s probably as wrong to steal
a thin pie as a thick one; and it made no difference because it was easy
to steal this sort. Easy stealing is no better than easy lying, where
detection of the lie is difficult. The boy who steals his mother's pies
has no right to be surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons.
Stealing is like charity in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.

X. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD

If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,--the best kind
of boy to be in the summer,--I would be about ten years of age. As soon
as I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boy is, that
just as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has to be set to
doing something else. If a country boy were wise, he would stay at just
that age when he could enjoy himself most, and have the least expected
of him in the way of work.

Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do
"chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters, rather
than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such boy. He
lived in the town of Goshen,--not the place where the butter is made,
but a much better Goshen than that. And I never saw him, but I heard of
him; and being about the same age, as I supposed, I was taken once from
Zoah, where I lived, to Goshen to see him. But he was dead. He had been
dead almost a year, so that it was impossible to see him. He died of the
most singular disease: it was from not eating green apples in the season
of them. This boy, whose name was Solomon, before he died, would
rather split up kindling-wood for his mother than go a-fishing,--the
consequence was, that he was kept at splitting kindling-wood and such
work most of the time, and grew a better and more useful boy day by day.
Solomon would not disobey his parents and eat green apples,--not even
when they were ripe enough to knock off with a stick, but he had such
a longing for them, that he pined, and passed away. If he had eaten the
green apples, he would have died of them, probably; so that his example
is a difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to get
a moral from. All his little playmates who ate green apples came to
Solomon's funeral, and were very sorry for what they had done.

John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, nor half
so dead. He was a farmer's boy, as Solomon was, but he did not take so
much interest in the farm. If Jo