Old Cap, you forgot to flash occasional glances of cautious
inquiry forward in order to make sure the teacher was where she properly
should be, at her desk up in front, and read on and on until that subtle
sixth sense which comes to you when a lot of people begin staring at
you warned you something was amiss, and you looked up and round you and
found yourself all surrounded by a ring of cruel, gloating eyes?

I say cruel advisedly, because up to a certain age children are
naturally more cruel than tigers. Civilization has provided them with
tools, as it were, for practicing cruelty, whereas the tiger must rely
only on his teeth and his bare claws. So you looked round, feeling that
the shadow of an impending doom encompassed you, and then you realized
that for no telling how long the teacher had been standing just behind
you, reading over your shoulder.

And at home were you caught in the act of reading them, or--what from
the parental standpoint was almost as bad--in the act of harboring them?
I was. Housecleaning times, when they found them hidden under furniture
or tucked away on the back shelves of pantry closets, I was paddled
until I had the feelings of a slice of hot, buttered toast somewhat
scorched on the under side. And each time, having been paddled, I was
admonished that boys who read dime novels--only they weren't dime novels
at all but cost uniformly five cents a copy--always came to a bad
end, growing up to be criminals or Republicans or something equally
abhorrent. And I was urged to read books which would help me to shape
my career in a proper course. Such books were put into my hands, and
I loathed them. I know now why when I grew up my gorge rose and my
appetite turned against so-called classics. Their style was so much like
the style of the books which older people wanted me to read when I was
in my early teens.

Such were the specious statements advanced by the oldsters. And we
had no reply for their argument, or if we had one could not find the
language in which to couch it. Besides there was another and a deeper
reason. A boy, being what he is, the most sensitive and the most
secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost emotions, rarely
does bare his real thoughts to his elders, for they, alas, are not young
enough to have a fellow feeling, and they are too old and they know too
much to be really wise.

What we might have answered, had we had the verbal facility and had we
not feared f