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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, the
sketch, and the popular essay of the magazines and newspapers; the new
novel, or the plays which he may see at the theatre. He has not been
interested in the writers of his own time, and has never been put in the
way of the best contemporary fiction. Hence the ineffectualness and
wastefulness of much of our school work: it does not lead forward into
the life of to-day, nor help the young to judge intelligently of the
popular books which later on will compete for their favor.

To be sure, not a little of the material used in our elementary schools
is drawn from Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, from Irving and
Hawthorne; but because it is often studied in a so-called thorough and,
therefore, very deadly way--slowly and laboriously for drill, rather
than briskly for pleasure--there is comparatively little of it read, and
almost no sense gained of its being part of a national literature. In
the high school, owing to the unfortunate domination of the college
entrance requirements, the situation is not much better. Our students
leave with a scant and hurried glimpse--if any glimpse at all--of
Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, or of Lowell, Lanier, and Poe; with no
intimate view of Hawthorne, our great classic; none at all of Parkman
and Fiske, our historians; or of writers like Howells, James, and Cable,
or Wilkins, Jewett, and Deland, and a worthy company of story-tellers.

We may well be on our guard against a vaunting nationalism. It <DW44>s
our culture. There should be no confusion of the second-rate values of
most of our American products with the supreme values of the greatest
British classics. We may work, of course, toward an ultimate
appreciation of these greatest things. We fail, however, in securing
such appreciation because we have failed to enlist those forms of
interest which vitalize and stimulate literary studies--above all, the
patriotic or national interest. Concord and Cambridge should be dearer,
as they are nearer, to the young American than even Stratford and
Abbotsford; Hawthorne should be as familiar as Goldsmith; and Emerson,
as Addison or Burke. Ordinarily it is not so; and we suffer the
consequences in the failure of our youth to grasp the spiritual ideals
and the distinctively American democratic spirit which find expression
in the greatest work of our literary masters, Emerson and Whitman,
Lowell and Lanier. Our culture and our nationalism both suffer thereby.
Our literature suffers also, because we have not an instructed and
interested public to encourage excellence.

Among the living writers there is no one whose work has a more
distinctively American savor than that of William Dean Howells; and it
is to make his delightful writings more widely known and more easily
accessible that this volume of selections from his books for the young
has been prepared as a reading-book for the elementary school. These
juvenile books of Mr. Howells contain some of the very best pages ever
written for the enjoyment of young people. His two books for boys--_A
Boy's Town_ and _The Flight of Pony Baker_--rank with such favorites as
_Tom Sawyer_ and _The Story of a Bad Boy_.

These should be introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and
essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is
one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and
distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still,
from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern
writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our
older high-school pupils are anxious to deal with, are alive in his
books. Our young people should know his _Rise of Silas Lapham_ and _A
Hazard of New Fortunes_, as well as his social and literary criticism.
As stimulating and alluring a volume of selections may be made for
high-school students as this volume will be, we venture to predict, for
the younger boys and girls of the elementary school.

In this little book of readings we have made, we believe, an entirely
legitimate and desirable use of the books named above. _A Boy's Town_
is a series of detachable pictures and episodes into which the boy--or
the healthy girl who loves boys' books--may dip, as the selections here
given will, we believe, tempt him to do. The same is true of _The Flight
of Pony Baker_. The volume is for class-room enjoyment; for happy hours
of profitable reading--profitable, because happy. Much of it should be
read aloud rather than silently, and dramatic justice be done to the
scenes and conversations which have dramatic quality.

                              PERCIVAL CHUBB.




I

ADVENTURES IN A BOY'S TOWN




HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS


Just before the circus came, about the end of July, something happened
that made Pony mean to run off more than anything that ever was. His
father and mother were coming home from a walk, in the evening; it was
so hot nobody could stay in the house, and just as they were coming to
the front steps Pony stole up behind them and tossed a snowball which he
had got out of the garden at his mother, just for fun. The flower struck
her very softly on her hair, for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a
jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh; and then she caught him by the
arm and boxed his ears.

"Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I
thought it was a bat!" she said, and she broke out crying and ran into
the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her,
"Lucy, Lucy, my dear child!"

Pony was crying, too, for he did not intend to frighten his mother, and
when she took his fun as if he had done something wicked he did not know
what to think. He stole off to bed, and he lay there crying in the dark
and expecting that she would come to him, as she always did, to have him
say that he was sorry when he had been wicked, or to tell him that she
was sorry when she thought she had not been quite fair with him. But she
did not come, and after a good while his father came and said: "Are you
awake, Pony? I am sorry your mother misunderstood your fun. But you
mustn't mind it, dear boy. She's not well, and she's very nervous."

"I don't care!" Pony sobbed out. "She won't have a chance to touch me
again!" For he had made up his mind to run off with the circus which was
coming the next Tuesday.

He turned his face away, sobbing, and his father, after standing by his
bed a moment, went away without saying anything but "Don't forget your
prayers, Pony. You'll feel differently in the morning, I hope."

Pony fell asleep thinking how he would come back to the Boy's Town with
the circus when he was grown up, and when he came out in the ring riding
three horses bareback he would see his father and mother and sisters in
one of the lower seats. They would not know him, but he would know them,
and he would send for them to come to the dressing-room, and would be
very good to them, all but his mother; he would be very cold and stiff
with her, though he would know that she was prouder of him than all the
rest put together, and she would go away almost crying.

[Illustration: HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY NEXT
MORNING]

He began being cold and stiff with her the very next morning, although
she was better than ever to him, and gave him waffles for breakfast with
unsalted butter, and tried to pet him up. That whole day she kept trying
to do things for him, but he would scarcely speak to her; and at night
she came to him and said, "What makes you act so strangely, Pony? Are
you offended with your mother?"

"Yes, I am!" said Pony, haughtily, and he twitched away from where she
was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning over him.

"On account of last night, Pony?" she asked, softly.

"I reckon you know well enough," said Pony, and he tried to be disgusted
with her for being such a hypocrite, but he had to set his teeth hard,
hard, or he would have broken down crying.

"If it's for that, you mustn't, Pony dear. You don't know how you
frightened me. When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was a bat, and
I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I didn't mean to hurt my poor boy's
feelings so, and you mustn't mind it any more, Pony."

She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, but he did not move or
say anything; only, after that he felt more forgiving toward his mother.
He made up his mind to be good to her along with the rest when he came
back with the circus. But still he meant to run off with the circus. He
did not see how he could do anything else, for he had told all the boys
that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and
said, "Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like
running off with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would
see whether it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.

The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the
corporation line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and
knights, the first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a
band-chariot, all made up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty
baggage-wagons; but before you got to them there was the greatest thing
of all. It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was
shaped like a big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there
were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus
clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed
to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen
Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough
to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus
girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the
fellows, and they all had to get out of the way then.

Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after
that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus
men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they
would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt
brandy would do it, but that would do it, sure.

Pony was scared at first when he heard that most of the circus fellows
were stolen, but he thought if he went of his own accord he would be all
right. Still, he did not feel so much like running off with the circus
as he did before the circus came. He asked Jim Leonard whether the
circus men made all the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy Hawkins
and Hen Billard heard him ask, and began to mock him. They took him up
between them, one by his arms and the other by the legs, and ran along
with him, and kept saying, "Does it want to be a great big circus actor?
Then it shall, so it shall," and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
careful of you, Pony dear!" till Pony wriggled himself loose and began
to stone them.

After that they had to let him alone, for when a fellow began to stone
you in the Boy's Town you had to let him alone, unless you were going to
whip him, and the fellows only wanted to have a little fun with Pony.
But what they did made him all the more resolved to run away with the
circus, just to show them.

He helped to carry water for the circus men's horses, along with the
boys who earned their admission that way. He had no need to do it,
because his father was going to take him in, anyway; but Jim Leonard
said it was the only way to get acquainted with the circus men. Still,
Pony was afraid to speak to them, and he would not have said a word to
any of them if it had not been for one of them speaking to him first,
when he saw him come lugging a great pail of water, and bending far over
on the right to balance it.

"That's right," the circus man said to Pony. "If you ever fell into that
bucket you'd drown, sure."

He was a big fellow, with funny eyes, and he had a white bulldog at his
heels; and all the fellows said he was the one who guarded the outside
of the tent when the circus began, and kept the boys from hooking in
under the curtain.

Even then Pony would not have had the courage to say anything, but Jim
Leonard was just behind him with another bucket of water, and he spoke
up for him. "He wants to go with the circus."

They both set down their buckets, and Pony felt himself turning pale
when the circus man came toward them. "Wants to go with the circus,
heigh? Let's have a look at you." He took Pony by the shoulders and
turned him slowly round, and looked at his nice clothes, and took him by
the chin. "Orphan?" he asked.

Pony did not know what to say, but Jim Leonard nodded; perhaps he did
not know what to say, either; but Pony felt as if they had both told a
lie.

"Parents living?" The circus man looked at Pony, and Pony had to say
that they were.

He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could scarcely hear him, and the
circus man said:

"Well, that's right. When we take an orphan, we want to have his parents
living, so that we can go and ask them what sort of a boy he is."

He looked at Pony in such a friendly, smiling way that Pony took courage
to ask him whether they would want him to drink burnt brandy.

"What for?"

"To keep me little."

"Oh, I see." The circus man took off his hat and rubbed his forehead
with a silk handkerchief, which he threw into the top of his hat before
he put it on again. "No, I don't know as we will. We're rather short of
giants just now. How would you like to drink a glass of elephant milk
every morning and grow into an eight-footer?"

Pony said he didn't know whether he would like to be quite so big; and
then the circus man said perhaps he would rather go for an India-rubber
man; that was what they called the contortionists in those days.

"Let's feel of you again." The circus man took hold of Pony and felt his
joints. "You're put together pretty tight; but I reckon we could make
you do if you'd let us take you apart with a screw-driver and limber up
the pieces with rattlesnake oil. Wouldn't like it, heigh? Well, let me
see!" The circus man thought a moment, and then he said: "How would
double-somersaults on four horses bareback do?"

Pony said that would do, and then the circus man said: "Well, then,
we've just hit it, because our double-somersault, four-horse bareback
is just going to leave us, and we want