Mrs. Partington was much surprised to find Ike, one
rainy afternoon, in the spare room, with the rag-bag
hung to the bed-post, which he was belaboring very
lustily with his fists, as huge as two one-cent apples.
“What gymnastiness are you doing here?” said she,
as she opened the door. He did not stop, and, merely
replying “training,” continued to pitch in. She stood
looking at him as he danced around the bag, busily
punching its rotund sides. “That 's the Morrissey
touch,” said he, giving one side a dig; “and that” —
hitting the other side — “is the Benicia Boy.” She
said, “Stop,” and he immediately stopped, after he had
given the last blow for Morrissey. “I 'm afraid the
training you are having is n't good,” she said; “and I
think you had better train in some other company. I
thought your going into compound fractures in school

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would be dilatorious to you. I don't know who Mr.
Morrison is, and don't want to; but I hear that he has
been whipping the Pernicious Boy, a poor lad with a
sore leg, and I think he should be ashamed of himself.”
Ike had read the “Herald with all about the great prize
fight” in it, and had become entirely carried away with
it. “How strange it is,” said Dr. Spooner, as he was
told the above, “that boys take so naturally to cruelty
and violence! In the time of boyhood, the reason has
not got control, and hence temptations to tyranny and
wrong have at this time potent force. We all remember
the tale of a child, — not a caudality, but a narrative, —
who was seeing a picture of the holy martyrs
torn to pieces by lions, in the days of Nero, wherein
one, according to perspective, that was in the back-ground,
appeared smaller; and, as it appeared to be
taking no part, the child, instead of being horrorstricken
at the scene, remarked, with considerable anxiety,
that the little lion would n't get any martyr, if he
was n't very quick! So, within our knowledge, urchins
in school were punished by their teacher for tying up
a cat and whipping it to death. It was on such cases
that the doctrine of man's total depravity was based.
Boys who thus began, with none to guide them by the
dangerous period, kept right on in wickedness, whereas
the merest slant of the helm to port might have saved
them. The boy is the least understood of anything in
the animal kingdom.” There 's an opinion as is an
opinion.

p676-223

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