It was on an early day of our new _tyrocinium_, or perhaps on the very
first, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue from
the factory [6] sang out to us derisively, "Hollo, bucks!" In this the
reader may fail to perceive any atrocious insult commensurate to the long
war which followed. But the reader is wrong. The word "_dandies_" [7]
which was what the villain meant, had not then been born, so that he
could not have called us by that name, unless through the spirit of
prophecy. _Buck_ was the nearest word at hand in his Manchester
vocabulary: he gave all he could, and let us dream the rest. But in the
next moment he discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime by
saluting us as "Boots! boots!" My brother made a dead stop, surveyed him
with intense disdain, and bade him draw near, that he might "give his
flesh to the fowls of the air." The boy declined to accept this
liberal invitation, and conveyed his answer by a most contemptuous and
plebian gesture, [8] upon which my brother drove him in with a shower
of stones.

During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my part, remained
inactive, and therefore apparently neutral. But this was the last time
that I did so: for the moment, indeed, I was taken by surprise. To be
called a _buck_ by one that had it in his choice to have called me a
coward, a thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable offence;
and as to _boots_, that rested upon a flagrant fact that could not be
denied; so that at first I was green enough to regard the boy as very
considerate and indulgent. But my brother soon rectified my views; or,
if any doubts remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of my
paramount duty to himself, which was threefold. First, it seems that
I owed military allegiant to _him_, as my commander-in-chief, whenever
we "took the field;" secondly, by the law of nations, I, being a cadet