wrappings and charging two china marbles a look. I seem to recall
that in the case of a specially attractive injury, such as a thumb
nail knocked off or a deep cut which has refused to heal by first
intention or an imbedded splinter in process of being drawn out by
a scrap of fat meat, that as much as four china marbles could be
charged.

On the Fourth of July you occasionally burned your hands and in
cold winters they chapped extensively across the knuckles but
these were but the marks and scars of honorable endeavor and a
hardy endurance. In our set the boy whose knuckles had the deepest
cracks in them was a prominent and admired figure, crowned, as you
might say, with an imaginary chaplet by reason of his chaps.

With girls, of course, it was different.

Girls were superfluous and unnecessary creatures with a false and
inflated idea of the value of soap and water. Their hands weren't
good for much anyway. Later on we discovered that a girl's hands
were excellent for holding purposes in a hammock or while coming
back from a straw ride, but I am speaking now of the earlier stages
of our development, before the presence of the ostensibly weaker
sex began to awaken responsive throbs in our several bosoms--in
short when girls were merely nuisances and things to be ignored
whenever possible. In that early stage of his existence hands
have no altruistic or sentimental or ornamental value for a boy--
they are for useful purposes altogether and are regarded as such.

It is only when he has reached the age of tail coats and spike-fence
collars that he discovers two hands are frequently too many and