mother came to the door the
boys always ran.
The mother represented the family sovereignty; the father was seldom
seen, and he counted for little or nothing among the outside boys. It
was the mother who could say whether a boy might go fishing or in
swimming, and she was held a good mother or not according as she
habitually said yes or no. There was no other standard of goodness for
mothers in the boy's world, and could be none; and a bad mother might be
outwitted by any device that the other boys could suggest to her boy.
Such a boy was always willing to listen to any suggestion, and no boy
took it hard if the other fellows made fun when their plan got him into
trouble at home. If a boy came out after some such experience with his
face wet, and his eyes red, and his lips swollen, of course you had to
laugh; he expected it, and you expected him to stone you for laughing.
When a boy's mother had company, he went and hid till the guests were
gone, or only came out of concealment to get some sort of shy lunch. If
the other fellows' mothers were there, he might be a little bolder, and
bring out cake from the second table. But he had to be pretty careful
how he conformed to any of the usages of grown-up society. A fellow who
brushed his hair, and put on shoes, and came into the parlor when there
was company, was not well seen among the fellows; he was regarded in
some degree as a girl-boy; a boy who wished to stand well with other
boys kept in the wood-shed, and only went in as far as the kitchen to
get things for his guests in the back-yard. Yet there were mothers who
would make a boy put on a collar when they had company, and disgrace him
before the world by making him stay round and help; they acted as if
they had no sense and no pity; but such mothers were rare.
Most mothers yielded to public opinion and let their boys leave the
house, and wear just what they always wore. I have told how little they
wore in summer. Of course in winter they had to put on more things. In
those days knickerbockers were unknown, and if a boy had appeared in
short pants and long stockings he would have been thought dressed like a
circus-actor. Boys wore long pantaloons, like men, as soon as they put
off skirts, and they wore jackets or roundabouts such as the English
boys still wear at Eton. When the cold weather came they had to put on
shoes and stockings, or rather long-legged boots, such as are seen now
only among lumbermen and teamsters in the country. Most of the fellows
had stoga boots, as heavy as iron and as hard; they were splendid to
skate in, they kept your ankles so stiff. Sometimes they greased them to
keep the water out; but they never blacked them except on Sunday, and
before Saturday they were as red as a rusty stove-pipe. At night they
were always so wet that you could not get them off without a boot-jack,
and you could hardly do it anyway; sometimes you got your brother to
help you off with them, and then he pulled you all round the room. In
the morning they were dry, but just as hard as stone, and you had to
soap the heel of your woollen sock (which your grandmother had knitted
for you, or maybe some of your aunts) before you could get your foot in,
and sometimes the ears of the boot that you pulled it on by would give
way, and you would have to stamp your foot in and kick the toe against
the mop-board. Then you gasped and limped round, with your feet like
fire, till you could get out and limber your boots up in some water
somewhere. About noon your chilblains began.
My boy had his secret longing to be a dandy, and once he was so taken
with a little silk hat at the hat-store that he gave his father no peace
till he got it for him. But the very first time he wore it the boys made
fun of it, and that was enough. After that he wore it several times with
streaming tears; and then he was allowed to lay it aside, and compromise
on an unstylish cap of velvet, which he had despised before. I do not
know why a velvet cap was despised, but it was; a cap with a tassel was
babyish. The most desired kind of cap was a flat one of blue broadcloth,
with a patent-leather peak, and a removable cover of oil-cloth, silk if
you were rich, cotton if you were poor; when you had pulled the top of
such a cap over on one side, you were dressed for conquest, especially
if you wore your hair long. My boy had such a cap, with a silk oil-cloth
cover, but his splendor was marred by his short hair.
At one time boots with long, sharp-pointed toes were the fashion, and he
so ardently desired a pair of these that fate granted his prayer, but
in the ironical spirit which fate usually shows when granting a person's
prayers. These boots were of calf-skin, and they had red leather tops,
which you could show by letting your pantaloon-legs carelessly catch on
the ears; but the smallest pair in town was several sizes too large for
my boy. The other boys were not slow to discover the fact, and his
martyrdom with these boots began at once. But he was not allowed to give
them up as he did the silk hat; he had to wear them out. However, it did
not take long to wear out a pair of boots in the Boy's Town. A few
weeks' scuffling over the gravelly ground, or a single day's steady
sliding made them the subjects for half-soling, and then it was a
question of only a very little time.
A good many of the boys, though, wore their boots long after they were
worn out, and so they did with the rest of their clothes. I have tried
to give some notion of the general distribution of comfort which was
never riches in the Boy's Town; but I am afraid that I could not paint
the simplicity of things there truly without being misunderstood in
these days of great splendor and great squalor. Everybody had enough,
but nobody had too much; the richest man in town might be worth twenty
thousand dollars. There were distinctions among the grown people, and no
doubt there were the social cruelties which are the modern expression of
the savage spirit otherwise repressed by civilization; but these were
unknown among the boys. Savages they were, but not that kind of savages.
They valued a boy for his character and prowess, and it did not matter
in the least that he was ragged and dirty. Their mothers might not allow
him the run of their kitchens quite so freely as some other boys, but
the boys went with him just the same, and they never noticed how little
he was washed and dressed. The best of them had not an overcoat; and
underclothing was unknown among them. When a boy had buttoned up his
roundabout, and put on his mittens, and tied his comforter round his
neck and over his ears, he was warmly dressed.
VIII.
PLAYS AND PASTIMES.
ABOUT the time fate cursed him with a granted prayer in those boots, my
boy was deep in the reading of a book about Grecian mythology which he
found perpetually fascinating; he read it over and over without ever
thinking of stopping merely because he had already been through it
twenty or thirty times. It had pictures of all the gods and goddesses,
demigods and heroes; and he tried to make poems upon their various
characters and exploits. But Apollo was his favorite, and I believe it
was with some hope of employing them in a personation of the god that he
coveted those red-topped sharp-toed calf-skin boots. He had a notion
that if he could get up a chariot by sawing down the sides of a
store-box for the body, and borrowing the hind-wheels of the baby's
willow wagon, and then, drawn by the family dog Tip at a mad gallop,
come suddenly whirling round the corner of the school-house, wearing
spangled circus-tights and bearing Apollo's bow and shaft, while a
silken scarf which he had seen in a bureau-drawer at home blew gallantly
out behind him, it would have a fine effect with the boys. Some of the
fellows wished to be highway robbers and outlaws; one who intended to be
a pirate afterwards got so far in a maritime career as to invent a
steam-engine governor now in use on the seagoing steamers; my boy was
content to be simply a god, the god of poetry and sunshine. He never
realized his modest ambition, but then boys never realize anything;
though they have lots of fun failing.
[Illustration: "A CITIZEN'S CHARACTER FOR CLEVERNESS OR MEANNESS WAS
FIXED BY HIS WALKING ROUND OR OVER THE RINGS."]
In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and went
in a stated order. The first thing in the spring as soon as the frost
began to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played till
the weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left it
off. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but any
boy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbles
he won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out in
the morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or a
brown marble of the Lowest value, and come home at night with a
pocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters find
bull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was not
approved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness of
his heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
before he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with
the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw
cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly
every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from
resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster
of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but it was considered effeminate,
and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were
always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that
of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether
a boy took-up or edged beyond the very place where his toy lay when he
shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground in
shooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble against
another and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" before
the other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of the
ring, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gambling
and the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, and
began again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings when
school let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with a
stick, but when there was a great hurry, or there was no stick handy,
the side of a fellow's boot would do, and the hollows for knucks were
always bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to
wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made
for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a
citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his
walking round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia
sense for amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense was
smart.
There were many games of ball. Two-cornered cat was played by four boys:
two to bat, and two behind the batters to catch and pitch.
Three-cornered cat was, I believe, the game which has since grown into
base-ball, and was even then sometimes called so. But soak-about was the
favorite game at school, and it simply consisted of hitting any other
boy you could with the ball when you could get it. Foot-ball was always
played with a bladder, and it came in season with the cold weather when
the putting up of beef began; the business was practically regarded by
the boys as one undertaken to supply them with bladders for foot-balls.
When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their shoes
for good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings. Life
has a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none so
ecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast of
our mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then from
the heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, and
cousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leaps
as wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their arms
in June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of the
earlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, his
races; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leave
the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is
all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the
earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they
shall not be thankless, nor she a step-mother any more.
About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, which
you were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and before
you had got used to your new running weight. When you struck your toe
against a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hopped
about a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.
Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,
till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, as
soon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quiet
about it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.
With the races came the other plays which involved running, like
hide-and-go-whoop, and tag, and dog-on-wood, and horse, which I dare say
the boys of other times and other wheres know by different names. The
Smith-house neighborhood was a famous place for them all, both because
there were such lots of boys, and because there were so many sheds and
stables where you could hide, and everything. There was a town pump
there for you, so that you would not have to go into the house for a
drink when you got thirsty, and perhaps be set to doing something; and
there were plenty of boards for teeter and see-saw; and somehow that
neighborhood seemed to understand boys, and did not molest them in any
way. In a vacant lot behind one of the houses there was a whirligig,
that you could ride on and get sick in about a minute; it was splendid.
There was a family of German boys living across the street, that you
could stone whenever they came out of their front gate, for the simple
and sufficient reason that they were Dutchmen, and without going to the
trouble of a quarrel with them. My boy was not allowed to stone them;
but when he was with the other fellows, and his elder brother was not
along, he could not help stoning them.
There were shade trees all along that street, that you could climb if
you wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had run
yourself out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctly
remembered that under one of these trees his elder brother first
broached to him that awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and applied
to their own lives the moral of "The Trippings of Tom Pepper;" he
remembered how a conviction of the righteousness of the scheme sank into
his soul, and he could not withhold his consent. Under the same tree,
and very likely at the same time, a solemn conclave of boys, all the
boys there were, discussed the feasibility of tying a tin can to a dog's
tail, and seeing how he would act. They had all heard of the thing, but
none of them had seen it; and it was not so much a question of whether
you ought to do a thing that on the very face of it would be so much
fun, and if it did not amuse the dog as highly as anybody, could
certainly do him no harm, as it was a question of whose dog you should
get to take the dog's part in the sport. It was held that an old dog
would probably not keep still long enough for you to tie the can on; he
would have his suspicions; or else he would not run when the can was
tied on, but very likely just go and lie down somewhere. The lot finally
fell to a young yellow dog belonging to one of the boys, and the owner
at once ran home to get him, and easily lured him back to the other boys
with flatteries and caresses. The flatteries and caresses were not
needed, for a dog is always glad to go with boys, upon any pretext, and
so far from thinking that he does them a favor, he feels himself greatly
honored. But I dare say the boy had a guilty fear that if his dog had
known why he was invited to be of that party of boys, he might have
pleaded a previous engagement. As it was, he came joyfully, and allowed
the can to be tied to his tail without misgiving. If there had been any
question with the boys as to whether he would enter fully into the
spirit of the affair, it must have been instantly dissipated by the
dog's behavior when he felt the loop tighten on his tail, and looked
round to see what the matter was. The boys hardly had a chance to cheer
him before he flashed out of sight round the corner, and they hardly had
time to think before he flashed into sight again from the other
direction. He whizzed along the ground, and the can hurtled in the air,
but there was no other sound, and the cheers died away on the boys'
lips. The boy who owned the dog began to cry, and the other fellows
began to blame him for not stopping the dog. But he might as well have
tried to stop a streak of lightning; the only thing you could do was to
keep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it was successful beyond the
wildest dreams of its projectors, though it would have been a sort of
relief if the dog had taken some other road, for variety, or had even
reversed his course. But he kept on as he began, and by a common impulse
the boys made up their minds to abandon the whole affair to him. They
all ran home and hid, or else walked about and tried to ignore it. But
at this point the grown-up people began to be interested; the mothers
came to their doors to see what was the matter. Yet even the mothers
were powerless in a case like that, and the enthusiast had to be left
to his fate. He was found under a barn at last, breathless, almost
lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who untied the can from his tail.
Eventually he got well again, and lived to be a solemn warning to the
boys; he was touchingly distrustful of their advances for a time, but he
finally forgot and forgave everything. They did not forget, and they
never tried tying a tin can to a dog's tail again, among all the things
they tried and kept trying. Once was enough; and they never even liked
to talk of it, the sight was so awful. They were really fond of the dog,
and if they could have thought he would take the matter so seriously,
they would not have tried to have that kind of fun with him. It cured
them of ever wanting to have that kind of fun with any dog.