LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS         169

not easily was its freedom lost! It demolished ut¬
terly with its hoofs the clothes of a strong man
who thought to capture it alive and quickly.

One pleasant feature of frontier life, despite its
roughness, was the close mutual acquaintance of
all domestic animals, four-footed and human. As
even to-day, one in a city can tell, by their feelings
of fear or trust in a horse, for example, the children
born and bred in the country and those who have
lived between brick walls, so even in New Nether¬
land the sports of town and country differed, and
human beings lived nearer nature in village and
country than in the towns. Kid ni mo inaha (even
in the metropolis there are boors) and Kid sumeru
(where you live, that is the capital) might be
Dutch as well as Japanese proverbs, for there
was culture on the frontier and rudeness on Man¬
hattan.