'Boil him, boil him,' yelled
the savages, now wrought to the point of frenzy."
"That seems fairly exciting, isn't it?" I said.
"Oh, he won't get boiled," said the little boy. "He's
the hero."
So I knew that the child has already taken his first
steps in the disillusionment of fiction.
Of course he was quite right as to Ned. This wonderful
youth, the hero with whom we all begin an acquaintance
with books, passes unhurt through a thousand perils.
Cannibals, Apache Indians, war, battles, shipwrecks,
leave him quite unscathed. At the most Ned gets a flesh
wound which is healed, in exactly one paragraph, by that
wonderful drug called a "simple."
But the most amazing thing about this particular hero,
the boy Ned, is the way in which he turns up in all the
great battles and leading events of the world.
It was Ned, for example, who at the critical moment at
Gettysburg turned in his saddle to General Meade and said
quietly, "General, the day is ours." "If it is," answered
Meade, as he folded his field glass, "you alone, Ned,
have saved it."
In the same way Ned was present at the crossing of the
Delaware with Washington. Thus:--
"'What do you see, Ned?' said Washington, as they peered
from the leading boat into the driving snow.
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