r tribe, and he became a leader among them. When you moved away from
a neighborhood you did not lose all your rights in it; you did not have
to fight when you went back to see the boys, or anything; but if one of
them met you in your new precincts you might have to try conclusions
with him; and perhaps, if he was a boy who had been in the habit of
whipping you, you were quite ready to do so. When my boy's family left
the Smith house, one of the boys from that neighborhood came up to see
him at the Falconer house, and tried to carry things with a high hand,
as he always had done. Then my boy fought him, quite as if he were not a
Delaware and the other boy not an Iroquois, with sovereign rights over
him. My boy was beaten, but the difference was that, if he had not been
on new ground, he would have been beaten without daring to fight. His
mother witnessed the combat, and came out and shamed him for his
behavior, and had in the other boy, and made them friends over some
sugar-cakes. But after that the boys of the Smith neighborhood
understood that my boy would not be whipped without fighting. The home
instruction was all against fighting; my boy was taught that it was not
only wicked but foolish; that if it was wrong to strike, it was just as
wrong to strike back; that two wrongs never made a right, and so on. But
all this was not of the least effect with a hot temper amid the trials
and perplexities of life in the Boy's Town.

Their fights were mostly informal scuffles, on and off in a flash, and
conducted with none of the ceremony which I have read of concerning the
fights of English boys. It was believed that some of the fellows knew
how to box, and all the fellows intended to learn, but nobody ever did.
The fights sprang usually out of some trouble of the moment; but at
times they were arranged to settle some question of moral or physical
superiority. Then one boy put a chip on his shoulder and dared the other
to knock it off. It took a great while to bring the champions to blows,
and I have known the mere preparatory insults of a fight of this kind to
wear out the spirit of the combatants and the patience of the
spectators, so that not a blow was struck, finally, and the whole affair
fell through.

GIRLS

Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy
went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would
have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have