r, boys!" so
that you would have thought the Neptune could put out the world if it
was burning up. Instead of that there was usually a feeble splutter from
the nozzle, and sometimes none at all, even if the hose did not break;
it was fun to see the hose break. The Neptune was a favorite with the
boys, though they believed that the Tremont could squirt farther, and
they had a belief in its quiet efficiency which was fostered by its
reticence in public. It was small and black, but the Neptune was large,
and painted of a gay color lit up with gilding that sent the blood
leaping through a boy's veins. The boys knew the Neptune was out of
order, but they were always expecting it would come right, and in the
meantime they felt that it was an honor to the town, and they followed
it as proudly back to the engine-house after one of its magnificent
failures as if it had been a magnificent success. The boys were always
making magnificent failures themselves, and they could feel for the
Neptune.

[Illustration: "THE ARTIST SEEMED SATISFIED HIMSELF."]

Before the Hydraulic was opened, the pork-houses were the chief public
attraction to the boys, and they haunted them, with a thrilling interest
in the mysteries of pork-packing which none of their sensibilities
revolted from. Afterwards, the cotton-mills, which were rather small
brick factories, though they looked so large to the boys, eclipsed the
pork-house in their regard. They were all wild to work in the mills at
first, and they thought it a hardship that their fathers would not let
them leave school and do it. Some few of the fellows that my boy knew
did get to work in the mills; and one of them got part of his finger
taken off in the machinery; it was thought a distinction among the
boys, and something like having been in war. My boy's brother was so
crazy to try mill-life that he was allowed to do so for a few weeks; but
a few weeks were enough of it, and pretty soon the feeling about the
mills all quieted down, and the boys contented themselves with their
flumes and their wheel-pits, and the head-gates that let the water in on
the wheels; sometimes you could find fish under the wheels when the
mills were not running. The mill-doors all had "No Admittance" painted
on them; and the mere sight of the forbidding words would have been
enough to keep my boy away, for he had a great awe of any sort of
authority; but once he went into the mill to see his brother; and
another time h