it is probably as wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one; and it
made no difference because it was easy to steal this sort. Easy
stealing is no better than easy lying, where detection of the lie is
difficult. The boy who steals his mother's pies has no right to be
surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons. Stealing is
like charity in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.




X

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD

If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,--the best
kind of boy to be in the summer,--I would be about ten years of age.
As soon as I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boy
is, that just as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has to
be set to doing something else. If a country boy were wise, he would
stay at just that age when he could enjoy himself most, and have the
least expected of him in the way of work.

Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do
"chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters,
rather than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such
boy. He lived in the town of Goshen,--not the place where the butter
is made, but a much better Goshen than that. And I never saw him,
but I heard of him; and being about the same age, as I supposed, I
was taken once from Zoah, where I lived, to Goshen to see him. But
he was dead. He had been dead almost a year, so that it was