The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-08-03
One Kind Of Boz.

One Kind Of Boy.
I am always sorry to see youth get
irritated and pack up his clothes, in the
heat of debate, and leave the home
nest. His future is little doubtful,
and it is hard to prognosticate whether
he will fracture limestone for the streets
of great city or become President OF
the United States, but there is beauti'
full and luminous life ahead of him in
comparison with that of the boy who
obstinately refuses to leave the home
nest.
The boy who cannot summon the
moral courage some day to uncoil the
tendrils of his heart from the cluster.
ing idols of the household, to grapple
with outrageous fortune. ought to be
taken by the ear and let away out into
the great untried realm of space.
While the great world throbs on. he
signs and refuses to throb. While
other young men put on their seal
brown overalls and wrench the Laurel
wreath and other vegetables from cruel
fate, the youth who bangles near the
old nest, and eats the hard-earned
groceries of his father shivers on the
brink of life's great current and sheds
the scalding tear.
He is the young-man-afraid-of- the
sawbuck, the human being with the
unlaundried spinal column. The only
vital question that may be said to
agitate his pseudo brain is whether he
shall marry and bring his wife to the
homenest, or marry and tear loose from
his parents to live with his father-in-
law. Finally he settles it and COM
promises by living alternately with
each.
How the old folks yearn to see him.
How their aged eyes light up when he
comes with his growing family to de-
YOUR everything in sight and yawn
through the space between meals. This
is the heyday of his life; the high noon
of the boy who never ventured to ride
the yearling colt, or to be yanked
through the shimmering sunlight at the
tail of two-year old. He never dared
to have any fun because he might bump
his nose and make it bleed on his clean
clothes. He never surreptitiously cut
the copper wire off the lightning rod to
snare suckers with, and he never went
in swimming because the great, rude
boys might duck him or paint him with
mud. He Stunned the green apple OF
boyhood and did not slide down hill be-
cause he would have to pull his sled
back to the top again.
Now he borrows other peoples news
papers, eats the provisions of others.
and sits on the counter of the grocery
till the proprietor calls him counter
irritant.
There can be nothing more I'M
American than this fiabby polyp, this
one-horse tadpole that never becomes a
frog. The average American would
rather burst up in business six times in
four years, and settle for nine cents on
the dollar, than to lead such life. He
would rather be an active bankrupt
than a weak and bilious barnacle on the
clam-shell of home.
The true American would rather work
himself into luxury or the lunatic
asylum than to hang like a great wart
upon the face of nature. This young
man is not in accordance with the
Yankee schedule. and yet l do not
want to say that he belongs to any
other nation. Foreign powers may
have been wrong; transatlantic nations
may have erred, and the system OF
European government may have been
erroneous, but 1 would not come out
and charge them with this horrible
responsibility. They never harmed me,
and will not tarnish their fair fame
with this grave Indictment.
He will breathe certain amount OF
atmosphere and absorb given amount
of feed for a few years and then the
full-grown biped will leave the home
nest at last. The undertaken will come
and get him and take what there is left
of him out to the cemetery. That will
be all. There can be no deep abiding
sorrow for him here; public buildings
will not be draped in mourning, and
you can get your mail at the usual hours
when he dies. The band will not play
a sadder strain because the fag end of
a human failure has tapered down to
death, and the soft and shapeless feat
ures are still. You will have no trouble
getting draft cashed on that day anu
the giddy throng will join the picnic as
they had made arrangements to do
Bill Nyc, in Detroit Free Press