No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine lives, she has but one ghost--and that will haunt no house where there are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent, you would not wish your only boy--your son and heir--the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty--to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his nose--botanising with his maiden aunts--doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and attending to the kettle--telling tales on all naughty boys and girls--laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny-pig--keeping all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer--having his own peg for his uncrushed hat--saying his prayers precisely as the clock strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's-buff--and puffed up every Sabbath eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memory for a sermon--while all the other boys are scolded for having fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write sermons himself at his tender years, nay--even to be able to give you chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even of his Sunday clothes--blotting his copy--impiously pinning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father--going to the fishing not only without leave, but against orders--bathing in the forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned--drying powder before the schoolroom fire, and blowing himself and two crack-skulled cronies to the ceiling--tying kettles to the tails of dogs--shooting an old woman's laying hen--galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps--climbing trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the tooth-of-time-indented sides of old castles after wallflowers and starlings--being run away with in carts by colts against turnpike gates--buying bad ballads from young gypsy-girls, who, on receiving a sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change out of that;"--on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail--a devil for galloping--not only attending country races for a saddle and