le-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did
this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when
they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when
they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had
to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at
all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and
as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort
of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since
this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one
time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the
fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a
boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about
going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard
fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then
they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made
this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on
wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came
upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public
opinion in the boy's world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their
honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts;
and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As
the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if
you were such a miscreant, and there was some boy you hated, you stole
up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in one arm or both arms of his
shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into your heart, you soaked the knot
in water, and pounded it with a stone.

I am glad to know that in the days when he was thoughtless and senseless
enough, my boy never was guilty of any degree of this meanness. It was
his brother, I suppose, who taught him to abhor it; and perhaps it was
his own suffering from it in part; for he, too, sometimes shed bitter
tears over such a knot, as I have seen hapless little wretches do,
tearing at it with their nails and gnawing at it with their teeth,
knowing that the time was passing when they could hope to hide the fact
that they had been in swimming, and foreseeing no remedy but to cut off
the sleeve above the knot, or else put on their clothes without the
shirt, and trust to u