The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1885-10-08


between the nursing bottle and the
winding sheet is more rare than one
with the semblance of newness in active
service ON week day. There is some
thing in Q boys soul that rebels and
kicks in mutiny at having to wear hat
of unmarried shape, and the only possi-
BILE chance of preserving the shape of a
new one unimpaired during the first
day of its use, would be to strap the
boys arms fast to his sides, pinion his
legs, push the hat down to his ears, and
make him stand in an empty -four bar
rel, amply isolated from all walls or
shrubbery against which he could bunt
his head. This may be little rough
on the boy. but it will save the hat. If
any other plan has been adopted with
success we have not been appraised of
it, or furnished with working plans of
the same. We have seen boy who
had been carefully nurtured-with both
single and slipper-go forth in the
morning under hat of gladstone look
and expensive texture, and in the even
ing of the same day we have seen that
same child of destruction march into
the house with all the glory of Ichabod
taken out of the thing on his head as
completely as a combination trip-ham-
mer and threshing machine could have
done it, without spraining itself
in the attempt. What agency
compassed this terrible condition
of tattered collapsiveness so speed
lily mortal man knows not, and proba-
bly, never will until the tree of knowl-
edge has been plucked bare, and its
very roots worked up into tea for brain
stimulant. 1t doesn't matter pin how
lamblike boy may be, and we don't
care gnat how blue his eyes are. or
how much sunlight fingers in his hair,
he is the remorseless foe of all new
hats, as you will find to your cost by
the time he is big enough to throw q
stone through light of glass in the
kitchen window. If you have boy
whose bones are not composed entirely
of milk, who doesn't fulfill this fore
cast, slip your hand down the back of
his neck, and examine the points of his
shoulder blades for incipient wings.
They ought to be dscernible in that
neighborhood somewhere. Why this
is thus is beyond our depth, but that it
10 oo 10 cApCuolNcay uppuiCAO W ONCiJ
parent who has small pantaloons in the
family. The nature bottled up in boy
seems to differ even more than day and
night, or man and wife, from all other
known forms of motive force outside of
street-car stable, in not being amena-
BILE to the same laws that seem to con-
troll the remainder of the universe, and,
although boys have for centuries been
nearly as abundant as stars In the
Milky Way, we know ten times as much
about the movements of the faintest
point of light in that celestial footpath
as we do about the devious ways of our
own male progeny. We understand
the causes of eclipse, wind, rain, and
the election of Cleveland, and we
know to the proximity of well-grounded
certainty that Ben Butler became cock
eyed from squirting through the fence
at the girls when small but, men and
brethren, what do we know about the
origin of that inexplicable cause which
prompts every child on the Adam side of
the house of David, and Goliath, too,
mayhap, to wage such unrelenting war
upon everything in headgear with the
smell of the shop still upon it? 1t is
humiliating to confess that, with all our
knowledge about heaps of things that
will never bring us any money, we are
still as much IN ignorance on the boy
question as the man in the moon him
self. How much consolation can we
find in the fact that we know why a
planet stays in its orbit, if we are to
remain forever ignorant about the GO
ings and comings of our own masculine
descendant, and what the mischief he's
been doing with his hat? Will it pro-
long the color and tenacity of your hair
and promote its growth, to say nothing
of removing dandruff and giving life to
the scalp, to know that it takes light a
million years to get here from head
quarters in some instances, If you are
to remain in the dark ever more con-
corning matters that occur with exas-
perating frequency within yard of your
own nostrils? There may be science
or two that we have not yet found time
to fully master, or some of the lumber
men in Michigan may possess infor-
nation not yet sent to the front; but
from all the data in hand at present we
very much doubt if the sum of all
earJnly WlSuOfn-lu auulUlOn 10 WnaJ Is
already known in Chicago and conjec-
tured in Milwaukee, equal to the
call made upon it by the question of
Juvenile depravity as applied to hats.
Or, to state the matter with still great
er conciseness, it is the opinion of one
humble toiler in the hive of popular
thought, that at sunrise this morning
there was not sufficient information
above high-water mark to make it as
clear as a sunbeam why boy feels
more at home under an old dishrag Of
thing not fit for gun-swab, than he
does with hat on his head worth two
of the hardest dollars ever minted.
There may be some things that we
know fully, and with a good deal more
comprehensivenes than a bachelor
understands that baby is baby; but
on this foggy question we are still
tossed about by the deluge of igno-
rance. and don't know any more about
the why and the wherefore of the same
than we do about the ring price of
wheat on the planet Saturn at this
minute. Chicago Ledger.
Marrying for Money.