There’s a boy,—­we pretend,—­with a three-decker-brain
     That could harness a team with a logical chain: 
     When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
     We called him “The Justice,”—­but now he’s “The Squire."(1)

     And there’s a nice youngster of excellent pith,(2)
     Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,
     But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,
     —­Just read on his medal,—­“My country,—­of thee!”

     You hear that boy laughing?—­you think he’s all fun,
     But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
     The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
     And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!(3)

     Yes, we’re boys,—­always playing with tongue or with pen,
     —­And I sometimes have asked,—­Shall we ever be men? 
     Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
     Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

     Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 
     The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May! 
     And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
     Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

1 Francis Thomas. 2 George Tyler Bigelow. 3 Francis Boardman Crowninshield. 4 G. W. Richardson. 5 George Thomas Davis. 6 James Freeman Clarke. 7 Benjamin Peirce.

III

[The Professor talks with the Reader.  He tells a Young Girl’s Story.]

When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the balance of creation was disturbed.  The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s-worth of masculine constituents.  These combined to make our first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of our common father.  All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means doctrinally or polemically.

The man implies the woman, you will understand.  The excellent gentleman whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day.  So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm-trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.

Where would she come from?

Oh, that ’s the miracle!

—­I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand.