THE IDEAL BOY AND THE REAL.
THERE is something truly pathetic in the thought of the kind-hearted and scientifically minded naturalist who writes books about country pastimes for boys, such as that by Mr. Anderson Graham, just published by Longmans. We say pathetic advisedly. It is always pathetic to find, when an ideal creature is compared with the real, that the real is either as totally different as the Polar regions from the Tropics, or else looks like a malignant caricature,—the dis- torted and burlesque points of resemblance making the con- trast all the more cruel. The writers on boyish pastimes may in their hearts consider the boy as a being occasionally capable of passion and error; but as a rule he appears in their books as a person "ever delicately marching" through a whole series of arts and crafts with the utmost moderation and dexterity. He never takes more than one egg out of the nest for fear that the bird will desert. He puts his hand in so neatly, and climbs the tree so skilfully, that not a twig is displaced, and the mother-bird watching from the neighbouring hawthorn, is rather pleased than otherwise by his visit. When he is coming down, he does not peel the lichen and moss off the bark in handfuls by the agonised pressure of his waistcoat against the trunk, in his swift and dusty descent ; nor does the band of his breeches catch in a small bough till it breaks with the weight. Instead, he comes down hand over hand, always making sure of a firm hold with the leading foot before the foot behind is dis- placed.' On aquatic expeditions, the boy of the book is no less of a marvel in the sober security of his behaviour. If he wants to cross a stream, he does not trample heavily back- wards and forwards three or four times in the muddiest and broadest place. He springs lightly from stone to stone without noise. If he wants to tickle trout, he steals on tip- toe to the bank, and without first heaving in a dozen or so of large stones so as to give the maximum of splash. Again, the book-boy does not forget to tuck up his sleeves to the elbow. When the book-boy makes a trap for birds it falls when it is wanted to fall, and if he keeps as what are called minor pets, two badgers, an owl, a lark, half-a-dozen rabbits, and an eel, he tends them with all the method and zeal of the Royal Zoological Society's servants. Their cages are never dirty ; they are never left without water ; they never know what it is to be crammed two days in the week in succession, and starved for the other five ; and they are never teased to make a holiday pass more agreeably. The book-boy is simply incapable of saying to a friend, "Will you give me your pistol if I let you stir up the old owl with a stick ; you don't know what a wax the old beast '11 get into." The book-boy is, in fact, as we have suggested, a mixture of the sympathetic naturalist and the accomplished artisan. He turns from studying the habits of the kestrel or the greyling to the construction of a patent rabbit-hutch, or a temporary rat-cage. "A few simple direc- tions "—directions which read like the integral calculus to the grown man—are nothing in his sight, and with the greatest possible ease he can first draw you a section of a "rabbit-hole and bolt-hole," and then proceed to catch the rabbit and teach it to dine out of, and not off, his hand. Such is the boy as he appears from the books on boyish sports.
Alas, non sic notus Achilles ! The boys we have known have been very different. They have been anything but kind-hearted naturalists. Their hearts may have been in the right place, and probably were, but the abstract desire not to disturb the old bird has not prevented them from clutching at the side of the nest in their descent. They keep minor pets, but it is difficult to know which offers the more appalling prospect for the pet, neglect or attention. Again, the real boy is anything but a deft mechanic. As far as we have observed, he is more of a sur- geon, at least, the matter which is subdued to his art is generally the flesh of himself and his companions. The real boy may set about making a cage for a badger, but he gene- rally desists before even the bars are shaped, because the bandages on fingers and thumbs have made the farthez manipulation of chisel, axe, saw, and plane difficult—nay, im- possible. In fact, the badger-cage from a few simple hints, generally ends in an inverted packing-case, on which are piled large stones because of the exceeding strength and ingenuity of badgers in the matter of getting out. Again the real boy, the boy that we remember thirty or forty years ago, and the boy we see to-day, shows little or none of the instincts of the true fisherman and poacher. He shouts and screams and dances on the bank, he splashes as much as he can, and he is likely, if he does not pull out the line every three minutes to see if there is anything on it, to convert the float into a target and pelt it with stones, content with the discovery that it does almost as well as a bottle. The difference between the real boy and the book-boy is capitally displayed in the frontis- piece of "Country Pastimes for Boys," the work which we have mentioned above. We see there a boy in a shapely straw hat, whose trousers are neatly and thoroughly turned up, and whose feet are clearly quite dry, walking with firm and well directed steps along the stepping-stones in the brook. His pockets are evidently filled with well selected "specimens," and in his arms he holds with a care and precision that might become the Regina Professor of Zoology in the University of Oxford, a large owl. The boy carries him so firmly and yet so gently, that the owl is evidently quite delighted with his mount. There is on his face something which seems to promise the remark of the old French
gentleman at his wife's funeral,—"Je pense que eette petite promenade m'a fait beaucoup de bien." Bat even if the owl does not go so far as this, and maintains an attitude of philosophic doubt as to the proceedings by which he has been conveyed from his hollow in the tree, he is clearly suffering no inconvenience. The picture is entitled "Heavy Laden." We feel that just outside the page and on the opposite bank of the stream waits a fond parent or kind uncle, who, after tethering "our feathered friend," as he will, of course, describe the owl, with a bit of whip-cord tied in a series of knots as knowing as those which Ulysses used in the land of the Phceacians, will run over the specimens in Edmund's pocket and name them out of " On the Wing," "British Insects," and "Ponds and Puddles, and their Inhabitants." "This," will say the parent or uncle, "is the fresh-water crayfish, but why it has only three claws on the right side I am not sure, unless, indeed, the poor creature met with an accident before it came into our possession ; this is the common mussel; this a somewhat rare form of dragon-fly, right wing slightly damaged; this is a variety of the vole, and not, as you no doubt supposed, a shrew- mouse. The insects, I think, we had better give at once to our friend the owl, for I promised your dear mother that we would not bring back anything of a crawly nature from our ramble."
Can any parent or uncle say that this depicts the real case ? Can he put his hand upon his heart and declare that when Tommy comes back "heavy laden" it is in such guise as we have described ? A. very different picture rises before our eyes, when the Edmund of the book gives place to the Tommy of reality. The brook gleams in the sunlight as before, and as before the water ripples against the moss- covered sides of the stepping-stones. But Tommy is not on them. He is splashing through the water intent upon an experiment in hydrostatics—can a man splash water twice as high as his own head ?—and soothed with the delightful sound made by walking in boots completely full of water. Edmund treads with care and precision. Tommy does not. He rolls along like a Dutch fishing-boat in a gale of wind, and as he lurches and plunges along the smooth and slippery bottom of the stream, every step looks as if it must be the last. There is something in his pockets in the way of speci- mens, but specimens of what ? His trousers are not tucked up, or rather, one is quite down and the other has half a reef in it, a recollection of an act of legerdemain which he tried to accomplish as he came headlong down the drive two hours ago. In Tommy's arms is an owl; but, oh how changed from the owl we have described above ! It is impaled against Tommy's waistcoat by his left arm. Originally it was buttoned inside his coat, but it has half-struggled out, and is biting savagely at Tommy's fingers whenever they come near. In the book-picture the parent or uncle on the bank awaited with satisfaction the advent of the specimens. Here no such satisfaction is visible. Instead, the father is gesticulating wildly on the bank. "I say, look out there, Tommy ! Take care what you're doing with the poor bird,— don't you see you're killing it ? No, don't drop it, you idiot, or it'll be drowned ; stick to it ! If you're not sharp it'll be smothered. Now you're choking it. That's worse. Oh, do be more careful ! Hurry ! What's the good of trying to tame an owl in mid-stream, and when the poor thing's dead with fright ? Bring it here, I say !" When Tommy and the owl get to the bank, and the question has been decided whether the poor bird ought not at once to be put out of its misery, Tommy begins to get his specimens named. From pockets swollen to the size of panniers he produces a vast collection of wet rub- bish. "Isn't this a very rare stone, father ?" and then is pro- duced a rock of the size of the chunk of Old Red Sandstone which broke up the Geological Society upon the Stanislaus. When he has heard an unfavourable verdict, softened so as to spare his feelings as much as possible, he proceeds to pro- duce "a splendid crystal, which I should like you to have, because it's the best I ever found." Alas ! it is very wet, very big, very dirty, and has but the very faintest suggestion of crystallisation at one corner. When this geological crown has been put aside, there emerges a dead newt. "I think it could be revived all right if you would give it some of that stuff you gave the garden-boy when he fell off the roof of the shed. Sal something, wasn't it?" Next come three partially smashed, hard-set blackbird's eggs,—a hideous mash of shell
and unfledged birds. Then two or three sticklebacks, and a mixed lot of paper, candle-ends, and string, and a peg-top and catapult. Then there is a pause, followed by, "Oh, I've forgotten my knife ! I must have lost it in the tree. Will you come back and help look ? I did as you always told me,—that is, to have both hands free when I climbed, and so I opened both blades and held it between my teeth. I think I must have dropped it when the owl hooted at me. I wasn't expecting it just then. I remember I called out something to keep him quiet." When you say that Tommy cannot go back for the knife, or anywhere but home to get dry things, Tommy looks like a martyr for two minutes, and then suddenly brightens and says that he believes it's all right after all, and that he left his knife at home. "But you said you had it in your mouth !" "Yes, but it must have been your knife; don't you remember I asked you for it just before I went across to the old tree ?" So ends a practical day devoted to the country pastimes of boys.
But we must not leave the book before us without noting that it is in reality an excellent account of country pastimes, written in a healthy, manly vein, and evidently by a person who knows what boys really are. The subject makes his work take a form which suggests Edmund the correct, but clearly Tommy the incorrigible is not unknown or nnsym- pathised with. Says our author in his preface, "While elder people are content merely to watch the natural habits of birds and beasts, it is certain that the average boy desires to catch and handle them." It is indeed. The work before us contains instructions which are intended to make this catching and handling as little cruel as may be. We hope they may prove successful.
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