To the boys, school had its chief value, in fact its only value, in its games and sports. Of course, our parents and teachers were always urging us to work. In their efforts to make us study, they resorted to every sort of means—headmarks, presents, praise, flattery, Christmas cards, staying in at recess, staying after school, corporal punishment, all sorts of persuasion, threats, and even main force—to accomplish this result. No like rewards or punishments were required to make us play; which fact, it seems to me, should have shown our teachers and parents that play, exercise, activity, and change are the law of life, especially the life of a little child; and that study, as we knew it, was unnatural and wrong. Still, nothing of this sort ever dawned upon their minds. I cannot remember much real kindness between the children of the school; while we had our special chums, we never seemed to care for them, except that boys did not like to be alone. There were few things a boy could do alone, excepting tasks, which of course we avoided if we could. On our way to and from the school, or while together at recess and noon, while we played the ordinary games a very small matter brought on a quarrel, and we always seemed to be watching for a chance to fight. In the matter of our quarrels and fights we showed the greatest impartiality, as boys do in almost all affairs of life. While our books were filled with noble precepts, we never seemed to remember them when we got out of doors, or even to think that they had any application to our lives. In this respect the boy and the grown-up man seem wonderfully alike. But really, school was not all play. Our teachers and parents tried their best to make us learn,—that is, to make us learn the lessons in the books. The outside lessons we always seemed to get without their help,—in fact, in spite of their best endeavors to prevent our knowing what they meant.