The semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1882-1886, 1883-07-28
ONE I N OF A BOY.
The True Stuff from Which Gem
uine Americans Are Made.
,ill Nve in the Detroit Free Press.

Bill Nye in the Detroit Free Press.
1 am always sorry to e a youth
get irritated, and pack up his clothes,
in the heat of debate, and leave the
home nest. His future is q little
doubtful, and it is hard to prognosti-
cate whether he will fracture lime
stone for the streets of a great city, or
become President of the United
States; but there is q 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 up
the moral courage, some day, to un-
coil the tendrils of his heart from the
clustering idols of the household,
and to grapple with outrageous For
tune, ought to be taken by the ear,
and led away out into the great, un-
tried realm of space.
While the great world throbs on,
he signs end refuses to throb. While
other young men put on there seal
Drown overalls aud 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 OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
saw-buck, 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 home-nest, or marry
and tear loose from his parents to
live with his father-in-law. Finally
he settles it, and compromises by
living alternately with each.
How the old folks yearn to G
him. How their aged eyes light up
when he comes with his growing
family to devour every thing 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 year
ling 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 sur
reptitiously cut the copper wire of
the lightning rod to snare suckers
with, and he never went in swim
ming because the great rude hovs
might duck him or paiut him with
mud. He Stunned the green ample
of boyhood and did not slide down
hill because he would have to pull
his sled back to the top again.
Now he borrows other peoples
newspapers, eats the provisions of
others and sits on the counter of the
grocery till the proprietor calls him a
counter irritant.
There can be nothing more I'M
American than this flabby polyp,
this one-horse tadpole that never be-
comes a frog. The average American
would rather burst up in business
six times in four years and settle for
nj, e cents on the dollar than to lead
such a 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 q
great wart on the face o. nature. The
young man is not in accordance with
Yankee schedule, and yet | do not
want to say that he belongs to any
other nation. Foreign powers may
have been wrong; transatlantic ma
tons may have erred, and the sys-
tenn of FurOpean Government ma
have been erroneous, but | would
not have come out and charge them
with this horrible responsible. They
never harmed me, and l will not
tarnish their fair fame with their
grave Indictment.
He will breathe a certain amount
of atmosphere, and absorb a given
amount of feed for a few years, and
then the full-grown biped will leave
the home-nest at last. The under
taker 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 q sadder strain because the tag
end If q human failure has tapered
down to death, and the soft and
shapeless features are still. You will
have no trouble getting a draft cash
ed on that day, and the giddy
throng will join the picnic as they
had made arrangements to do.