Well, it is about the same with men and women, and boys and girls, as it is with dogs. Those who bark most bite least, the world over.
Show me a boy who talks about being as bold as a lion, and I will show you one with the heart of a young rabbit, just learning to eat cabbage. I do dislike to see boys and girls boasting of what they can do. It always gives me a low opinion of their merits.
There is Tom Thrasher. You don't know Tom, do you? Well, he is one of your barking dogs. He is all the time boasting of the great things he is able to do. Nobody ever saw him do any such things. Still he keeps on boasting, right in the midst of the young people who know him through and through, a great deal better than he knows himself. It is strange that he should brag at that rate where everybody knows him. But he has fallen into the habit of bragging, and I suppose he hardly thinks of the absurd and foolish language he is using. According to his account of himself, he can run a mile in a minute, jump over a fence ten rails high, shoot an arrow from his bow twenty rods, and hit an apple at that distance half a dozen times running.
I must tell you a story about this Tom Thrasher. Poor Tom! he got "come up with," not long ago, by some fun-loving boys that lived in his neighborhood. Tom had been boasting of his great feats in jumping. He could jump higher than any boy on Blue Hill. In fact, he had just jumped over the fence around Captain Corning's goat pasture, which, as everybody knows, was eight rails high, and verily believed he could have cleared it just as easily, if it had been two rails higher. That was the kind of language he used to this company of boys. They did not believe a word he said.
"Let's try Tom," one whispered to another, "let's try the fellow, and see how high he can jump."
"Say, Tom," said one of the boys, "will you go down to the captain's goat pasture with us, and try that thing over again?"
Tom did not seem to be very fierce for going. But all the boys urged him so hard, that he finally consented and went. When he got to the goat pasture, he measured the fence with his eye; and from the manner in which he shrugged his shoulders, it was pretty clear that he considered the fence a very high one indeed. He was not at all in a hurry about performing the feat. But the roguish boys would not let him off.
"Come, Tom," said one.
"Now for it," said another.
"No backing out," said a third.