“Spit, spit, spy, tell me whur my chicken is, er I’ll hit ye in the eye”

“I’ll pay for your chicken, I say.  Now you keep away from me”

An irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his hair

“Got anything here fit to eat?”

“What’d you want to take Annie’s doll away from her for?”

She drew him down and kissed his cheek while he pecked at her lips

Piggy Pennington ... galloped his father’s fat delivery horse up and down the alley

Mammoth Consolidated Shows

Oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry

How many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman

Brother Baker—­a tiptoeing Nemesis

Dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets, hurrying their seniors

The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him

The Blue Sash about the country girl’s waist and the flag in her Beau’s hat

“One’s a trick elephant.  You’d die a-laughing if you saw him”

“It’s an awful good one.  Can’t he go just this once?”

8 Funny Clowns—­count them 8

“Well, son, you’re a daisy.  They generally drop the first kick”

The other wranglers ... dropped out for heavy repairs

When Mr. Pennington’s eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a show-case and laughed till he shook all over

“Miss Morgan, I just want you to look at my boy”

“Now, Henry, don’t ever have anything to do with that kind of trash again”

“Here’s a dollar I got for ridin’ the trick mule ...  I thought it would be nice for the missionary society”

“Gee, we’re going to have pie, ain’t we”

PROLOGUE

We who are passing “through the wilderness of this world” find it difficult to realize what an impenetrable wall there is around the town of Boyville.  Storm it as we may with the simulation of light-heartedness, bombard it with our heavy guns, loaded with fishing-hooks and golf-sticks, and skates and base-balls, and butterfly-nets, the walls remain.  If once the clanging gates of the town shut upon a youth, he is banished forever.  From afar he may peer over the walls at the games inside, but he may not be of them.  Let him try to join them, and lo, the games become a mockery, and he finds that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him.  Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return?  In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him.  He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it dust upon their lips.