Mothers who are disturbed by the noise and untidiness of boys at home must be careful, lest by their reproaches they drive their children from home in search of pleasure elsewhere. “There are those banisters all finger-marks again,” said Mrs. Cary, as she made haste with a soft linen cloth to polish down the shining oak again. “George,” she said, with a flushed face, as she gave the cloth a decided wrench out of the basin of suds, “if you go up those stairs again before bedtime you shall be punished.” “I should like to know where I am to go,” said George, “I cannot stay in the kitchen, I am so in the way, and can’t go in the parlor for fear I’ll muss that up; and now you say I can’t go up to my own room. I know of a grand place where I can go,” he added to himself; “boys are never told they are in the way there, and we can have lots of fun. I’ll go down to Nile’s corner. I can smoke a cigar now as well as any boy, if it did make me awful sick the first time. They shall not laugh at me again about it.” And so the careful housekeeper virtually drove her son from the door to hang about the steps and sit under the broad inviting portico of the village grog-shops.