For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic.

No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.

No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions with unappeasable envy.

But no, there was something gaudier even than this.

He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor.