The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-02-25

lulD Odlhbr dihN bilC COllllLl lhtd
gets into his clutches.
There is another kind of boy who
should live out-of-doors. He is the
timid, emotional, merely nervous boy,
apt to be labeled "girl-boy." Fine
Compartments fall to these lads often,
and none are more easily misunder-
stood The fellow will not fight; all
risks appal him. If in the water, he
likes to feel bottom. He has good
chance of going to pieces early; but if
he lives he comes to something, and
only needed kindly help to have given
him in youth the sturdiness he misses
so much in later life.
will recall two such fellows We
used to try to make them fight one an
other. 1t was like battle between
two doves. One grew to be gallant
Major-Gcneral in our great war, and
the other became resolute and fear
less guerilla soldier in the widest
fighting on the Kansas line in that great
strife.
What did Wordsworth mean about
the child being the "father of the
man? Character is often q question
of health. Out-of-doors is a great
steadier of nerves, and these lads
should get it early and in large doses.
If wars were fought indoors, every
body would run away at once.
rode once through the Yellowstone
and across Montana in days when Sit
ting Bull was name of fear, and the
common, daily risks of travel were Sc
rious enough. A bad ford was our first
experience, and my saddle turned an
hour later on a rocky path in canyon
eight hundred feet deep | decline to
say how scared | was; but week later
we were all of us more or less indffer-
ent to danger. 1t was worth while to
go into the woods once a year to get
made over again in this fashion, and
"kind of feel yourself persimmoned up
a Bit" as my guide Dan Harrington
used to say, when we tloated together
down the swift Allegash.
Among the indoor boys are often
good scholars, who lead their classes,
and at college take honors, and then
some fine day merely stop living for
want of good stomachs or sound hearts.
1t seems as if some of tn, m were wound
up to run just so long and no longer.
But suppose that they 90 through,
and come to the bar, or get to the no.
bier position of physician, and are
looked to as the successes of the future
Then something happens, and the man
ceases to live. Meanwhile some young
scamp who spent his youth in the man
ufacture of legs, and took honors at
baseball, picks up the peach the other
fellow let fall, and goes on comfortably
munching it, with health for partner,
having illustrated the fact that life is
essential to success.
What l want to say to the boy who
merely studies or reads, and does not
also play, is that plenty of men win in
life who never did much with their
heads in youth; but, that, as rule, the
great winners in the contest of man
hood must have healthy bodies, and
IHaC SOulH Is Cie ScdSOH lOI play.
Very often it is not the boy fault
that he has no outdoor life and no
taste for it. The father, lucky mer-
chant or manufacturer, proud of
clever lad. sets him to work early, and
sees with JOY his eager ambition. Col
lege life the father looks upon as time
lost, as four years given to games and
the learning of what makes no man
materially richer. At last. years after,
the lad grown old, and broken in the
dull monotony Of successful trade,
comes to me or to some one and says:
II am rich, l am wretched, what shall
! doPh
answer: go and shoot ducks, lure
trout, kill salmon, ride horse" He
has neither vigor nor enterprise to do
any of these things. As to travel and
pictures, books and music, he lacketh
custom of liking. He has been forty
years in trade-prison, and being driven
ont of Il sudden, knows not what to do.
The gentle art of being pleasantly idle,
he can never know. l have not yet
learned what to say to that mans.
Weir Mitchell, N. D., IN YOUTHS COM
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