any other friendship my boy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved
each other, and that was all; and why people love one another there is
never any satisfactory telling. But this friend of his must have had
great natural good in him; and if I could find a man of the make of that
boy I am sure I should love him.

My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it was
often made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; so
that in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been to
him. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he was
ignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I am
not able to say now just how he worked his friend up to the point of
coming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, and
putting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and my
boy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendship
with him before the whole school. This was not easy, for though
everybody knew how much the two were together, it was a different thing
to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to
help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He
struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from
the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one
half-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiled
their simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the old
ground of perfect trust and affection. Perhaps the kindly earth-spirit
had instinctively felt a wound from the shame my boy had tried to brave
out, and shrank from their former friendship without quite knowing why.
Perhaps it was my boy who learned to realize that there could be little
in common but their common humanity between them, and could not go back
to that. At any rate, their friendship declined from this point; and it
seems to me, somehow, a pity.

Among the boys who were between my boy and his brother in age was one
whom all the boys liked, because he was clever with everybody, with
little boys as well as big boys. He was a laughing, pleasant fellow,
always ready for fun, but he never did mean things, and he had an open
face that made a friend of every one who saw him. He had a father that
had a house with a lightning-rod, so that if you were in it when there
was a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boy
once