The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1883-09-14
NUMBER IL
One Kind of Row.

am always sorry to see a youth get
irrtated 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 prOgnosticatc whether he will
fracture limestone for the streets of q
great city or become President of the
United States, but there is beautiful
and luminous life ahead of him in COM
parison with that of the boy who OBJ
stinately 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 clustering
idols of the household. to grapple with
outrageous fortune, ought to be taken
by the ear and led 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 scal-brown oy-
erals 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 OF the brink of life's
great current and sheds the scalding tear.
He is tho young-m afraid-of- the
sawbuck, the human being with an un-
laundried spinal column. The only vital
question that may be said to agitatc his
pseudo brain is whether he shall marry,
and bring his wife to the home-nest, CT
marry and tear loose from his parents
to live with his father-in-law. Finally
he settles il and compromises by living
alternately with each.
How the old folks ycarn to see him.
Hcw 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 vcntured TO ride
the yearling colt, or to be yanked
through the shimmering sunlight at the
tail of a 2-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 of the lightning rod to
snare suckers with, and he never went
i'm 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 othc:s,
and sits Oh the counter Of the grocery
till the proprietor calls him 4 counter
irritant.
There can be nothing more un-Ameri-
can than this Happy po!yp,this one-horse
tadpode that never becomes Il 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 Snci Il life.
The true American would rather
work himself into luxury or the lunatic
ASYLUM than to hang like Il great war;
upon the face OF nature. This young
man is not in accordance with the Yam
kec schedule, and vet do not want to
say that he belongs 10 any other nation.
Eprei%h powers may have been wrong;
transatlantic nations may have erred,
and the system of European govern
mcnt may have been erroneous. but
would not come ont and charge them
with this horrible responsibility. They
never harmed me, and ! will not tar
nish their fair fame with this grave ill.,
dictmcnt.
. He will breathe certain amount of
atmosphere and absorb given amount
of feed for Il 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
he 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 ut the usual hours
when he dies. The band will not play
a saddcr strain because the fag end of
human failure has tapcred down to
death, and the soft and shapeless feat
lures are still. You will have no trouble
getting draft cashed on that day, and
the giddy throng will join the panic as
they had made arrangements TO do
BM Me.