turning-shop supplied them with a
deep bed of elastic shavings just under the bank, which they turned
somersaults into, when they were not turning them into the river.

I wonder what sign the boys who read this have for challenging or
inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used
to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the
forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did
this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when
they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when
they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had
to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at
all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and
as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some
sort of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone.
Since this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at
one time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after
the fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there
a boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even
about going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their
hard fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and
then they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had
made this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their
shirts on wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some
enemy came upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties
which public opinion in the boys' world condemns, but I am glad to
remember, to their honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town
who would tie shirts; and I fervently hope that there is no boy now
living who would do it. As the crime is probably extinct, I will say
that in those wicked days, if you were such a miscreant, and there was
some boy you hated, you stole up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in
one arm or both arms of his shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into
your heart, you soaked the knot in water, and pounded it with a stone.

I am glad to know that in the days when he was thoughtless and senseless
enough, my boy never was guilty of any degree of this meanness. It was
his brother, I suppose, who taught him to abhor it; and perhaps it was
his own suffering from it in part; for he,