aged friends of the twenty-two families, without any collusion, placed their hands upon the youthful heads, prophesying their future eminence.  But even this remarkable coincidence does not affect the fact that the precocity of the average transatlantic boy is not generally in the most useful branches of knowledge, but rather in the direction of habits, tastes, and opinion.  He is not, however, evenly precocious.  He unites a taste for jewelry with a passion for candy.  He combines a penetration into the motives of others with an infantile indifference to exposing them at inconvenient times.  He has an adult decision in his wishes, but he has a youthful shamelessness in seeking their fulfilment.  One of his most exasperating peculiarities is the manner in which he querulously harps upon the single string of his wants.  He sits down before the refusal of his mother and shrilly besieges it.  He does not desist for company.  He does not wish to behave well before strangers.  He desires to have his wish granted; and he knows he will probably be allowed to succeed if he insists before strangers.  He is distinguished by a brutal frankness, combined with a cynical disregard for all feminine ruses.  He not seldom calls up the blush of shame to the cheek of scheming innocence; and he frequently crucifies his female relatives.  He is generally an adept in discovering what will most annoy his family circle; and he is perfectly unscrupulous in avenging himself for all injuries, of which he receives, in his own opinion, a large number.  He has an accurate memory for all promises made to his advantage, and he is relentless in exacting payment to the uttermost farthing.  He not seldom displays a singular ingenuity in interpreting ambiguous terms for his own behoof.  A youth of this kind is reported to have demanded (and received) eight apples from his mother, who had bribed him to temporary stillness by the promise of a few of that fruit, his ground being that the Scriptures contained the sentence, “Wherein few, that is, eight, souls were saved by water.”

The American small boy is possessed, moreover, of a well-nigh invincible aplomb.  He is not impertinent, for it never enters into his head to take up the position of protesting inferiority which impertinence implies.  He merely takes things as they come, and does not hesitate to express his opinion of them.  An American young gentleman of the mature age of ten was one day overtaken by a fault.  His father, more in sorrow than in anger, expressed his displeasure.  “What am I to do with you, Tommy?  What am I to do with you?” “I have no suggestions to offer, sir,” was the response of Tommy, thus appealed to.  Even in trying circumstances, even when serious misfortune overtakes the youthful American, his aplomb, his confidence in his own opinion, does not wholly forsake him.  Such a one was found weeping in the street.  On being asked the cause of his tears, he sobbed out in mingled