rds' nests. There would be two hands for use in
skinning up the tree, and one hand for scaring off the mother bird and
one hand for stealing the eggs. And for hanging on behind wagons the
combination positively could not be beaten. Then there would be the
gaudy conspicuousness of going around with four arms weaving in and
out in a kind of spidery effect while less favored boys were forced to
content themselves with just an ordinary and insufficient pair. Really,
there was only one drawback to the contemplation of this scheme--there'd
be twice as many hands to wash when company was coming to dinner.

Generally speaking a boy's hands give him no serious concern during the
first few years of his life except at such times as his mother grows
officious and fussy and insists that they ought to be washed up as far
as the regular place for washing a boy's hands, to wit, about midway
between the knuckles and the wrist. The fact that one finger is usually
in a state of mashedness is no drawback, but a benefit. The presence
of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a boy's hand a touch of
distinctiveness--singles it out from ordinary unmaimed hands. Its
presence has been known to excuse its happy possessor from such chores
as bringing in wood for the kitchen stove or pulling dock weeds out of
the grass in a front yard where it would be much easier and quicker to
pull the grass out of the dock weeds. It may even be made a source of
profit by removing the wrappings and charging two china marbles a look.
I seem to recall that in the case of a specially attractive injury, such
as a thumb nail knocked off or a deep cut which has refused to heal by
first intention or an imbedded splinter in process of being drawn out
by a scrap of fat meat, that as much as four china marbles could be
charged.

On the Fourth of July you occasionally burned your hands and in cold
winters they chapped extensively across the knuckles but these were but
the marks and scars of honorable endeavor and a hardy endurance. In
our set the boy whose knuckles had the deepest cracks in them was
a prominent and admired figure, crowned, as you might say, with an
imaginary chaplet by reason of his chaps.

With girls, of course, it was different.

Girls were superfluous and unnecessary creatures with a false and
inflated idea of the value of soap and water. Their hands weren't
good for much anyway. Later on we discovered that a girl's hands were
excellent for holding p