"Yes, and many a time when you want a pair of new boots, you'll have to do without them because you can't possibly go without your cigar, and you haven't money enough for both. Now, I'd just like to know if a smart little fellow like you is going to be made such a slave of, by a miserable little dirty roll of tobacco?"
Well, he said he would not smoke any more, but I've been afraid ever since to turn a corner, for fear I shall see the precocious young man walking behind a cigar.
Oh, the country is the place for boys,—on a nice farm, where there is ploughing, and hoeing, and digging, and sowing, and reaping going on; where they can jump upon a horse, without any saddle, and ride him to water, with his mane for a bridle; where they can help build fences, and help make hay, and help milk cows, and drive them to pasture; where they can go blackberrying, and strawberrying, and chestnuting, and everything but bird-nesting. I wouldn't like to leave my purse in the way of a boy who went bird-nesting. I should know he had a bad heart.
Yes, the country is the place for boys. There are no oyster saloons there; no cigar shops for them to loitre round; no gangs of bad, idle boys to teach them all sorts of mischief;—plenty going on in the country to amuse them innocently—terrible rattlesnakes to be slaughtered; woodchucks to be hunted; hawks to be shot (who make mince-meat of the poor little chickens); maple sugar and cider to make; husking frolics to go to. Just as if I didn't know what was best for boys, if I am a woman. I tell you, some of the greatest heroes in the world have had women for mothers.
[ THE BOY WHO LIKED NATURAL HISTORY. ]
Hal Hunt lived at the "Seven Corners;" he was just six years old last Fourth of July; and as "independent" as you might suppose, with such a birth-day to boast of.
He was on the gun-powder order, I can tell you; bound to make a fizz wherever he went, always popping up in odd places, and frightening nervous old ladies, and little two-year-olders, who had ventured away from their mothers' apron strings. Every cat and dog, for ten miles round, made for the nearest port when Hal and his torn straw hat loomed up in the distance.
Hal never was in a school room in his life; but it didn't follow that he did no studying for all that. On the contrary, he sat there, on the steps of his father's grocery store, with his chin between his little brown palms, doing up more thinking than the schoolma'am would have allowed, except in recess.
Hal was very fond of Natural History;—in fact, he had about made up his mind, that as soon as he owned a long-tailed coat, he would own a menagerie. Pigs, geese, hens, ducks, cows, oxen, nothing came amiss to him that went into Noah's ark. He expected to have a grand time when he got that menagerie—setting them all the cars, and hearing them growl behind their bars.