But we of the race of grown-ups are a purblind people.  Otherwise, when we acknowledge what a stronghold this Boyville is, we the banished would not seek to steal away the merry townsmen, and bruise our hearts and theirs at our hopeless task.  We have learned many things in our schools, and of the making of books there has been no end; so it is odd that we have not learned to let a boy be a boy.  Why not let him feel the thrill from the fresh spring grass under his feet, as his father felt it before him, and his father’s father, even back to Adam, who walked thus with God!  There is a tincture of iron that seeps into a boys blood with the ozone of the earth, that can come to him by no other way.  Let him run if he will; Heavens air is a better elixir than any that the alchemist can mix.  What if he roams the woods and lives for hours in the water?  What if he prefers the barn to the parlor?  What if he fights?  Does he not take the risk of the scratched face and the bruises?  Should he not be in some measure the judge of the situation before him when the trouble begins?  Boys have an ugly name for one of their kind who discovers suddenly, in a crisis of his own making, that he is not allowed to fight.  And it were better to see a boy with a dozen claw-marks down his face than to see him eat that name in peace.

Now this conclusion may seem barbaric to elders who have to pay for new clothes to replace the torn ones, And according to their light perhaps the elders see clearly.  But the grown-up people forget that their wisdom has impaired their vision to see as boys see and to pass judgment upon things in another sphere.

For Boyville is a Free Town in the monarchy of the world.  Its citizens mind their own business, and they desire travellers in this waste to do likewise.  The notion that spectacled gentry should come nosing through the streets and alleys of Boyville, studying the sanitation, which is not of the best, and objecting to the constitution and by laws,—­which were made when the rivers were dug and the hills piled up,—­the notion of an outsider interfering with the Divine right of boys to eat what they please, to believe what they please, and, under loyalty to the monarchy of the world, to do what they please, is repugnant to this free people.  Nor does it better matters when the man behind the spectacles explains that to eat sheep-sorrel is deleterious; to feed younkers Indian turnip is cruel; to suck the sap of the young grapevine in spring produces malaria; to smoke rattan is depraving, and to stuff one’s stomach with paw-paws and wild-grapes is dangerous in the extreme.