yet,--not a leaf or a twig. Until he is well into his teens, and
sometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod before the fruit has
developed,--indefinite, succulent, rich in possibilities which are
only vaguely outlined. He is a pericarp merely. How rudimental are
all his ideas! I knew a boy who began his school composition on
swallows by saying there were two kinds of swallows,--chimney
swallows and swallows.

Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, more
definite and "translatable."



XVII

Who will write the natural history of the boy? One of the first
points to be taken account of is his clannishness. The boys of one
neighborhood are always pitted against those of an adjoining
neighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the other
end. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries of
hostile or semi-hostile tribes. The boys that go up the road from
the country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road,
and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roaders
return the hooting and the missiles with interest.

Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regular
battles. A few years since, the boys of two rival towns on opposite
sides of the Ohio River became so belligerent that the authorities
had to interfere. Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the West
Virginia side of the river, he was unmercifully beaten; and when a