And he was quite right. The two bad boys enjoyed in
stealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the most
wicked thing they could do. If it had been as sinless as playing
marbles, they would n't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past a
brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless inhabitants, it was
said, were card-playing people; and it is impossible to describe how
wicked that house appeared to John. He almost expected to see its
shingles stand on end. In the old New England one could not in any
other way so express his contempt of all holy and orderly life as by
playing cards for amusement.
There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than there
was of Easter; and probably nobody about him could have explained
Easter; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas
gifts. Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on his
birthday or any other day. He expected nothing that he did not earn,
or make in the way of "trade" with another boy.
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