nd the ignominy as
best he could, and, as he thought, alone.

He was often kept from being a fool, and worse, by that elder brother of
his; and I advise every boy to have an elder brother. Have a brother
about four years older than yourself, I should say; and if your temper
is hot, and your disposition revengeful, and you are a vain and
ridiculous dreamer at the same time that you are eager to excel in feats
of strength and games of skill, and to do everything that the other
fellows do, and are ashamed to be better than the worst boy in the
crowd, your brother can be of the greatest use to you, with his larger
experience and wisdom. My boy's brother seemed to have an ideal of
usefulness, while my boy only had an ideal of glory, to wish to help
others, while my boy only wished to help himself. My boy would as soon
have thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother's
doing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice,
of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which he
wished to make shine before men in their fulfilment. His brother was
always doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only did
for himself; he had a very gray moustache before he began to have any
conception of the fact that he was sent into the world to serve and to
suffer, as well as to rule and enjoy. But his brother seemed to know
this instinctively; he bore the yoke in his youth, patiently if not
willingly; he shared the anxieties as he parted the cares of his father
and mother. Yet he was a boy among boys, too; he loved to swim, to
skate, to fish, to forage, and passionately, above all, he loved to
hunt; but in everything he held himself in check, that he might hold the
younger boys in check; and my boy often repaid his conscientious
vigilance with hard words and hard names, such as embitter even the most
self-forgiving memories. He kept mechanically within certain laws, and
though in his rage he hurled every other name at his brother, he would
not call him a fool, because then he would be in danger of hell-fire. If
he had known just what Raca meant, he might have called him Raca, for he
was not so much afraid of the council; but, as it was, his brother
escaped that insult, and held through all a rein upon him, and governed
him through his scruples as well as his fears.

His brother was full of inventions and enterprises beyond most other
boys, and his undertakings came to the same