and if, occasionally, when he sees his friend gratifying his palate with a fair round specimen of the same delicious fruit, he asks for a return of his kindness, with a beckoning gesture, and a free and easy—"I say, you know me, Bill!"—he is moved thereto by no mere selfish liking for apples, but by a natural sense of friendship, and of the excellence of the apostolic principle of community of goods. This spirit of generosity may be seen in the friendships of boys, which are more entire and unselfish than those by which men seek to mitigate the irksomeness of life. There are more Oresteses and Pyladeses, more Damons and Pythiases, at twelve years of age than at any later period of life. The devotedness of boyish friendship is peculiar from the fact that it is generally reciprocal. In this it is superior to what we call love, which, if we may believe the French satirist, in most instances consists of one party who loves, and another who allows himself or herself to be loved. This phenomenon has not escaped the notice of that great observer of human nature, Thackeray.
"What generous boy," he asks, "in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation; whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be; who is his hero."
The generosity, and all the priceless charms of boyhood, rarely outlive its careless years of happiness. They are generally severely shaken, if not wholly destroyed, when the youth enters upon that crepuscular period of manhood in which his jacket is lengthened into a sack, and he begins to take his share in the conceit, and ambition, and selfishness of full-grown humanity. It is sad to think that a human boy, like the morning star, full of life and joy, may be stricken down by death, and all his hilarity stifled in the grave; but to my mind it is even more melancholy to think that he may live to grow up, and be hard, and worldly, and ungenerous as any of the rest of us. For this latter fate is accompanied by no consolations such as naturally assuage our sorrow when an innocent child is snatched from among his playthings,—when "death has set the seal of eternity upon his brow, and the beautiful hath been made permanent" I have seen few men who would be willing to live over again their years of manhood, however prosperous and comparatively free from trouble they may have been; but fewer still are those whom I have met, in whose memory the records of boyhood are not written as with a sunbeam. No, talk as we may about the happiness of manhood, the satisfaction of success in life, of gratified ambition, of the possession of the Mary or Lizzie of one's choice,—what is it all compared to the unadulterate joy of that time when we built our card houses, and made our dirt pies, or drove our hoops, unvexed by the thoughts that Jinkins's house was larger than ours, or by any anxiety concerning the possibility of obtaining our next day's mutton-chop and potatoes? Except the momentary pain occasioned by the exercise of a magisterial rattan upon our persons, or an occasional stern reproof from a hair-brush or the thin sole of a maternal shoe, that halcyon period is imperturbed, and may safely be called the happiest part of life.
My venerated friend, Baron Nabem, who has been through all these "experiences," and therefore ought to know, insists upon it that no man really knows any thing until he is forty years old. For when he is eighteen or twenty years of age, he esteems himself to be a sort of combination of the seven wise men of Greece in one person, with Humboldt, Mezzofanti, and Macaulay thrown in to make out the weight; at twenty-five, his confidence in his own infallibility begins to grow somewhat shaky; at thirty, he begins to wish that he might really know a tenth part as much as he thought he did ten years before; at thirty-five, he thinks that if he were added up, there would be very little to carry; and at forty the great truth bursts upon him in all its effulgence that he is an ass. There are some who reach this desirable state of self-knowledge before they attain the age specified by the Baron; other some there are who never reach it at all,—as we all see numerous instances around us,—but these are mere exceptions strengthening rather than invalidating the common rule. It is a humiliating acknowledgment, but if we consider the uncertainty of all earthly things, if we try the depth of the sea of human science, and find how easy it is to touch bottom any where therein, if we convince ourselves of the impenetrability of the veil which bounds our mental vision,—I think that we shall be obliged to allow that the recognition of our own nothingness and asininity is the sum and perfection of human knowledge. Now, Solomon tells us that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow; and it naturally follows that when a man has reached the knowledge which generally comes with his fortieth year, he is less happy than he was when he wrapped himself in the measureless content of his twentieth year's self-deception. And it follows, too, most incontrovertibly, that he is happier when unpossessed by that exaggerated self-esteem which rendered the discovery of his fortieth year necessary to him; and when is that time, if not during the careless, happy years of boyhood?
The period of boyhood has been shortened very considerably within a few years; and real boys are becoming scarce. They are no sooner emancipated from the bright buttons which unite the two principal articles of puerile apparel, than they begin to pant for virile habiliments. Their choler is roused if they are denied a stand-up dickey. They sport canes. They delight to display themselves at lectures and concerts. Their young lips are not innocent of damns and short-sixes; and they imitate the vulgarity and conceit of the young men of the present day so successfully that you find it hard to believe that they are mere children. Since this period of dearth in the boy market set in, of course the genuine, marketable article has become more precious to me. I remember seeing an old physician in Paris, who was as true a boy as any beloved twelve-year-old that ever snapped a marble or stuck his forefinger into a preserve jar on an upper shelf in a china closet. A charming old fellow he was, too. He used to stop to see the boys play in the gardens of the Tuileries, and I knew him once to spend a whole afternoon in the avenue of the Champs Elysées looking at the puppet shows and other sights with the rest of the youngsters. He told me afterwards that that was one of the happiest days of his life; for he had felt as if he were back again in the pleasant time before he knew any thing of that most uncertain of all uncertain things—the science of medicine; and he doubted whether any boy there had enjoyed the cheap amusement more than himself. I envied him, for I knew that he who retained so much of the happy spirit of boyhood could not have outlived all of its generosity and simplicity. "Once a man and twice a child," says the old proverb; and I cannot help thinking that if at the last we could only recall something of the sincerity, and innocence, and unselfishness of our early life, second childhood would indeed be a blessed thing.
JOSEPHINE—GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS
A bright-eyed, fair, young maiden, whose satchel I should insist upon carrying to school for her every morning if I were half a century younger, came to me a day or two after the publication of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked your piece about the boys very much; and now I hope that you'll write something about girls." "My dear Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for telling the truth, and there are some subjects concerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'" The gentle damsel smiled, and looked
"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace
For the crown'd truth to dwell in,"
as she still urged me on, and refused to see any danger in my giving out the plainest truth about girlhood. She had no fear, though all the truth were told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier men and women, and should dread the truth as little as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to describe the charming young person I have referred to, with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bowditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the unfortunate "general reader" who does not know Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down to the plain prose of my subject.
There is, in fact, very little that can be said about girlhood. Those calm years that come between the commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and emancipation from the tasks of school, present few salient points upon which the essayist (observe he never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They offer little that is startling or attractive either to writer or reader,—