Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1893-08-31

When 7 was a boy in the wflds Of west
ern Indiana We used 70 say there were
three sorts of fellows no decent boy ought
to stick UP for. One was the boy who
slipped up and hid our clothes or tied hard
knots in our breeches legs when we were
swimming IN forbidden waters. 1t was
necessary to be lively in those days, and as
we wore nothing in the summer season
but hats, shirts and pantaloons, a boy
could dress in half q minute and In an
other half be in a thicket not penetrable
by a man. Another. detested character
was the boy who would pick a fight and
run and complain IL he got whipped. But
the arch criminal was the boy who owned
up when he didn't have to. If he stood
out awhile and the teacher whaled him,
we could forgive his telling. Well, these
savages have the same code. They have
been fighting among themselves to a Sc
rious extent, especially the Arabs, but be-
fore white judges or inquirers they are
mum.
Their alleged fun has an awkward re-
semblance to that of boys. Their women
act very much like little girls who are
anxious to play but half afraid to. And
some of their sports are very rude practi-
cal jokes, just rs ours were some forty
years ago.. In these days we had very lit
tie trouble about drying our hair when we
came out of the water in a hurry, for
thoughtful mothers usually kept il short
enough to keep other boys from putting
cockleburrs in it. well remember what
fun it was when a new boy came to school,
from some n~eighboring center OF refine
ment, Greencastle or Charlottesville, for
ins6ance-a boy with long curls, adelicate-
lipped and soft-skinned blonde of a boy.
How the fingers of our little reprobates
did itch to get into that hair, and how
they did "rub it i'm when they got tnere,
Now, / fancy that boys of eight or ten or
twelve are nothing but modified savages.
They quarrel and make up, roll ovei. and
hug each other, fight one day and are good
friends the next, very much like those
wild people on the plaisance. But there
is one serious difference. While the boys
are only temporary savages these wild
folks ire permanently grown up boys with
the passions of men, and they hold malice
a long time in two classes of cases. These
cases, of course, are such as pertain to
women and ~religion-the two subjects on
which half civilized people can get up the
biggest mount of mad" in the shortest
time. Boys also have a profound dread OF
authority, especially of the law. These
dark races haven't. Boys can be separate
ly examined and caught in a lie il they
have made up one. With these Arabs it
Is more fun to beat the law than it was to
do the original devilment. The result is
that white men put in control of them
nearly always adopt arbitrary methods in
a little while. The Chinese, however, are
said to excel all other races in evading the
law and concealing what is done among
themselves. They have got it down to an
exact science.
-
l will not go SO far as to say that this
Dahomeyan here is a man and a brother
/ may want to runfor office some day-but
he acts so much like the boys of my time
did and as many of them, I fear, would
nave continued to act IL they had then
been turned loose, that I cannot but sym
pathize with him. The boy who is not in
actual pain and is not hungry forms no
plans for the future. and lives entirely in
the present 1t is just the same with these
blacks. In short, the childhood of the
man is q good type of the childhood of the
world. Turn a lot of boys loose In the
woods for a day and they invent very
much as the sayages did. They pass
through the "Stone Age" selecting the