Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-26
BOYS. THEz AND now.

The Whitewater Chronicle, paper pub
lished by an old schoolmate of the editor
of the Sun, starts out an article scoring
the boys as follows cat the risk of being
thought too fastidious, and called a grum,
bier, the Chronicle wishes for about the
fourteenth time to make few mild re.
marks upon what it considers a growing
evil. There has for long time past
seemed to be strong tendency on the part
Of quite number of the rising generation
to indulge in good deal of idiotic enthu-
siasm and general devilishness. Stop
right there, old pard. When any man
who has been a boy himself, as we know
the editor of the Chronicle has, attempts to
put on dignity and take the boys OF the
present day across his journalistic knee,
because they indulge in "idiotic enthusi-
asm, he starts the Irish in US, and the red
hair snaps like stroking the fur of cat the
wrong way. Let the editor of the CHroni-
Gle look back twenty five years, and think
of the deviltry that was going on among
boys at that time, and compare it with the
quiet of to-day. He complains because
boys who can raise two shillings go to the
hall and get in the gallery and whistle and
stamp, and shout at an entertainment.
Twenty five years ago, in that same town,
boys never thought of paying to go in
a show at that same hall, but crawled up
to the window on boards and got in, and the
audience could consider itself in luck if
they didn't raise the roof The boys of a
quarter OF century ago, in that town,
were regular cowboys compared with your
truly good boys of the present day. Why,
man, don't you remember when a Sunday
morning in summer would have seemed
tame indeed if the people on the way to
church did not find a procession of fifty
wagons on Main street, placed there the
night before by the "boys?" Don't you
remember how every wagon contained a
crockery crate, with dog inside, and each
cage labeled with the name of some rare
animal caught in the jungles of Africa or
lsssoed on the plains of Venezuela by the
Indians! You remember how man had
to chain down the outhouse at the back of
his store or he would be apt to find it on
Main street in the morning. with sign on
it full of information. OF course your
great mind can go back to the time when
every sign in town that was not printed on
stone or cut in marble in the sidewalk
would appear in the wrong place in the
morning, and you can recall how the long.
faced citizens who could not see any fun in
such monkey work, said those boys would
all fetch up in State Prison. We have
watched the State Prison record for quar-
ter Of century, and not single name of
one Of those old Whitewater boys is re.
corded in any prison, but we can point out
fifteen OF them who occupy high positions
IN all branches of business. There are
lawyers, as good as the State can produce,
among those nocturnal menagerie organ zers
and smoke-house movers of the olden
time. There is Judge of Western State
who used to make a speciality of putting
zebra stripes on white dog with black.
ing brush, whose name we suppress out
of regard for his sisters, who never could
be made to believe that the son of Baptist
minister had in the nature of things any of
the kittenishness of other boys; but he
had it bigger than anybody. And yet his
decisions on the Judicial bench OF Colo
RADIO are said to be marked with no evil
dence that he ever worked half the night
to carry the northwest corner of a smoke
house around q block TO have it ready in
the morning. There is a capitalist living
in this city who helped place 200 pound
wooden boot, stolen from in front of shoe
store, upon a school. house at Whitewater
one night, but the exercise did him good,
and nobody was harmed. Some of the
best merchants, bankers, and manufsctur-
ers and professional men of the State grew
up from these devils, who made White
water fairly howl on dark nights twenty.
five years ago, and it is astonishing that
paper, published by one of the boys, should
kick because the boys of the present day
whistle and stamp their feet nowadays.
The Sun does not wish to have boys do
such things now, because it ia not neces-
sary, and there are other ways to stir up
the blood, but it does not want people to
feel that boys are all going to the devil be-
cause they do occasionally slop over
GPeck's Sun.