He considers the advantage of such an arrangement in school--two
hands in plain view above the desk holding McGuffy's Fourth Reader
at the proper angle for study and the other two out of sight, down
underneath the desk engaged in manufacturing paper wads or playing
crack-a-loo or some other really worth while employment.

Or for robbing birds' nests. There would be two hands for use in
skinning up the tree, and one hand for scaring off the mother bird
and one hand for stealing the eggs. And for hanging on behind
wagons the combination positively could not be beaten. Then there
would be the gaudy conspicuousness of going around with four arms
weaving in and out in a kind of spidery effect while less favored
boys were forced to content themselves with just an ordinary and
insufficient pair. Really, there was only one drawback to the
contemplation of this scheme--there'd be twice as many hands to
wash when company was coming to dinner.

Generally speaking a boy's hands give him no serious concern during
the first few years of his life except at such times as his mother
grows officious and fussy and insists that they ought to be washed
up as far as the regular place for washing a boy's hands, to wit,
about midway between the knuckles and the wrist. The fact that one
finger is usually in a state of mashedness is no drawback, but a
benefit. The presence of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a
boy's hand a touch of distinctiveness--singles it out from ordinary
unmaimed hands. Its presence has been known to excuse its happy
possessor from such chores as bringing in wood for the kitchen
stove or pulling dock weeds out of the grass in a front yard where
it would be much easier and quicker to pull the grass out of the
dock weeds. It may even be made a source of profit by removing the