My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at
school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning
in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. I
dare say it was a sense of his kinship with Nature that took my boy with
him, and rested his soul from all its wild dreams and vain imaginings.
He was like a piece of the genial earth, with no more hint of toiling or
spinning in him; willing for anything, but passive, and without force or
aim. He lived in a belated log-cabin that stood in the edge of a
cornfield on the river-bank, and he seemed, one day when my boy went to
find him there, to have a mother, who smoked a cob-pipe, and two or
three large sisters who hulked about in the one dim, low room. But the
boys had very little to do with each other's houses, or, for that
matter, with each other's yards. His friend seldom entered my boy's
gate, and never his door; for with all the toleration his father felt
for every manner of human creature, he could not see what good the boy
was to get from this queer companion. It is certain that he got no harm;
for his companion was too vague and void even to think evil. Socially,
he was as low as the ground under foot, but morally he was as good as
any boy in the Boy's Town, and he had no bad impulses. He had no
impulses at all, in fact, and of his own motion he never did anything,
or seemed to think anything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply
appeared in the neighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence
till he came out. He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other
fellows did, but waited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off
with wherever my boy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never
any will but to go in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did
not even fish; and I suppose that money could not have hired him to run
races. He played marbles, but not very well, and he did not care much
for the game. The two boys soaked themselves in the river together, and
then they lay on the sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but
my boy could not have talked to him about any of the things that were in
his books, or the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must
rather have soothed against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of
his fantastic spirit, and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax
and easy aimlessness. Their friendship was not only more innocent than