Their style
was so much like the style of the books which older people wanted
me to read when I was in my early teens.
Such were the specious statements advanced by the oldsters. And
we had no reply for their argument, or if we had one could not
find the language in which to couch it. Besides there was another
and a deeper reason. A boy, being what he is, the most sensitive
and the most secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost
emotions, rarely does bare his real thoughts to his elders, for
they, alas, are not young enough to have a fellow feeling, and
they are too old and they know too much to be really wise.
What we might have answered, had we had the verbal facility and
had we not feared further painful corporeal measures for talking
back--or what was worse, ridicule--was that reading Old Cap Collier
never yet sent a boy to a bad end. I never heard of a boy who ran
away from home and really made a go of it who was actuated at the
start by the nickul librury. Burning with a sense of injustice,
filled up with the realization that we were not appreciated at
home, we often talked of running away and going out West to fight
Indians, but we never did. I remember once two of us started for
the Far West, and got nearly as far as Oak Grove Cemetery, when--
the dusk of evening impending--we decided to turn back and give
our parents just one more chance to understand us.
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