Transcriber Notes Obvious printer errors, typos and missing punctuation fixed. Misspellings in the pupil’s speech in the Stephen and his Adult Pupil story have been retained, as have archaic spellings and inconsistent hyphenation. The table of contents has been created and added by the transcriber. A description of an illustration with no caption has been added. Italics are represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_. Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Early Boyhood and its Merry 1 Pastimes. The Alligator Lives for Another 2 Week. Stephen and his Adult Pupil. 3 Stephen H. Branch, in his Cell at 3 Blackwell’s Island—A Mournful Scene. Advertisements 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR.] ---------------------------------------------------------------- Volume I.—No. 23. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1858. Price 2 Cents. Early Boyhood and its Merry Pastimes. I remember the woman’s school at four years old, and the merited chastisement of the school marm; my desperate descent on the sugar bowl; the military company of which I was commander; my annual cries in the trundle bed at 12 o’clock and one second, A. M.: “I wish you merry Christmas, Ma,—I wish you happy New Year, Pa,—now gim me cent;” with my father’s: “Go to sleep, you young rascal, or I’ll come and spank you;” the two cents I always got on the 4th of July, if I had been a good boy, and the solitary penny if I hadn’t; the death of my mother of twins; the copious tears of my father and Aunt Lucy; my grief at her sudden demise; the country boarding school, and the blast of lightning that felled me to the earth, while whittling on the summer green; my eyes soon open on the glories of the lurid universe, and I scamper into the pretty cottage, and bound into the arms of my aunt, who nearly smothers me with affectionate embraces; the storm passes; a bow appears, with crimson arrows, and lingers on the concave’s rosy verge, till Venus gleams through the twilight leaves, when its gorgeous hues are vailed by the revolving spheres, and it descends the dazzling west. Whose Archer follows the resplendent sun, Before whose darts the stormy Furies run;