XV
Men follow their noses, it is said. I have wondered why the Greek did not follow his nose in architecture,—did not copy those arches that spring from it as from a pier, and support his brow,—but always and everywhere used the post and the lintel. There was something in that face that has never reappeared in the human countenance. I am thinking especially of that straight, strong profile. Is it really godlike, or is this impression the result of association? But any suggestion or reminiscence of it in the modern face at once gives one the idea of strength. It is a face strong in the loins, or it suggests a high, elastic instep. It is the face of order and proportion. Those arches are the symbols of law and self-control. The point of greatest interest is the union of the nose with the brow,—that strong, high embankment; it makes the bridge from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All the Greek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face the arches are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from the brow,—hence the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderance of the speculative intellect over creative power.
XVI
I have thought that the boy is the only true lover of Nature, and that we, who make such a dead set at studying and admiring her, come very wide of the mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sure of his dinner," says our Emerson, "is the healthy attitude of humanity." The boy is a part of Nature; he is as indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. He browses, he digs, he hunts, he climbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He uses things roughly and without sentiment. The coolness with which boys will drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, or murder young birds, or torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's own mercilessness.
Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of nature from children. Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen to children when they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest. There is such a freedom from responsibility and from worldly wisdom,—it is heavenly wisdom. There is no sentiment in children, because there is no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about them yet,—not a leaf or a twig. Until he is well into his teens, and sometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod before the fruit has developed,—indefinite, succulent, rich in possibilities which are only vaguely outlined. He is a pericarp merely. How rudimental are all his ideas! I knew a boy who began his school composition on swallows by saying there were two kinds of swallows,—chimney swallows and swallows.
Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, more definite and "translatable."
XVII
Who will write the natural history of the boy? One of the first points to be taken account of is his clannishness. The boys of one neighborhood are always pitted against those of an adjoining neighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the other end. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes. The boys that go up the road from the country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road, and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting and the missiles with interest.
Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regular battles. A few years since, the boys of two rival towns on opposite sides of the Ohio River became so belligerent that the authorities had to interfere. Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the West Virginia side of the river, he was unmercifully beaten; and when a West Virginia boy was discovered on the Ohio side, he was pounced upon in the same manner. One day a vast number of boys, about one hundred and fifty on a side, met by appointment upon the ice and engaged in a pitched battle. Every conceivable missile was used, including pistols. The battle, says the local paper, raged with fury for about two hours. One boy received a wound behind the ear, from the effects of which he died the next morning. More recently the boys of a large manufacturing town of New Jersey were divided into two hostile clans that came into frequent collision. One Saturday both sides mustered their forces, and a regular fight ensued, one boy here also losing his life from the encounter.
Every village and settlement is at times the scene of these youthful collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or at the country school, how the other boys crowd around him and take his measure, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle!