Thorough Thieves
Where the urban child excels is in thoroughness. One had thought that the country boy knew something of the delicate and gentle art of securing apples from his neighbour's orchard. But he is a novice. One owner of a small orchard well retired behind his house, saw a little group of refugees enter, armed with baskets and sacks ; a mere coat-pocket was no use to them. He threatened the little brigands with pains and penalties, and they retired. Coming out of his house ten minutes later, he saw them returning to the attack. A certain ignorance of botany leaves these London boys as ready to break off branches as fruit. To take fruit found in such strange places as a tree or bush does not in their philosophy come under the heading thievery. The one form of natural history in which these exiles are superior is in the domain of entomology. Let the animal be called, as in that glorious skit by Stephen Leacock, pulex hibiscus.
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