than to look after the boys. So for them it was a continual life in the
open air, which makes the body strong and hard. Augustin and his companions
should be pictured as young wild-cats.

This roughness came out strong at games of ball, and generally at all
the games in which there are two sides, conquerors and prisoners, or
fights with sticks and stones. Stone-throwing is an incurable habit
among the little Africans. Even now in the towns our police are obliged
to take measures against these ferocious children. In Augustin's time,
at Cherchell, which is the ancient _Caesarea Mauretaniae_, the childish
population was split into two hostile camps which stoned each other. On
certain holidays the fathers and big brothers joined the children; blood
flowed, and there were deaths.

The bishop Augustin recalls with severity the "superb victories" he won in
jousts of this kind. But I find it hard to believe that such a delicate
child (he was sickly almost all his life) could have got much pleasure out
of these brutal sports. If he was drawn into them by the example of others,
it must have been through the imagination they appealed to him. In these
battles, wherein sides took the field as Romans against Carthaginians,
Greeks against Trojans, he believed himself Scipio or Hannibal, Achilles
or Hector. He experienced beforehand, as a rhetorician, the intoxication
of a triumph which playfellows who were stronger and better provided with
muscles gave him a hard fight for. He did not always get the upper hand,
except perhaps when he bribed the enemy. But an eager young soul, such
as he was, can hardly be content with half-victories; he wants to excel.
Accordingly, he sought his revenge in those games wherein the mind has the
chief part. He listened to stories with delight, and in his turn repeated
them to his little friends, thus trying upon an audience of boys that charm
of speech by which later he was to subdue crowds. They also played at