The presence of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a
boy's hand a touch of distinctiveness--singles it out from ordinary
unmaimed hands. Its presence has been known to excuse its happy
possessor from such chores as bringing in wood for the kitchen
stove or pulling dock weeds out of the grass in a front yard where
it would be much easier and quicker to pull the grass out of the
dock weeds. It may even be made a source of profit by removing the
wrappings and charging two china marbles a look. I seem to recall
that in the case of a specially attractive injury, such as a thumb
nail knocked off or a deep cut which has refused to heal by first
intention or an imbedded splinter in process of being drawn out by
a scrap of fat meat, that as much as four china marbles could be
charged.
On the Fourth of July you occasionally burned your hands and in
cold winters they chapped extensively across the knuckles but
these were but the marks and scars of honorable endeavor and a
hardy endurance. In our set the boy whose knuckles had the deepest
cracks in them was a prominent and admired figure, crowned, as you
might say, with an imaginary chaplet by reason of his chaps.
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