play mean tricks on him; but when he found that they were making game of him, he flew into a passion, and made himself ridiculous.

Poor boy! Though he is called Marmaduke in this book, his poetic names were too long for everybody except his parents; and while his teachers called him Mark, the school-boys called him “Marmalade,” or “Dreamer,” or something else quite as appropriate and scurrilous. Some envious little Smiths and Greens did not scruple to call him “Fitty.”

Next on the list is Stephen Goodfellow, one of the most important characters in the tale. He was a fun-loving fellow, fertile in devices, an adept at repartee, and too light-hearted to be serious for more than five consecutive minutes. In a word, he was the most nimble, sprightly, ingenious and good-natured boy in the village. At the same time he was the most reckless of all boys, taking pride in rushing blindly into danger. Indeed, he affected a stoical contempt for every kind of danger; jumped backwards off empty schooners with his eyes shut; made friends with the most unamiable and untractable bull-dogs in the place; lowered himself into deep, dismal, and unsafe old wells to wake the echoes with his bellowing voice, and busied himself about the punching and shearing machine, the steam engine, and the circular saws in the Columbia foundry. He knew every sailor of all the vessels that put into the harbor; knew every engineer and brakeman on all the trains that passed[42] through the village; knew the name and disposition of every respectable dog within the corporation; knew just where to look for the best raspberries and the most desirable fish-worms; but he didn’t know an adversative conjunction from an iambic pentameter.

[42]

To be acquainted with this boy was to like him. By Will and Charles he was actually beloved, and there was a mutual and lasting affection between him and all our heroes. He was always ready to lend them his counsel and assistance when agitating their dark schemes, and when any waggish trick was in view, or when anything ludicrous was going on, his approval and support were the first consideration. Some of the urchins tried to equal Stephen’s feats of dexterity and to ape his sallies and whimsicalness; but it could not be done, and they only exposed themselves to his derision and made themselves more envious and unhappy than before. Stephen was familiarly known as “Stunner;” which, being offensively vulgar, we, out of respect for the reader’s feelings, have transposed into Steve.

If this were the history of a sailor-boy, Steve 

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