While I may have been guilty of many literary offences, a li

Bringing up the Boy

[Illustration]

“GIVE HIM THE LIGHT

TELL HIM THE TRUTH

SHOW HIM THE WAY!”

Bringing up the Boy

A Message to Fathers and Mothers

from a Boy of Yesterday concerning

the Men of To-morrow

By

CARL WERNER

[Illustration]

New York

Dodd, Mead and Company

1913

Copyright, 1911, by

THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1913, by

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

Published, March, 1913

TO

Mary Morris Werner

A GOOD MOTHER

WHOSE FINE SYMPATHY, KEEN PERCEPTION,

AND DEVOUT SENSE OF DUTY ARE MOULDING

THE CHARACTER OF

AN AMERICAN BOY

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD xi

I FROM BABY TO BOY 3

II THE SIMPLICITY OF DISCIPLINE 17

III AS THE TWIG IS BENT 33

IV A TALK AT CHRISTMAS TIME 48

V THE DYNASTY OF THE DIME NOVEL 63

VI THE SIN OF SEX SECRECY 77

VII THE WEED AND THE WINECUP 91

VIII OUT INTO THE WORLD 104

There; my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

--Polonius to his son.

_Hamlet_, Act I, Scene 3.

FOREWORD

A good portion of the material in this volume was printed in serial

form in _The Delineator_, to whose editors and publishers I am deeply

indebted for the sympathy and encouragement that were necessary to

bring my ideas on boy training into the circle of general parenthood.

As a result of the publicity gained through the medium of that

magazine’s wide circulation, many letters were received by the magazine

and by myself; and in this mass of correspondence there was a distinct

note of appeal for the publication of the essays between covers. It was

quite without any knowledge of this demand, however, that the present

publishers, acting independently, became interested in the series, and

decided, after due consideration, to issue it in book form.

It was surprising that of the many letters received while these

articles were appearing serially, only a small minority of the writers

disagreed with my views, and those few protests were confined to one

or two subjects. So far as could be reasonably expected of one whose

time is much occupied in pursuing a livelihood, I replied to all such

communications. If in some instances I failed, the omission was not

because I was lacking in a keen appreciation of the interest, the

sympathy, the suggestions and the criticisms thus expressed. As to

those who disagreed with me, I would like to repeat here what I have

said to them in personal replies: They may be right, and I wrong.

This much only, I know--That Providence is kind in that He permits

me to retain a distinct picture of the boy’s cosmos; that as a man

and a father I can still see--and feel--from the boy’s viewpoint; and

that, preserving that visuality, I have tried, with the best judgment

and most constant effort of which I am capable, to employ it for the

greatest good. Everything that I have written about boy training is

solidly fixed on this foundation; and everything that I have written

has been or is being employed, to the very letter, in my stewardship

of one who is infinitely more precious to me than life itself--my

own boy. If I have erred, may God forgive me; but on this score my

conscience is as clear as a crystal pool, for so far as human vision

penetrates not one duty has been left undone and not one endeavour has

gone astray. And happily, though I say it with a prayer on my lips and

humility in my heart, every passing year adds its living testimony to

the principles which I advocate and for which I plead.

C. W.

Bringing up the Boy

I

FROM BABY TO BOY

Your son, madam, while passing a vacant house, paused, poised his

arm and deliberately sent a small stone crashing through one of the

windows. Then, turning on his heel, he ran nimbly up the street and

disappeared around the corner.

You know it occurred, because some one living next to the house saw him

do it and told the owner, and the owner came to you for reparation and

you charged the boy with it and he admitted it to be true.

You are heartbroken because you find yourself confronted with what

appears to be irrefutable evidence that your son is a bad boy.

You ask him why he did it. He doesn’t know. You suggest that it might

have been an accident. Being a truthful boy, he replies tearfully that

it was not. You enquire if he had any grievance against the man who

owns the house. He answers that he hadn’t even heard of the owner and

didn’t know who he was. Then--you ask again--why did he do it? You get

the same answer:

“I don’t know.”

It certainly looks dubious for your boy, madam, doesn’t it? If at the

tender age of ten years a lad will deliberately “chuck” a stone through

a neighbouring window, with no reason or provocation for it whatsoever,

what may he not be capable of at twenty? The thought is appalling,

isn’t it?

Happily, however, I think it can be demonstrated to your complete

satisfaction that your son is not bad--so far as this particular

offence is concerned, anyway--and that this stone-throwing business is

a perfectly natural thing for a perfectly normal boy to do.

To start with, let us suppose that I have placed on your back

fence, side by side, a brick and a bottle. I then hand you a little

target-rifle and invite you to try your skill at shooting. Now, which

will you aim at--the brick or the bottle?

The bottle, of course. You answer more quickly than I can write it.

And why the bottle?

Just think that over a moment, please. Why the bottle?

Meanwhile, let us go back to the boy and the window.

The desire to see a physical result from any personal effort is

deep-seated in every human being. Where is the author who does not take

secret and real pleasure in scanning the achievements of his pen in

the public print? Where is the architect who would forego the pleasure

of seeing the finished structure, the lines and masses of which he

has dreamed over and designed? The desire to see the result follow the

endeavour, the effect follow the cause, is strong within us all.

It may seem a far cry from art and letters to the boy and the broken

window, but the psychologic principle involved is one and the same.

The boy, sauntering along the street or the roadway, has been amusing

himself by throwing stones. He has sent one against the side of a barn

with no effect other than the sound of a hollow thud as it struck the

boards. He has heaved one at a telegraph pole, and the pole didn’t even

quiver. Then he spies the vacant house.

It is obviously deserted and abandoned. A pane already shattered in one

of the windows starts the idea. It is far enough back from the street

to make the throw a test of skill. If he misses there’s no harm done.

If he hits there’ll be a noise, a crash, a shower of flying glass

and--Enough! Up goes the arm, away goes the stone with fateful accuracy

and the deed is done. It was the act of a sudden impulse. Before the

conscience within him could assert itself the missile had struck; and

that innate human ambition to produce a visible result was gratified.

The deed is done, and the boy doesn’t know why he did it. But returning

to the hypothesis of the brick and the bottle, perhaps you, madam, can

explain why you would prefer to shoot at the bottle.

In these talks I want to tell mothers something of what I know about

boys; not all about them, but just a few of the more vital things

that every mother of a boy ought to know and every father ought to be

reminded of. I say “reminded” advisedly, for the fathers must have

known some time, though it would seem that most of them have forgotten

now. What I say I know about boys, I know. What I may suggest or advise

is another matter. It can stand only as a belief, an opinion, and my

sole excuse for presuming to offer it is that I love the boy; I live

close to him and I believe in him.

I do not believe that the intuitiveness generally accredited to

motherhood is in the least degree overestimated or exaggerated. But

mere intuitiveness, even in its highest form of development, can hardly

be expected to bridge the natural gap of temperamental sex difference

between mother and son.

Unfortunately, the father, not eager to invade what he believes to

be the mother’s sphere, usually is content to leave the management

of the boy in the mother’s hands, while the mother, not recognising

the deficiency of her position, labours on patiently, lovingly,

untiringly, but in many cases blindly, and often with poor success.

If mothers only understood this it would be better. If they could be

brought to realize the handicap under which they are striving they

could fortify themselves against it. They could deepen the interest

of the father or, failing that, they could at the least draw upon his

experience and knowledge of real boyhood with good effect. But there

are no sex distinctions to the average mother. The boys and the girls

are just “the children” and the difference of sex is lost in the great

catholicity of maternal love.

At the very beginning parents must concede the existence of an inherent

temperamental difference between the boy and the girl. This, for the

mother, is not so easy of adjustment as it may appear. The boy is her

baby, just her baby, from swaddling-clothes to long trousers.

The fact is, of course, that the assertion of the sex temperament

starts almost with the beginning of life. For the first four or five

years it is, to be sure, almost a negligible quantity, but after that

the boy needs to be treated as a boy, and not as a sexless baby.

Put a pair of new red shoes on a little girl’s feet and send her out

among a group of misses shod in black. Then watch her plume herself and

pose at the front gate and mince up and down the avenue, as proud as a

peacock.

Now, rig up the six-year-old boy in some new and untried kink of

fashion and turn him loose on the highway--and observe what follows.

Note how sheepishly he looks down the street to where his playfellows

are gathered, and see how he edges toward them, faltering and keeping

as close to the fence as he can. Observe how, just as he is trying to

slip into their midst unostentatiously, one of them cries in a shrill

voice:

“Look who’s here!” and another remarks:

“Oh, what a shine!” and still another exclaims:

“Pipe the kelly!” meaning, observe the hat.

Then perhaps there is the very rude boy who asks whether the “rags”

have been “rassled,” said enquiry being gently emphasised by a push

from behind. In which case the young glass of fashion, having a gloomy

premonition of what may happen to him at home if he returns bearing the

marks of combat, backs discreetly off the firing-line, and retreats

to his own dooryard with as small loss of dignity as the exigency

of the occasion will permit. And he is pretty sure to stick there

the remainder of the afternoon, while occasionally other boys, in

regulation woollens or corduroys, peep at him curiously through the

palings, making him feel like one of those unpronounceable animals that

they keep in cages and lecture about at the zoo.

Do you think this characteristic of the boy really signifies that he

is “notional”? Do you put it down merely as “finicality”? Then you do

him a great injustice. In the true analysis it is quite the opposite.

It is but one feature of a unique democracy, a splendid democracy that

you will find holding sway wherever boys gather. Oh, this democracy of

boyhood is a wonderful thing! To me it is the régime beautiful. There

is something so inspiring about it! For here, in this quaint domain of

dare-and-do, you see every sturdy little chap, regardless of clothes,

creed or family position, standing on his own merits and judged by his

own deeds.

Why some mothers persist in Little-Lord-Fauntleroy-ing their boys

within an inch of their lives is to me a profound mystery. Can any

mother enlighten me on the long-curls cruelty? Is it selfish vanity?

Could any mother, for the mere gratification of an egoistic desire,

be so unfeeling as to send her helpless boy out into the scene of

humiliation and actual physical torture of which the boy with the long

curls becomes the pitiable centre as soon as he turns the corner?

I do not like to think so. Rather would I believe, as in the case of

the broken window, that the mother’s error is chargeable to her never

having been a boy. She has a faulty conception of what it means to be

yanked about by those boy-hated ringlets of gold, to be harassed and

taunted by the inornate but happier hoi polloi.

I recall one afternoon when I took a youngster of three around to the

barber’s to have him shorn. I returned with the boy in one hand and the

curls in the other. He was magnificently cologned and wanted everybody

to “smell it.”

The mother was waiting with an empty shoe-box in her lap. She was

sitting by the window, in the soft half-light of the early evening, and

she caressed the golden bronze ringlets before putting them away. And

something glistened in her eye and it fell into the box and was packed

away with the curls. I shouldn’t wonder if it were there yet, for

somehow I can’t help thinking that a tear like that must crystallise

into a tiny pearl and glisten on forever.

But when this mother looked up at the boy, she was smiling, almost

proudly; and she patted the shiny, round head, and kissed it, cologne

and all, and quoted a verse about having “lost a baby and gained a

man,” declaring that he really looked much better than she had expected.

And the boy was put to bed and slept coolly and comfortably, and he’s

had a clean scalp and a clear conscience ever since, I guess.

But here I am, taking up the reader’s precious time talking about

clothes and curls--neither of which mere man is supposed to know

anything about--when all I meant to do was to emphasise the fact that

long before a half-dozen of his birthdays have been celebrated, the boy

must be taken up as an abstract proposition.

At the age of five, then, let us say, the boy reaches the stage of

recognisable and indisputable masculinity. This is the logical time for

the properly constituted father to take the helm of the son’s destiny.

If he does not do so, through lack of interest, lack of time or lack

of the faculty for it, the mother must needs go on with the struggle.

Her five years of training the baby will not come amiss in training the

boy. But she must now reckon with boyhood as a distinct classification

of childhood. She must remember that from now on, every year, every

month, every day, widens the gap of sex divergence. She will do well

to look at the bearded men who pass her door and consider that every

attribute of masculinity exists, embryonically, in her round-faced baby

boy.

From now on, if she hopes to appeal to the best that is in him, she

must not only study the boy, but she must study the world from the

boy’s viewpoint. The nearer the mother can get to the boy’s inner

emotions, the more effectively can she direct the trend of his mental,

moral and physical development. Herein lies the secret of getting and

keeping a grip on the boy.

II

THE SIMPLICITY OF DISCIPLINE

We are living in an epoch of extremists. This morning the suffering

dyspeptic is told that he will find a complete cure in a two weeks’

fast; this afternoon he is advised that by eating every two hours he

will be forever free from his ills. On the one hand is a sect preaching

that prayer will bring us peace, power and plenty, and on the other

is a schism pleading that supplication, in itself, availeth nothing.

Here we have a group of modern disciplinists teaching that corporal

punishment is a fading relic of barbaric brutality; there we find a

sturdy school of old-timers telling us that if we spare the rod we

shall spoil the child.

With these extremists who specialise in the stomach or in the soul I

have no quarrel; but coming down to the subject of disciplining the boy

I do want to point out to fathers and mothers seriously and earnestly

that there is a happy medium, a middle course--a neutral and natural

way.

The moral suasion idea is a fine thing in theory and it would be a

moderately fine thing actually if parents were all moral suasionists,

and if parents and children had nothing else in the world to do but

practise it. By this I mean that if all or most parents were naturally

equipped to rule by moral suasion, and, secondly, if twenty-four hours

of the day could be devoted exclusively to discipline, it would be

undoubtedly a commendable method of child-government. Unfortunately,

such is not the case, and in dealing with the question collectively we

have to take conditions, parents and children as we find them.

Nearly every parent possesses the faculty of governing to some

extent--greater or less; and all children are capable of responding

to it--but in varying degrees. There is, therefore, no hard and fast

rule that can be laid down for the guidance of all parents, to be

applied successfully to all children. However, by reducing the subject

of this article first to boys, and second to the average boy, I think

we can get the discussion down to a practicable basis. The little

girl is here absolutely eliminated from consideration. I have studied

her assiduously and at close range for a number of years and have

succeeded in establishing this much only; first, that she is almost too

sweetly complex for paternal comprehension, and second, that she is not

amenable to the rules by which we discipline the boy.

My boy, then, is the average boy, old enough to walk and talk and

understand what is said to him, moderately sensitive, moderately

affectionate, moderately impulsive, moderately perverse, of ordinarily

good health, and possessed of the usual amount of animal spirits.

Obedience is the foundation stone of the entire structure of

discipline. There is a good deal in discipline besides obedience, but

without obedience there is no discipline. It is not the alpha and

omega, but is a good deal more than the alpha. Discipline is harmony.

Harmony cannot be maintained without perfect obedience, because

obedience is a joint affair, a partnership arrangement between you and

the boy. All other essentials of discipline are _ex parte_. In all

other essentials you are subjective and the boy is objective. You think

and he acts, you direct and he executes, you furnish the plan of living

and he lives it. But it is the _partnership_ in obedience that makes

this possible. Given perfect obedience, the rest is easy, because the

boy’s daily routine is simply a vivification of the principles shaped

by your own matured mind.

Let me repeat, then, that discipline is simply harmony and harmony

cannot be attained without perfect obedience. Note the adjective,

_perfect_, for this is the obstacle over which we are so prone to

stumble. Obedience must be absolute, complete and infallible.

How can we attain it? How can we take the child-boy and so mould him

that he will respond to a command instantly and unfailingly? Within

him there is a natural, healthy instinct opposed to it. Within him is

the natural human tendency to think and act independently, to learn by

experiment, to venture unassisted and unrestrained into the unknown.

Punishment other than corporal will not always do it, because at the

time when this condition must be established the boy’s baby mentality

is not capable of compassing the long distances between cause and

effect. At the early age at which it is necessary to establish perfect

obedience, the moral penalties are too slow in action, too complex

and too much dependent upon local condition to be effective. There

are exceptions, of course. For example: You have a box of sweets and

you tell the boy he may take one. He takes two. As a penalty for

his disobedience you make him return both pieces to the box and you

cast the package into the fire. There you have incorporal punishment

that is instant, direct and effective; but this incident is made to

order and of rare occurrence in fact. Suppose that the boy swallows

the two pieces instantly, or suppose the more usual occurrence that

you have forbidden him to partake of the sweets at all and he has

surreptitiously eaten one. What then? Casting the remainder into the

fire will not impress him at the time because his appetite has been

satisfied, the desire is dulled. You may deprive him of his allowance

on the day following, but the lapse of time dims the relation of the

penalty to the offence. This kind of treatment works well with some of

the minor errors but not with disobedience. The tendency to disobey is

too constant, too persistent and too frequent, and too early in the

boy’s process of development.

A mother said: “It is not necessary for me to strike my child. I compel

him to sit in a chair for one hour without speaking. He fears that

more than the rod.” Of course, he does, poor little chap! And that

mother did not realise that she was substituting a barbaric torture

for mild punishment. I reverse her reasoning: It is not necessary for

me to so torture my boy. Nor shall I deprive him of his play, of the

outside air, of his supper, of anything that makes for his health and

happiness, nor of any good thing that it is in my power to give him.

Disobedience calls for a punishment that is short, direct and

impressive. A sharp tap on the palm of a boy’s hand, or on the calf of

his leg--or two or five or ten--is the only kind of penance I know of

that fills the requirements. It is the one short and sure road to an

immediate result. Naturalists tell us that the sense of touch is the

first experienced by a newborn child. It is the first and quickest wire

from the outer world to the brain. Then come hearing and smelling and

seeing and long after these come the moral perceptions, the power of

deduction and the distinction of right and wrong. My experience has

been that this first sense continues to be the live wire until well on

toward the maturity of the child--if the child is a boy. There are many

men, who can undergo the severest mental torture with calm resolution

and fortitude, but who tremble at the sight of a dental chair. Not

long ago I was chatting with a friend, who is a dentist, when a burly

policeman rushed in, plumped himself into the operating-chair and asked

the dentist to ease his aching tooth. The dentist looked at the tooth

and reached for his forceps. “The only way to fix that is to extract

it,” he said. The officer of the law sprang from the chair like a

jack-in-the-box and made for the door, remarking apologetically as he

went out that he couldn’t spare the time. “That man,” said the dentist,

when he had gone, “has a medal for bravery, and three times has been

commended for saving lives at the risk of his own.”

It is not that the boy fears pain, but that he fears the certainty of

it, he dreads the deliberate, the inevitable punishment, accompanied by

no moral stimulus with which to combat it. I have known my boy to take

a severe beating from another boy in a struggle for the possession of

an apple--and all without shedding a tear. The spat on the hand that

I inflicted was a mere flea-bite to that beating, but because of it I

could leave an apple within reach of his hand indefinitely and, though

he might want it ever so much, he would not touch it if I had forbidden

him.

So much for the psychology of corporal punishment. Now for the practice

of it.

While I may have been guilty of many literary offences, a list of

“Don’ts” has not, up to this time, been among them. But as the word

obedience necessarily captions an imposing array of “Don’ts” for the

boy, I think his parents may be better equipped to enforce them by

considering some very important ones applying to themselves. At any

rate, having spoken freely in favour of the use of the rod, it is

vitally important to qualify my advocacy of it in accordance with my

experience and belief. Every one of the qualifications or conditions

that I am about to enumerate is essential to this system of discipline,

so much so that if they were not to be considered as part of it, all

that I have written would go for naught and I would ask to withdraw it

completely.

Corporal punishment is resorted to for one kind of offence

only--disobedience. Absolutely for no other.

Corporal punishment consists of a few sharp taps on the palm or calf

with a thin wood ruler.

The boy is never punished in the presence of a third person, even a

brother or sister.

Punishment is never administered with the slightest sign of anger or

under excitement. _Any parent incapable of so administering corporal

punishment should not employ it._

Punishment must partake of the nature of a simple ceremony rather

than of a torture; it must be regarded as a duty, not as a personal

retaliation.

Punishment is always prefaced with a simple, brief, but explicit

explanation, like this: “My boy, listen: I love you and I do not

like to hurt you. But, every boy _must_ be made to obey his father

and mother, and this seems to be the only way to make you do it. So

remember! Every time you disobey me you shall be punished. When I tell

you to do a thing, you must do it, instantly; without a moment’s delay.

If you hesitate, if you wait to be told a second time, you will be

punished. When I speak, you must act. Just as sure as you are standing

here before me, this punishment will follow every time you do not do

as you are told.”

Say no more than that. Drive home the inseparability of the cause and

the consequence; let the idea of instant, infallible obedience be

telegraphed to his brain simultaneously with the sting of the ruler.

Have no fear that this form of chastisement will break your boy’s

spirit or will weaken the bond of love between him and yourself. Both

will be strengthened by it. For one punishment inflicted, there are

hundreds of kind words and deeds to prove your affection.

No child should be punished corporally other than as I have described.

To strike him in the face, to strike him at all with the hand or fist

is brutal, and brutality is not only sinful but ineffective. Corporal

punishment inflicted impulsively is dangerous because it lacks the

earmarks of good intent.

Above all, remember this: That the kind of corporal punishment which I

employ is effective, first because it is the only kind the child knows,

and in no other way does he feel the weight of a corrective hand; and

second, because _it never fails to follow the deed_.

To waver is unfair to the child. Yesterday he was punished. To-day he

commits the same infraction and is not punished. Here is inconsistency

and the boy is confused. If it were not deserved to-day, he reasons, it

was undeserved yesterday; therefore, he is aggrieved. Every time you

miss the atonement you lose a link, and the chain of your discipline is

broken.

This is the chief error of parent disciplinarians. We fail to grasp

the all-important truth that the unfailing application of corporal

punishment is the very thing that can render punishment of any kind

unnecessary. Many a boy is punished a hundred times where but a few

would have sufficed had the penalty been exacted consistently and

unfailingly. The right kind of discipline neither spoils the child nor

spoils the rod. It spares both. It is like good dentistry. Every moment

of hurt saves years of suffering in later life. And good painless

discipline is as rare as good painless dentistry.

Further than this I have but little to say about discipline, for,

once you have achieved infallible obedience, you are bound to achieve

perfect discipline. The two words are synonyms in effect. No mother can

hope for the best results if she seeks to train her boy as she would

arrange her hair--to please her vanity--or as she would plan a shopping

tour--to suit her convenience. Self must be submerged and the child’s

future kept uppermost. For discipline is a mother’s duty to her boy.

If she falters in it the boy will suffer. And every penalty that the

unwatched boy escapes through a parent’s frailty, he will have to pay,

many fold, in the future years.

III

AS THE TWIG IS BENT

You hear the sound of sobbing in the distance, and as it draws nearer

and grows more distinct you recognise the voice. A moment later the

door flies open and there stands your boy, crying as though his

heart would break. Little rivulets of tears are trickling down his

dust-covered cheeks, and on the side of his face is the mark of a cruel

blow.

Between sobs he tells you that the boy across the street did it. Why?

He doesn’t know why; he wasn’t doing anything at all, “jes’ playin’

around.”

You wipe the tears away and kiss the hurt, and as you note the

quivering lip and the angry bruise, a wave of indignation swells within

you. Glancing out through the window you see the boy across the

street, cavorting triumphantly on the curb. How much bigger and coarser

and rougher than your boy he appears--isn’t it always so? Your little

chap has come to you partly for sympathy, but mainly for retaliation.

He shows you his wound and points to the boy who did it. He has been

hurt, he has been grievously wronged, and he has come to you whom he

has learned to look upon as his one never-failing protector and friend.

You spring to your feet, fired with an overwhelming desire to rush into

the street and avenge the wrong that has been done your child.

Madam, one moment! Don’t do it. The retaliation you contemplate may

be justice so far as the tormentor across the street is concerned,

but it is a rank injustice to your own boy. I want to tell you on the

authority of an ex-boy that if you would serve your son best, you will

not interfere.

None but a mother knows the trials and heartaches of the fighting

period in a boy’s life; and none but a father realises what an

important part that period plays in the shaping of the boy’s career.

The period runs approximately from the ages of five to ten. Prior to

that the child is too young to indulge in it, and subsequently he is

too old to tell about it. In the interim these affairs of the street

are of daily occurrence and are to the mother a source of annoyance as

mysterious as they are harrowing.

The right way to deal with this problem may not be the easiest way

but it is the simplest, and it is the best for the boy. It is to let

him alone. It is to teach him from the very beginning that outside of

his own dooryard he must protect himself with his own hands. Have a

distinct understanding that if he gets himself into a fight, he must

get himself out of it. Tell him that by helping him you would only make

more trouble for him because he would get to be known as a coward, and

all the boys would annoy him more than before.

I went further than this with my boy. I told him that I did not approve

of fighting, but that if he were forced into it, I would expect him to

hit out hard and fast and defend himself blow for blow. I provided him

with a punching-bag and a set of boxing-gloves and I showed him how to

use them. He was just five when I established this rule and in one year

it proved itself.

At six we started him off to school, and a few days later he came home

one afternoon with a discoloured eye.

But there was no tear in it. He threw his books in a corner and ran,

whistling, out to play. At dinner that evening my curiosity got the

better of me, but I assumed indifference.

“Where did you get the eye, old chap?” I asked casually.

He looked up sheepishly, smiled and pushed his cup toward me.

“Some more milk, if you please, father,” he said. The fighting problem

had been solved forever.

The mother who coddles her boy shows him a double unkindness. She

not only increases his boyhood miseries, through making him the

particular target of other boys, but she retards the development of his

self-reliance and his manliness.

I give the _affaire d’honneur_ an important place in this chapter

because it is one of the things about boys that mothers often

misunderstand and quite generally undervalue.

Of course, the cardinal precept which should form the foundation of

the character structure is--Truth. Combine in him manliness and

truthfulness, and the other essential traits of good character will

spring from these two like shoots from the trunk of a healthy tree.

Truth-telling should be made a matter of habit with the boy. Have you

not among your acquaintances men, women and children who are habitual

prevaricators, people who make misstatements continuously, absolutely

without purpose and without malice? Lying has become a habit with them.

By the same token truth-telling can be and should be so instilled in

the boy as to become automatic. He should never be punished for a

falsehood as you might punish him for disobedience. The problem of

disobedience, which I discussed in a foregoing chapter, is a matter of

psychology from beginning to end. Truth-telling becomes so in the end

but is a matter of morals at the beginning. It can be formed into a

fixed habit by treating it morally and by keeping everlastingly at it

until the result is achieved. You cannot beat a boy into hating a lie,

but you can shame him into it.

It is natural for a very young boy to seek to evade responsibility for

an offence by disclaiming it. The first time he does this he must be

made to know that, however serious the offence may be, it is as nothing

compared to the lie that he seeks to cover. I did not go so far as to

promise my boy immunity for infractions that he frankly confessed;

but I did make it a rule unto myself that he should never suffer

through confession, and I did invariably commend him, in the highest

terms, when he told the truth under conditions that made it peculiarly

praiseworthy. An example: I find my inkstand tipped over and a great

black stain upon the carpet. I summon the boy and ask him sternly:

“Who did that?” My manner is threatening. The offence is grave. He is

thoroughly frightened, but after a moment he answers, falteringly, “I

did.” Instantly my attitude changes from admonitive to commendatory.

I say to him: “This is an awful thing that you have done. The carpet

is spoiled. The stain will always be there. Nothing can remove it. But

you have told the truth and that is the finest thing that a boy can do.

As bad as this is, I would rather you would do it a hundred times than

tell one lie.”

If, on the other hand, he falsifies, I grieve before him. I tell him

that nothing that a boy can do is as bad as a falsehood: that a lie

is the very meanest and lowest thing in the world. I tell him that I

fully forgive him for spilling the ink, but it is almost impossible to

forgive him for that lie. I leave him to meditate upon it.

I never allow an untruth to pass without bringing a blush of shame to

the boy’s cheek. I never let a lie show itself without holding it up as

a thing to be despised. The boy first gets to fear a falsehood, then to

despise it--and finally to forget it. And by forgetting I mean that it

passes beyond the pale of things considerable. Truth has become a fixed

habit.

Having accomplished this, you have given your boy a solid foundation

upon which to rear the structure of good character.

I believe in sending the boy to the church. Regardless of the parents’

attitude toward religion, I believe it is their duty to give the

boy the benefit of a church environment while he is still a boy.

Irrespective of sect or creed, he is sure to absorb some good in an

atmosphere of divine worship. In later years he may depart from the

precepts there learned, but the early teachings and associations of the

church or the Sunday school will leave their influence in some degree,

and whether it is much or little, it will never be for anything but

good.

I give my boy the Bible to study and the Golden Rule to live by. I

teach him to speak or think deprecatingly of no religious faith, and

show him that all are working for the betterment of man.

From his infancy I guard him from superstition and discourage the fear

of fancied dangers. I do not believe it is necessary for a boy, at any

age, to fear the dark. Mine never did. Fear of the dark is born of

suggestion, and he has been successfully guarded from any word that

would couple darkness with danger. Throughout his entire childhood he

never sensed the usual terrors of the unlighted room and the darkened

passage. I would never confirm even the Santa Claus myth, though I did

not dissuade him from it, because I well remember the added joy it

brought to me when I was a boy. When the question was put to me I said:

“I shall not tell you because the mystery of Christmas adds much to

your enjoyment of it. Believe it or not, as you choose; I have nothing

to say.” With this pleasant exception he has never asked me a question

that I have not answered truthfully and as completely as I could.

I live close to my boy, and by so doing I find his level and see his

narrowed horizon as he sees it. When he was only six we lived together

in the woods, slept under the same blanket, fished and sailed and took

our daily swim together. Beginning at that early age we have sat by the

campfire at night and talked of the stars and the moon and the strange

noises of the wood. Nowhere can you get as close to your boy as you can

out under the sky with only Nature about you. It would be a splendid

thing if every father could devote a few weeks each year to “roughing

it” with his boy. Besides the opportunities it offers for community of

thought, it brings out a phase of the boy’s character that under other

conditions might never come to the surface. I recall one evening, as

the boy and I were lolling on the bank of a river, how he astonished

me by exclaiming: “See! What a beautiful sunset!” He had seen the sun

go down many times over the housetops of the town, but it needed the

solitude of that particular place and time to give him an appreciation

of its beauties. Unexpectedly there was disclosed to me an æsthetic

side of his nature that I had never known.

These are opportunities that open peculiarly to the father, and he

should take advantage of them.

I believe that every boy should be encouraged to acquire a college

education and that he should be made to pay for it. We hear a good

deal of talk nowadays about the lack of real advantage that the college

man has over the other fellow. Thousands of college men fail in their

struggles with the work-a-day world, and often you find a degree man

working in a subordinate capacity to a man of his own age who missed

a college education. It is a fact, too, that the honour men of our

colleges rarely distinguish themselves in their chosen professions.

But none of these things prove anything, because the personal equation

has to be reckoned in. I believe that the young man who takes his

college course and takes it seriously is better fitted for the work

of life than he would otherwise have been. The unschooled man who

succeeds would have succeeded with more ease and to a higher standard

had he been schooled. The college man who fails would have failed more

miserably had he been untrained. I believe that failure of an educated

man is in spite of his education, and not because of it.

If you want to make sure that your boy is going to use his college

education to the best advantage, let him pay his way. The failures that

our institutions of learning turn out are not the men who work their

way through; they are the sons of the affluent, the little brothers

of the rich. The boy who drives the hay-rake or works behind the

counter of his father’s store in vacation time is rarely found among

the derelicts. Let the boy share the cost with you, and you need have

no fear that either the time or money spent for education will go for

naught.

From the first time that he trots over to the candy store with his

penny, the boy should be trained to know the intrinsic value of money.

Encourage him in moderate frugality, not because the accumulation of

money is a desideratum, but because profligacy is bad for the morals.

Whether it is the mother or the father who takes especial charge of

the boy, or both, they should aim steadfastly to have his complete

confidence always. He should be made to feel that they are not only

dearer to him, but nearer to him than any one else in the world.

If a condition of implicit confidence can be established between you

and the boy, you can depend upon him to be receptive of the good which

you seek to charge him with.

Then, with truth as his anchor, no storm of the outer world can sweep

him beyond the influence of home. The bulwark of the good character

that you have builded will stand throughout his lifetime.

IV

A TALK AT CHRISTMAS TIME

On a Christmas Eve some thirty-odd years ago a very small boy, guarded

on either side by sisters older than himself, knelt at the low sill of

his bedroom window and looked wonderingly out into the night. Above was

the sky, studded with twinkling stars. Below was a soft, silent blanket

of white--the unsullied snow of a northern winter. Everything was very

still.

The boy looked first at the sky. Being of the baby age when the

children of the wise are put to bed with the sun, the night sky was

more mystic than the snow. There were so many of those stars, and

they appeared to be twinkling at him with cheerful friendliness. One

attracted him particularly. It did not twinkle and was not so merry as

the others, but it was larger and shone with a bright, steady glow. It

seemed to be reaching down toward the boy as though it would speak to

him.

He recalled the story that had been told him only the day before, the

story of the first Christmas and of three wise men who had been guided

to the manger wherein lay the infant Christ; and the thought came to

him that this, perhaps, was the star that led them. The suggestion of

the manger brought the boy’s eyes downward to the snow-topped stable

opposite his window; and from the stable he turned to the white-roofed

houses with their chimneys still smoking from the evening fires. He

wondered if Santa Claus would have to wait till all the fires were out

before he could make his rounds.

How white everything was and how still! A sense of delicious mystery

crept over him. He heard the sound of distant sleigh-bells. They drew

nearer and jingled more tunefully. One of his guardians caught his hand

in hers and held up a warning finger. They listened.

“Quick! Maybe it’s Santa Claus!” whispered the guardians in unison; and

the three scampered to their beds and disappeared beneath the blankets.

Five minutes later the little boy was fast asleep.

The little boy was myself, and the incident is the first Christmas that

I can recall. I recount it because it seems to illustrate the natural

coalescence of the mythical idea with the historical idea of the great

world holiday.

Too often, I think, the real significance of our holidays is lost

in the merriment of celebrating them. Every child is entitled to a

thorough explanation and a lasting impression of the incident which

Christmas commemorates. In shaping the Christmas idea in the boy’s mind

we should begin at the beginning. If the story of the Star of Bethlehem

is told in the right way and at the right time, it may be depended upon

to survive the myths and the merry-making with which the atmosphere is

charged during the festal period.

And this need not militate against the development of the Santa Claus

side of the celebration, for the one amplifies the other. Unselfish

giving is the keynote to both, and the child-mind easily comprehends

the application of the modern custom to the ancient story.

In the bringing up of my boy I have been a stickler for truth. Absolute

confidence between father and son, mother and child, has been my

plea and my practice, always. Yet, while not going out of my way to

encourage the Santa Claus myth, I have most cheerfully tolerated it.

It is the one mystery of childhood that I do not explain, and my reason

for excepting it from the calendar of candour is that the end justifies

the means.

I would not rob the boy of a fiction that has not one harmful

possibility, and that brings so much gladness into the home, and into

his heart. I would not deny him a kind of pleasure that added so much

to the joy of my own childhood. But, and paramount to every other

consideration, the great unassailable justification of the Santa Claus

myth is the remarkable lesson it teaches.

With reasonable reservations for the unusual I may say that never,

after the Santa Claus age, does a man or a woman either practise or

experience that remarkable unselfishness of the parents who conceal

their bounteousness behind a fiction. After childhood we continue to

give and take. We give to our brothers and sisters, to our parents and

to all whom we love. It is our pleasure to add to their happiness; but

it is also our pleasure to feel that they know it is we who have so

contributed to their enjoyment.

Not so in Santa Claus land. There, and there only, is found the

absolute submergence of self, the sincerely impersonal benefaction. As

a child, coming down to the dazzling Christmas tree, I said: “How good

is Santa Claus!” But in after years when I began to realise that every

one of those trees of joy had come from my good father, who had tramped

out into the woods to cut them and had hauled them over the hills for

miles, sometimes through a blinding blizzard,--then I said: “How great

is a parent’s love!”

When the boy arrives at the age of serious reasoning, say six or seven,

and asks me point-blank if there is really a Santa Claus, I meet the

question fairly. I simply decline to answer and give him my reason for

so doing. I explain to him that half the fun of the holiday lies in

the mystery surrounding St. Nicholas. I tell him, good-humouredly but

positively, that he must solve the Santa Claus problem himself.

By taking this position I keep square with the boy, and at the same

time he is not disillusionised, for he is as willing to cling to the

romance as I am to have him--and more so.

The custom, particularly prevalent in the large cities, of conducting

the boy through the toy department of the stores when the big holiday

stocks are on display, is to be deplored. The lavish exhibitions

paraded before his eyes cannot fail to dull his appreciation of the

home Christmas.

In arranging my boy’s Christmas I strive for simplicity. It was

Nerissa, I think, in the “Merchant of Venice,” who said: “They are as

sick who surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.” The

rich--sometimes--pity the poor at Christmas.

This is well, for pity looses a purse-string occasionally, and Heaven

knows there are enough tight ones! But the fact is, that the children

of the moderately poor often get more real joy to a square inch of a

Christmas morning than many a little brother of the rich. There can be

no great pleasure in receiving when there has been no genuine longing.

Only the child who has known want can fully relish realisation.

A few modest gifts, judiciously selected, are more permanently

satisfying than a lavish display, indiscriminately gathered. I always

try to supply my boy with one thing that he most desires, or with a

fair compromise between it and what I can afford to buy. If I can

meet his anticipations fully in this one gift I do so; but it must be

something of a substantial and permanent nature. After which, if my

purse permits, I amplify this with a few things of lesser cost and more

trivial in character.

And here let me record a protest against that modern unnecessary,

the perfected toy. By the perfected toy I mean the toy that is not

a plaything, but an ingenious contrivance so perfected mechanically

that it leaves nothing for the child to do. I protest against the toy

that leaves absolutely nothing to either the fancy or the ingenuity

of the boy. The imaginative faculty of a child is constantly reaching

out for something upon which it may feed and develop. This propensity

is stifled by the perfected toy. The railroad outfit that goes into

complete operation at the turn of a lever; the doll that walks and

talks and has an elaborate trousseau; the soldier equipments that fit a

boy out in military style from head to toe--these and all like them are

praiseworthy examples of the commercial instinct of the toymakers; but

they do not meet the requirements of the child.