same level in all this enjoyment.

The house was pretty full of children, big and little. There were seven
of them in the Boy's Town, and eight afterwards in all; so that if there
had been no Boy's Town about them, they would still have had a Boy's
World indoors. They lived in three different houses--the Thomas house,
the Smith house, and the Falconer house--severally called after the
names of their owners, for they never had a house of their own. Of the
first my boy remembered nothing, except the woodpile on which he tried
his axe, and a closet near the front door, which he entered into one
day, with his mother's leave, to pray, as the Scripture bade. It was
very dark, and hung full of clothes, and his literal application of the
text was not edifying; he fancied, with a child's vague suspicion, that
it amused his father and mother; I dare say it also touched them. Of the
Smith house, he could remember much more: the little upper room where
the boys slept, and the narrow stairs which he often rolled down in the
morning; the front room where he lay sick with a fever, and was bled by
the doctor, as people used to be in those days; the woodshed where, one
dreadful afternoon, when he had somehow been left alone in the house, he
took it into his head that the family dog Tip was going mad; the window
where he traced the figure of a bull on greased paper from an engraving
held up against the light: none of them important facts, but such as
stick in the mind by the capricious action of memory, while far greater
events drop out of it. My boy's elder brother at once accused him of
tracing that bull, which he pretended to have copied; but their father
insisted upon taking the child's word for it, though he must have known
he was lying; and this gave my boy a far worse conscience than if his
father had whipped him. The father's theory was that people are more apt
to be true if you trust them than if you doubt them; I do not think he
always found it work perfectly; but I believe he was right.

My boy was for a long time very miserable about that bull, and the
experience taught him to desire the truth and honor it, even when he
could not attain it. Five or six years after, when his brother and he
had begun to read stories, they found one in the old _New York Mirror_
which had a great influence upon their daily conduct. It was called "The
Trippings of Tom Pepper; or, the Effects of Romancing," and it showed
how at many important momen