_The positive mind has no fear of pain_, particularly if this pain is incurred in a vital effort. Little boys will actually enjoy enormous discomfort and pain, provided it is encountered in doing things that reek of active life, that bring their bodies into violent action, and give them the thrill and bracing sensation of overcoming an obstacle, of resisting an attempt at capture, or of effecting a capture. “Yea” is their constant attitude to everything, even to the things which, to the adult, are disagreeable. I remember on one occasion, when I was walking home from a friend’s house in the pouring rain, I met that same friend’s two little sons returning at a perfectly leisurely pace from school. I had an umbrella, they had not. Naturally I felt it incumbent upon me to see them home, and, gathering them carefully under my silk shelter, I marched them smartly in the direction of their father’s house. I soon found, however, that all my pains were wasted on them, for whenever I was not looking, out one of them would stray into the drenching shower; and when I insisted on their keeping quite close to me, each of them gravely extended his free arm out into the rain to catch as much of it as possible, while every puddle was conscientiously and solemnly explored by their feet. This may seem a trifling circumstance to dwell upon; but unimportant as it was, it struck me as being but another example of the indomitable yea-saying of healthy childhood to anything and everything. The gravity of the little boy when he does these things shows clearly the relation between positiveness and things that matter—things that have _weight_, _solidity_, _importance_, _tangibility_, _definition_.