could, at a mungoose. Are Hindoos forbidden to throw stones? Perhaps they may be, but imagine forbidding a gamin to throw stones, or forbidding a gamin to do anything! When England sells Gibraltar it will be time to think of that; or when, as Wendell Holmes says, strawberries grow bigger downward through the basket. It is evident, then, that none of these are the right reasons, so it only remains to conclude that Hindoos were not designed in the beginning for gamins. Boys, they say, are the natural enemies of creation, but Young India contradicts this flat. “Boys will be boys” has stood most of us in good stead when brought red-handed before the tribune; yet Young India needs no excusings for mischief. He never does any. He has all the virtues of his elders, and none of their vices, for he positively prefers to behave properly.
Perhaps as a last resource the absence of gamins in India might be accepted as a key to the theory of climates, for we know that Nature never wastes. Nature is pre-eminently economical. What, then, would have been the use of giving Bengal ice and snow, since there are no gamins to throw it about, or to make slides on pavements?
In England the small boy begins to throw stones as soon as he can crawl to one, and continues to do so until he takes to gloves, or is taken up by the police; and there are tolerable reasons why he should thus indulge himself. Take, for instance, the case of a passing train. The boys see the train coming and a lively interest is at once aroused in its approach; the best places on the bridge are scrambled for, and the smaller children, who cannot climb up for themselves, are hoisted on to the parapet and balanced across it on their stom-
