Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-23
BOYS, GOOD AND BAD.
A Synopsis Of the Qualities Possessed
by Young America.
THE VERY PCGNACIOUS YOUTH,
And the Boy Whose Heart Palpitates at the
Sight of Girl.
THE LAD LEADS THEM ALI,
THE EMISCHIEvOUS ADLEADs THEM ALI
WRITTEN FOR THE p1spArcH.;

the most sincere, honest, genuine, open
hearted, enthusiastic, whole-souled creatures
the sun shines upon. Nine-tenths of then
are freckled, and have noticed that 6
freckled face is almost invariably the title
page of sweet, wholesome heart.
As general thing, you can count on 8
boys being just what he pretends to be-
Occasionally one of them will deceive you,
but he always regrets it and tries to make il
up afterward. Deception isn't professional
affair with the boy, as it is with the man,
The boys insincerity is always amateurish
and trips in its lines. IF you have ever
noticed the difident and deprecatory way in
which boy tells a lie, you will realize how
much he has got to learn before he will ever
make frstclass editor or lawyer.
But there are boys and boys. Their con-
stitutions and personalities differ like peb-
bles. Amy schoolroom will afford you as
many as five or six different types of unde-
veluped manhood, and perhaps the play
ground will present even more. To begin
with, there is the rather large, square-faced
boy of pugnacious disposition. His freckled
nose has an upward tilt, and his hair is
always totally unmanageable and generally
afflicted with "cowlick" He is the bully
of the school, and would not exchange the
distinction for life-pass reward of merit.
As a scholar he fails to sustain the pre-
eminence which is accorded him among his
fellows on the playground.
A PROMINENT INDIVIDUAL.
But if he stands at the foot of his class
in the schoolroom, he is always at the ex-
of ho txuh ino 10
"snapped;" and he takes fendish delight,
at recess time, in bending the back and
twisting the nose of the small, pale, intelli-
gent boy who enjoys a monopoly of the
honors in mental arithmetic and geography.
The pugnacious boy has a warm, chiv-
alrous heart in his bosom, and if he catches
any of his vassals in the performance of a
mean act, especially an act of discourtesy
to girl, he lays aside all other engage
ments and proceeds to chastise the offender
according to the enormity Of the offense.
His heart is always moved within him at
the sight of undeserved suffering, and he
thinks nothing OF often carrying little
crippled schoolfellow home on his back
On the whole, the pugnacious boy is right
good fellow, and I am inclined to think
that the faculty of using the fists we'll in
youth is not so great sin as the Sunday
rate the list of our DDS and leading phi
lanthropists is largely made up OF men who
were sandy-haired Sullivans and red-handed
children of Belial in their youth. They
smote their fellows hip and thigh and
spared not. But somehow they seem grad
ually to have grown tired of this sort of
thing. There is nothing that promotes
piety like early acquaintance with the
world.
Then there is the boy who is afraid of the
girls. He is generally small and timid. But
he has heart that is deeper than an artesian
well, and power of sentiment so intense
that it chokes itself. Nobody can ever real
ize what this boy suffers from unexpressed
and unrequited love. He is in heaven or
hot water all the time. He looks upon girls
as angels, to whom it would be blasphe-
mously presumptuous in him to speak, and
upon him kindly, he goes about in blind
rapture for days and days.
@ ANOTHER KIND.
He is seldom good scholar, because his
occult love affairs so engross his mind and
soul that all practical life, all literature,
letters and science, knowledge of affairs,
seem in comparison like ordinations and
impertinences. Like Tasso, he is minded to
exclaim: What learn we not within the
school of love?" Life is mockery, a tan
talous dream to the boy who is afraid of the
girls. He is forever spinning around the
periphery of paradise which he cannot
enter.
Again and again he resolves to taste the
unspeakable delights of feminine society, as
other boys do, but long ere the endeavor is
made his courage fails him, and he sinks
back into the attitude of a solitary and re-
mote worshiper. He would rather face a
battery of guns than the roguish eyes of
pretty girl. Poor fellowl he is cursed with
an unutterable longing combined with an
inexorable prescription. The picture is too
sad to look upon. Let us pass to the
next.
The next fellow is the intellectual boy,
whom we have already alluded to. He
cares for neither feminine society nor the
rude pleasures OF the playground. His soul
is wrapped up in mathematics, grammar,
physics and the elusive art of orthog-
raphy. To be solemnly virtuous and to
obtain the highest mark-this is for him
the ideal life. He is not favorite with his
fellows, but basks contentedly in the appro-
baton of his teacher and his own con-
science. His little pale face and short legs,
always at the head of the class, remind one
of grace-note before psalm, but let who
ever will get above him.
AN ILLUSTRATION.
There he stands, like a modern David,
defying the giant Goliath. Boys may come
and girls may 60, but he stands there for
ever. Out of school he suffers all manner
of indignities, even to being pushed, books
and all, into the midst of bevy of girls,
and there being slapped for his i'm
pertinence. But all these things move him
not He goes and tells the teacher, and
patiently and meekly awaits the result
We have no fault to find with the old
schoolma'm, except her fondness
for the intellectual boy.
But we must not close without mention
ing the mlschievous boy. He is the true
boy, the type of the genius. Bless his
twinkling eye and hemely face There is
more benevolence and charity and cheerful
good will in one of his bent pins than in all
the dustcovered homilies that were ever
written, Everything that he does seems to
spring out of perennial sprightliness of
heart, so that his very mischief is lovable.
He chews and projects paper wads with the
same spirit which animates the essays of
Ella. His warm heart simply boils over in
mischief. He can no more keep still than
The tentacles of a jelly-fsh Boy of bows,
as thou art, the world shall !
yet be sweeter for the spirit that is in thee T;