d horse will draw a
crowd of small boys, who will dwell without shrinking upon the details
of his putrefaction, when they would pass by a rose-tree in bloom with
indifference. Hideous reptiles and insects interest them more than the
loveliest form of leaf or blossom. Their senses have none of the
delicacy which they acquire in after-life.

They are not cruel, that is, they have no delight in giving pain, as a
general thing; but they do cruel things out of curiosity, to see how
their victims will act. Still, even in this way, I never saw many cruel
things done. If another boy gets hurt they laugh, because it is funny to
see him hop or hear him yell; but they do not laugh because they enjoy
his pain, though they do not pity him unless they think he is badly
hurt; then they are scared, and try to comfort him. To bait a hook they
tear an angle-worm into small pieces, or impale a grub without
flinching; they go to the slaughter-house and see beeves knocked in the
head without a tremor. They acquaint themselves, at any risk, with all
that is going on in the great strange world they have come into; and
they do not pick or choose daintily among the facts and objects they
encounter. To them there is neither foul nor fair, clean nor unclean.
They have not the least discomfort from being dirty or unkempt, and they
certainly find no pleasure in being washed and combed and clad in fresh
linen. They do not like to see other boys so; if a boy looking sleek and
smooth came among the boys that my boy went with in the Boy's Town, they
made it a reproach to him, and hastened to help him spoil his clothes
and his nice looks. Some of those boys had hands as hard as horn,
cracked open at the knuckles and in the palms, and the crevices
blackened with earth or grime; and they taught my boy to believe that he
was an inferior and unmanly person, almost of the nature of a cry-baby,
because his hands were not horn-like, and cracked open, and filled with
dirt.

He had comrades enough and went with everybody, but till he formed that
friendship with the queer fellow whom I have told of, he had no friend
among the boys; and I very much doubt whether small boys understand
friendship, or can feel it as they do afterwards, in its tenderness and
unselfishness. In fact they have no conception of generosity. They are
wasteful with what they do not want at the moment; but their instinct is
to get and not to give. In the Boy's Town, if a fellow appeared at h