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[Illustration]

[Illustration: KITE-TIME]




BOY LIFE

STORIES AND READINGS SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

AND ARRANGED FOR SUPPLEMENTARY
READING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS BY

PERCIVAL CHUBB

DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH IN THE
ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL, NEW YORK

ILLUSTRATED


[Illustration]


HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

    NEW YORK AND LONDON
    MCMIX




HARPER'S MODERN SERIES

OF SUPPLEMENTARY READERS FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

_Each, Illustrated, 16mo, 50 Cents School._


BOY LIFE

Stories and Readings Selected from the Works of WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,
and Arranged by PERCIVAL CHUBB, Director of English in the Ethical
Culture School, New York.

     "The literary culture which we are trying to give our boys and
     girls is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
     sufficiently national and American....

     "Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
     distinctively American savor than that of William Dean
     Howells.... The juvenile books of Mr. Howells' contain some of
     the very best pages ever written for the enjoyment of young
     people."--PERCIVAL CHUBB.

(_Others in Preparation._)

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

Published September, 1909.




CONTENTS


                                                                   PAGE

INTRODUCTION                                                         ix


I. ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN

  HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS           3

  THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN                                                13

  JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE                                  23


II. LIFE IN A BOY'S TOWN

  THE TOWN                                                           41

  EARLIEST MEMORIES                                                  45

  HOME LIFE                                                          47

  THE RIVER                                                          51

  SWIMMING                                                           55

  SKATING                                                            61

  MANNERS AND CUSTOMS                                                64

  GIRLS                                                              68

  MOTHERS                                                            69

  A BROTHER                                                          73

  A FRIEND                                                           79


III. GAMES AND PASTIMES

  MARBLES                                                            89

  RACES                                                              91

  A MEAN TRICK                                                       93

  TOPS                                                               96

  KITES                                                              98

  THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 103

  PETS                                                              108

  INDIANS                                                           124

  GUNS                                                              129

  NUTTING                                                           138

  THE FIRE-ENGINES                                                  145


IV. GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD

  THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS                                             151

  PASSING SHOWS                                                     163

  THE THEATRE COMES TO TOWN                                         168

  THE WORLD OPENED BY BOOKS                                         171


V. THE LAST OF A BOY'S TOWN                                         183




ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

KITE-TIME                                              _Frontispiece_

HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE
VERY NEXT MORNING                                                   5

THE FIRST LOCK                                                     43

THE BUTLER GUARDS                                                 105

ALL AT ONCE THERE THE INDIANS WERE                                127

NUTTING                                                           141




INTRODUCTION


There are two conspicuous faults in the literary culture which we are
trying to give to our boys and girls in our elementary and secondary
schools: it is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not
sufficiently national and American. Hence it lacks vitality and
actuality. So little of it is carried over into life because so little
of it is interpretative of the life that is. It is associated too
exclusively in the child's mind with things dead and gone--with the
Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere,
the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively
recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of
the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the
Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies
do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which--if
he reads at all--he is most likely to be concerned: the short story