Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1877-12-19
About Boys.

| III We may DelieNe testimony, there
was formerly race of boys who
worked; who got up at an incredible
hour in the morning to light the kitchen
fires and do the chores; who hoed corn
contentedly for three weeks for the
chance Ofgoing fishing on rainy day /:
who eschewed the vanities of marbles
and baseball except upon rare oeca-
siOns, and went through a long day S
work as if the Eight-Hour law had
never been dreamed of. The testimony
to their existence comes from the fa-
thers who entertain their incredulOus
sons with "When was your age, sir,
/ could do as much work in day as a
man, and my father made me do it,"
Johnny turns his toast over TO butter
the other side, and wonders why his
father does not make him do ii, and
then asks for twenty-five cents to sub
scribe TO a baseball club, and gets it
the boy must have some exercise.
Meanwhile father and mother are hon
estly puzzled. The father having been
brought up to hard work, has vague
impression that boys need some such
discipline, but he does not see how il
can be secured. The Legitimate object
of boys life used to be to chop wood !;
but anthracite coal cannot be sawed and
split, and he can hardly afford farm.
or keep a COW in a city lot. so the boys
loaf and lounge, and make work for
their mothers, and get into mischief,
and live through Il vast amount of fret
ting and fault-finding, until some day
they are turned loose in a working
world to give and take hard knocks and
learn 10 cork.
That is the very thing they should
have learned at home-the working j.
not of half 80 great importance as the
learning how. No healthy boy was
ever lazy until he was trained to il.
from the tips of his fingers to the ends
of his toes, he is full of that restless,
vigorous, irrepressible something which
makes the difference between 4 boy and
a girl. You can never delude the
mother of a boy with your theories that
il is all matter of education. She
knows it is in the grain. and if she be q
wise woman makes provision for its
healthy direction and development.
Give the boys knives and saws and
hammers and nails, and let them learn
to use them, even if you have to shut
you eyes when You see the soft little
fingers struggling with the dangerous
blades. There must be a beginning
and multitude of boys have carried
their full compliments of fingers up to
manhood. Who is it that says Provi-
dence always takes care of boys if peo-
pie do not interfere?
There are plenty of uses for a boy in
a house Chairs get shaky for lack of
glue; hinges looses and need only the
tightening of a screw; the normal con-
dition of door-fastenings is to be out of
order, but a lock with two knobs is as
simple a bit of mechanism as can he
made, and any boy ought to be able to
take one off and put il in order. Out of
your boys play you get skill and train
ing which you may draw upon, and
others may thank you for, all his life.
Work in itself is not an actual good,
but only valuable for its results either
TO ourselves or others, and the market
value of a boys work in dollars and
cents is no fair measure of its worth.
Ii is paying investment to furnish
the boy with tools and material for
their use. Twenty-Five cents in waste
boards from planning mill, or the odds
and ends of furnished lumber, bits of
molding. shingles, etc, to be obtained
for a trifle from house-builders, or
load of boxes from grocery, Will make
a boy as rich as a millionaire, and give
him hours of healthful enjoyment.
The girl can draw for the wardrobe of
her dependent family upon the con-
stantly accumulating stores of the rag
bag, and those odds and ends of femi-
nine attire in the shape of ribbons,
laces and bits of gay stuffs; but, in the
average home, boards are not found ly-
ing around loose. especially if there be
an ayaricious female in the kitchen, to
appropriate everything larger than a
toOth-pick for kindiRgs.
The rat-traps which scare the rats
from their neighborhood. The bird
houses in which the birds judiriously
decline to build. the rabbit-pens which
precisely suit the rabbits, whatever
maladictiOns they may provoke from the
gardener, the ships and windmills and
blow-guns and cross-bows, may not be
eminently successful from mechani-
cal standpoint, but they are invaluable
as educators, and as furnishing sub
stantial recreation-a thing far above
musement.-E6cbdnge