There was also a band of unattached guerillas
who aspired to be, and often pretended to be, either “Hounds” or “Rovers”—they did not care which. They always hunted in couples, and if they met The Boy alone they asked him to which of the organizations he himself belonged. If he said he was a “Rover,” they claimed to be “Hounds,” and pounded him. If he declared himself in sympathy with the “Hounds,” they hoisted the “Rovers’” colors, and [p 31]
punched him again. If he disclaimed both associations, they punched him anyway, on general principles. “The Head of the Rovers” was subsequently killed, in front of Tom Riley’s liberty-pole in Franklin Street, in a fireman’s riot, and “The Chief of the Hounds,” who had a club-foot, became a respectable egg-merchant, with a stand in Washington Market, near the Root-beer Woman’s place of business, on the south side. The Boy met two of the gang near the Desbrosses Street Ferry only the other day; but they did not recognize The Boy.
The only spot where The Boy felt really safe from the interference of “The Hounds” and “The Rovers” was in St. John’s Square, that delightful oasis in the desert of brick and mortar and cobble-stones which was known as the Fifth Ward. It was a private enclosure, bounded on the north by Laight Street, on the south by Beach Street, on the east by Varick Street, and on the west by Hudson Street; and its site is now occupied by the great freight-warehouses of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company.
In the “Fifties,” and long before, it was a private park, to which only the property owners in its immediate neighborhood had access. It possessed fine old trees, winding gravel-walks, and meadows of grass. In the centre was a fountain, whereupon, in the proper season, the children were allowed to skate on both [p 32]
feet, which was a great improvement over the one-foot gutter-slides outside. The Park was surrounded by a high iron railing, broken here and there by massive gates, to which The Boy had a key. But he always climbed over. It was a point of etiquette, in The Boy’s set, to climb over on all occasions, whether the gates were unlocked or not. And The Boy, many a time, has been known to climb over a gate, although it stood wide open! He not infrequently tore his clothes on the sharp spikes by which the gates were surmounted; but that made no difference to The Boy—until he went home!
The Boy once had a fight in the Park, with Bill Rice, about a certain lignum-vitæ peg-top, of which The Boy was very fond, and which Bill Rice kicked into the fountain. The Boy got mad, which was wrong and foolish of The Boy; and The Boy, also, got licked. And The Boy never could make his mother understand why he was silly and careless enough to cut his under-lip by knocking it against Bill Rice’s knuckles. Bill subsequently apologized by saying that he did not mean to kick the top into the fountain. He merely meant to kick the top. And it was all made up.
THE BOY ALWAYS CLIMBED OVER
The Boy did not fight much. His nose was too long. It seemed that he could not reach the end of it with his fists when he fought; and that the other fellows could always reach it with theirs, no matter [p 33]
how far out, or how scientifically, his left arm was extended. It was “One, two, three—and recover”—on The Boy’s nose! The Boy was a good runner. His legs were the only part of his anatomy which seemed to him as long as his nose. And his legs saved his nose in many a fierce encounter.
The Boy first had daily admission to St. John’s Park after the family moved to Hubert Street, when The Boy was about ten years old; and for half a decade or more it was his happy hunting-ground—when he was not kept in school! It was a particularly pleasant place in the autumn and winter months; for he could then gather “smoking-beans” and horse-chestnuts; and he could roam at will all over the grounds without any hateful warning to “Keep Off the Grass.”