natural boys, we "cheeked," and "punched" and "clouted"; we thought
ourselves Red Indians and cowboys and such-like honourable things,
and not young English gentlemen; we never felt the strain of "Onward
Christian soldiers," nor were swayed by any premature piety in the cold
oak pew of our Sunday devotions. All that was good. We spent our rare
pennies in the uncensored reading matter of the village dame's shop, on
the Boys of England, and honest penny dreadfuls--ripping stuff, stuff
that anticipated Haggard and Stevenson, badly printed and queerly
illustrated, and very very good for us. On our half-holidays we were
allowed the unusual freedom of rambling in twos and threes wide and far
about the land, talking experimentally, dreaming wildly. There was much
in those walks! To this day the landscape of the Kentish world, with its
low broad distances, its hop gardens and golden stretches of wheat, its
oasts and square church towers, its background of downland and hangers,
has for me a faint sense of adventure added to the pleasure of its
beauty. We smoked on occasion, but nobody put us up to the proper
"boyish" things to do; we never "robbed an orchard" for example, though
there were orchards all about us, we thought stealing was sinful, we
stole incidental apples and turnips and strawberries from the fields
indeed, but in a criminal inglorious fashion, and afterwards we were
ashamed. We had our days of adventure, but they were natural accidents,
our own adventures. There was one hot day when several of us, walking
out towards Maidstone, were incited by the devil to despise ginger beer,
and we fuddled ourselves dreadfully with ale; and a time when our young
minds were infected to the pitch of buying pistols, by the legend of
the Wild West. Young Roots from Highbury came back with a revolver and
cartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life one
holiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine at
Chiselstead, and nearly burst our ear drums; then we fired in a primrose
studded wood by Pickthorn Green, and I gave a false alarm of "keeper,"