The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-14


 years ago who affected the same habits, and look them over. Ask your father to point them out to you. He may not be able to tell you clearly, even if you give him time, but he knows why he does not want his boy to be away from home the better part of the night.
 Being a. schoolboy. you are still a student, and at eighteen there are no limits to the splendid possibi1- ities before you. The strong body you ought to be building up will be more valuable to you if 1t houses an active and well trained mind. There is a limit to the cultivation Of the body. but there is no limit to the cultivation of the mind.
 At eighteen, nothing is inpos- sfble. :.
 Fix your mind on the finest man you ever heard of and consider all that he ever said. wrote or did that makes you admire him.
 At eighteen you have the oppor- tunity to do all that he ever did,
 
 of a. race which is not always to the swift, and which you can win if you try hard. but you will never get anywhere by wanting to stay out until 1:8O a. m.
 Keep at your studies as long as you can. Get your recreation most 1y in the sunlight and spend your evenings mostly at your schoolwork When it gets tiresome, there are thousands of books, fine, thrilling and interesting books. in which you will make friends with the best minds of all ages, meet the finest people and see the most wonderful . things You will meet all these people and see all these sights without cost or trouble by simply taking out your ticket at the Bron- son library.
 Study 8 foreign language while your tongue and mind are still plastic; and while you are about it, never cease trying to perfect your self in the use of your own. If you are inclined to music, work hard at it while you are young. You will enjoy it now, but more than ever later on. Attend a good play or g concert when you can. Go and see ''the movies occasion ally, they are educational and stim- ulating. Go out occasionally where you will meet nice boys and girls of your own age, with their moth fo and sisters around, but get home early.
 There is plenty here to interest, instruct and amuse the young chap of eighteen, and writing from the height of experience of the fellow of thirty-nine, the world of your Knowledge has nothing else to offer that compares with it. You may spend night after night in other ways and places without learning anything but the itching to go again. You may waste numerous hours on street corners and never meet a. fellow really worth while, or hear a thing worth remember ing. You may have more or less excitement. sometimes believed to be fun, by spending all your spare time in pool rooms, or bowling al- 1eys or at cheap dance halls. The man who writes this. or your fath- CT. or any other man of your &C., quaintance, has seen a thousand young men like you take those courses, and never knew one of them to learn anything more use- ful than to smoke cigarettes, and the world is not giving out any diplomas for that.
 One in twenty or fifty of the boys who form these frivolous habits is weak or unIucky or both, and goes to hell entirely, and each such case is a. great tragedy,-a, terrible thing that makes the companions of the lost youth shudder with remorse. and with gratitude that the nern- esis did not follow them.
 And still, when wise man con- siders the vacant faces, the wan dering or soiled minds, the 1tfuI impulses and the uncertain futures the forty-nine other young men who wasted five or ten of their best years in frivo1ity or worse. he feels that maybe here is a. bIacker tra-