Boy's Town

by William Dean Howells

  XVIII.

  THE NATURE OF BOYS.

  I TELL these things about my boy, not so much because they were peculiarto him as because I think they are, many of them, common to all boys.One tiresome fact about boys is that they are so much alike; or used tobe. They did not wish to be so, but they could not help it. They did noteven know they were alike; and my boy used to suffer in ways that hebelieved no boy had ever suffered before; but as he grew older he foundthat boys had been suffering in exactly the same way from the beginningof time. In the world you will find a great many grown-up boys, withgray beards and grandchildren, who think that they have been differenttheir whole lives through from other people, and are the victims ofdestiny. That is because with all their growing they have never grown tobe men, but have remained a sort of cry-babies. The first thing you haveto learn here below is that in essentials you are just like every oneelse, and that you are different from others only in what is not so muchworth while. If you have anything in common with your fellow-creatures,it is something that God gave you; if you have anything that seems quiteyour own, it is from your silly self, and is a sort of perversion ofwhat came to you from the Creator who made you out of himself, and hadnothing else to make any one out of. There is not really any differencebetween you and your fellow-creatures; but only a seeming differencethat flatters and cheats you with a sense of your strangeness, and makesyou think you are a remarkable fellow.

  There is a difference between boys and men, but it is a difference ofself-knowledge chiefly. A boy wants to do everything because he does notknow he cannot; a man wants to do something because he knows he cannotdo everything; a boy always fails, and a man sometimes succeeds becausethe man knows and the boy does not know. A man is better than a boybecause he knows better; he has learned by experience that what is aharm to others is a greater harm to himself, and he would rather not doit. But a boy hardly knows what harm is, and he does it mostly withoutrealizing that it hurts. He cannot invent anything, he can only imitate;and it is easier to imitate evil than good. You can imitate war, but howare you going to imitate peace? So a boy passes his leisure incontriving mischief. If you get another fellow to walk into a wasp'scamp, you can see him jump and hear him howl, but if you do not, thennothing at all happens. If you set a dog to chase a cat up a tree, thensomething has been done; but if you do not set the dog on the cat, thenthe cat just lies in the sun and sleeps, and you lose your time. If aboy could find out some way of doing good, so that he could be active init, very likely he would want to do good now and then; but as he cannot,he very seldom wants to do good.

  Or at least he did not want to do good in my boy's time. Things may bechanged now, for I have been talking of boys as they were in the Boy'sTown forty years ago. For anything that I really know to the contrary,a lot of fellows when they get together now may plot good deeds of allkinds, but when more than a single one of them was together then theyplotted mischief. When I see five or six boys now lying under a tree onthe grass, and they fall silent as I pass them, I have no right to saythat they are not arranging to go and carry some poor widow's winterwood into her shed and pile it neatly up for her, and wish to keep it asecret from everybody; but forty years ago I should have had good reasonfor thinking that they were debating how to tie a piece of herclothes-line along the ground so that when her orphan boy came out foran armload of wood after dark, he would trip on it and send his woodflying all over the yard.

  This would not be a sign that they were morally any worse than the boyswho read _Harper's Young People_, and who would every one die ratherthan do such a cruel thing, but that they had not really thought muchabout it. I dare say that if a crowd of the _Young People_'s readers,from eight to eleven years old, got together, they would choose the bestboy among them to lead them on in works of kindness and usefulness; butI am very sorry to say that in the Boy's Town such a crowd of boys wouldhave followed the lead of the worst boy as far as they dared. Not all ofthem would have been bad, and the worst of them would not have been verybad; but they would have been restless and thoughtless. I am not readyto say that boys now are not wise enough to be good; but in that timeand town they certainly were not. In their ideals and ambitions theywere foolish, and in most of their intentions they were mischievous.Without realizing that it was evil, they meant more evil than it wouldhave been possible for ten times as many boys to commit. If the half ofit were now committed by men, the United States would be such an awfulplace that the decent people would all want to go and live in Canada.

  I have often read in stories of boys who were fond of nature, and lovedher sublimity and beauty, but I do not believe boys are ever naturallyfond of nature. They want to make use of the woods and fields andrivers; and when they become men they find these aspects of natureendeared to them by association, and so they think that they were dearfor their own sakes; but the taste for nature is as purely acquired asthe taste for poetry or the taste for tomatoes. I have often seen boyswondering at the rainbow, but it was wonder, not admiration that movedthem; and I have seen them excited by a storm, but because the storm wastremendous, not because it was beautiful.

  I never knew a boy who loved flowers, or cared for their decorativequalities; if any boy had gathered flowers the other boys would havelaughed at him; though boys gather every kind of thing that they thinkwill be of the slightest use or profit. I do not believe they appreciatethe perfume of flowers, and I am sure that they never mind the mostnoisome stench or the most loathsome sight. A dead horse will draw acrowd of small boys, who will dwell without shrinking upon the detailsof his putrefaction, when they would pass by a rose-tree in bloom withindifference. Hideous reptiles and insects interest them more than theloveliest form of leaf or blossom. Their senses have none of thedelicacy which they acquire in after-life.

  They are not cruel, that is, they have no delight in giving pain, as ageneral thing; but they do cruel things out of curiosity, to see howtheir victims will act. Still, even in this way, I never saw many cruelthings done. If another boy gets hurt they laugh, because it is funny tosee him hop or hear him yell; but they do not laugh because they enjoyhis pain, though they do not pity him unless they think he is badlyhurt; then they are scared, and try to comfort him. To bait a hook theytear an angle-worm into small pieces, or impale a grub withoutflinching; they go to the slaughter-house and see beeves knocked in thehead without a tremor. They acquaint themselves, at any risk, with allthat is going on in the great strange world they have come into; andthey do not pick or choose daintily among the facts and objects theyencounter. To them there is neither foul nor fair, clean nor unclean.They have not the least discomfort from being dirty or unkempt, and theycertainly find no pleasure in being washed and combed and clad in freshlinen. They do not like to see other boys so; if a boy looking sleek andsmooth came among the boys that my boy went with in the Boy's Town, theymade it a reproach to him, and hastened to help him spoil his clothesand his nice looks. Some of those boys had hands as hard as horn,cracked open at the knuckles and in the palms, and the crevicesblackened with earth or grime; and they taught my boy to believe that hewas an inferior and unmanly person, almost of the nature of a cry-baby,because his hands were not horn-like, and cracked open, and filled withdirt.

  He had comrades enough and went with everybody, but till he formed thatfriendship with the queer fellow whom I have told of, he had no friendamong the boys; and I very much doubt whether small boys understandfriendship, or can feel it as they do afterwards, in its tenderness andunselfishness. In fact they have no conception of generosity. They arewasteful with what they do not want at the moment; but their instinct isto get and not to give. In the Boy's Town, if a fellow appeared at hisgate with a piece of bread spread with apple-butter and sugar on top,the other fellows flocked round him and tried to flatter him out ofbites of it, though they might be at that moment almost bursting withsurfeit. To get a bite was so much clear gain, and when they hadwheedled one from the owner of the bread, they took as large a bite astheir mouths could stretch to, an
d they had neither shame nor regret fortheir behavior, but mocked his just resentment.

  The instinct of getting, of hoarding, was the motive of all theirforaging; they had no other idea of property than the bounty of nature;and this was well enough as far as it went, but their impulse was not toshare this bounty with others, but to keep it each for himself. Theyhoarded nuts and acorns, and hips and haws, and then they wasted them;and they hoarded other things merely from the greed of getting, and withno possible expectation of advantage. It might be well enough to catchbees in hollyhocks, and imprison them in underground cells with flowersfor them to make honey from; but why accumulate fire-flies and evendor-bugs in small brick pens? Why heap together mussel-shells; and whatdid a boy expect to do with all the marbles he won? You could trademarbles for tops, but they were not money, like pins; and why were pinsmoney? Why did the boys instinctively choose them for their currency,and pay everything with them? There were certain very rigid laws aboutthem, and a bent pin could not be passed among the boys any more than acounterfeit coin among men. There were fixed prices; three pins wouldbuy a bite of apple; six pins would pay your way into a circus; and soon. But where did these pins come from or go to; and what did the boysexpect to do with them all? No boy knew. From time to time several boysgot together and decided to keep store, and then other boys decided tobuy of them with pins; but there was no calculation in the scheme; andthough I have read of boys, especially in English books, who made aprofit out of their fellows, I never knew any boy who had enoughforecast to do it. They were too wildly improvident for anything of thekind, and if they had any virtue at all it was scorn of the vice ofstinginess.

  They were savages in this as in many other things, but noble savages;and they were savages in such bravery as they showed. That is, they wereventuresome, but not courageous with the steadfast courage of civilizedmen. They fought, and then ran; and they never fought except with somereal or fancied advantage. They were grave, like Indians, for the mostpart; and they were noisy without being gay. They seldom laughed, exceptat the pain or shame of some one; I think they had no other conceptionof a joke, though they told what they thought were funny stories, mostlyabout some Irishman just come across the sea, but without expecting anyone to laugh. In fact, life was a very serious affair with them. Theylived in a state of outlawry, in the midst of invisible terrors, andthey knew no rule but that of might.

  I am afraid that _Harper's Young People_, or rather the mothers of_Harper's Young People_, may think I am painting a very gloomy pictureof the natives of the Boy's Town; but I do not pretend that what I sayof the boys of forty years ago is true of boys nowadays, especially theboys who read _Harper's Young People_. I understand that these boysalways like to go tidily dressed and to keep themselves neat; and that agood many of them carry canes. They would rather go to school than fish,or hunt, or swim, any day; and if one of their teachers were ever tooffer them a holiday, they would reject it by a vote of the wholeschool. They never laugh at a fellow when he hurts himself or tears hisclothes. They are noble and self-sacrificing friends, and they carry outall their undertakings. They often have very exciting adventures such asmy boy and his mates never had; they rescue one another from shipwreckand Indians; and if ever they are caught in a burning building, or castaway on a desolate island, they know just exactly what to do.

  But, I am ashamed to say, it was all very different in the Boy's Town;and I might as well make a clean breast of it while I am about it. Thefellows in that town were every one dreadfully lazy--that is, they neverwanted to do any thing they were set to do; but if they set themselvesto do anything, they would work themselves to death at it. In this aloneI understand that they differed by a whole world's difference from theboys who read _Harper's Young People_. I am almost afraid to confess howlittle moral strength most of those long-ago boys had. A fellow would bevery good at home, really and truly good, and as soon as he got out withthe other fellows he would yield to almost any temptation to mischiefthat offered, and if none offered he would go and hunt one up, and wouldnever stop till he had found one, and kept at it till it overcame him.The spirit of the boy's world is not wicked, but merely savage, as Ihave often said in this book; it is the spirit of not knowing better.That is, the prevailing spirit is so. Here and there a boy does knowbetter, but he is seldom a leader among boys; and usually he is ashamedof knowing better, and rarely tries to do better than the rest. He wouldlike to please his father and mother, but he dreads the other boys andwhat they will say; and so the light of home fades from his ignorantsoul, and leaves him in the outer darkness of the street. It may be thatit must be so; but it seems a great pity; and it seems somehow as if thefather and the mother might keep with him in some word, some thought,and be there to help him against himself, whenever he is weak andwavering. The trouble is that the father and mother are too oftenchildren in their way, and little more fit to be the guide than he.

  But while I am owning to a good deal that seems to me lamentably wrongin the behavior of the Boy's Town boys, I ought to remember one or twothings to their credit. They had an ideal of honor, false enough as faras resenting insult went, but true in some other things. They werealways respectful to women, and if a boy's mother ever appeared amongthem, to interfere in behalf of her boy when they were abusing him, theyfelt the indecorum, but they were careful not to let her feel it. Theywould not have dreamed of uttering a rude or impudent word to her; theyobeyed her, and they were even eager to serve her, if she asked a favorof them.

  For the most part, also, they were truthful, and they only told lieswhen they felt obliged to do so, as when they had been in swimming andsaid they had not, or as when they wanted to get away from some of theboys, or did not wish the whole crowd to know what they were doing. Butthey were generally shamefaced in these lies; and the fellows who couldlie boldly and stick to it were few. In the abstract lying was held insuch contempt that if any boy said you were a liar you must strike him.That was not to be borne for an instant, any more than if he had calledyou a thief.

  I never knew a boy who was even reputed to have stolen anything, amongall the boys, high and low, who met together and played in a perfectsocial equality; and cheating in any game was despised. To break bounds,to invade an orchard or garden, was an adventure which might bepermitted; but even this was uncommon, and most of the boys saw theaffair in the true light, and would not take part in it, though it wasconsidered fair to knock apples off a tree that hung over the fence; andif you were out walnutting you might get over the fence in extremecases, and help yourself. If the owner of the orchard was supposed to bestingy you might do it to plague him. But the standard of honesty waschivalrously high among those boys; and I believe that if ever we havethe equality in this world which so many good men have hoped for, theftwill be unknown. Dishonesty was rare even among men in the Boy's Town,because there was neither wealth nor poverty there, and all had enoughand few too much.