ngled circus-tights and bearing Apollo's bow and shaft, while a
silken scarf which he had seen in a bureau-drawer at home blew gallantly
out behind him, it would have a fine effect with the boys. Some of the
fellows wished to be highway robbers and outlaws; one who intended to be
a pirate afterwards got so far in a maritime career as to invent a
steam-engine governor now in use on the seagoing steamers; my boy was
content to be simply a god, the god of poetry and sunshine. He never
realized his modest ambition, but then boys never realize anything;
though they have lots of fun failing.

[Illustration: "A CITIZEN'S CHARACTER FOR CLEVERNESS OR MEANNESS WAS
FIXED BY HIS WALKING ROUND OR OVER THE RINGS."]

In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and went
in a stated order. The first thing in the spring as soon as the frost
began to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played till
the weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left it
off. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but any
boy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbles
he won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out in
the morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or a
brown marble of the Lowest value, and come home at night with a
pocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters find
bull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was not
approved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness of
his heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
before he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment wi