Waterbury Democrat., 1902-03-15
THE BOYS HOME.

l A good boy is the natural product of q good home, and all the efforts of I philanthropy to make boys better are consciously imperfect substitutes for the natural influences of q healthy minded home. The great and overshad- owing peril of a boys life is not, as many suppose, his bad companions, or his bad books. or his bad habits; it is the peril of homelessness. I do not mean merely houselessness-hav no l bed or room which can be called ones own-but that homelessness which may exist even in luxurious houses the isolation of the boys soul the lack of any one to listen to him, the loss of roots to hold him to his place and make him grow. This is what drives the boy into the arms of evil and makes the street his home and the gang his fam l fly, or else drives him in upon himself, into uncommunicated imaginings and feyerish desires. It is the modern story of the man whose house was empty, and precisely because it was empty there entered seven devils to keep him company. If there is one thing that boy cannot bear it is him. self. He is by nature a gregarious an imal, and if the group which nature gives him is denied, then he gives him. self to any group which may solicit him. A boy, like all things i'll nature, l abhOrS vacuum. and if his home is a vacuum of loyelessness and homeless ness, then he abhors his home. l Evidently, therefore, when one l speaks of the peril of homelessness he is not thinking of poor boys alone. Of course there is q poverty which in- wolves homelessness, the wandering | 1ifn nf 10 r41 l tramp. In q vast majority, however, even of every humble homes, one of the most conspicuous and beautiful traits is the instinct of family affection. enduring every kind of strain-the wo- man clinging to the drunken husband the parents bearing with the wayward l Son-and, on the other hand ,an in- creasing danger of the prosperous is in the tendency to homelessness; the peril l Of the nOmadic life, as though q home were tent which one might at any time fold; like the Arabs, and silently steal away; the slackening of responsi- bility through the movement Of social habit to the hotel or boarding house as ways of escape from the burdens of the home.
 l have heard of mother i'll the Bos- ton public garden who said, There is my baby in the distance in it's car riage."
 ''Is it?" said her friend.
 Il think so,' said the mother, "fOr 1 seem to recognize the nurse..'' The fact is that between some boys of the most prosperous and some boys of the least prosperous type there ex- ists q very curious and imperfectly rec 1 ognized likeness of condition Both | IIln va 1.iSIy of ho,,1 f,o+l, the home presents itself as shifting restless, temporary incident
 The growth of the boarding school system is, to q large extent, an indict- ment of the luxurious home. It is but the admission by parents that, for l some feason-often good reason, but often mere unwillingness to care for the child-Some other place is more wholesome for the boys than the home into which they are born. Such q boy though he may have many blessings has missed the Fundamental blessing of q boys life and his chief defense from sin.
 If. therefore. a boy is normally the product of q home. what kind of home is likely to make the right kind Of q boy?
 This is the kind of home which makes the right kind of a boy--a home where simplicity and consistency open into piety; home where children think of parents, not as taskmasters, or fault finders, or money-getters, or housekeep- CTS, so that the first business of the boy is to keep out of the way, but as companions to whom it is happiness to go learn: home which i'll later life as the mystery of experience makes one again little child seems to the man the best picture botlf of the necessary discipline and of the abiding love of God.-Professor Francis G. Peabody. e A S To E l Tho .d Me- H. o-.