le as it was for little boys and girls.

The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights.
Speaking of those thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cupboard. I used
to know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, and brushed his
hair straight up like General Jackson, and went to the legislature,
where he always voted against every measure that was proposed, in the
most honest manner, and got the reputation of being the "watch-dog of
the treasury." Rats in the cellar were nothing to be compared to this
boy for destructiveness in pies. He used to go down whenever he could
make an excuse, to get apples for the family, or draw a mug of cider
for his dear old grandfather (who was a famous story-teller about the
Revolutionary War, and would no doubt have been wounded in battle if he
had not been as prudent as he was patriotic), and come upstairs with a
tallow candle in one hand and the apples or cider in the other, looking
as innocent and as unconscious as if he had never done anything in his
life except deny himself butter for the sake of the heathen. And
yet this boy would have buttoned under his jacket an entire round
pumpkin-pie. And the pie was so well made and so dry that it was not
injured in the least, and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more
than if it had been inside of him instead of outside; and this boy would
retire to a secluded place and eat it with another boy, being never
suspected because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and
he never appeared to have one about him. But he did something worse
than this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she told the
family that she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said a
word, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired man was probably
regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his days, and if he
had been accused of robbing, they would have believed him guilty.

I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse now about
that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his jacket and
sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like a
round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals. Perhaps not. It is
difficult to say exactly what was the sin of stealing that kind of pie,
especially if the one who stole it ate it. It could have been used for
the game of pitching quoits, and a pair of them would have made very
fair wheels for the dog-cart. And yet it i