What unsatisfactory creatures we are as children, so imperfect, so deficient! It is worse with boys than with girls.

Compare, for instance, the twine with boys often.

What coarse, awkward, unruly lumps of boisterousness youngsters mostly are at that age! I dislike boys, and more than ever when I remember myself at that stage.

What an insensible, ungrateful, brainless, and heartless brat I was!' 'You must be wrong in one respect,' she returned, watching a large butterfly.

'You could not have been brainless.' 'Oh, the foundation of tolerable wits was there, no doubt; but it is just that undeveloped state that irritates me.