He was a shrewd man; he generally saw through surfaces and perceived what was going on inside without being suspected of having an eye on the matter.
When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them.
They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job-lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life.

There were many practical jokers in the new Territory.

I do not take pleasure in exposing this fact, for I liked those people; but what I am saying is true.

I wish I could say a kindlier thing about them instead--that they were burglars, or hat-rack thieves, or something like that, that wouldn't be utterly uncomplimentary.

I would prefer it, but I can't say those things, they would not be true.