AN ABUSED BOY.
YOU can always tell a boy whose mother cuts his hair. Not because the edges
of it look as if it had been chewed off by an absent-minded horse; but you
tell it by the way he stops on the street and wriggles his shoulders. When
a fond mother has to cut her boy's hair, she is careful to guard against
any annoyance and muss by laying a sheet on the carpet. It has never yet
occurred to her to sit him over a bare floor, and put the sheet around his
neck. Then she draws the front hair over his eyes, and leaves it there while
she cuts that which is at the back. The hair which lies over his eyes appears
to be surcharged with electric needles, and that which is silently dropping
down under his shirt-band appears to be on fire. She has unconsciously continued
to push his head forward until his nose presses his breast, and is too busily
engaged to notice the snuffing sound that is becoming alarmingly frequent.
In the mean time, he is seized with an irresistible desire to blow his nose,
but recollects that his handkerchief is in the other room. Then a fly lights
on his nose, and does it so unexpectedly, that he involuntarily dodges, and
catches the points of the shears in his left ear. At this he commences to
cry, and wish he was a man. But his mother doesn't notice him. She merely
hits him on the other ear to inspire him with confidence, and goes on with
the work. When she is through, she holds his jacket-collar back from his
neck, and with her mouth blows the short bits of hair from the top of
his
head down his back. He calls her attention to this fact; but she looks for
a new place on his head, and hits him there, and asks him why he didn't use
his handkerchief. Then he takes his awfully disfigured head to the mirror,
and looks at it, and, young as he is, shudders as he thinks of what the boys
on the street will say.
