The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1877-03-29
TAKE DOWN THE ROD.
Some Very Unkind Remarks About the
Young Man Of the Period.

There is altogether too much senti-
mentalism abroad nowadays about
whipping boys. In ancient days boys
were soundly flogged, and they grew up
into the men who laid the foundation
of the worlds civilization. The men
who won our independence were all
whipped at home and at school when
they were boys. Our fellows who went
out to Mexico and walked through the
halls Of the MonteZumas had all been
spanked by their mothers, boxed by
their primary teachers, and logged by
their fathers and the teachers of their
youth. Every man on either side in our
civil war had felt the rod, and there is
not a man in the country now over
t~hirty-ffve who does not remember good
old days of wholesome flogging at school
and feel the better for the discipline
that made him then smart. 1t is only
the latter day young saints whose spirits
cannot endure the rod. They are the
heightened young bucks who seize a IL
so soon as they can look over a billiard
table, who go into the mint-julep bust
ness on joint speculation with pocket
money just sufficient to go halves on
one julep and two straws, who chew
tobacco as loon as they cut their second
teeth, who torture their infant stomachs
with mean cigars, and, as they APP
proach manhood, go home on Saturday
night into the presence of their mothers
and sisters as drunk as fools. They
are the same high-spirited fellows who,
when they, in the old age of their young
manhood, take to themselves wives, be-
ing removed from their mothers and
sisters, make themselves agreeable by
frequently going home drunk, and max
ing their families economic for the
benefit of the heightened fellows with
whom they run. 1t is all stuff and
nonsense about breaking the spirit Of
boys. All that's ever been done in the
world has been accomplished by men
who were flogged when they were boys.
What the new sentimental training is
to do for the world will be left for time
to reveal, but no person Of. any intelli-
gence can regard the tenderly nurtured
and mildly disciplined youth coming up
around us now, and say that he discov-
ers in them the elements of a greatness
that is to make the grandeur of the past
appeal mean and little. Cromwell and
Nelson and Wellington and all the he
roes of English and American history
were vigorously strapped at school, and
when the attention of their fond par
ents were called to the occurrence they
Justify cried out to Tutor Macduff to
lay on, and be hanged to him who first
cried hold, enough. Boy human nature
has not changed since the days of Solo
mon, and spelling the youth is as much
q consequence now of sparing the rod
q in his day. Half the boys of this
generation would be improved if they
were soundly and regularly trounced
three times a week. They might not
all need it exactly at the appointed
time, but it would benefit all by re.
minding them that there is an authority
paramount to their W unbridled will,
and it would make them grow up more
law-abiding, peace-observing, honest
sober, and industrious men than three
fourths of them have any chance of eve
being. louisville Courier-Journal.