of frustrating any one’s plans, lounges over to the other side of the pool; and there he reposes just as if he was not spoiling the boy’s holiday.  This slight change of base on the part of the fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line.  This time, cunning and patience are rewarded.  The hoop encircles the unsuspecting fish.  The boy’s eyes almost start from his head as he gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has got him fast.  Out he comes, up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to look at him.  In this transaction, however, no one can be more surprised than the sucker.

VII

FICTION AND SENTIMENT

The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his city cousin.  When school keeps, he has only to “do chores and go to school,” but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm that have been left for the boy to do.  Picking up stones in the pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them.  Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the surface, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft garden soil; it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys this sort of fall work.  And very lively work it was on frosty mornings for the barefooted boys, who were continually turning up the larger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that had been covered from the frost.  A boy can stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork; and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole of his foot was likely to stand in it until the words, “Come, stir your stumps,” broke in discordantly upon his meditations.  For the boy is very much given to meditations.  If he had his way, he would do nothing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think about things, and enjoy his work as he goes along.  He picks up potatoes as if each one were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, and requiring careful examination.

Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as he does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school is his opening into the world,—­his romance.  Its opportunities for enjoyment are numberless.  He does not exactly know what he is set at books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs, standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not at all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole.  But recess!  Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess?  He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like