CONTRIBUTED BY FREDERIC KNAPP “I like boys, the masters of the playground and of the street--boys, who have the same liberal ticket of admission to all shops, factories, armories, town-meetings, caucuses, mobs, target-shootings, as flies have; quite unsuspected, coming in as naturally as the janitor--known to have no money in their pockets, and themselves not suspecting the value of this poverty; putting nobody on his guard, but seeing the inside of the show--hearing all the asides. There are no secrets from them, they know everything that befalls in the fire company, the merits of every engine and every man at the brakes, and how to work it, and are swift to try their hand at every part; so, too, the merits of every locomotive on the rails, and will coax the engineer to let them ride with him and pull the handles when it goes to the engine-house. They are there only for fun, and not knowing that they are at school in the courthouse, or the cattle show, quite as much and more than they were, an hour ago, in the arithmetic class.” Our Emerson was right: he knew boys. And at no place or time was the boy let loose to see and do, quite equal to the training days in the “Forties.” This was his day, when school didn’t count, when the schoolma’am or master wasn’t in it, the day long anticipated. When the morning broke he was no laggard, but the wise mother would not allow him to skip or hurry his breakfast, for she knew that when the day was done her laddie would be too fagged to eat. So, breakfast over, she ties the ribbon in his broad turn-down collar, and the father gives him two fippenny bits for all his own to spend as he pleases, and then they launch him forth with a “good time” for a blessing.