His other occupations were decidedly significant. His most intimate friend at this time was William Gardiner, his preceptor's son; and the two boys were absolutely at one in their tastes and amusements. Both of them were full of mischief, and both were irrepressibly boisterous, playing all sorts of tricks at evening in the streets, firing off pistols, and in general causing a good deal of annoyance to the sober citizens of Boston. In this they were like any other healthy boys,--full of animal spirits and looking for "fun" without any especial sense of responsibility. Something else, however, is recorded of them which seems to have a real importance, as revealing in Prescott, at least, some of those mental characteristics which in his after life were to find expression in his serious work. The period was one when the thoughts of all men were turned to the Napoleonic wars. The French and English were at grips in Spain for the possession of the Peninsula. Wellington had landed in Portugal and, marching into Spain, had flung down the gage of battle, which was taken up by Soult, Masséna, and Victor, in the absence of their mighty chief. The American newspapers were filled with long, though belated, accounts of the brilliant fighting at Ciudad Rodrigo, Almeida, and Badajoz; and these narratives fired the imagination of Prescott, whose eagerness his companion found infectious, so that the two began to play at battles; not after the usual fashion of boys, but in a manner recalling the _Kriegspiel_ of the military schools of modern Germany. Pieces of paper were carefully cut into shapes which would serve to designate the difference between cavalry, infantry, and artillery; and with these bits of paper the disposition and manoeuvring of armies were indicated, so as to make clear, in a rough way, the tactics of the opposing commanders. Not alone were the Napoleonic battles thus depicted, but also the great contests of which the boys had read or heard at school,--Thermopylæ, Marathon, Leuctra, Cannæ, and Pharsalus. Some pieces of old armour, unearthed among the rubbish of the Athenæum, enabled the boys to mimic in their play the combats of Amadis and the knights with whom he fought.