Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1890-11-08
BEING A BOY.
II IL Troublesome Disease, But Not
Necessarily Fatal.
New Yurk Times.

Necessarily Fatal.
New York Times.
I used to be boy once, but / seem
to have got over it. B0yhood is
curious disease, but every man has TO
tuke his dose Of 1t. He does not mind
IL at the time, but when his complete
cure has been effected, he looks back
over the period of the attack, and won
tlers if he could ever have had any
thing so bad as that. A boys troubles
are mental. He has strange notions OF
life, aud they rattle him so that he
doesn't seem to get square with mat
tiers aud things in the estimation OF
any disinterested observer. Or course,
the boy thinks he is having James
dandy of a time, but every one else
knows he is not.
For instance, a boy thinks It is real
good fun TO 90 to bed with his clothes
an and lie awake for three hours till the
old man has swallowed his sleep coax
or aud sought his downy perch.
Then the boy gets out of bed, climbs
out of the back window and down
rain-spout, barking his shins and skim
ming his knuckles on the way, and
walks three miles across plowed
fields to steal a watermelon ont OF
farmers patch. And the next day,
when they have walermelons for din
mer at home, do you suppose that
makes the boy feel sore, as 1t would
a man? Not much. The boy has had
his fun, and The chances are that he'll
get up and do the same old act all over
again day after Tomorrow.
Again, a boy thinks IL is fun to put
an empty soap box on top of two logs
and paddle himself up and down a
brook where there are no light houses,
no harbors and not more than twelve
inches of water, counting the mud on
the bottom. A boy thinks it fun TO-
row u boat. too. lie will get aboard
big, heavy skiff with pair of seven
foot oars, when the thermometer in
dicates 80 degrees in the summer
house, AMI he'll pull himself around
and around in ring and cut SIS and
figure IS on the water and think he's
having more fun than grand army
man drawing a pension.
a boy thinks it's fun, too, TO get
four old bricks and build himself an
oven aud then to make woodilre in II
and roast four peachblow potatoes with
the skin on and eat them without salt.
Two boys who can have unto them
selves a small feast like this. accom-
panied bv cdifying conversation about
The determination of the Sioux. think
they are having more fun than you or
1 would at a public dinner OF fifteen
courses.
When boy gets over being boy
and lc oks back over the period OF his
disorder he often wonders how it hap
pend that he lived through il. But
it appears to be pretty generally adj
united by medical experts that the
hovhood disease is not necessarily
fatal. 1t does away with a few of Its
victims, 10 he sure, hut there are those
who are affected with the acute form,
in which twenty foot rivers appear
three feet deep and double-barrel shot
guns are mistaken for Pandean pipes.
There is one form OF the disease
which ought to prove fatal, for some
inscrutable reason does not. That is
the form which causes the patient TO
imagine that jewsharps, flies, barjos
and horse tiddles produce music. Usu-
ally, however, they just let the disease
wear itself out. 1t wears great
many people out, too; but no matter.