Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1877-03-30
TAKE DOWN TEE Rod.
Unktnd Remarks About the Young
Man of Ihe Period

There is altogether too much senti-
mentalism abroad nowadays about
whipping boys. In ancient days
BOYS were soundly fogged, and they
grew up into the men who laid the
foundation of the worlds eiviliza-
ton. The men who won our indie
pendence 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 hOgged by
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 thirty-five who does not
remember good old days of whole
some fiogging at school, and feel the
better for the discipline that made
him then smart. 1t is only these
latter-day young saints whose spirits
cannot endure the rod. They are
the high-toned young bucks who
seize a cue so soon as they can look
over a billiard-table, who go into the
mint-julep business on joint sPecula-
ton with pocket money just suffi-
cient to 90 halves on one julep and
two straws, who chew tobacco as
soon as thev cut their second teeth,
who torture their infant stOmachs
with mean cigars, and, as they ap-
proach manhood, go home on Satur-
day night into the presence OF their
mothers and sisters as drunk as fools.
They are the same high-spirited fel-
lows who, when they, in the old age
of their Young manhood, take to
themselves wives, being removed
from their mothers and sisters, make
themselves agreeable by frequently
going home drunk, and making their
families economic for the benefit of
the high-toned fellows with whom
thev run. 1t is all stuff and non
sense about breaking the spirit OF
bows. All that has ever been in the
world has been accomplished by men
who were fogged when they were
bows. What the new sentimental
training is to do for the world will
be left for time to reveal, but no per-
son of any intelligence can regard
the tenderly -nurtured and mildly
disciplined youth coming up around
us low, and say that he discovers in
them the elements of greatness
that is to make the grandeur of the
past appear mean and little. CrOm-
well and Nelson and Wellington and
all the heroes of English and Amer-
can history were vigorously strap
ped at school, and when the atten-
ton of their fond parents was called
to the occurrence, they Justify cried
ont to Tutor Macduff to lay on, and
be hanged to him who hrst cried
hold. enough. Boy human nature
has not changed since the days of
Solomon, aud spelling the youth Is
as much a consequence now of spar
ing the rod as in his day. Half the
boys of this generation would be inn
proved if they were soundly and reg
ularly trounced three times a week.
They might not all need it exactly
at the appointed time, but 1t would
benefit all by reminding them that
there is an authority paramount to
,Lo;r own unbridled will, and il
would make them grow up more law
abiding, peace-observing, honest, so
her. and industrious men than three
fourshs of them never have any
chance of ever being.
Lo,tispiNe Courier Journal