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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 055 383 6 
 
 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924055383610 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND HIS 
 PROBLEMS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NSW yOKK ' BOSTON ' CHICAGO ■ DAIXAS 
 ATLANTA ' SAN PRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 lONDON ■ BOMBAV ' CALCUTTA 
 UELBODXNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 lOKONTO 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 BY 
 THOMAS ARKLE CLARK 
 
 DBAN OF MEN, tJNIVERSITT OF ILLINOIS, UBBANA, ILLINOIS 
 
 Neva fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
 All rightt resorted 
 
COFYBIQBT, 1920 
 
 bt the macmillan company 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published April, igsa 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I can not remember a time since I have been grown 
 when I did not know, intimately, boys of high school age 
 and in high school, and when I did not like to sit down 
 and talk to them. One group of boys, only a few years 
 ago, I had almost daily contact with from the time they 
 entered high school until they graduated from college. 
 As a college executive, I meet, personally, every autumn, 
 hundreds of boys fresh from the training of the high school, 
 and reveaUng almost at once what they have gained and 
 what they have missed. It is this intimate contact with 
 so many thousands of high school boys that has induced 
 me to write the papers contained in this little book. 
 
 Morals and Manners was read before a meeting of the 
 North Central Academic Association; Going to College was 
 given as a Commencement address to the boys of the 
 University School, Cleveland, Ohio; the other papers have 
 not preAdously been printed. 
 
 Thomas Aekle Clark 
 
 UeBANA, II/LINOIS, 
 
 August, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAQB 
 
 The High School Boy 1 
 
 The Course 21 
 
 Studies and Other Things 40 
 
 Examinations and Grades 56 
 
 The Leisure Hour 76 
 
 Books and Reading 96 
 
 Social Activities 114 
 
 Morals and Manners 132 
 
 Choosing a Profession 152 
 
 Going to College 168 
 
 TU 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND HIS 
 PROBLEMS 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND 
 HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 Bill and I were walking down town one September 
 afternoon talking in a friendly way as we were accustomed 
 to do. School was to open the next day, and Bill was to 
 begin his high school course. He seemed more thought- 
 ful than usual; something I could not make out was on 
 his mind. 
 
 " What is it, Bill? " I asked finally. " What big scheme 
 are you working out?" 
 
 "Won't tomorrow be a wonderful day!" he exclaimed. 
 It was to him the beginning of a new existence. 
 
 The entrance of the boy into high school comes at the 
 most critical period of his life. He is fourteen years of 
 age usually, if he is a normal boy, and fourteen marks the 
 dividing line between childhood and youth — chUdhood 
 which passes alt too soon, youth which opens up a thou- 
 sand possibilities, which stirs a thousand new emotions, 
 new impulses and new desires, which puts before him a 
 thousand opportunities and a thousand new temptations 
 for which he is often unprepared. It is a time of restless- 
 ness and change for the boy, perhaps which tends often to 
 
2 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 make him give up school and to drive him upon the rocks. 
 It is perhaps to be deplored that high school and adoles- 
 cence should come at the same time. 
 
 It is for this reason that many thoughtful teachers have 
 tried to change the situation by making it possible for 
 children to complete the work of the grades by the time 
 they are twelve, so that they may be well entered upon 
 the work of the high school before the time of physical 
 transition comes. Whether or not such reorganization of 
 school work is feasible and whether or not it will ever be 
 generally made, depends upon a good many things. which 
 it is hardly desirable to discuss here. 
 
 It is about the boy himself that I want most to speak 
 and of the various problems which at the high school age 
 he is called upon to solve. A lot of things are happening 
 to him about the time he enters high school, very im- 
 portant things, too, and yet he is seldom prepared for 
 these. He does not understand the situation at all him- 
 self, and those who know anything about it seldom help 
 him out. His teachers are generally afraid to tell him 
 what he ought to know about himself, or they are perhaps 
 so taken up with presenting to him facts about history and 
 economics and grammar and mathematics and the lives 
 and accomplishments of other men, that they have no 
 time to give to the boy himself. Even his Sunday school 
 teacher who ought to get down to practical every day 
 matters, generalizes on the facts and the phrases of the 
 Bible and seldom if ever makes any personal or practical 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 3 
 
 application of its teachings to the boy's daily life. His 
 mother has never been a boy, so she has no idea what 
 revolutions are going on in his mind and body miless he tells 
 her as he infrequently does, of the changes in view point 
 which passing childhood and dawning youth bring, and his 
 father — his father has long ago forgotten that he ever was 
 a boy, so that he gives the son no concern. 
 
 The sensible, sympathetic father who takes his four- 
 teen-year-old boy into his confidence and who talks to 
 him frankly about the changes which are going through 
 and within him is so rare as to be a negligible quantity 
 in the discussion of the boy and his problems. Ninety- 
 five per cent of the boys who enter college from high 
 school will say, if asked, that their fathers have never 
 so much as mentioned to them anything that had to 
 do with sex or adolescence. What the boy learns at 
 this time about his body and about the mysteries of 
 life generally comes from boys as ignorant as himself, 
 or more likely than not from some one who is not only 
 ignorant but whose moral ideals are low and whose tenden- 
 cies are vicious. It is the rowdy and the street loafer, and 
 the nomadic hired man who has picked up his facts from the 
 gutters, and the ignorant and the vulgar minded who solve 
 our boys' sex problems for them — ^more's the pity! 
 
 A good many things are happening to a boy who is just 
 entering high school, as I have said. Educationally he is 
 forming an entirely new relationship. High school is differ- 
 ently run from-the elementary school. He will have more 
 
4 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 liberty and. less restraint than he has been accustomed to, 
 his teachers will treat him more as a man than he has ever 
 before been treated. The subjects which hejnll take.up_are 
 in them,sdyes_more_interesting, they require more ihougbt^ 
 and less memo^, more independence, and more origi- 
 nalityT He will need, if he is to get on, to apply hiF 
 mind more seriously and for longer periods of time than 
 has been necessary before. He will have, almost for the 
 first time, opportunities for thought and reasoning. As 
 he takes advantage of these opportimities and begins to 
 tfeinkjfld^daiLandLact jor^himself, he will gain the sort of 
 strength that he will need later in life. The more responsi- 
 bility he can take at this time the better for him. If he 
 has a job or an obligation of some sort that requires regular 
 daily attention it will be of treinendous advantage to him. 
 It will strei^then his body and so reinforce his will. The 
 more he is repressed, the longer some one else does his 
 thinking for him and shoulders his responsibilities, the 
 longer and the more assuredly he will remain a child. 
 
 But the most important things that are happening to 
 him are physical and emotional. His body changes rapidly. 
 His shoulders broaden, his arms and legs shoot out so 
 fast that it is almost impossible to keep him inside his 
 clothes. He grows up overnight, like a mushroom. 
 His voice deepens, and he begins to realize for the first 
 time perhaps that he is a boy and that he will soon be 
 a man. It is his awkward age when no one understands 
 him and when he least of all understands himself. He 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 5 
 
 is not so frank as he was. He keeps a great many things 
 to himself, or if he tells them at all, he tells them to his 
 boy friends only, because most of all he dislikes being 
 laughed at or thought ignorant. A thousand things 
 about his own being awaken his curiosity, and about 
 these he is eager for information, but he seldom asks 
 questions, because he would not for the world suggest 
 the fact he does not know the things that he is the most 
 eager to learn. He will even lie rather than admit igno- 
 rance of the questions which concern him most vitally. He 
 is alert; he keeps his ears and his eyes open; but too often 
 what he learns is in no sense enlightening or illuminating, 
 and injures rather than helps him out of his quandary. 
 Few people talk frankly and openly about the subjects 
 which interest his developing mind. He wants very much 
 to be a man all at once, and it is this desire very largely, 
 no doubt, which causes him so easily to fall into the 
 temptation of forming the bad rather than the good 
 habits of men. I have never been able to understand 
 why to a boy bad habits are likely to seem so much 
 more manly than good ones. 
 
 In addition to the physical changes which are going 
 on in his body there are within him emotional changes 
 quite as great if not more so. He is subject at this time 
 more than at any other time of his life to religious influ- 
 ences. If there is a religious revival in the community, 
 he is among the first to show interest in it, and to "come 
 forward." If he gets by this period of life withoui taking 
 
6 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 any definite stand in religious matters it will take a con- 
 siderable amount of logic or persuasion later to stir 
 him. This is his time of idealism, of the awakening in 
 him of respect and reverence for God and that , which 
 is best in man. Those who teach him may not wisely 
 forget this fact. 
 
 He is becoming a hero worshiper, too, and it is the 
 physical hero who receives his devotion. Football stars 
 and clever baseball players and prize fighters attract his 
 attention. If the question of legalizing prize fights were 
 left to the vote of high school boys the aflSrmative vote 
 would be overwhelming. If he reads the newspapers 
 at all it is the sporting sheet for which he first asks; 
 he soon learns who is high man in sporting circles, it 
 is not long before he can call all the better known ones by 
 their first names, and he follows their performances like 
 a personal friend. Adventure, deeds of heroism, physical 
 prowess of all sorts fill his mind and fire his imagination. 
 It is unfortunate if his teacher at this time is a physical 
 weakling or unsympathetic with physical fitness and ath- 
 letic sports. Such a man will have little influence, moral or 
 intellectual, with the fourteen-year-old. It is the man who 
 can knock a home run, or break through the interference, 
 or lick anybody who challenges him, who is a hero in the 
 boy's eyes. 
 
 I have always been in theory opposed to corporal 
 punishment and a strong advocate of moral suasion. An 
 experience I had soon after I got out of college almost 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 7 
 
 converted me to the opposite theory. I was principal of 
 a school with an enrollment of several hundred boys, a 
 good many of them of high school age. They were rough, 
 ill-trained, and notoriously hard to control and had driven 
 out more than one timid teacher before my arrival. For 
 two weeks I got on with them moderately well without 
 laying a hand on any one. I was pleasant and firm; I 
 took a good many of their pranks lightly, with the hope 
 that if I did not notice their deviltries too much they would 
 be discontinued. 
 
 I was quite mistaken, however. The boys misinterpreted 
 my point of view entirely. They thought me soft-hearted, 
 afraid to wield the willow switch, a weakling, in fact. It 
 was only after I had soundly thrashed a half dozen or so 
 of the leaders that they had any respect for me. They 
 all adored physical strength, and those whom I castigated 
 most vigorously were throughout my regime the most 
 docile and they love me today. 
 
 If the boy develops a taste for reading at this point in 
 his life, and it is well if he does, it is no sentimental stuff 
 such as his sister dotes on, that pleases his taste. War and 
 bloodshed and adventure hold him. Strategy and deep-laid 
 plots and hairbreadth escapes are to his liking. Indians 
 and burglars and highwaymen are his ideals. He courts 
 danger and adores exhibitions of physical courage. He will 
 probably break a bone or two in attempting to emulate 
 the physical stunts which most please him. If he ever 
 runs away from home it will be now, and most normal boys 
 
8 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 of fourteen have at least seriously contemplated such an 
 action more than once, if they have not actually put it into 
 effect. It is, of course, not pleasant to have a favorite 
 son or pupil "turn up missing" as an Irishman would 
 say, but it is nothing to be especially worried about, 
 for the boy who does so is only following a natural tend- 
 ency, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will 
 return better satisfied with home and school than before, 
 and be none the worse for the adventure. It is as nor- 
 mal and as harmless for a yoimg boy to run away as it is 
 for a young girl to weep or to be sentimental. 
 
 It is this spirit of adventure, largely, this desire to be 
 independent and to show early in life manly characteristics 
 that leads most boys into certain habits that are either 
 harmful or immoral. It is this reason, I am sure, that 
 caused me first to smoke. The older boys with whom I was 
 associating were smoking — ^big, black and very cheap cigars 
 they were — and I had never smoked. As I recall now I 
 had never felt any desire to do so nor had I had been given 
 any parental suggestions on the subject. But when one 
 of the fellows handed me a cigar, never guessing that I was 
 quite iimocent of any personal experience with smoking, 
 I felt a thrill go through me. He had paid me a compliment 
 as he might have done had he asked me to give him change 
 for ten dollars, or as I might feel if some one should apply 
 for the position of butler at my humble dwelling; and I 
 smoked the bitter sickening thing to the last available 
 shred thinking myself by so doing so much the more a man. 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 9 
 
 The worst of it all was that, though it made me a trifle 
 dizzy, it did not turn me pale nor nauseate me as it 
 should have done, and cure me of the habit. On the 
 contrary my success made me the more conceited and 
 tended to confirm me in the opinion that I was very rapidly 
 taking on manly characteristics, as I suppose such expe- 
 riences affect other boys of the age I was at that time. 
 
 I do not wish to be thought to condone the habit of 
 smoking by this explanation of the cause which leads to 
 it, for few people have been in better position to see how 
 frequently it injures a boy's nervous system and reduces 
 his efficiency than I have been, and fewer people, perhaps, 
 have been so willing as I to relinquish the habit when they 
 recognized just how detrimental it was in its effects. 
 
 The habit of swearing comes in the same class. I trust 
 that none of my readers are addicted to profanity nor ever 
 have been, but if it happens that any one has used or does 
 use an occasional profane word somewhat stronger it may 
 be than " darn " or "gosh " or "golly," if he will recall for me 
 when he first succumbed to the temptation, I am sure it 
 was in an attempt to simulate courage, or strong manly 
 emotion of some sort. It shows experience with the world 
 and contact with bold men, the boy thinks, to be able to 
 rip out a few careless oaths or other strong words. The 
 habit is a low, vulgar, irreverent one, it is true, which to 
 sensible thinking people can give only the impression of 
 crudity and careless rearing, and bad taste, even if it goes 
 no further than that and does not suggest actually bad 
 
10 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 morals; but to the boy himself who falls into such a 
 habit there is often only the desire to be thought a man. 
 
 It was a somewhat puzzled teacher who talked to 
 one of his pupils not long ago. The boy was only seven- 
 teen, he came of a very quiet, respectable and even 
 religious family, and he had himself been in the habit 
 of going to church and Simday school quite regularly. 
 No one had thought of accusing him of hypocrisy or 
 inconsistency, and yet the night before he had been 
 drunk. He could not himself quite explain how or why 
 it had all happened. He had not planned the orgy de- 
 liberately, but he had been working hard, he had had 
 little recreation, and he had grown tired of the situation, 
 and, to use his own words, had "just cut loose." Now 
 that it was all over and he had a little time to think, 
 he found no special satisfaction in the memory of his 
 escapade, and, stranger still to his teacher, he had no 
 special regret excepting that his unwise combining of 
 various forms of intoxicants had made him horribly 
 sick and had left him with a coated tongue and a dull 
 headache. 
 
 "I don't suppose I'll ever do it again," he said, "but 
 I just had to have that experience once in my life." 
 
 He was learning slowly a fact that many boys and 
 their teachers find it difficult to learn, and that is that 
 the main problem of the high school boy whether in 
 school or out is the problem of self-control — control of 
 the body, control of the mind, control of the emotions. 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY H 
 
 The most important problem which the high school 
 boy has is the discipline of his mind. It isn't easy to 
 hold one's attention to a dull stupid book on mathe- 
 matics or Latin when one would far rather be climbing 
 a tree or plasing at baseball, but it is often very neces- 
 sary. A boy does not go to high school so much for 
 the facts he learns in mathematics or Latin or chemistry 
 as for the discipline he gets through learning these things. 
 Of course every one needs information, and a boy may 
 be excused if he thinks that the information he acquires 
 at school is the main thing for which he spends his days 
 and nights; but if he does think so, he is mistaken. The 
 most important thi ng for any boy is to learn to think 
 quickly and correctly^soJoJLrain his mind that it wil^^ 
 do what he wants it to do within a definite time and 
 at a definite time. 
 
 "I was in a hurry," you explain to your teacher or 
 the boss when he calls your attention to the fact that 
 the work you have accomplished is inaccurately or care- 
 lessly done, "and did not have time to do the job as 
 well as I could have done had I had more time;" or 
 "My mind was wandering, and I could not get down 
 to busmess," you offer as an alibi for not having a piece 
 of work accomplished when it was called for. But the 
 well-trained boy or mauNwill be the master and not the 
 slave of his mind, and will have so done his work in high 
 school or in college that his brain will submit to his 
 direction and will plan the composition or solve the 
 
12 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 mathematical problem, or get the right answer when 
 these things need to be done. There is little time for 
 inspiration when we are engaged in doing the regular 
 work of the world. When there is a job to be done we 
 can not wait until we "feel like it" before taking up 
 the work. If he has developed these qualities of regular 
 work and concentration of mind which it is possible 
 for every high school boy to develop, he can do what 
 has to ]ae done whether he feels like it or not. Men could 
 not wait until they were emotionally prepared when 
 they were called into battle; they went to the front when 
 the call came; they went "over the top" on the second. 
 They had been trained to be ready at any time, and a 
 boy's mind should be so trained. 
 
 Now an athlete soon learns that no matter how physi- 
 cally clever he may be, no matter how much natural 
 strength of body or fleetness of limb he may possess, 
 he will never really excel unless he practices regularly, 
 unless he is constantly striving to do his best and to 
 make each, succeeding best a little better than was the 
 former. It is often very difficult, however, for the high 
 school boy or for his older and presumably wiser brother 
 to recognize the fact that the training of his mind is 
 not materially different from the training of* his body. 
 A clever, quick-witted boy can pick up a lot of informa- 
 tion if he keeps his eyes and ears open; he can, in truth, 
 with little or no concentrated study pick up quite enough 
 to get by his high school examinations creditably or even 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 13 
 
 to be excused from them, if that is the custom of the 
 school, on account of his cleverness, and still have dis- 
 ciplined his mind very little. Unless he studies regularly, 
 unless he pushes himself often to do his intellectual 
 best, he will train his mind as inadequately as the athlete 
 trains his body when he practices irregularly and never 
 does his best. 
 
 "I don't see why George failed in college," I heard a 
 mother say not long ago. "He never studied in high 
 school, and yet he managed to get fine grades." 
 
 She did not realize that she had herself given the explana- 
 tion. The high school boy who is so clever that he never 
 has to "crack" a book, as they say, who has never 
 submitted even for a brief time to mental drudgery, who 
 doesn't pretty frequently settle down and dig his level best, 
 is going to have trouble later with his brain, for sometime 
 when he will want it to work, it will rebel like a balky ill- 
 trained horse. It will run away from him as he ran away 
 from his duties at home. The high school boy in many 
 cases knows little abQut^ concentration and less about 
 bard, consistent study. That is why he fails sometimes 
 when he goes to college, and quite as often as not it is 
 the clever boy in high school who fails when he gets to 
 college. 
 
 Regular study hours, the doing of diflScult things well, 
 the holding of oneself to accuracy and rapidity of thinking, 
 concentration of attention upon a definite problem or 
 piece of work for a reasonable time — these are some of the 
 
14 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 methods which any boy may employ for training himself 
 to think. 
 
 A boy's body ought to be trained as well as his mind. 
 It is, of course, possible to find illustrations of men dis- 
 tinguished for their intellectual achievments who have 
 had frail, ill-developed bodies, but this is the exception 
 and not the rule. The muscles that are developed and 
 trained early are more easily trained and more perma- 
 nently as well, for the physical skill learned in youth is 
 soon recovered in old age, even, if apparently forgotten. 
 
 I watched a man, nearly sixty years of age, not long ago 
 play a termis match with a young fellow. The older man 
 had played little in thirty years, and he seemed rather slow 
 and awkward at first. Gradually, however, his muscles 
 responded to the impulse of his braiu; his old tricks came 
 back to him, he recovered his serve, he placed his balls with 
 surprising accuracy. He was winded a little, perhaps, 
 when the set was ended, but he had won against a very 
 worthy opponent. 
 
 The high school boy growing as quickly as he does is 
 awkward. He wiU remain in that condition unless he 
 trains his body rigidly and regularly. He should learn to 
 swim and to row a boat and to ride a horse; to run and 
 climb and jump. He should develop skill in as many out- 
 of-door games as possible such as golf and baseball and 
 tennis. If he can learn to wrestle and box and dance so 
 much the better. So far as he has control over his body 
 he will find it easier to exercise control over his emotions. 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 15 
 
 The ability to stand on one^s feet and speak is almost 
 as much a matter of the body as of the mind. If a boy 
 knows how to manage his feet and what to do with his 
 hands and how to stand erect, he will find usually, that he 
 has enough in his head out of which to make a pretty fair 
 speech. Every boy in high school ought to practice suf- 
 ficiently to be able to speak without having his hands shake 
 or his knees tremble, and once he has learned, he is quite 
 imlikely ever to forget. 
 
 I asked a very effective public speaker not long ago if 
 his ability to speak well was natural or acquired. 
 
 "I was the shyest sort of boy," was his reply, "I 
 stammered and hesitated and turned cold with fright when- 
 ever I got on my feet to speak. I determined, even while 
 I was in high school, to learn to talk extemporaneously, 
 and I forced myself to do so whenever I had a chance, and 
 to speak as correctly and as much to the point as I could. 
 Every boy can learn if he tries." 
 
 In addition to controUing his mind and his body, 
 one of the most important things that a boy just enter- 
 ing upon youth should learn is the discipline and control 
 of his desires and his emotions. All sorts of new emotions 
 and desires and passions rush upon the fourteen-year-old 
 boy, and in so far as he subdues and controls and directs 
 these, he will become a strong man. It is his failure to 
 do this that causes him to run away from home, or to 
 learn to smoke and to swear and to develop habits of 
 mind and of body that are unclean and immoral. It is as 
 
16 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 often as not first from ignorance that he does these things, 
 ignorance of the fact that it is he and not his environ- 
 ment that is changing. He often blames his parents 
 or the conditions under which he lives for his discon- 
 tent and mihappiness, while the truth is that all these 
 new feelings and desires which are striving to get control 
 of him are the result of sexual changes which are going 
 on in his body, and which are causing him to look at 
 life from an altogether different angle. A most important 
 thing for him now and for the future is that he learn 
 to control these desires and not that he let them control 
 or subdue him. 
 
 All sorts of temptations will come to him at this time. 
 If he can be made to understand that his body with all 
 its parts is a sacred thing which his creator has given 
 into his care to keep clean and strong and undefiled, if 
 he can turn aside vulgar suggestions, if he will refrain 
 from impure words and impure thoughts, and impure acts 
 of all sorts, he will learn self-control of immeasurable 
 value to him not only as a boy but as a man. For all these 
 things sap a growing boy's strength, they reduce his 
 vitality, they undermine his character, they make him less 
 able to think and, worst of all, they make hitn far less a 
 man. 
 
 Bad sexual habits in the developing boy are the greatest 
 evil of which he can be guilty. They take away his 
 initiative, they increase his self-consciousness, they rob 
 him of his physical strength, and they weaken his mind. It 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 17 
 
 is only by living a clean, self-controlled sexual life 
 that a boy can make the most of his physical and men- 
 tal powers. 
 
 The boy of fourteen begins usually to take his first 
 real interest in society when he enters high school. He is 
 making his first real friends, and he is coming to realize 
 for the first time the basis upon which friendship is formed. 
 Here again self-control and discipline are necessary. A 
 boy's friendships determine his character as much as any 
 influence which operates in his life. Very few of us have 
 formed alone the habits that possess us, but on the con- 
 trary we have done so in connection with one or more of 
 our friends. When a high school boy cuts class or leams to 
 smoke or stays out late at night or falls into any sort 
 of irregularity, no one who has any sane knowledge of 
 human nature ever supposes that he was alone when he 
 did so. The fourteen-year-old forms into groups, he or- 
 ganizes little excluM^ve'societies^ he has his particular pals 
 with whom he consorts and schemes and under whose in- 
 fluence he develops character and leadership. 
 
 In all these close relationships which grow up between 
 boys of high school age there is invariably a leader. All 
 make suggestions and present plans, but in every group 
 of boys there is some one whose opinion is paramount, 
 whose word and whose decision is law. Now at the outset 
 any boy may determine, negatively at least, with whom 
 he will associate; after relationships are strongly formed, 
 however, it is not so easy, for it is always a much more 
 
18 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 simple matter to evade or to decline an association than 
 it is to break it after it has been made. Before he 
 enters high school a boy's friends have not always been 
 entirely of his own choosing. They have been deter- 
 mined by his parents, by his immediate neighbors, by the 
 friendships which his father and mother had made for him 
 and with him. To a certain extent, mitil he shall himself 
 go away from home, this will continue to be true, but, far 
 more than he has ever been at liberty to do so before, he 
 will, when he enters high school, be left very much to his 
 own devices in the choice of his friends. It is most impor- 
 tant that he choose wisely, for upon his choice depend his 
 habits, his ideals, his character. If his friends develop into 
 a fast lot, and smoke and swear and waste their time, he 
 will be more than Hkely to follow; if they are quiet and 
 studious and clean minded, he is pretty sure to adopt the 
 same conservative tactics. A boy, as well as a man, is 
 known by the friends he keeps, and can with the greatest 
 difficulty follow a hue of conduct different from that which 
 these same friends follow. 
 
 "I don't have to do what they do," a boy often says 
 when warned against certain careless or evU companions, 
 but the facts usually prove quite the contrary, and 
 whether he wills it or not, he soon takes up the practices 
 that his friends set for him. 
 
 It is a great opportunity which is offered a boy who 
 goes to high school. In these days, however, when in 
 most communities it is the rule rather than the exception 
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 19 
 
 for boys to go, the privilege is not infrequently valued 
 rather lightly. The boy goes, not from any serious pur- 
 pose on his own part or any special desire for training, 
 but because it is the custom, because his parents have 
 desired it, and because all the other boys in his class are 
 going. Possibly it is better to go for these reasons than not 
 to go at all, but if added to these there is also the eagerness 
 on his part to train his mind, to add to his store of infor- 
 mation, to prepare liimself better for the work which he 
 must take up later in life, and especially if there is for 
 him some interest, some line of study which he very much 
 desires to carry on, his chances of getting somewhere 
 will be materially increased. No one can get far in any 
 line of work without interest. The work we do without 
 joy in the doing is pretty sure to be badly done. 
 
 Intellectual work is not unUke physical. A group of 
 laborers is engaged upon a piece of work near my office. 
 I can look out of my window and see them as they gather 
 in the morning. Some of them come early and sit on the 
 curb and smoke or talk to each other; others come up 
 at the last minute. When the whistle sounds announc- 
 ing the hour to begin, few of them go to their work with 
 any enthusiasm or apparent pleasure. They drag them- 
 selves to their feet with reluctance, they take up their 
 tasks with indifference, and when the twelve o'clock 
 whistle announces quitting time, they throw down their 
 tools with a rapidity that is disheartening. It is hardly 
 necessary to say that they accomplish Uttle, their progress 
 
20 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 in their trade is slow. They are discontented, dissatis- 
 fied, inefficient and unhappy. 
 
 If a boy is going to high school, he should go with a 
 spirit different from this. He is having a rare chance 
 to develop his mind, to strengthen his character, to widen 
 his chances of usefulness and success. This chance should 
 inspire him to do his best, to nieet an^ JflLsplve his prob- 
 lems with courage and manliness. 
 
THE COURSE 
 
 When your grandfather went to high school, if fortu- 
 nately he had the chance to do so, the course of study 
 open to him was a pretty rigid one, very much indeed 
 like an intellectual table d'h6te at which he had little 
 opportunity to pick and choose, but must talke what was 
 set before him and ask no questions. There was a gener- 
 ous helping of mathematics with Latin and probably, 
 Greek, to form the heavy part of the intellectual meal. 
 Physics and chemistry often made up a part of the re- 
 quirement, with history and English to serve as dessert 
 to lighten the repast. There were few if any electives 
 then, and little questioning on the part of the students 
 as to whether or not what they were taking was likely 
 to "do them any gOod" or was particularly to their 
 individual tastes; they took their studies as they ate the 
 simple nourishing food that was set before them -at home 
 by grandmother, in the belief that their elders knew best 
 what was good for them. 
 
 Now everything is different. The program of study in 
 the well-equipped modem high school carries an intel- 
 lectual bill of fare as varied and as bizarre as that repre- 
 sented by the k la carte dining service of a first-class hotel. 
 The boy entering high school today has so varied a program 
 set before him, has so many things from which to choose, 
 
 21 
 
22 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 that it is little wonder if he is not sometimes confused and 
 at loss to know just what to choose. Unrestricted elec- 
 tion is not possible in any high school, so far as I know, 
 but the restrictions are so limited that the actual results 
 amount almost to that. High school boys have so great 
 a variety put before them that they often become over 
 fastidious and finical in their tastes and so hard to please 
 that they refuse to show interest in, or to cultivate an 
 appetite for, anything. A dozen different subjects of 
 which his grandfather would scarcely have known the 
 names, from agronomy to pharmacy, are now found in 
 many a high school boy's program. 
 
 Even if the boy is sensible enough to recognize the 
 difficulty and the danger he is in, he will not always find 
 it easy to get intelligent advice. There is a wide difference 
 of opinion these days as to just what is best for a boy to 
 study. There are those who think he ought to choose 
 only what interests him, only what may be put to immedi- 
 ate and practical use. There is no greater educational 
 fallacy than this insistence that we should always make 
 a student's work interesting, and that if he can see 
 no practical end in what he is studying, there is no log- 
 ical reason why he should go on with it. He should study, 
 the argument is, only such subjects as he finds he has 
 special fitness and liking for. The lines of least resist- 
 ance are the lines for him to follow. "Make it easy or 
 cut it out." 
 
 A young fellow will not always get a great deal of help 
 
THE COURSE 23 
 
 by going to his father or his mother. They may not have 
 had a high school experience themselves, and even if they 
 have had, things are done very differently now from what 
 they were twenty-five years ago, and educational affairs are 
 managed in quite another way than when your father was 
 young. Anyway fathers are often thought old-fashioned 
 and tremendously behind the times by their young sons, 
 and it is not always easy for boys to take the father's 
 advice even if the fathers are willing to give it. Fathers, 
 too, fall into the same educational jargon that they hear 
 about them without always thinking seriously on the 
 problems of education as they are presented to yoimg boys. 
 
 Teachers, it is true, ought to be able to give dependable 
 advice, because it is their business to know something 
 definite about educational matters, but too many teachers 
 are specialists, or think they are, and are too much impressed 
 with the importance of the subject which they themselves 
 teach to be able to give unprejudiced advice. It is a rare 
 teacher who when asked will advise a boy against taking a 
 subject which he himself teaches. As a result, in most 
 cases, the boy is left to make his own decision and 
 within the limits of his possible elections, to rely upon 
 his own judgment as to what he shall study. 
 
 In making this choice he is pretty likely to be iafluenced 
 by popular opinion, by what some of the other fellows are 
 taking, and by his own personal tastes and tendencies. 
 Few people would work if circtunstances did not require 
 it, and fewer still would voluntarily choose to do disa- 
 
24 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 greeable or unpleasant things, and a young boy least of 
 all is likely to do so. Very naturally, then, if allowed to 
 determine his own program, he picks out what he likes 
 best, not stopping to inquire whether or not what gives 
 him the most pleasure is likely to do him the most 
 good. 
 
 "Why did you drop chemistry?" I asked a neighbor 
 boy in high school not long ago. 
 
 "I didn't care for it," was his reply, "ajid__I__don!t_ 
 see_jgy_^reason_Jii-st.ndyins -anything- J don'jt,,care for, 
 do you?" 
 
 I really did, and I tried to tell him that every one has 
 all through life, every day usually, to do many things 
 that are not pleasing, and that the sooner one begins, 
 the easier the task becomes. 
 
 He shies, often at what he considers difficult. If he 
 reasons badly, he avoids, as far as possible, mathematics 
 and chemistry and physics. If he has a poor verbal 
 memory he passes up Latin and modem languages argu- 
 ing when questioned on the subject, that he can get just 
 as much good out of something else that he finds more to 
 his liking. If he finds spelling difficult or the composition 
 of themes puzzling he dodges such work as well as he can 
 and explains his course of action by saying that he "never 
 could spell or write a good theme, anyway." He fails 
 in doing so to recognize the fact that one of the main 
 purposes of education is to help him to do more easily 
 these and other things which he may find hard to do. A 
 
THE COURSE 25 
 
 normal mind can be made to work successfully along al- 
 most any line, if the boy to whom it belongs will apply 
 himself persistently to the diflScult subject. There is 
 nothing so sure in any sort of endeavor to bring defeat 
 as the admission at the outset that defeat is very probable, 
 and there is no intellectual joy so sweet as the successful 
 accomplishment of a task that was thought difficult or 
 impossible. The boy who says he is going to fail seldom 
 does anything else. 
 
 Just the other day a boy was telling me, with the greatest 
 exultation showing in his face, of his experience with what 
 the teacher had called "the hardest problem in the book." 
 The boy did not find mathematics easy, often he was 
 satisfied with working the simpler problems at the be- 
 ginning of the assignment trusting to luck that he would 
 not be called upon to explain any of the "stickers" 
 when it came to the recitation. This time, however, his 
 ambition was stirred, his "spimk was up," he said, and 
 he determined he would work that problem if it took all 
 night. Well, it did take mighty nearly all night, but he 
 stuck to it, and got it right, and the joy of mental conquest 
 was a satisfaction and an inspiration to him for the rest 
 of his high school course. So is it to every boy who strug- 
 gles. The benefits of such accomplishments, too, will 
 not end with a boy's graduation from high school. Forty 
 years afterwards he will still be able to feel the self- 
 rehance which he gained through his boyish conquest of 
 difficulty; forty years afterwards he will be stronger to 
 
26 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 meet unexpected trials by having overcome this mental 
 hardship. 
 
 "What are you going to take next half year?" I asked 
 Donald at mid-year. 
 
 "I don't know," he repKed. "Do you know any snap 
 course? " 
 
 The snap, whatever it is, will get a boy nowhere ex- 
 ceptiag to give him credits, and what one ought to 
 want out of four years of high school is training that 
 will make one happier and more able to think and that 
 wiU fit one better to do the hard but necessary things 
 of Ufe. 
 
 "Kext to the interesting and the easy, the practical is 
 what now appeals to the majority of boys. There is 
 no sort of bunkimi in educational matters that appeals 
 now so strongly to the public as that which is presented 
 with the label "practical" on it. It is like the old "made 
 in Germany " which used so to appeal to us when we found 
 it on an article ia which we were interested, and it is 
 about as cheap and worthless in its significance. Our 
 high school courses are crammed fuU of subjects which 
 are supposed to be eminently practical and which will 
 assist those who have taken them almost immediately 
 to make money or to get a job or to do something. Type- 
 writing, stenography, cooking, dressmaking, millinery, 
 plumbing, typesetting, manual training, pharmacy, busi- 
 ness English and business arithmetic, whatever these 
 last two subjects may be, may all be found in one or another 
 
THE COUESE 27 
 
 of our high school curricula, and they appeal very strongly, 
 some of them, to boys, because they suggest an immediate 
 use and appUcation of knowledge. 
 
 I am not now meaning to imply that many of them 
 are not of use; in fact very likely each is of some benefit 
 and may be put to immediate use more readily, apparently 
 at least, than a good many other subjects which are in 
 the high school course. They are more easily learned, 
 however; they require less brain power, and they are 
 more quickly forgotten than are those subjects that re- 
 quire concentration of mind and logical reasoning. 
 
 "Of what possible use could Latin be to me?" George 
 protested the other day when his father was advising 
 him to include it in his high school course. "I'm not 
 going to teach, I'm not going to be a lawyer, and nobody 
 talks Latin these days." 
 
 There is a curious, though possibly an explainable, 
 point of view with many young people now-a-days that 
 only the teacher or the lawyer could ever find any use for 
 so dead a language as Latin — the teacher because every- 
 body expects him to have had the subject, and the lawyer 
 because many legal terms are still expressed in Latin, 
 and the lawyer is supposed to know how to translate 
 them. I suppose the real facts are that neither of these 
 men needs Latin in his business more than any other in- 
 telligent or educated person does. 
 
 I am no special advocate of foreign languages, and 
 especially of dead languages, and have no special fluency 
 
28 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 either in reading or speaking any one. I have had some 
 training in three languages besides my native tongue, 
 but if I am in any degree able to estimate the relative 
 benefits to me of the various subjects which I pursued 
 -preparatory to entering college I have no hesitancy in 
 saying that my study of Latin meant more to me than 
 anything else I did and meaDsmore to me today. His- 
 tory bored me, so I worked very little at it; mathematics 
 required little study on my part, so though I received 
 high grades in it I really derived little discipline from it, 
 science I liked, but it did not require any strenuous effort 
 to get by the examinations. Latin was to me the most 
 difficult of all. I toiled at it; I dug out laboriously each 
 word and phrase and sentence; I coromitted my declen- 
 sions and my paradigms with painful slowness, but I held 
 myself to the task, and I accompHshed it with rather 
 more than average success. 
 
 I can read today, after thirty years, with some fluency 
 every Latin text I ever studied. I got more idea of 
 concentration and accuracy and coordination out of the 
 subject than from anything else. It was the one thing 
 that gave me mental discipline; it was the thing that 
 required of me most serious study. Perhaps it might 
 not accomplish the same result for others; perhaps for 
 you that, result would be brought about through some 
 other means; but for me, it was the Latin that did it, 
 so when I hear a boy say, "What possible good could 
 Latin do me?" I tell him my story, and I try to show him 
 
THE COURSE 29 
 
 that it will do for him what it did for me if he will go at it 
 with a determination to do it well. 
 
 I once heard a practical man, one of the leading 
 engineers of the country in fact, and a man trained at 
 a well-known technical school in New England, make 
 the statement that if he were given the privilege of 
 going to school or college again he would never elect 
 anything that was considered practical. What he really 
 meant, he explained, was that as he saw education it is 
 not for immediate and practical use so much as for train- 
 ing and discipline of the mind, for the development of 
 ideals, for" the setting of standards. High school is not 
 so much to give a boy specific information as it is so to 
 prepare him to get that information for himself if he ever 
 needs it, and needing it that he may have a brain suffi- 
 ciently well trained intelligently to use the information 
 when he gets it. 
 
 Of course it would be quite unwise and even untrue 
 to assert that the practical things one finds in a high school 
 course do not in a measure conduce to discipline and 
 training of the mind. Many of them are both practical 
 and disciplinary, but as a rule the so-called practical 
 subjects that are more and more creeping into the high 
 school course and that make the strongest appeal to 
 the boy and quite as often to his parents, have little disci- 
 plinary value, have less cultural value, and are seldom 
 used practically after the boy leaves high school. The 
 boy who is fed-up on these subjects often has a hard 
 
30 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 time when he is called upon to work out problems which 
 require logical and consistent thinking. 
 
 Sometimes, too, a boy is tempted to "specialize" in 
 electing his course in high school. He makes up his mind 
 to prepare for a definite line of work, and he begins early 
 to load up his course with all that is offered in a single 
 department of work. This is usually an unwise thing 
 to do. It gives a one-sided training, it develops a rather 
 badly balanced mind. The boy who runs to languages, 
 or to commercial subjects, or to drawing and manual 
 training because he Ukes these subjects, or because he 
 thinks they will better prepare him for a specific sort of 
 work, even though he is allowed to graduate from high 
 school on such a specialized program, has missed the vital 
 purpose of a high school course. After he has been taught 
 to think, after he has laid a broad foundation, a boy can 
 specialize to much better advantage in anything he likes. 
 
 So far I have seemed to be satisfied with condemning 
 certain practices followed in choosing a course in high 
 school, without giving much suggestion as to what is 
 best to do. It is a foolish man, however, who spends 
 his energies entirely in condemning and tearing down and 
 who does not suggest something definite and constructive. 
 
 There is a certain necessary preparation which every 
 boy should get in high school if he intends to go to college 
 or if he is looking forward to a specific sort of work. The 
 college entrance requirements are now about as flexible 
 as they are likely to be made for a while, and they are 
 
THE COURSE 31 
 
 about as liberal as any high school course ought to be, 
 and yet, if one is to enter college, there are a few things 
 which are essential in all cases, and in technical colleges 
 there are additional requirements. For instance one can 
 not enter any course in engineering without having a 
 fairly thorough foundation in mathematics and physics. 
 At least a year and a half of algebra are required with a 
 year of plane geometry and a half year of solid geometry. 
 Some institutions require in addition advanced algebra 
 and trigonometry. Every high school principal is ac- 
 quainted with this fact and ought to make it evident to 
 his students, though he does not always do so. If the boy 
 has the foresight to inquire he will undoubtedly get the 
 information he desires, but every year I find fellows who 
 wish to enter a course in college for which they do not 
 have the requirements, and these requirements, had they 
 known them, they might very easily have met. 
 
 The man who expects later in college to go on with 
 English or chenaistry or foreign language should at least 
 find out the minimum requirements in these subjects, 
 for entrance to college, and should meet them, so that 
 he may not later be handicapped on account of not hav- 
 ing done the thing which he could easily have accomplished. 
 
 There are a great many people who maintain that there 
 is a vast difference between preparing for college and 
 preparing for life. These people hold that because 
 one does not expect to enter college after he is through 
 with high school, he is therefore excusable if he omits from 
 
32 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 his course such subjects as do not appeal to him either 
 as interesting or as practical. There is in their arguments 
 the inference that college entrance requirements are un- 
 reasonable or freakish, or that they do not furnish a 
 young fellow with the training that will be of any material 
 value, or at least of the greatest value to him, should he 
 not go to college. I believe that quite the contrary is true, 
 and that the course prescribed for entrance to college is 
 on the whole as^ooji*t!6ufse"asa boy.can .select nomatter 
 what ,he intends doing. Such a course will teach him 
 logical thinking, and the ability to think is quite as nec- 
 essary out of college as in it; whatever one undertakes and 
 carries through that causes him to think is of the greatest 
 advantage to him in any later enterprise. Since no 
 boy is likely while he is in high school absolutely to 
 know that he will or will not go to college, the safest plan 
 would seem to be so to choose his course in high school 
 that he may meet the college entrance requirements 
 should he ever want to do so. 
 
 Every boy should undertake something in high school 
 that he finds hard to do, something that will make him 
 bring his books home at'night and do a little studying after 
 school hours. There is always a question about the train- 
 ing the boy is getting who never has to do any studying 
 at home, who never finds anything that causes him to 
 dig, who does not know what it means to work his brain 
 at times as hard as it is capable of working. If you will 
 ask any than, young or old, out of what experience, mental 
 
THE COURSE 33 
 
 or physical, he has received the most valuable training 
 he will almost invariably answer that it was from the 
 experience which forced him to work the hardest. It is 
 through vigorous and regular exercise that ^y muscle 
 or any faculty is developed. 
 
 I knew "Mike" Mason before he entered high school; 
 and "Mike" developed later into the best two-miler the 
 Western Conference has ever had. He had no special 
 talents athletically at the outset, unless one should admit 
 that persistence and willingness to work hard and to 
 sacrifice whenever it is necessary are special talents. Mike 
 wanted to be a good runner, and he was willing to pay 
 the price. He trained regularly all through his high school 
 course; he worked hard when other boys, some of them^ 
 as good prospects as he, perhaps, had long ago given up 
 the contest and had gone over to join the rooters on the 
 bleachers; he worked hard when hard work was far from 
 pleasant; he gave up everything that seemed to interfere 
 with his prospects, but when he was ready for college he 
 was beginning to be counted as one of the coming athletes 
 of the state, and before he graduated he was known as the 
 best runner of the middle west. And it was largely through 
 hard work, through doing his best, through his willing- 
 ness constantly to tackle something hard that Mike 
 trained his muscles and developed his mind, and out- 
 stripped his competitors in the race. 
 
 Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, of New York, in a recent 
 address to young people said, "If you are starting out 
 
34 THE HIGH SCHCX)L BOY 
 
 to make a success in life, don't choose the job that offers 
 you the easiest time or the most money. Choose rather 
 the one that requires the hardest work and furnishes 
 the great||t opportunity for your development." Now 
 a boy trains his mind as he learns a profession or trains 
 his muscles, by putting it to the test and seeing what 
 it can regularly do when it is pushed. It is for this reason 
 that I should advise a boy, no matter what his regular 
 curriculum in the high school may be, always to select 
 some course that will give his mind a good work out. 
 I heard an architect say once that to be worth much 
 in his profession an architect had to be able to do his work 
 rapidly and to do it well. There are a great many people, 
 he alleged, who can turn out a lot of work in a short time, 
 but it proves inaccurate or worthless; there are a great 
 many others whose work is beautifully and carefully 
 done, but it takes them all summer to get anything ac- 
 complished. Neither sort of person will get far in his 
 profession. Out of his high school course^ every boy should 
 learn concentration — ^that is the ability to center the 
 mind on a definite piece of work and to bring it to com- 
 pletion within a definite and reasonable time. Some 
 boys learn this trick more easily than others, but it is 
 quite possible for every boy so to acquire control of his 
 mind that it will accomplish what he wants it to do within 
 the time at his disposal. Possibly the best way to bring 
 this about is through setting for himself mental "stunts" 
 and trying to see in how short a time these may be satis- 
 
THE COURSE 33 
 
 factorily accomplished, just as when we were boys we 
 used to set for ourselves physical tasks. 
 
 "If you will get the potatoes hoed by three o'clock," 
 mother used to say to us boys, "you can go fishing for 
 the rest of the afternoon." 
 
 How quickly conversation and youthful horseplay 
 stopped; the weeds fell before our devastating hoes like 
 the Huns before the marines. We plied our task with 
 a vigor and a persistency that brought it to a glorious 
 finish with time to spare before three o'clock. 
 
 It is so that a boy ought to learn to drive his mind, 
 yet few young fellows come to college or go out from high 
 school into life with much idea of mental concentration 
 or much training in it. Their minds have a tendency to 
 jump from one thing to another with the skill of an acrobat. 
 They find it difficult to concentrate their attention on 
 a single subject for fifteen minutes, and, both in high 
 school and college, they are handicapped by this lack of 
 mental control. 
 
 The best student I have ever known was so not so much 
 from superior quality or alertness of mind as from his 
 unusual ability to concentrate and hold his attention 
 on what he was doing. He could get more done in an 
 hour than most fellows could accomplish in two. When 
 he settled to his books nothing moved him or diverted 
 his attention. He would sit for an hour never stirring 
 a muscle excepting as he had to turn the pages of the book 
 he was reading. When he was at work he neither spoke 
 
36 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 to his companions nor seemed to take any account of 
 what they are doing or saying. This is a quality of 
 mind which every boy would do well to cultivate, and it 
 is a quality which can be developed through effort and 
 practice. 
 
 A boy should get a certain breadth of view from his 
 high school course. It should take him to other coun- 
 tries than his own and to other worlds. It should interest 
 him in the great people and the great movements of 
 thought of the world, and should stimulate in him a desire 
 to read and to know more and to see more of what the 
 world contains. It should be for him the beginning and 
 not the end of an interest in history and science, and Utera- 
 ture; in inventions and discoveries, and manufactures. If 
 it is to do this, the boy must have shown interest in more 
 than one subject in the high school; he must have done 
 more than merely pass in the various subjects which he has 
 elected; he must be taken out of his own narrow environ- 
 ment, his interest and his breadth of view must be broad- 
 ened, and he must see life as a different and a better 
 thing than it was before he took up a high school course. 
 
 A boy should get from his high school course better 
 taste, better manners, more interest in poetry and music 
 and art and whatever is idealistic and beautiful. He 
 should be less selfish than when he began his course of 
 study, more interested in other people, more ambitious. 
 
 Besides choosing subjects that will require hard work, 
 that will develop concentration, broaden his view and 
 
THE COURSE 37 
 
 develop his taste and his ideals, every boy should regu- / 
 larly have something in his course of study that he likes. 
 Doing what one likes may not always be so profitable 
 but it is more interesting than doing the difficult. Life, 
 and especially high school life, should not be all drudgery 
 or it will fail of its main purpose Every day's work 
 should be looked forward to with interest and pleasure, 
 and this can be only when the program of studies is in 
 some part at least pleasing to the boy. We have all eaten 
 the carrots or the common bread and butter we had no 
 taste for in order that we might the sooner get at the 
 dessert which we so much more enjoyed, and we shall 
 often find the same condition existing in the boy's atti- 
 tude toward his high school course. He will stand a 
 certain amount of unpleasant work provided there is 
 mixed up with it something he enjoys. 
 
 The question of carrying an over-schedule often comes 
 up. Some boys say that they always do their best 
 work when they are carrying the heaAdest intellectual 
 load. This means that only when they are under pressure, 
 when they are being urged on by surrounding conditions 
 do they develop concentration and conservation of their 
 time. It is undoubtedly true that for some temperaments 
 this sort of goading is most conducive to good work. The 
 less some boys have to do, the less they will do, and vice 
 versa. Simons was one of that sort. When he carried 
 a light schedule he loafed and cut class and fooled away 
 his time generally. It was only when his teacher told 
 
38 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 him that he had no shadow of a chance to pass that he 
 got down to business. When he was metaphorically 
 pushed against the wall with some one at his throat, he 
 roused himself and fought for his life, and he usually 
 won the contest. He was like a man who really never 
 makes an effort to swim until he thinks himself drowning. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances a normal schedule is 
 best. There is little to be gained from finishing high 
 school ahead of one's class. It is pretty hard if not practi- 
 cally impossible to develop in a boy of sixteen the judgment 
 and the power of thinking that we expect him to have 
 at eighteen. The time element counts more than we 
 are often willing to admit, and the high school course 
 finished in three years is quite often worth no more 
 than seventy-five per cent of the same course pursued 
 normally and completed in four years. If a boy has been 
 unlucky, if he is behind his class, then it is sometimes an 
 advantage for him to speed up by carrying more than 
 the normal amount. In most cases, however, it is a 
 mistake for him to do so. A normal schedule gives a boy 
 time to think, time to read, time to do his work well. It 
 is always better to do a moderate amount of work with 
 credit than to skim indifferently through twice as much. 
 The boy who just gets by misses the most of the good 
 that he might get out of his course. 
 
 The high school course for a very large number of boys 
 is the end of their formal educational training; they go 
 no further excepting as they acquire training from the 
 
THE COURSE 39 
 
 practical experiences of business or industrial life. A boy 
 should carry away from high school then, something more 
 than a diploma inscribed with a list of the subjects he 
 has pursued. He should have grounded himself in the ele- 
 ments of a number of subjects, he should have learned 
 at least the beginnings of logical thinking and be ready 
 to solve whatever problem is put to him, he should 
 have some knowledge of literature, he should know 
 how to write a correct sentence, and he should not count 
 either reading or writing a task but rather a pleasure. 
 His high school com'se should have prepared him for 
 entrance to college, or, if that privilege is denied him, it 
 should have given him a helpful and satisfactory training 
 for entering upon the practical duties of life. 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 
 
 Kenneth, my next door neighbor, who is a senior in 
 high school, has a habit of dropping in on me every few 
 days to talk things over. He is a healthy normal young 
 fellow of seventeen who generally gets on well with his 
 teachers; whose work is being creditably done if his final 
 grades are any indication of success, and who has as little 
 fault to find with the world as the average boy of his age 
 who has no responsibilities and who has never made sac- 
 rifices. 
 
 We discuss all sorts of topics, froni the probable fu- 
 ture of the Bolsheviki to the latest bill at the Orpheum, 
 but I am rather interested to notice that unless I drag 
 in th6 topic myself he seldom has anything to say of his 
 studies. Physics, Vergil, Shakspere, and history engage 
 his thoughts, or are supposed to do so, five days in the 
 week, but he seldom of his own volition makes these the 
 topic of conversation, unless it be to rail against one or 
 the other of them. He talks freely of the football team, of 
 his own accomplishments and possibilities as a member 
 of it, and of the determination of the eleven to clean up 
 Springfield and win a championship. He is interested 
 slightly in the fortunes of the high school debating team, 
 although debate to him is about as manly a sport as knit- 
 ting for the soldiers. He dilates at length on the success of 
 
 40 
 
STUQIES AND OTHER THINGS * 41 
 
 the last high school dance, and when I ask him sympathet- 
 ically about Clara, I know that I have opened up a topic 
 that can not be anything like adequately discussed at one 
 sitting. The incidental things connected with his high 
 school life seem to him the most interesting and the most 
 vital. He gives considerable time and thought to the 
 "other things" but, outside of class at least, none to his 
 studies. 
 
 I am conAdnced that he is not unique in this respect. Al- 
 though I have no boys of my own, I have frequently had 
 them in my household. I have for some time, also, acted 
 as guardian to two young fellows who are in a western 
 academy of standing, and from them I receive weekly 
 letters, usually written with the ostensible purpose of 
 giving me information with regard to the intellectual, and 
 physical progress of the writers, but actually to offer an 
 opportunity to ask that their regular allowances be in- 
 creased or at least not delayed in transit. In these letters 
 I get no discussion of studies, and seldom any reference 
 to them. Were it not for the friendly communications of 
 the principal, and the regular bills for school supplies 
 which I receive, I should have no knowledge, even, of what 
 subjects, the boys are pursuing. Their letters are made 
 up chiefly of optimistic predictions as to their athletic 
 successes, of accounts of escapades (harmless of course, 
 and quite within the regulations of the school), of dra- 
 matics, and of anticipated pleasures at social functions 
 with the Ferry Hall girls. Even the attaining of a high 
 
42 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 grade, which is a rare enough occurrence, may not be men- 
 tioned at all. At Christmas or Easter time when they 
 visit me, I find that the dullest topic of conversation 
 Vhich I can introduce is studies. 
 
 I am nqt suggesting that this is out of the normal; it 
 is, perhaps, quite in accord with the principle that the 
 thing which touches us most deeply and which is closest 
 to our hearts we are sometimes least likely to speak 
 about. Possibly the high school boy considers it "shop" 
 and thinks that he gets enough of it in the regular daily 
 routine, and had best forget it when away from it. Pos- 
 sibly there is a certain feeling that one who talks about his 
 studies is likely to be thought a grind, and however credit- 
 able it may be to work like a Trojan at football or track or 
 baseball or in getting ready for a class dance, it has not yet 
 become so generally popular through regular persistent 
 effort to excel at one's studies. Why, I have never known. 
 If one excels in his studies, it is in the minds of most boys 
 creditable only if one does so without hard work, and it is 
 not a thing to boast about like breaking the school record 
 in the quarter mile. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, however, a boy's studies con- 
 stitute his business during the four years he is in high 
 school. They are the main thing. They ought to have 
 his best effort and his best thought. Father thinks so; 
 most of the neighbors feel that way; his teachers have no 
 doubt of it. No matter how good an appearance you make 
 at the Junior dance, no matter how widely advertised you 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 43 
 
 are as a pole vaulter or how enchlantingly you warble on the 
 Glee Club, if you do not carry your work creditably at the 
 end of the semester, you are a failure so far as high school 
 is concerned. It isn't enough that you make the debating 
 team or are elected class president or are known as the 
 most popular boy in school; it's the studies that count. 
 
 Too many boys go to high school without much definite 
 purpose. They expect to go to college, and high school 
 is part of the necessary routine for the accomplishment 
 of that result. All the other fellows are going, and it is 
 easier to go than not to do so. They would rather con- 
 tinue going to school, as one boy told me, than go to work; 
 and so it goes. If they were asked what their reasons are — 
 if any boy who is reading this essay were to ask himself — 
 the answer would in all probability be that they "wanted 
 an education, " whatever that may mean. I am not sure 
 that with all the experience I have had and with all the 
 definitions I have read, I could myself give an adequate 
 explanation of what education really means, but I am 
 sure that it means in some degree training of the mind, and 
 that such training comes through application and regular 
 rigid exercise of the brain, through the accomplishing of 
 mental tasks that are not easy and not always pleasant. 
 Every young boy knows that if he expects to amount to 
 anything as an athlete he must train regularly and persist- 
 ently, that he must deny himself many things which he 
 would otherwise enjoy, and that he must not only con- 
 stantly do his best, but that he must be striving all the 
 
44 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 time to make his best better. It is with some such spirit 
 as this that a boy should go at his studies. He will never 
 do very well unless he learns concentrated hard work. He 
 will never increase his ability to think as he should un- 
 less he tries to do well a good many things he doesn't like 
 to do. 
 
 If possible, have an object in view. Set some intellec- 
 tual goal for yourself, and do not be satisfied until you 
 have reached that point or gone beyond it. You will 
 find, usually, that you can attain success more easily in 
 some directions than in others. Do not be satisfied to be 
 commonplace or merely to pass, but make up your mind 
 that in some line or other you are going to be as good as 
 the best at least, for your success in any one line of en- 
 deavor will always give you more likelihood of success in 
 anything else which you may undertake. The boy who 
 gets away creditably with a difficult course in mathemat- 
 ics or with an examination in Vergil which he finds dis- 
 tasteful, will be so much the better able through self- 
 confidence and persistence to win the girl of his choice or 
 to make a creditable recprd at track. As you do well the 
 intellectual tasks which are set for you today, you will 
 accomplish more easily and more accurately the duties 
 which are laid upon you twenty years from now, no matter 
 what these duties may be. 
 
 By far the largest percentage of poor work or of failures 
 in high school comes not from the fact that boys are stu- 
 pid or badly prepared in the elementary schools, or be- 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 45 
 
 cause the amount of work they .are asked to do is unreason- 
 able or beyond their grasp, but because they do npt do 
 their work seriously or thoroughly at first; they have no 
 well-organized plail of study; they are procrastinating, and 
 wake up to the fact too late, that their studies are a real 
 business to which they should have been giving regular 
 attention from the beginning. Jones told me only yester- 
 day that if he had learned his conjugations and his declen- 
 sions carefully and thoroughly when he began his high 
 school study of Latin, he would have been saved years of 
 uncertain floundering through the classics. If you would 
 give more careful attention to elementary algebra, you 
 would not have heart failure later when you take the 
 required courses in college mathematics. If boys took 
 their work as seriously in September as they do in Jan- 
 uary or immediately before the final examinations there 
 would be a great many more honor students than failures. 
 
 As a rule the task set for the average high school student 
 is a very moderate one, and the amount and the character 
 of the work required quite within the range of his ability. 
 I have known a great many high school boys, but I have 
 known few whose mental equipment was not adequate to 
 the accomplishment of the work they had elected to do if 
 they had gone at it in the right way when it was as- 
 signed. The number of "boneheads" is pretty limited. 
 
 Have a regular time for study. Of course I appreciate 
 the fact that most high schools have "study periods" 
 between recitations and that a good many boys depend 
 
46 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 upon these to furnish adequate time for preparation, or if 
 this should prove inadequate there is always the chance 
 of studying ahead in class and being ready to recite when 
 the teacher calls upon you, but this method is either in- 
 adequate or a subterfuge and will not get you anywhere. 
 
 "John is so quick at his books," his fond mother tells 
 me, "he never has to study." But I know John is com- 
 ing up against a great surprise one of these days, for the 
 boy who expects to get what he should out of his studies, 
 ought to have at least a little regular time for hard study 
 at home every day. The boy who never needs to open a 
 book at home may be a bright boy, but he will seldom de- 
 velop into a well-trained man; he is pretty sure to prove 
 commonplace. 
 
 Learn to do things within the time assigned to you. 
 If there are problems to be handed in on Monday, do 
 not put off solving them until the last minute and then 
 have to give an excuse because you did not have time 
 enough to finish them. If your theme is due on Thursday 
 go at it early enough to get it done by that time. The 
 boy who waits for an inspiration or who thinks it will 
 be easier for him to write tomorrow than it is tonight, 
 is more than likely to be fooled. No one but a poet 
 ever waits for an inspiration, and the fellow who gets 
 into the habit of delaying the doing of his work until he 
 feels like it, soon finds that his eagerness for work con- 
 stantly decreases, while the boy who goes at his work 
 and gets it done in time no matter how he feels about it, 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 47 
 
 discovers before long that he can work whenever he wants 
 to do so. No man who has regular routine work to do 
 can allow it to be a matter of inspiration or feeling. One 
 of the main things for which brains are trained is that 
 they may be made to work easily whenever the necessity 
 arises. 
 
 Perhaps the reason why boys court delay in the ac- 
 complishment of assigned work is because there is so 
 much time in which it may be done, and the task set 
 for tomorrow seems so much easier of accomplishment 
 than that which confronts us today; but work always 
 grows more difficult as we allow it to pile up, and one 
 is not, in general, likely to have more time tomorrow than 
 he has today. 
 
 Learn to depend upon your own efforts for the ac- 
 complishment of your work. I know that there is a 
 certain comradeship developed between two boys who 
 get their work together, and it is sometimes a tremendous 
 timesaver, but it is very seldom best. If the result of 
 study were accomplished when we got the answer to the 
 problem, all that would sometunes be necessary would 
 beito turn to the back of the book. The boy who works 
 out his own problems, as he will usually have to do later 
 in life, develops self-reliance, learns to trust his own 
 judgment, gets the habit of standing on his own feet, 
 and is the more likely to be honest and self-reliant at 
 examination time. If you and Tom are working out the 
 problems in algebra together there is always the tempta- 
 
48 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 tion to utilize his work as your own, to trade answers, 
 and in reality to slight half the work. If it is translation 
 instead of mathematics that is being worked out, the 
 poorer student soon learns to rely upon the better and 
 misses the training which comes from working out a hard 
 task alone. 
 
 Regularity of work counts for a tremendous lot in 
 any line of business. Once get behind, and the damage 
 is almost irreparable. I was talking to a discouraged 
 high school sophomore today. 
 
 "I was a good student last year," he said, "and I'm 
 sure I have brains enough to get on. I had rather light 
 work this half year, and I should have carried it easily. 
 I simply loafed and let th^ work pile up expecting to do 
 it all in the end. When I awoke to my situation the pile 
 was more than I could crawl over." 
 
 Unless any boy at the very beginning learns to work 
 regularly, he will have a hard time to learn later. It is 
 almost impossible to play the ant after one has long been 
 cast in the role of the grasshopper. 
 
 It is not enough that a boy work regularly, he must 
 apply himself to his work with concentration of mind. 
 The fellow who puts in the most hours is not necessarily 
 the best student. It is the one who works regularly and 
 works hard as well — ^who has his whole mind on what 
 he is doing — who will accomplish the most and who will 
 get the best development out of his work. As I write 
 this paper, I have been watching a young fellow sitting 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 49 
 
 on the porch across the street from my office window, 
 a book in his hand and his chair tilted back against the 
 house wall. He is whistling to a passing dog now; he was 
 engaged in conversation with a mate a few moments ago; 
 he hailed the ice cream cone man and did business with 
 him at the beginning of the hour; and yet he will tell his 
 friends at dinner time how hard he was grinding at his 
 lessons all the afternoon. 
 
 One of the poorest students with whom I have had to 
 do was as regular in his work as the phases of the moon 
 and as sure to be at his book as taxes, but he worked too 
 much, and he had no concentration. He would go to 
 sleep while writing his theme as readily as I did while 
 reading it. He worked without method and without 
 application, and so he failed to carry anything. The 
 best student I have ever known — and by that I mean 
 not only the man who was best in his studies, but in the 
 "other things"— put in a very few hours at his work, 
 but he studied every night, and when he worked his whole 
 mind was directed toward what he wished to accomplish; 
 he did not let anything come between him and what he 
 was doing, and when he was through, he stopped and 
 put his work away. He had more leisure time at his 
 disposal than any of the rest of us. He won through 
 regularity and concentration, and these qualities are 
 usually to be discovered when a man, high school student 
 or otherwise, succeeds. It is possible to learn concentra- 
 tion. One must have interest, he must have the will to 
 
60 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 do, and he must be wide-awake enough to realize what it 
 is that he is trying to accomplish. 
 
 But the "other things" are important; only slightly 
 less important in fact than the studies themselves. How- 
 ever much a boy may be devoted to his work he can not 
 study all the time, and he should not be allowed to do so 
 even if it were possible. As I remember my own secondary 
 school course and try to estimate, as it is impossible justly 
 to do, its present worth to me, I am inclined to value most 
 highly some of the things that were connected only re- 
 motely with the studies I was pursuing. These external 
 things naturally would have been of little value to me un- 
 less I had carried the work I was taking, for matters were 
 so conducted in our home circle that a place would read- 
 ily have been found for me on the farm had I shown any 
 chronic inaptitude in securing grades. But granting that 
 ability, these "other things" seem to me of the greatest 
 value. As an instructor I can seldom find much excuse for 
 the boy who does not carry his work in high school; but 
 the one who does not do more than this, no matter how 
 high his scholastic standing may be, has missed a very 
 large part of what every one should get from high school 
 training. School iife is very much a community life. No 
 one can justly hve to himself alone, and profit greatly 
 from the life. He has his own private individual work to 
 do, it is true, and he should do it; but he has also his obli- 
 gations to his fellow students and to the community at 
 large, and these he may not shirk. 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 51 
 
 I heard a boy once boast that during his high school 
 course he had never cut a class nor seen an athletic contest. 
 I am not sure that either fact was a virtue, and notwith- 
 standing that he now wears a badge won by high scho- 
 lastic attainments, I think that his training and his sym- 
 pathies might have been broader if his school interests 
 had, perhaps, been varied enough to make it desirable for 
 him sometimes to cut a class, or interesting to attend a 
 ball game. I think his influence now would be wider. A 
 boy's studies should give him familiarity with ideas, and 
 training in principles; and "other things" in which he in- 
 terests himself should make him acquainted with people, 
 and furnish him some opportunity to get experience in the 
 management of erratic human beings. Whether the busi- 
 ness which a young man finally takes up happens to be 
 designing gas engines or preaching the gospel, he will find 
 daily opportunities for the exercise of both sorts of 
 training. 
 
 It is a somewhat overworked and jaded joke that class 
 valedictorians generally bring up as street car conductors 
 or as hack drivers, not that I should like to underestimate 
 the value of any' one of these positions or the amount of 
 intelligence required successfully to perform the work of 
 either one of these worthy oflices — and though, perhaps, 
 it is a joke, one can occasionally find instances of students 
 of the highest scholastic standing filling the most common- 
 place positions simply from lack of initiative or ability to 
 assume leadership. One such dropped in on me only a few 
 
52 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 days ago. I did not remember him at first; he seemed 
 commonplace, unaggressive, without diplomacy. When 
 he mentioned his name I recalled that he had been vale- 
 dictorian of his class a dozen years ago. He had got no- 
 where; he had lost every position he had held because he 
 had no ability at leadership; he could not adjust himself 
 to the peculiarities of other people. He was always at 
 loggerheads with his boss. The lack of ability to get on 
 with men often keeps a young fellow as it had kept him, 
 from an opportunity to utihze his educational stock in 
 trade. Social training then, association with man, is a 
 very desirable thing. 
 
 There are many ways in which such an association 
 may be cultivated. The ordinary method which sim- 
 ply for the sake of enjoyment takes a boy out amor^ his 
 fellows — and sometimes his fellows' sisters — ^is neither to 
 be ignored nor worked too strenuously. Parties and pic- 
 nics, social calls, and long quiet strolls when the moon is 
 full are, in moderation, helpful, perhaps, but they should 
 not be developed into a regular practice. Even a good 
 thing may be overdone. It is exceedingly desirable that 
 one should learn how to manage his hands and feet and 
 tongue, but it is quite possible to devote too much time to 
 acquiring skill of this sort. Thejb^ who omits all so- 
 cialjife^makes a mistake ;\the fellow wh"o'3evblea a large 
 part of his time to it is mushy. 
 
 I have a strong belief in the value of athletics. It is 
 true that some of the poorest students I have ever known 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 53 
 
 have called themselves athletes because their main in- 
 terest was physical rather than intellectual, but I, have 
 known more good students than poor ones who have been 
 prominent in athletic events. The boy who goes into 
 athletics sanely has a good chance of developing a strong 
 body; both tradition and necessity demand that he live a 
 temperate, healthy life, and his thinking powers and his 
 ability to do mental work are likely to be stimulated by 
 the regular exercise he must take. It is true that few stu- 
 dents ever do themselves damage from working too hard, 
 but a great many develop chronic indigestion and physi- 
 cal worthlessness from sitting in stuffy rooms and taking 
 no exercise. I should not go so far as to say that the ath- 
 lete is usually a better student than the fellow who does 
 not go in for such things, but he is usually a better all- 
 around man than the other fellow. He has more stamina 
 and endurance, and because of his symmetrical develop- 
 ment he is more likely to make a success later in life than 
 boys who have had no such training. For this reason as 
 well as for the pleasure and relaxation in it, every student 
 who can should go in for some athletic game. 
 
 There are a good many societies in high school which 
 will bid for the boy's time and attendance. Many very 
 worthy people think most of these are wholly bad, and 
 advise the boy to steer clear of them all as he would dodge 
 smallpox and the tax collector. Most of these organiza- 
 tions have their uses, however, and in the majority of 
 cases they are good. Most boys would be helped by 
 
54 THK HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 joining a debating society both on account of the per- 
 sonal associations which they would cultivate, and for the 
 training it would give them in speaking and writing. It 
 is a great asset to be able to say easily what one has in his 
 mind. Dramatics, declamation contests, musical or- 
 ganizations, stunt shows in general give one a training 
 which will later in life repay many times the effort en- 
 tailed in the practice for these activities. 
 
 There are political opportunities in high school which 
 should not be overlooked. Class officers and manager- 
 ships must be filled. Such work offers an excellent chance 
 for the development of business sense and business ex- 
 perience, and for widening one's influence and control of 
 men. The necessary relationships which political actiAdty 
 requires develop resourcefulness, shrewdness, and a gen- 
 eral understanding of human nature. It gives training in 
 organizing men, in planning operations, in meeting un- 
 expected situations. It is one of the best experiences a 
 boy can have. It is often, too, a strong test of a boy's 
 character, for, even in high school politics, there is con- 
 stant opportunity for graft, for trickery, and for dis- 
 honesty. The boy who goes through such a contest and 
 comes out clean has had a test and a training which will 
 prove invaluable to him. 
 
 The four years you are in high school should mean 
 sometMng more than the mere acquaintance with facts, 
 or the acquiring of information or the passing of ex- 
 aminations; it should give you a knowledge of other 
 
STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 55 
 
 boys. But in getting this second sort of training you 
 will usually have to choose between several of many 
 interests. If you elect to do one thing, you must usually 
 omit the rest. A fellow may occasionally be president 
 of his class and at the same time captain of the foot- 
 ball team, but ordinarily one of these positions is quite 
 sufficient to occupy his leisure moments. If you try too 
 much, you will fail in all. If you get into the real life of 
 the school and do something to direct its current, you will 
 usually be better fitted to meet the unexpected in the 
 more strenuous world into which you must go when you 
 enter college or take up the practical work of life, than you 
 would be if you simply did your school work and stayed in 
 you own little shell. 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 
 
 Most students in high school quite seriously believe 
 that examinations have been devised by teachers merely 
 to torture a group of defenseless young people. They 
 see in examinations neither pleasure nor benefit, they 
 look forward to their approach with premonition and 
 pain, and give a relieved sigh when each series of exam- 
 inations is safely past. 
 
 "The teacher knows what a fellow will do before he 
 takes an examination," the high school boy argues, "so 
 why can't he let it go at that and give a man a grade with- 
 out working him to a shadow or scaring him to death in 
 getting ready for an examination? " 
 
 When I was in college we had a shrewd old instructor, 
 lazy we thought him at times, whom we could never 
 quite make out. His grades were always in the college 
 office within a surprisingly short time after the examinar 
 tion had ceased, so that there was a suspicion in the minds 
 of a good many of us that he never read his examination 
 papers at all, but dumped them into the waste paper 
 basket and went home to enjoy his cigar. 
 
 The trouble was that no one quite liked to take the 
 risk to prove his suspicion. We threatened often to test 
 out our theories by not studying for the quiz and by 
 writing down any sort of bunk that came into our heads 
 
 56 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 57 
 
 when we got into the classroom, but these threats seldom 
 got further than talk. Fred Waterman tried it once and 
 flunked the course, whether because the old man read 
 the paper and discovered Fred's trick, or because he had 
 already scheduled Fred for defeat, we could never quite 
 determine. As it was the majority of us went on bon- 
 ing up for the examination and sweating through it, 
 fearful that after all that the instructor might read the 
 papers. I always meant to ask him after I got out of 
 college whether he did or not, but I could never quite 
 get up my nerve. I can see now that whether he read 
 them or not made very little difference. He was a good 
 judge of human nature. He knew us well enough so as sel- 
 dom to do us any especial intellectual injustice, and he kept 
 us guessing so that we had to make the review and the 
 preparation that he wanted us to make. 
 
 The boy is right who says that the teacher generally 
 knows pretty well beforehand what his students are worth 
 and what they will know on an examination. The teacher 
 is just as sure, however, if he is any judge of human 
 nature, that it is the getting ready for the .examination 
 and the actually taking of it that makes the boy sure of 
 what fee knows. If he knew that he did not have to take 
 an examination the boy would seldom make any special 
 mental effort. Our old high school trainer used to know 
 pretty well what Jim Whalen would do in the race 
 for which he was practicing, though Jim seldom made 
 any remarkable showing before the time of actual contest. 
 
58 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 It was the thought of the race itself that put nerve into 
 Jim. It was the contact with the other fellows and the 
 stimulus of competition that urged him on and made 
 Viinn win. Jim would never have been much of a runner 
 unless he had been put into a race, and no one knew the 
 fact better than the trainer. It is the same way with a 
 boy in examinations. 
 
 A good many schools follow the practice of excusing 
 from final examinations all students whose daily work 
 averages above a certain grade. I know a good many 
 high school boys who have never taken a final examina- 
 tion and who would not know how to do so creditably. 
 It is a perfectly easy matter, if he is alert while in the 
 classroom and regular in his class attendance, for a 
 boy to keep his daily grades up and still to have very 
 little general grasp of the subject. I have just answered 
 a letter from the father of one of our freshmen in college. 
 The boy has been dropped at the end of his first year 
 for poor scholarship, and the father finds it difficult 
 to understand why. 
 
 "George was always a good student in the high school," 
 he wrote. "He never had to take an exa,mination, and 
 I can not see why he had done so badly in college.'' 
 
 In college George was required in his final examina- 
 tion to present a general view of the whole subject-matter 
 covered in his course; he found it necessary to syste- 
 matize his knowledge and to present his facts in an orderly 
 fashion, and he had had no previous practice in doing this 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 59 
 
 sort of thing. It was quite easy to see why he had failed. 
 He was working under a new system, and he had not 
 adjusted himself to it. 
 
 I have seldom seen a boy who was so smart in high school 
 that he was excused from all his examinations who, 
 without unusual effort, was able to do well in college. 
 Such boys have a good many facts, possibly, in their 
 possession, but when they want to use them, they don't 
 know where they are. They have been mislaid or so 
 jumbled up with other things that it is impossible to 
 disentangle them. Knowledge is of little use to any one 
 unless it is available. I have all sorts of tools about 
 the house, but if when I want to drive a nail I discover 
 that the hammer is gone, and I am forced to use a flat 
 iron, of what service to me is the hammer? A boy may 
 have innumerable items of information somewhere 
 about his brain, but if when he finds a use for facts 
 it is impossible for him to organize or to recall them^ 
 he is about as well off as if he did not have them 
 at all. 
 
 The best possible use of an examination is that it 
 necessitates an organization of knowledge. A boy must 
 get his facts into some sort of order if he is to do his best 
 in a limited time. He must have what he has learned 
 laid out before his mental vision so that he can put his 
 hands on it readily if it is called for. I am often an on- 
 looker at surgical operations. Nothing in this sort of 
 experience interests me more than the preparations 
 
60 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 which are always made before the actual work of the 
 operation begins. There is the movable tray standing 
 ready by the operating table with its array of instru- 
 ments all laid out in the most careful order. There are 
 sponges, and needles, and all sorts of thread, and^He- 
 tractors, and forceps all in their places, and so arranged 
 that whatever may be needed in the emergency that 
 is likely to occur will be ready for use. It is some such 
 preparation as this that a boy should make who is get- 
 ting ready for an examination. He does not know what 
 is going to be called for, but if he has his information 
 in logical order he is ready for any call. 
 
 An examination, or at least the preparation which 
 any sensible boy will make in getting ready for an ex- 
 amination, is an excellent training in judgment. The 
 boy, as he goes over the material he has studied, must 
 determine what is fxmdamental, what is important, and 
 what without danger may be discarded. This requires 
 thought, discrimination, and care. It is not so difficult 
 to pick out each day the important facts of a lesson as 
 it is at the close of a year's or a half year's study to select 
 what one should carry with him from the mass of facts 
 that has been considered. Knowing that he will be 
 required to do this, a boy will study with a very different 
 purpose than he would show if he were convinced that 
 when a day's lesson is learned, he is through with it 
 for all time. 
 
 Examinations are meant to test a student's resource- 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 61 
 
 fulness, his ability to meet a new situation, to assemble 
 facts in a different way than he had been accustomed to 
 do, and from them to draw new conclusions. 
 
 "I never heard of some of the things the teacher asked 
 us today," one of my neighbor boys announced following 
 a final examination. "I'm sure a lot of the answers were 
 not in the book." 
 
 It always seems an injustice to a boy to be asked on an 
 examination anything the answer to which can not easily 
 be found by turning to the book. But really the best sort 
 of question to ask is the one that requires the searching of 
 a boy's brain rather than the book before he finds the 
 proper answer. Nobody in real Ufe ever finds a problem 
 presented just as it is in the book, but, if he has learned 
 to analyze and to organize his knowledge, the one in the 
 book helps him to the solution of the one in real life. The 
 lawyer seldom if ever finds the series of circumstances 
 surrounding his first important case like any particular 
 illustration he has studied; the surgeon taking out his 
 first appendix can seldom put his finger on the disturbing 
 organ at the point where the books say it ought to be. It 
 is the thing that isn't in the book that we are always run- 
 ning up against in practical life, and it is a very good ex- 
 perience to get used to in the examinations taken in 
 school. 
 
 The greatest howl which is set up by the high school 
 boys I know against examinations is caused by the so- 
 called "catch-questions" which are frequently introduced 
 
62 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 into examinations, and by the fact that examinations are 
 frequently sprung upon an unsuspecting and unprepared 
 class without announcement. 
 
 "If he had only told us ahead of time that we were go- 
 ing to have the quiz," the boy protests, "it wouldn't have 
 been so bad; but there we were absolutely unprepared. 
 It wasn't fair." 
 
 Here again there is something to be said on the other 
 side. It is the purpose of an examination just as much to 
 discover what a boy does not know as it is to find out the 
 facts he is acquainted with. It is very helpful to a teacher 
 at times as well as to his students to stumble upon the 
 weak places in his teaching and in their knowledge. The 
 "catch question" often tests the alert mind. All through 
 life a boy will find that there is likely to be some one lying 
 in wait to catch him by a trick or a technicality. He might 
 as well get used early in life to recognizing these situations 
 and meeting them. If only the expected happened, the 
 world would be a very much easier place in which to live 
 than it now is. I try to figure out each morning as I go 
 to my office what form of student irregularity I shall dur- 
 ing the day have to adjust, but I am never successful. No 
 two days are alike; every problem which is presented has 
 something in it unforeseen and unlike anything else which 
 I have ever met. If we knew when we were going to die 
 we should be upset considerably, no doubt, but I am not 
 at all sure that we should meet the grim destroyer with 
 any more composure than we shall when he comes upon us 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 63 
 
 unannounced. It is the way most experiences of life come, 
 so why not examinations? 
 
 The hard examina;tion is frequently objected to on the 
 ground that it is not a fair test of a student's knowledge. 
 It is a good thing for every boy, however, occasionally to 
 give his brain a stiff work out. Our real physical and in- 
 tellectual strength is tested not so much by what we 
 can accomplish as we loaf along lazily through life, as 
 by what we can do when we are pushed into a comer and 
 forced to work or to think our hardest. The boys who 
 came through the horrors of the Argonne or of Belleau 
 Wood never suspected what they could stand until put 
 to the test, and their changed point of view reveals the 
 fact that they were strengthened by the test. One young 
 boy I know got three meals out of eleven and was without 
 sleep for three days, and I suppose he had an easy time as 
 compared with what other boys suffered. Of course, if a 
 boy lies down and refuses to do his best when he comes up 
 against a hard mental test, the advantage to him of such an 
 experience is nullified. 
 
 An examination is a good game, if a boy will think of it 
 so, a game which it is possible to learn to play skilfully. He 
 must first of all keep his head if he is going to make a good 
 score. He should go into the game in good condition and 
 with good spirits. I know many fellows who get ready for 
 an examination by^studying far into the night or all night, 
 trying in a few hours to cram into their brains all sorts of 
 miscellaneous information. They get little sleep, and they 
 
64 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 go to their examination stupid and irritable and in no con- 
 dition to meet either the unexpected or the difficult. One 
 of the best preparations for a stiff examination is a good 
 night's sleep and a cold shower on rising. An intelligent 
 review of the ground covered every one ought to take, but 
 he should not try to do this at one sitting at the expense 
 of his regular hours for sleep. This review is purely a 
 matter of judgment to determine what is essential and 
 what is not. It is the steady, regular, daily work that gets 
 a fellow into condition for an examination more than the 
 feverish cramming the night before the test comes. 
 
 Next to a rested body, a calm mind and a reasonable 
 self-confidence are most helpful in passing a good ex- 
 amination, and these states of mind are much more fully 
 within a boy's personal control than we are sometimes will- 
 ing to admit. Worry and fear and lack of faith in our own 
 ability to do a task well we largely induce in ourselves, or 
 eliminate from our minds as the case may be. Self-con- 
 trol is a good deal a matter of will, and the boy who is get- 
 ting ready to take an examination can exercise it very much 
 to his advantage. Whenever a player in any game allows 
 himself to get "rattled," then his game goes to pieces. 
 
 One should go at an examination in an orderly fashion. 
 If you will watch a good whist player you will see that he 
 arranges his cards carefully before he leads so that he can 
 determine easily what the strength of his hand is. He tac- 
 kles first the thing that he is sure of. So a boy going into 
 an examination should get a grasp of the whole situation 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 65 
 
 before he begins his solution. He should read the entire 
 examination paper before he begins to write, and should 
 take stock of the requirements and of his assets. He 
 should adjust his time to the length of the task before him. 
 I have seen a good many boys fail an examination be- 
 cause having met something difficult at the outset, they 
 gave most of their available time to the solution of this 
 problem and had no time left for the remainder of the 
 examination which they might have found relatively 
 simple. 
 
 The best way from my experience to " hit an examination 
 hard" is to answer first and as rapidly as possible all the 
 questions the answers to which seem easy or obvious. This 
 is quite possible, since students are seldom if ever required 
 to write their answers in any definite order. By safely 
 and quickly disposing of a reasonable share of the exam- 
 ination, the boy gains confidence, he realizes that he is 
 probably doing fairly well, and he can divide the remainder 
 of his time between the questions that seem to him to re- 
 quire more thought and care. His very satisfied state of 
 mind will help clear his brain and steady his nerves for the 
 doing of the task that is more difficult. 
 
 During all this time he ought to be giving some at- 
 tention to the order and form of his answers. A neatly 
 written, orderly arranged examination paper, other things 
 being equal, will draw a higher grade by several per cent 
 than another one which may contain the same information 
 badly put together. We are all unconsciously attracted 
 
66 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 by the shop whose windows display a tasteful and orderly 
 arrangement of wares. Any jumble annoys us even if it 
 be a jumble of things otherwise pleasing and attractive. 
 Arrange your answers, therefore, so that they look well. 
 If possible put them down so that the instructor can read- 
 ily grasp what you are trying to say, and will not have to 
 waste his time and his patience in digging out your reason- 
 ing. Number or letter the subdivisions of your answers 
 if necessary. Write legibly. I have thrown aside many an 
 examination paper disgusted because it was almost impos- 
 sible to determine the identity of the written words. Don't 
 crowd your material; paper is of less value than your in- 
 structor's eyesight or peace of mind. The very fact that 
 you seem trying to make what you say clear and easy 
 of comprehension predisposes the instructor in your 
 favor. 
 
 It sometimes pays to guess, if one is not certain of his 
 facts. Of course, it is a weak player who is always un- 
 certain, and a weak boy who hasn't some things definitely 
 in mind. But on occasion it is best to take a chance, and 
 if you are wrong to take the consequences. Even the best 
 of us has to bluff once in a while, and just so one doesn't 
 get the reputation for regularly dbing it, no harm is likely 
 to be done. It is better to be struck out trying to hit the 
 ball than it is to be sent back to the bench never having 
 swung the bat. 
 
 I have spoken of examinations as a game. I should like 
 to have every boy feel that it is an honest game, an honor- 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 67 
 
 able gentleman's game, which he must play squarely, de- 
 pending upon his own skill and his own knowledge to 
 carry him through. 
 
 "«But I had to pass," a boy said to me once in justifica- 
 tion of the fact that he had been caught cribbing. 
 
 He was entirely mistaken. Nobody has to pass, and no- 
 body should pass unless he does so honestly. The boy 
 who gains his grades through cribbing, is little better than 
 a common thief. There are a thousand forms and methods 
 of getting help illegitimately in an examination, from 
 cribbing from your neighbor's paper to bringing books and 
 elaborately disguised "ponies" to class, but no one who 
 cares for honesty and for his reputation will have anything 
 to do with any of these. In truth they seldom help a great 
 deal. I am convinced that it could be shown, if the proper 
 investigation were made, that the cribber loses on the 
 whole more than he gains not only in self-reliance and 
 strength of character but in the accuracy of the informa- 
 tion which he puts down, which would be more de- 
 pendable if he relied upon his own brains. There ig the 
 greatest satisfaction always in feeling after an examination 
 that one has done a good piece of work. There is the great- 
 est satisfaction in being able to feel that whatever the re- 
 sult of the test you have done your best and that you have 
 played a clean square game. I always feel proud of the 
 boy who can say after he has taken a quiz, 
 
 "Well, whatever my grade is, what I handed in was 
 entirely my own." Like Paul he can say, "I have fought 
 
68 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 a good fight, I have finislied the course, I have kept the 
 faith." 
 
 One of the stock arguments against examinations is that 
 they are not fair. 
 
 "I could have answered ahnost anything else in the 
 book," the boy who has just been through an examina- 
 tion protests. "He asked me just the things I didn't 
 know." 
 
 This is, of course, virtually admitting that what the 
 teacher had considered fundamental, the boy had thought 
 of as trivial, and tends to prove that his mind had not been 
 especially alert during the recitation periods. It is not 
 possible that the teacher, in making a comprehensive set 
 of examination questions, should have selected only those 
 details with which the student was not familiar unless the 
 student had shown little attention to what had been going 
 on in the class recitation. Even a poor teacher makes 
 pretty clear during the class work some of the points at 
 least which he considers important. 
 
 I have never doubted that there are times when an ex- 
 amination strikes even a good student pretty hard, just as 
 in plajdng a game one is sure at times to draw a poor hand 
 or to have a bad run of luck. But just as surely he will 
 stumble upon the easy test when everything seems to be 
 coming his ,way. Sometimes, when he has apparently 
 made little preparation, the quiz seems as easy as taking 
 candy away from a baby. In such a case, however, I have 
 yet to hear the first claim that examinations do not fairly 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 69 
 
 measure a boy's ability. It is the average, and not, the 
 single test that truthfully measures a student's accom- 
 plishments. 
 
 I always like to hear a group of high school boys dis- 
 cussing grades. From such discussions, of which I have 
 heard not a few, I would draw the conclusion that from the 
 high school boy's point of view at least, grades do not indi- 
 cate fairly a boy's accomplishment in any subject. Grades 
 are in no sense an index of a student's real ability and do 
 not show what he has "got out of a subject." They do 
 not suggest anything of what he is likely to accomplish 
 after he is through with school and college and has gone 
 into the practical work of life. If a mistake has ever been 
 made in a boy's grade, and such mistakes the boy admits 
 are legion, it has always been that he has been marked 
 lower than he deserved. I have never yet heard a boy com- 
 plain that his teacher had given him a grade higher than he 
 was entitled to. The assigning of grades, he is convinced, 
 is very much a lottery. The teacher very likely writes the 
 names of his students on slips of paper and puts them in 
 one hat, and a series of grades on other slips and puts these 
 in another hatj pulls out a name and then a grade and thus 
 settles each boy's fate. It is a pretty generally accepted 
 doctrine that nothing gives a teacher so much or so ex- 
 quisite joy as to be able to flunk a boy. The more he 
 flunks the more pleasure he gets out of his work. 
 
 To begin with, grades are symbols only; they should 
 never be taken quite literally. They are meant merely to 
 
70 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 indicate the difference between poor and excellent work. 
 The raising or the lowering of the passing grade in any 
 school would seldom if ever influence the number who 
 would be passed or failed. For instance, in the school 
 which I attended seventy-five was the passing grade. At a 
 similar institution which a boy friend attended in another 
 country, thirty was the passuig grade, and yet no larger a 
 percentage of the students were passed in his school than 
 in mine. The only difference was that in the school 
 with the ^ower passing grade it was possible to show 
 a greater variety of ability, and the student in his institu- 
 tion who was given the very high grade was entitled to 
 somewhat more distinction than was the man who got 
 the high grade in my institution. Students argue often 
 that because the passing grade in a school is high the 
 standard of excellence in that school is necessarily higher 
 than in a school where the passing grade is lower. There 
 is httle or nothing to such an argument. 
 
 To a very large degree grades are an index of the charac- 
 ter of the work that a student is doing. A single grade 
 either high or low can not fairly determine an individual 
 case, for a single grade may be the result of luck, good or 
 bad, or, perhaps, it is better to say of chance; but a boy's 
 average grade may in general fairly be taken to represent 
 either his ability or his industry. If his grades are uni- 
 formly high he is either a quick, clever thinker or a hard 
 worker; if they are regularly low, he is either dull or 
 lazy. 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 71 
 
 "Now, father," I heard Frank explaining to his parent 
 when questioned as to the cause of a particularly modest 
 showing in grades at the end of a half year, "I got 
 a lot out of those courses which doesn't show in my 
 grades." 
 
 He was really dodging the issue as was Adam when 
 caught with the apple or Cain when his brother was 
 missing. 
 
 If a boy has actually secured any logical or definite in- 
 formation from a course the chances are overwhelmingly 
 in favor of his being able to make clear to the teacher that 
 this is the case. The boy who writes a poor examination is 
 in the same class as the teacher who presents his subject 
 badly — ten chances to one the matter is muddled in his 
 own brain. If you will pin such a person down to actual 
 "brass tacks," you will find that his knowledge is not 
 clear-cut and definite. 
 
 It is not at all difiicult to find illustrations of the high 
 school and college student whose scholastic record has been 
 commonplace or poor who later in life has made a distinct 
 if not a brilliant business or professional success. Neither 
 is it impossible to find illustrations of the high school and 
 college valedictorian whose place in middle life is common- 
 place and whose success was never attained. The fact, 
 however, that such cases stand out so clearly, that they 
 make such a vivid impression upon our minds, only tends 
 to prove that they are rather rare. The dullard in school 
 is not hopeless; he simply has far less chance to make good 
 
72 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 than has the student who has given a good account of him- 
 self. The bright student in school and college does not 
 have a monopoly on success; he simply has considerably 
 more than an even chance with the other fellows to make 
 good. 
 
 I have followed pretty carefully the record of fellows 
 whom I knew in school and college twenty-five or thirty 
 years ago. There are a few who did well scholastically 
 who have done little in the positions which they have 
 since held. In most cases, however, it is not difficult 
 to understand why; they had alert minds without self- 
 reliance or initiative. There are some, also, whose scho- 
 lastic record was little to their credit, who are now leaders 
 in the business or the profession which they have taken up. 
 Here, too, the explanation is not hard to find. They had 
 conceit and self-reliance; they were good judges of human 
 nature, and their independence and personal magnetism 
 outweighed their lack of ability to think and reason logi- 
 cally. On the whole, however, I can say that in more than 
 ninety per cent of the cases of the fellows I have known 
 in school and college, the success of these men could be 
 very accurately measured by the grades which they re- 
 ceived while they were in the high school or college. It is 
 as sensible to claim that character is worthless, because it 
 is possible to show that a crook occasionally gets by with 
 his crookedness, as it is to claim that grades neither indi- 
 cate a boy's success in school nor his probable progress 
 later in life. The facts prove otherwise. 
 
EIXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 73 
 
 "I'm not working for grades," I hear boys say repeat- 
 edly. "I don't believe grades show much about a fellow's 
 work." 
 
 Fathers, too, echo the same sentiments, but never so 
 far as I can now recall, when their sons were getting any- 
 thing creditable in the way of grades. It was the defense 
 of their son's commonplace work which they were throw- 
 ing up. It was another case of the fox who, when he saw 
 that he could not reach the grapes, consoled himself by 
 declaring them sour. It would be quite as sensible and 
 convincing an argument, it seems to me, for a runner to 
 say, " I don't care what time I make in the race; it doesn't 
 seem to me that time means anything when a fellow's in 
 a race. Just so one gets around the track a certain num- 
 ber of times is all that is necessary;" or for a base ball 
 player to declare, "I don't count much on the base hits 
 or the runs a man makes; I went to bat just as many times 
 as any one did." 
 
 High grades are an indication of accomplishment; they 
 show, usually, correct thinking, logical arrangement, and 
 a grasp of fundamentals. Sometimes, it is true, they are 
 the result of dishonest methods, or of a well-trained mem- 
 ory, but such cases are the exception and not the rule. The 
 low grade, in general, suggests the commonplace student 
 who is either slow in his thinking processes or unwilling 
 to work. No one should be satisfied to do poorly. Every 
 business man, every professional man, every boy in high 
 school ought to be ambitious to excel in his special line of 
 
74 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 endeavor. It is not enough just to' come out even at the 
 end of the year or just to get by at the examination. One 
 should have pride enough to be eager to be as good as the 
 best. 
 
 I have been a teacher for a good many years and I know 
 that the great body of teachers want their students to do 
 well, and are as proud as the boys themselves when their 
 students do attain scholastic distinction. The teacher 
 who takes delight in seeing his students fail can occasion- 
 ally be found, but only rarely, I am sure. 
 
 As I was walking home to lunch during examination time 
 I came upon one of our instructors. He was dragging him- 
 self along very slowly and looking the picture of gloom. 
 He is at best not a hilarious person, and he has the reputsr 
 tion of being a rather hard taskmaster in his classes and 
 one who takes a certain pleasure in seeing the downfall of 
 the unambitious student. 
 
 "What's on your mind, Fred?" I asked. 
 
 "I haven't slept Veil the last few nights," he admitted. 
 "A lot of my boys haven't done well on the examinations, 
 and I can't see why. I hate to flunk them. The fact is 
 I've read some of the papers three or four times trjring to 
 find enough in them to pass the fellows. I'm late now in 
 handing in my grades, and I'm just trying to determine 
 what I ought to do." 
 
 I laughed. I am sure not one of his students would have 
 beUeved me if I had told them that Professor Frederick 
 Brown, the cold-blooded, hard-hearted instructor who 
 
EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 75 
 
 took such delight in flunking every one possible, was ly- 
 ing awake of nights trying to devise some honest way to 
 pass the boys; but that is what really happens more often 
 than we imagine. Any good teacher wants his students to 
 do well; any ambitious boy wants to get good grades. 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 
 
 Every boy has leisure — ^much more, often, than he thinks. 
 There are the hours during the day when no tasks are set, 
 the weeks of the summer vacation when there is frequently 
 nothing definite regularly to occupy his time, and there 
 are the long winter evenings when even study will not suf- 
 fice to take up all his available time. More often than 
 otherwise he is left to himself during these hours and days 
 of leisure, and what he does to occupy the time affects 
 materially both his present and future happiness and his 
 character. 
 
 One of our most respected Southern colleges has, among 
 other customs, an unwritten tradition that the young fel- 
 low just out of high school and entering college should not 
 be found loafing around the "Comer," a well-known place 
 with its own particular attractions and allurements as well 
 as its own particular dangers. The reason for this restric- 
 tion, if a reason were necessary, is, no doubt, that it is not 
 thought good for a young boy to begin his college career 
 by cultivating the habit of loafing on street comers and 
 picking up the uncertain acquaintances wont to con- 
 gregate in such places; it is even worse for a high school 
 boy so to occupy his time. 
 
 If any one in our town wanted to find Bert, if he were 
 not in school or at home, he was as certain to be located 
 
 76 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 77 
 
 at the pool hall as his father on Sunday morning was sure to 
 be found at church. Bert knew no other recreation; it was 
 his particular indoor sport, and though he developed no 
 skill in pool to speak of, he was quite content to spend his 
 money and waste his time in shooting the balls into a pocket. 
 He has no other recreation today. He is not unique in any 
 way. If, out of his working hours, you are looking for any 
 boy with whom you are acquainted there is quite likely to 
 be some particular corner where he leans against the wall, 
 some definite place which draws him, some sport which 
 makes for him a regular and an irresistible appeal, a man- 
 dolin, or a golf club, or a billiard cue that drops readily into 
 his hand. As I go down town every day after my work 
 is done, I can usually run in to the same old loafers talking 
 politics or whittling the store boxes that cumber the side- 
 walk, the same young boys doing nothing in the same 
 places or kidding the girls that pass by on the street. 
 
 A certain amount of leisure is necessary for everyone, 
 man or boy. All work and no play not only makes Jack a 
 dull boy, but it retards his development, it sours his disposi- 
 tion, and it very likely turns him into a pretty irritable and 
 xmpleasant companion. No one can work all the time with- 
 out reducing his efficiency, and without wearing out his 
 nervous system. A little vacation, even if it is only an 
 hour or two in the woods or a half day fishing at the river, 
 sends one back to his work rested and with more vim and 
 more interest and enthusiasm. I have no doubt that a 
 good part of the purpose of the creator when he inaugur- 
 
78 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 ated the custom of working six days and resting the seventh 
 was to forestall some fool man who would probably start 
 the custom of working all the time and so eliminate vaca- 
 tions and reduce the general efficiency of mankind. As a 
 class, we Americans have too few leisure hours. 
 
 Of course growing boys need more leisure time than do 
 other people. They are only beginning to develop con- 
 centration, their tiodies tire, and they grow weary very 
 soon of doing one thing, and so need a change; their high- 
 strung nervous systems need relaxation, and they are 
 helped in the development of self-reliance by being left for 
 a considerable time to do as they please. One has only to 
 see the pinched, white, tired faces of the children who are 
 ground down by long hours of toil to realize how it dwarfs 
 and stunts and discourages a child to have no recreation, to 
 have no time in which he may do as he pleases. The boy 
 with no leisure is robbed_of his youth; and youth at best 
 is all too short. 
 
 It is really astonishing, however, if one has never be- 
 fore done so, to discover just how many ho"urs in a day or 
 a week or a month one has at his own disposal — ^in fact 
 just how much time one wastes, or idles away, or uses for 
 one's own pleasure or recreation; and boys have far more 
 than other and older people. A boy came to see me not 
 long ago who was complaining because he had so much 
 work to do and so little time in which to do it, so much 
 drudgery and so little leisure in which to enjoy himself. 
 His was the common complaint of young boys. 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 79 
 
 "I haven't a minute," was his assertion. 
 
 "Won't you keep a record for the next week," I asked 
 him, "of exactly how you spend the twenty-four hours of 
 the day, and bring it back to me?" 
 
 I gave him directions as to how the time should be di- 
 vided: so much for meals, so much for sleeping, so much for 
 school work and study, and so on, and required him to ac- 
 count specifically for the entire twenty-four hours of the 
 day. 
 
 "I guess I'm not working as much as I thought," he 
 said when, at the end of the specified time, he came back 
 again: "I'm a good deal more of a loafer than I should 
 have been willing to admit." 
 
 His record showed, as yours will quite likely if you will 
 take the trouble to investigate, that nearly one-third of the 
 twenty-four hours of each working day, and much more 
 than that on Saturdays and Sundays was taken up 
 either with doing very trifling things or in actually doing 
 nothing. He had considerable leisure, but he was wasting 
 it. If the boy who thinks he has little or no leisure time 
 will make a similar experiment, he may have his eyes 
 opened. The undeniable fact is that most of us waste our 
 leisure; we get out of it neither pleasure nor profit. 
 
 There are few things which more accurately reveal 
 your character than the use that you make of your leisure 
 time or would make of it if you could follow your own de- 
 sires. If for the next twenty-four hours you could do as 
 you please, go where you want to, and be asked no ques- 
 
80 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 tions, what would you do? Some boys would go fishing, 
 some would read a book or build something. I know boys 
 who would stay in bed sleeping most of the time and others 
 who would not go to bed at all; some would play a game 
 or take a trip, and some would do things about which they 
 would not care to speak. It might be very interesting for 
 every boy to think the question out for himself and to 
 answer it. 
 
 Many people, boys and men, are quite at a loss to know 
 what to do with leisure time and quite upset if unexpect- 
 edly they are confronted with an hour or two of leisure 
 and are separated from their ordinary entertainment. 
 Many are like the old citizen in an isolated New England 
 village, who being asked what he did in the winter when 
 the summer tourists with whom he employed his time had 
 gone, replied, 
 
 " Wal, mostly I set and think; and sometimes I jest set." 
 ' Those who have not trained themselves to think, who 
 have no resourcefulness when left to their own devices, 
 are sometimes forced merely to "set," and to find little 
 pleasure in leisure time and no incentive to thought. 
 
 Coming into Atlanta one Sunday morning not long ago, 
 I had as a seatmate an intelligent looking man of middle 
 age who was bemoaning the fact that he was to have an 
 unoccupied day in a city with which he was not familiar. 
 Only two possible solutions of the problem as how best to 
 spend a tiresome day suggested themselves to him — the 
 Sunday newspaper and sleep. Church, music, books, the 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 81 
 
 woods, a quiet walk — none of these made any appeal to 
 him. He only yawned, bored at the mere thought that 
 here was a whole day at his disposal and positively nothing 
 to do. It was really sad to realize that here was a man 
 whose life was more than half gone and who, when left 
 to himself, was helpless to enjoy it. Some time I intend 
 to write an article on how to spend one's time enjoyably 
 in railroad stations. 
 
 One of the most unhappy men I know has an attrac- 
 tive home, a comfortable income, and much leisure. He 
 is not harassed by hard toil or the fear of poverty; but he 
 does not know how to spend his leisure. He has not cul- 
 tivated any special friendships with people, or interest in 
 them, he does not find enjoyment in reading, he takes no 
 pleasure in the beautiful birds, and flowers, and trees with 
 which he is surrounded. He plays no games, finds no 
 comfort in exercise, and is at his wits end when he has 
 read the Breeders' Gazette and the village newspaper. 
 Like the New England farmer the most that he does is 
 just to "set." A boy should cultivate as many interests 
 as possible, should find a hundred interesting and profitable 
 ways to employ his leisure time. In doing so he will be 
 happier and wiser now, and more useful and happy later 
 in life. 
 
 A boy's greatest danger and his greatest temptation 
 comes not while he is at work, not while he is busy with 
 something that keeps his brain and his hands employed 
 but when he is free to do as he pleases, when his time ia 
 
82 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 his own and when he does not know quite what to do with 
 it, when he is out from under any direction but his own 
 personal desires. It is only another illustration of Satan 
 finding work for idle hands to do. Practically every bad 
 habit that a boy develops, every moral misstep that he 
 makes, may be traced to the misuse of leisure time. Any 
 boy who has learned to smoke or to swear or to drink or to 
 gamble or to be dishonest or to associate with vulgar or 
 lewd women will admit, if he will recall his first offense, 
 that in nine cases out of ten, he slipped at some vacation 
 time, or at some time when he was free from the regular 
 obligations of his daily work and with other fellows was 
 left to his own devices. It is a story generally of "nothing 
 to do" and "out for a time." 
 
 That was Tom Brown's experience as told in the story 
 with which every high school boy is familiar. He was 
 saved, fortunately, from the great temptation, but it was 
 more through good luck than good management. If 
 Arthur Donnithorne had had more to do, if his leisure 
 time had been spent in something besides idleness and the 
 pursuit of selfish pleasure, the tragedy of Hetty Sorrel 
 in Adam Bede might very easily have been averted. 
 
 There is a good reason for this condition of affairs. A 
 boy relaxes at vacation time, he lets down, he is somewhat 
 off his guard, and he therefore is more open to suggestion. 
 It is at week ends, and Christmas time, and sumcjer vaca- 
 tions, it is on the night when he is allowed to stay out after 
 his regular bed time that the temptation comes. He wants 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 83 
 
 to be a "good fellow," he can not bear to be thought a 
 quitter; when something a little daring or risqu6 is pro- 
 posed, he often lacks the courage to stand out against it, 
 and the ineAdtable happens. Disease and drunkenness 
 and irregularities of all sorts are far more imminent at 
 vacations than at any other time. The most dangerous 
 times are when he is excited by victory or depressed by 
 defeat or when he has so much leisure on his hands that 
 he grows bored with it and must break loose into the ir- 
 regular in order to relieve his pent-up feelings. I believe 
 in athletics, but it must be confessed that the athletic con- 
 test is responsible for a good many boyish derelictions, 
 because the excitement of victory or the despondency of 
 defeat throws the boy out of himself for the time being 
 and makes him an easy victim to the temptations which 
 are always lying in wait. 
 
 It is nearly always an unfortunate thing for a boy to 
 have no regular duties or responsibilities aside from his 
 school work. The most unhappy and the most discon- 
 tented boys I know, the laziest and the most dissipated, 
 are those whose time before and after school is at their 
 own disposal. They are likely to develop habits of ex- 
 travagance, to become spendthrifts and loafers, and the 
 loafer is generally ready for any sort of proposition that 
 may come up that will give him a new sensation or a 
 novel experience, immoral or otherwise. Even if the boy 
 with unlimited leisure develops the habit of reading, which 
 in itself is a very creditable one, his tendency will be to be- 
 
84 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 come something of a recluse, to shut hunself in, and to 
 grow pale and round shouldered and out of touch with 
 other fellows of his age. Every growing boy is better ofE 
 for having some regular work to do, something physical, 
 if possible, that will harden his muscles and develop his 
 strength and teach him to assume responsibility. Boys 
 usually have to learn to like work as they learn to hke 
 olives, by keeping at it until their taste is developed. I 
 know too many boys who would feel humiliated to be 
 caught washing the car, or mowing the lawn, or taking 
 care of the furnace, but any boy, no matter what the fi- 
 nancial standing of his father may be, is made stronger and 
 more manly and more dependable and happier, if he has 
 a steady regular job to take up a part of his leisure time, 
 and to teach him the dignity of labor and the value of 
 money. I have never known anyone, boy or man, who 
 lost caste by working, or who on the other hand was not 
 helped by doing so. 
 
 In conjunction with too much leisiu-e or leisure that is 
 largely without occupation, too much spending money is 
 a bad thing for a boy. When a boy has so much money 
 at his disposal that he needs to give little thought to his 
 expenditures, he is likely to grow selfish, to fall into ex- 
 travagances, if not to drift into worse things. It is an un- 
 comfortable situation for a boy to have too little money 
 or less than the fellows with whom he regularly associates; 
 it is a dangerous one for him to have so much that he can 
 daily gratify his appetites or satisfy his desires for pleas- 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 85 
 
 ure. If he does not learn while he is young to make some 
 sort of sacrifice and to deny himself, he will not find it 
 easy later in life. 
 
 Granted that there is danger to the young boy who has 
 a considerable amount of leisure, there is, also, to the one 
 who will use it wisely, a great opportunity. Most men who 
 have come up from poverty and ignorance to positions of 
 financial responsibility and intellectual attainment have 
 done so through the regular and wise utilization of their 
 leisure time. One of the best French scholars I know got 
 all his preliminary knowledge during his leisure hours in 
 the army when he was only a young boy. The biographies 
 of well-known men furnish innumerable illustrations of 
 boys who, with little encouragement and less opportunity, 
 by using their leisure hours wisely made themselves ready 
 for positions which would not otherwise have been open 
 to them. 
 
 There are various ways in which the high school boy 
 may utilize his leisure time. He may use it, as too many 
 boys do, in the pursuit of so-called pleasures that are ac- 
 tually injurious to his health and to his character. It is 
 not necessary to specify all of the things which are a real 
 injury to a young fellow; one may be pretty well assured, 
 however, that when the high school boy is out every night 
 of the week imtil long after he should be in bed, what- 
 ever he may be doing, he is not attending Sunday school. 
 When boys are found nightly hanging about street comers 
 or talking to careless silly girls, they are not picking up 
 
86 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 information that will be of any particular service to them 
 or developing habits that will better fit them for citizen- 
 ship. Few boys develop vicious or immoral habits with 
 the idea of continuing them. It is the fling of the moment, 
 they say, and they promise themselves and their friends, 
 often, that their derelictions are to be short lived. Ex- 
 perience shows, however, that the high school boy who 
 even for a brief period falls into questionable habits finds 
 it no easy matter to separate himself from them. Ex- 
 periences of all sorts, at his age, sink deep into his con- 
 sciousness and are hard to eradicate — psychologists tell 
 us that such impressions are eradicated with far more 
 difficulty than are those which come later in life. For- 
 tunately, the larger percentage of boys are saved from 
 such experiences. 
 
 Most of the young boys whom I know do not spend 
 their time viciously but foolishly. They are not during 
 their leisure developing useful knowledge or physical 
 strength, or cultivating habits or tasks that yield them 
 much present gratification or insure future happiness or 
 usefulness, most of their activities being only momentary 
 gratification. 
 
 "What did you do yesterday, before and after school?" 
 I asked Frank a few days ago. Frank is aged seven- 
 teen and is making a feeble attempt to get through the 
 junior year in high school. His father is a well-to-do 
 citizen who has established himself in his present busi- 
 ness by long and consistent hard work. He usually looks 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 87 
 
 after his own furnace and occasionally mows his own 
 lawn. I have even caught him washing his car or putting 
 up the screens to his house. Frank has unlimited leisure 
 and doesn't know a lawn mower from a cream separator. 
 He knows how to drive a car but is ignorant of even 
 the crudest methods of washing it. He is always well 
 dressed and spends money freely. He is, in fact, a very 
 pleasant and a very popular boy. He spends his leisure 
 time as most boys in his class do. 
 
 "I slept so late in the morning," was his reply, "that 
 by missing my breakfast I barely had time to get to 
 school for my first recitation. At lunch time Paul and 
 I went down to Harris' and had an egg malted milk. 
 After our last recitation for the day we had another 
 drink and then went to the movies. We fooled round 
 imtil dinner time and took a ride in the car until bed 
 time. In fact, I guess it was a little after bed time, for 
 as nearly as I remember it was about one a. m. when I 
 rolled in," 
 
 And this is not unusual; it is his regular program. He 
 seldom if ever studies; he has no interest in athletics; 
 he does not look into a newspaper; he never reads a book. 
 The car and sentimental girls and ice cream parlors 
 and moving pictoe shows take up practically all of his 
 leisure time which is not given over to lying in bed, or 
 strumming a ukelele. It is a gay and carefree life he lives! 
 
 There is little harm, possibly, in racing a motor car 
 about town, but it is, in the long run, an expensive 
 
88 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 pastime if it is not sometimes a dangerous one. It is 
 the young boy, usually, who exceeds the speed limit. 
 I can see Httle real profit or permanent good in most 
 of the vaudeville or moving picture shows. The plays 
 which appear regularly on the screen are frequently 
 full of questionable suggestions if they are not actually 
 vulgar, and at best they are unlikely often to aid in 
 the development of either good taste or good morals; 
 and yet there are many young boys in almost every town 
 who would be unhappy and discontented if they did not 
 attend at least one show a day, and I know many who 
 during the summer time go twice a day. There are far 
 better ways of spending leisure time, and ways which 
 will bring more satisfactory returns both to the young boy 
 and to the man that he will later become. 
 
 I was visiting not long ago in a part of the United 
 States with whose trees and birds and flowers I had 
 previously not been familiar. These things were to 
 me both curious and interesting, and I asked a good 
 many direct questions about them. Only one of the 
 six or eight boys with whom I was walking about 
 could give me any satisfactory information as to the 
 names of the trees or the birds or the flowers with which 
 I was not familiar though they were all intelligent in 
 general matters, were graduates of good high schools, 
 and had lived in the community all their lives. 
 
 Some of them ventured a guess, but in every case, 
 as I remember, they guessed incorrectly. They were 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 89 
 
 a little annoyed finally at their apparent ignorance, 
 and one of them determined to show me that he was 
 not wholly unfamiliar with the flora of his region. As 
 we were passing through a park, he pointed out a bed 
 of flowers saying, "Well, I know what those flowers 
 are, anyway: they're phlox." He was really mistaken, 
 though I did not have the courage to tell him so, for they 
 were petunias. 
 
 Now, a boy who is fifteen years of age and who has 
 spent any considerable time out of doors ought to have 
 had interest and curiosity enough to learn the names 
 of the plants which he has seen growing about him every 
 day, he ought to be as familiar with common trees and 
 shrubs as he is with the people whom he meets daily 
 on the street. If he had such knowledge, it would en- 
 liven every quiet walk which he might take, it would 
 give interest to every journey and help to dispel lone- 
 someness and gloom; for every bird in the hedges, every 
 vine and shrub and flower which he would see from the 
 car window, would seem like meeting an old friend on 
 the streets of a strange city. The reasons why boys 
 find so little pleasure in long walks into the country 
 or in quiet strolls in the woods when there is no girl 
 along, is because they meet little or nothing that is inter- 
 esting or familiar; they lack the information and the 
 training necessary to bring them pleasure, though it is 
 information which might very easily be obtained. 
 
 There is no method of occupying one's leisure time 
 
90 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 that will bring more present and permanent pleasure 
 to a boy than reading. Few boys read the newspapersi 
 and those who do generally confine themselves to the 
 cartoons and the sporting page. I shall have more in 
 in detail, to say about this subject in another article, 
 so that I shall simply content myself with saying here, 
 that part, at least, of a boy's leisure every day should 
 be devoted to general reading that will stimulate his 
 imagination, keep him informed on what is going on in 
 the world to-day and what was going on centuries ago. 
 
 The boy or the man who reads is always safer and 
 happier and has a great advantage over his companion 
 who does not do so. He has a possibility of general in- 
 telligence not open to other boys. 
 
 Men who have not learned to take regular exercise 
 while they are boys are little likely to do so later in life, 
 and the adult man who engages in no regular exercise 
 or who does not play with some sort of skill an athletic 
 out-of-door game will grow old and ineffective earlier 
 in life than would otherwise be the case, will grow wide 
 of girth or slow on his feet even if he does not actually 
 break down. ■ There is nothing like exercise for keeping 
 one young and active. The youngest old man that I 
 know, in some ways a boy still at eighty, has played 
 every day for many years, and is still playing, a vigorous 
 athletic game. 
 
 Few people will keep up an interest in any athletic 
 game in which they do not show some skill. Everybody 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 91 
 
 who is normal likes to beat rather than to be beaten, 
 and skill in almost any game which requires physical 
 alertness, unless it be golf, is seldom developed unless 
 one begins in youth. Further than this, if one waits 
 until he is out of high school or college before he takes 
 up any athletic recreation he is likely to argue and to 
 prove the point to himself, that he has not time for such 
 foolishness; his business is too exacting, his responsibil- 
 ities are too great, things generally would go to the bow- 
 wows if he took the time to learn what his better judgment 
 tells him would be the best thing in the world for him. 
 The high school boy has no such excuse. He has plenty 
 of time, he would be immeasurably benefited by such 
 exercise both now and later in life, and the development 
 of skill is for him so much more possible than for 
 an older man. There are few boys, no matter how thin 
 or fat, heavy or light, tall or short, who could not by 
 persistence develop skill beyond the commonplace in 
 some sort of healthy athletic activity, and who would 
 not from such development derive the greatest pleasure 
 and profit from the mere joy of contest; from physical 
 strength developed, from friendships formed, from self- 
 reliance gaiued through the defeat of some opponent. 
 Leisure time spent in the development of a strong healthy 
 body will pay as high an interest on the time invested 
 as anything which a high school boy can engage in. It 
 will develop in him moral stamina and control; it will 
 often bring him the respect and the admiration of his fel- 
 
92 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 lows and a physical reserve which will be to him a god- 
 send when he needs to call upon it in the emergencies 
 which come sooner or later to all men. 
 
 I have a neighbor, a man of education and of ordinary 
 intelligence, who is constantly in mechanical difficulties. 
 If a faucet leaks, he is quite at sea as to what ought to 
 be done to adjust it; if his car gets out of order, he is 
 as much at a loss to know how to fix it as is his ten-year- 
 old son — ^more at a loss, perhaps, for the boy is learning 
 to use his hands; he can not drive a nail or stoke a furnace, 
 or make anything run that is out of order. If anything 
 mechanical gets out of fix, he stands around as helpless 
 as an infant. He did not when a boy learn to use his hands 
 or to cultivate any mechanical skill. 
 
 Every boy of high school age should learn to make 
 things and should develop curiosity enough to want 
 to know how mechanical things are put together and how 
 they run. Tools should not have an awkward feeling 
 in his hands; he should be able to bore a straight hole, 
 to put in a screw correctly, to saw a board evenly, and 
 so to adjust a lawn mower that it will give the lawn a 
 smooth, even hair cut. If he has access to a motor 
 car he ought to figure out its mechanism intelligently 
 enough to understand how to keep it in order and what 
 to do for it when it refuses to work properly. I know 
 boys who have had cars for years who are as confused 
 and helpless when they look under the hood as they 
 would be if they were asked to translate a language with 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 93 
 
 which they were unfamiliar; they have not used their 
 leisure time to advantage; and yet these are the things 
 which any intelligent boy could learn, and the knowledge 
 of which would be a great asset to him both in pleasure 
 and in usefulness. 
 
 There is the opportunity, also, which every boy has 
 during his leisure time for the cultivation of friendships, 
 for the understanding of other boys, for the development 
 of relationships which will continue throughout his whole 
 life. I do not undervalue the good effects which come from 
 a boy's association with girls; in another place I shall 
 speak of these somewhat more at length. I believe, how- 
 ever, that the value of a boy's healthy association with 
 other boys is much greater to him during his high school 
 days than any other association he may have. Time 
 spent in acquiring friends and in learning to know and to 
 understand them is usually well spent. As I go back now 
 over a period of forty years I find no greater satisfaction 
 than in the recollection that I came to know a few boys 
 well, that our friendships deepened as time went on, and 
 if I could choose today whom of all of my friends from 
 whom I am now separated by time and distance I should 
 most like to see, and with whom I should soonest drop 
 into the old time relationship, it would be a boy whom I 
 knew first in district school, with whom I later prepared 
 for college, and who was for two years in college my closest 
 friend. I see him now only at rare intervals, for we are 
 separated by a thousand miles or more, but I am sure that 
 
94 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 the leisure time in childhood and youth and early man- 
 hood I spent with him was well spent and brought me hap- 
 piness then and leaves me a pleasant memory today. The 
 experience I had so long ago, any other boy can have if 
 he gives himself to it. 
 
 For most of us, boys or men, there are set tasks which 
 occupy definite portions of time. During these periods 
 we are largely the creatures of routine; lessons or routine 
 duties, or business of one sort or another come to us reg- 
 ularly throughout the day, and we have little or no choice 
 but to do them and to ask no questions. We may each of 
 us exercise a certain amount of discretion or individuality 
 in the doing of this work, but in the main it is put before 
 us without our asking, and it is done today in much the 
 same way as it was yesterday. It is only when it comes to 
 our leisure time that the choice of how it may be em- 
 ployed is ours. We are never so much our real selves as 
 during our leisure hours. Eliminating the leisure time 
 which falls to every high school boy during the five working 
 days of the week, there is always Saturday and Sunday 
 in which he is pretty free to follow his own tactics. He 
 can spend his time in things that are trifling or useless or 
 even harmful. He can sleep, or, what is equally bad if 
 not worse, he can sit around doing absolutely nothing but 
 chatter and gossip and loaf. But life is too short even to 
 waste it in youth; there are too many pleasant and profit- 
 able things to do, and it is some of these that in these para- 
 graphs I have attempted to suggest. Every boy must 
 
THE LEISURE HOUR 95 
 
 have pleasure, but it should be healthful and stimulatiug; 
 it should send him back to the regular work which is his 
 to do, stronger, healthier, cleaner, with greater energy and 
 greater ambition. If from your leisure hours you come 
 to your regular work listless and yawning and without 
 ambition or pleasure at the thought of work, if your pleas- 
 ure has left you tired and irritable, if your recreation, 
 however you spend it, has not in some way made you a 
 better boy and better prepared you for your work, then it 
 has not been spent as it should have been. You should 
 work it out some other way. 
 
BOOKS AND READING 
 
 Printing, which is not such an ancient art after all, 
 helped very much to make books more plentiful. Before 
 printing was invented the man outside of the Church who 
 owned a book or who could get at one easily was almost as 
 rare as the man who kept a pet elephant. There were not 
 many books, and those there were, were hard to get at and 
 had few readers. The ability to read was not so common as 
 today, for schools were not run at public expense, and 
 education was not general and was not compulsory. Books 
 were laboriously lettered by hand and boimd with great 
 care. It took a long time to make a book. Sometimes they 
 were chained to the table upon which they lay, so that 
 people might have an opportunity to read them and yet 
 not be able to carry them away. The reading habit was, 
 therefore, not a common one. 
 
 Even after printing was introduced, books did not at 
 once become plentiful. For generations, the daily news- 
 paper was almost unthought of. When it was estabUshed, 
 it had little circulation excepting in cities, and neither 
 newspapers nor books were generally to be found in the 
 houses of the common people. They could not afford 
 them, and they did not realize either the pleasure or the 
 benefits of reading. 
 
 Respect for books, even within the experience of our 
 
BOOKS AND READING 97 
 
 grandparents, was much greater than it now is. It was 
 a signal honor to be given a book. When as a boy of ten 
 Jim Justice, our neighbor boy, won a copy of Robinson 
 Crusoe as a prize for regular attendance at school, he was 
 looked upon almost with as much respect as today 
 is accorded the returning soldier who has won the Dis- 
 tinguished Service Medal. It is not so in these times. 
 Books are too common; they are too easily obtained and 
 too generally at our disposal. 
 
 I ran across grandmother's geography this morning, 
 The Village Elementary Geography, standing primly 
 beside Bob's First Year Latin Lessons, on our book- 
 shelves. Bob is my nephew who is in high school. Grand- 
 mother's book is yellowed with age, but, save for a few 
 thumb prints, the pages are clean and without dog ears. 
 It is still covered with the bright calico which her grand- 
 mother sewed on for her to keep the book from being 
 soiled or injured when the little girl carried it to school. 
 Grandmother's name and the date is on the flyleaf writ- 
 ten in a cramped childish hand, for grandmother was 
 only eight when she got the book, and the date is near 
 the begiiming of the last century. She always handled 
 the book with the greatest care, for they had respect 
 for books in those days. 
 
 Robert's book presents a somewhat different appear- 
 ance. It was bought only a few months ago, but the 
 cover is torn and battered and hangs by a thread. Inside, 
 the pages are mutilated or missing, and pen sketches 
 
98 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 and hieroglyphics are scrawled across the text making 
 it almost unreadable. As I turn through, I find the 
 dignified Cicero wearing a sombrero and smoking a pipe, 
 and Caesar with a beard done in India ink. The book 
 has suffered every insult and indignity possible to be 
 thought of by a boy of fourteen. Robert knows more 
 than grandmother did at his age, but neither he nor 
 the children with whom he associates have the love and 
 respect for books that grandmother had as a girlj 
 
 As for me I should as soon see a dear friend abused 
 as a book I have worked with and come to know and to 
 imderstand. I do not mind the ordinary wear of use 
 and age any more than I am annoyed by wrinkles in 
 the faces of my friends who are growing old, but inten- 
 tional indignities hurt me. 
 
 Is it because books are so plentiful or so cheap that 
 we care so little about them? Is it because they cost 
 us now no sacrifice, no struggle, no tender thought or 
 anxious anticipation that we think of them so lightly 
 and toss them about so carelessly? I have heard grand- 
 mother tell of how happy she was and how proud when 
 her father first put the little geography into her hands. 
 Neither high school nor college students often feel so 
 today. 
 
 The story of Lincoln, unable to find a half dozen books 
 in the community in which he lived and willing to work 
 days in order that he might become the owner of a worn 
 and rain-soaked volume of biography seems almost 
 
BOOKS AND READING 99 
 
 unbelievable to the young boy of today who spends 
 his money freely on moving picture shows and ice cream 
 sodas, but who would seldom go far or suffer much to 
 get a book, and who, in fact, is often bored if he is called 
 upon to read one. 
 
 Books were never so readily within the reach of all 
 as today; newspapers were never before so abundant 
 and so full of varied information as at the present time; 
 a bulky and profusely illustrated magazine that will 
 keep one reading for many hours, may be bought for 
 a dime. There is no one so poor that he can not buy 
 reading matter, or there are not many who are not 
 now within reasonable distance of libraries with free 
 access to the most varied assortment of books and 
 newspapers. Few people, in this country at least, can 
 assert truthfully that there is nothing for them to 
 read. No doubt the very abundance of books, the ease 
 with which we get at them, causes us to value them less 
 than we otherwise should and to respect them less. That 
 which is most difficult is obtain is most valued. Tom 
 Sawyer recognized this fact when he had the gardpn 
 fence whitewashed by his eager pals. If we had fewer 
 books we should think more highly of books and respect 
 them more. We see them scattered about us so abundantly 
 that we take them like automobiles and aeroplanes as 
 a matter of course. 
 
 If a high school boy does not have the reading habit it 
 is certauily not from lack of opportimity to acquire it. In 
 
100 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 the elementary school and high school curriculum more 
 time is given to English, including reading, grammar, 
 literature, and composition, than to any other two or 
 three subjects in the school course combined. Perhaps the 
 reason why young people read so badly when called upon 
 orally to interpret a page, and care so little for reading, is 
 that they have so much of it. We can all become sated 
 with the most delightful things; I have known boys who 
 ate so much cake and ice cream that they never wanted 
 any again. 
 
 Another reason, perhaps, why high school and college stu- 
 dents (for the difficulty is not confined to the high school) 
 read so badly and take so little pleasure in reading is be- 
 cause all through their school life their taste is forced, they 
 are made to read what is far beyond their ability to under- 
 stand and to enjoy, and they are taught to cultivate 
 critical judgment rather than appreciation. They analyze 
 what they read when they should be allowed to give them- 
 selves over to the pleasure of reading. They attempt to be 
 critics rather than lovers of books. They are told what is 
 good and what effect it should have upon their minds 
 and their emotions, and they play the hypocrite often 
 by pretending to feel what they are told they should 
 feel. 
 
 "What do you think," I asked my fourteen-year-old 
 boys in Sunday School a few years ago, "is the best book 
 in the world? What is the best book you ever read?" 
 
 "The Bible," one boy piously answered. 
 
BOOKS AND READING 101 
 
 "Shakspere's Macbeth," another literary hypocrite 
 shouted waving his hand in the air. Not one of the boys 
 told the truth; they were afraid to do so. Down in their 
 hearts they were really enshrining Huckleberry Finn or one 
 of the heroes of Nick Carter's exciting tales. They were 
 saying what they thought they ought to say. They were 
 following the example which many of us who are older set 
 for them in our spoken estimate of the fine arts, especially 
 of music and painting. It takes training and experience 
 and education to enjoy the best things in these arts, and 
 many of us have not brought ourselves to the point of 
 really enjoying what is best. We yawn or sleep through a 
 concert, or we stand bored before a great painting praising 
 the artistic product with our lips but getting little enjoy- 
 ment out of it in our souls, because we do not yet know 
 enough to enjoy it. And that is the way many boys feel 
 about the literature they are forced to read and to criti- 
 cise in the high school. 
 
 There is little doubt in my mind that Mr. William Shak- 
 spere was a great writer of Enghsh poetry and of the Eng- 
 lish drama; he was, perhaps, the greatest writer that we 
 have ever known, but he is not the most easily understood, 
 nor is he ever likely to give the greatest enjoyment 
 to young and immature minds. Even in college it is 
 not common to find a young fellow of eighteen or twenty 
 who picks up a volume of Shakspere to read for pleasure 
 to fill in an hour of leisure. I confess I was not a little 
 startled a few months ago when an eighteen-year-old 
 
102 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 convalescent in our hospital asked me to bring him a 
 book to read while he was getting weU. 
 
 "What would you like?" I asked, expecting of course 
 that he would say Harold Bell Wright or O. Heniy, or 
 suggest a stray copy of the Cosmopolitan or the Red Book. 
 
 "I think I should like to read Henry V," was his reply. 
 The only explanation is that he must have had a rare mind 
 or an unusually inspiring teacher. 
 
 I do not wish to suggest to high school boys that they 
 are justified in spending their time on trashy reading. 
 The better things they read and understand and en- 
 joy, the better for them. I am convinced that they are 
 asked to read many books good in themselves, but far be- 
 yond their understanding and their appreciation. It is 
 the reading habit which they should cultivate, and no 
 one is likely to get that habit unless reading is a pleasure 
 for him, unless books tempt him when he sees them lying 
 about, and lure him away from his work or from other 
 appealing pleasures. I know few boys who would decline 
 an invitation to a moving picture show in order to finish 
 an interesting book. 
 
 There is a good deal said against the reading of trashy 
 books by boys, and I think much that has been said is not 
 without a foundation of truth; the practice is too general. 
 I think I read up to the age of fifteen as much trashy 
 stuff as any normal boy of my age. I read Mary J. Hohnes 
 and E. P. Roe and all their clan, from Edna Rivers to 
 Barriers Burned Away. I went through the goodie-goodie 
 
BOOKS AND READING 103 
 
 volumes in our Sunday school library at the rate of two or 
 three a week. I waited with the utmost impatience for the 
 weekly copy of the Saturday Night contributed to the 
 family stock of reading matter by our hired man, and con- 
 taining the most exciting tales of murder, mystery and 
 adventure. I remember still the lurid title of one of these 
 tales — BenUey Burroughs, or The Skeleton Hand. 
 
 I had something on hand to read all the time, and, 
 fortunately I developed the habit of reading. In the 
 course of events the stock of sensational and sentimental 
 and adventurous stuff gave out, but my appetite still 
 had to be satisfied. I went quite naturally to Dumas 
 and Scott and Cooper and Bulwer-Lytton; to Dickens 
 and Eliot and Thackeray. I even read some poetry at 
 my father's suggestion, and I got a good deal of insight 
 into historical works. Before I was grown, I had read 
 pretty widely, far more widely, in fact, than I should 
 ever under any other circumstances have had the time to 
 do. I am thankful, every day that thus early in my life 
 I became acquainted with so wide a range of literature, 
 even if some of the books I read are not now contained in 
 the admirable list suggested by President Eliot. I can not 
 now see how I was hurt in any way. I got enough, after 
 a while, of the poorer stuff and ultimately developed an 
 appetite for something solider.and better. 
 
 I do not believe that my experience ife unique. I have 
 asked my friends, many of them, whose reputation for 
 clear thinking and balanced judgment in literary matters 
 
104 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 is better than my own, and not one of them has any seri- 
 ous regrets concerning his early reading, which was in 
 many cases quite as light as mine. The reading of the 
 poorer forms of literature often makes the good better in 
 contrast. The main thing is that one should get the habit 
 of reading. If that is developed early, the problem of 
 cultivating a liking for what is good and of eventually de- 
 veloping a real interest in what is best, is not so diflBcult. 
 
 The high school boy is at the age when adventure 
 and mystery are most appealing to him. , He will learn 
 to read this sort of literature most readily. He might 
 as well be fed on Dumas and Jules Verne and Conan 
 Doyle and Stevenson as upon Nick Carter; he might 
 as well have good English and stimulating healthy ad- 
 venture as the opposite. 
 
 The reading habit is cultivated like any other habit, 
 and the taste for books developed like any other taste, 
 by practice, and persistence. We can learn anything 
 if we want to do so and if we keep at it. The reading 
 habit is a good one because i1^ furnishes us a ready method 
 of getting information, of learning about what has been 
 done and what is doing in the world. We would stagnate 
 if we did not read; we could make little progress in any 
 sort of work without reading. The business or profes- 
 sional man who does not read soon gets to be a back 
 number in his work. 
 
 There is nothing that can give one more pleasure than 
 the habit of reading. If one has learned to read and 
 
BOOKS AND READING 105 
 
 to enjoy books he need never have a dull or a lonesome 
 moment. No matter where he may be, if he has an inter- 
 esting book at hand, he can soon in imagination sur- 
 round himself with interesting scenes and pleasing friends, 
 and his cares and his boredom will vanish. If a boy 
 likes to read, an evening at home alone, a long wait in 
 an otherwise dull railway station, lack of companion- 
 ship for a time, isolation of any sort, will not only have 
 no horrors for him, but may even be for a time a source 
 of actual enjoyment. I always like a rainy day or a 
 stormy night in winter, or a quiet undisturbed Sunday 
 afternoon because it furnishes a chance to stay in-doors 
 and to cultivate the companionship of an entertaining 
 book. 
 
 When I hear boys, or men, complaining of the fact 
 that Sunday is such a long, dull day, that there is nowhere 
 to go and nothing to do, when I see them yawning with 
 the weariness of leisure and strolling aimlessly down 
 the street tired of existence, I know for one thing that 
 they find little comfort in religion, and for another, 
 that they have not cultivated the reading habit, and 
 so find little pleasure in books. I am always sorry to 
 think what pleasure they have missed, and I wish that I 
 might lead them into the friendships and the companion- 
 ships which are so easily formed through reading. Think 
 what it must mean not to have known and enjoyed Wil- 
 kins Micawber, and King Lear, and Tom TuUiver, and 
 D'Artagnan and Sidney Carton and Colonel Newcome 
 
106 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 and Tom Jones, and Becky Sharpe, and all the myriad 
 of interesting characters with which literature is filled. 
 Life must be pretty dull to those whose acquamtance 
 is limited to real people only. 
 
 One of the most placid and contented persons I have 
 ever known was an old lady who was totally blind and 
 who was forced for several years to lie in bed a good 
 deal of the time alone. I used to drop in upon her fre- 
 quently and usually quite uniexpectedly. The great 
 surprise to me was that I never foimd her depressed or 
 with time hanging heavy on her hands. She was unifor- 
 mally cheerful and happy and with a mind that seemed 
 constantly occupied with something that was interest- 
 ing and pleasing. 
 
 " What do you do to occupy your time and your thoughts 
 when you are so much alone," I asked her once, "espe- 
 cially when you can not see? " 
 
 "I visit with my old friends," she said. 
 
 Then she went on to tell me that all through early 
 and middle life, although she had had little opportunity 
 for education in the schools, she had been a constant 
 reader. I was amazed to discover how much she had 
 read and how well she remembered it. Now that she 
 was old and blind she went over all these literary ex- 
 periences in her mind daily, and she got from the recol- 
 lection infinite pleasure and recreation. Just the day 
 I had been talking to her, she told me, she had been 
 recalling the incidents in Scott's Heart of Midlothian 
 
BOOKS AND READING 107 
 
 the scenes of which were made more vivid to her from 
 the fact that she had been bom in northern England, 
 had visited Edinburgh as a girl, and knew very well, 
 because her own youthful feet had trodden it, the road 
 which Jeanie Deans had taken from Edinburgh to London 
 when she went to plead for her sister's life. Her early 
 reading was the source of hourly pleasure to her, and 
 made quite bearable an existence which might other- 
 wise have been wretched even to contemplate. 
 
 No one has so much time at his disposal to learn to 
 read as the young person before he enters high school 
 and during his high school course. More than this, 
 youth is the habit-forming time, as I have said, more 
 than once. If one does not leam the habit of reading 
 then, he is not likely ever to acquire it. It would seem 
 easy to prove that with all the opportunities furnished 
 the boy for reading while he is in the elementary school, 
 and after he enters high school, with the great variety 
 of reading he is required to do, and with the wide range 
 of books from which he may choose, he would learn to 
 like something, he would cultivate his interest, and 
 would continue his acquaintance with books during 
 vacation and after he had graduated from high school. 
 The number of boys, however, who regularly and of 
 their own choice read books while they are in the high 
 school and after they get out is small, and the class of 
 books in which they find interest is often very poor. The 
 training in English in our schools does not develop the 
 
108 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 reading habit generally nor does it awaken generally an 
 interest in good not to say the best, literature. I have 
 suggested previously that I believe the explanation of 
 this condition arises from the fact that we force the taste 
 of young people and feed them at first on things they can 
 not assimilate. We give them literary indigestion, and 
 they revolt from reading. 
 
 There is scarcely a day of his life until he finishes high 
 school that a boy might not devote at least a short time 
 to reading from which he could derive both pleasure and 
 profit. If you want to learn to read, select first the things 
 that are most interesting to you — history, science, poetry, 
 fiction, the news of the day, or whatever it may be. Read 
 the best things that you can understand and enjoy. You 
 will find that scientific facts as presented by Darwin 
 and Huxley and John Burroughs are not only quite as 
 dependable as those which commonplace writers give 
 you, but they are so simply and so interestingly pre- 
 sented that they read like a story book; they will develop 
 your scientific interest far more quickly than if you give 
 your time to some other author who knows less and writes 
 worse. If you enjoy history, then read Macaulay or 
 John Fiske, or Motley or any one of a dozen men who 
 will give you all the facts that a less brilliant author 
 might present, and who will do it in a style that is at once 
 delightful and inspiring. If you are drawn to the fiction 
 of heroism and adventure you will not know what de- 
 light there is in romance at its best until you have tasted 
 
BOOKS AND READING 109 
 
 the incomparable Dumas who will lead you through 
 one volume and another with a fascination that is impos- 
 sible to resist. The boy who once gets into the Three 
 Musketeers and who lays it down before it is finished, 
 has a self-control which is beyond my understanding. 
 
 If you find it not easy to cultivate the reading habit 
 from lack of interest or for apparent lack of time, you will 
 be tempted to it rather subtly by having a book near 
 by, so that when you drop into an easy chair, or stretch 
 yourself on a couch, for a little rest or to wait until din- 
 ner is ready, it will catch your eye or fall easily into 
 your hslnd. If the book is your own, and especially if 
 you have been led through curiosity or passing fancy 
 to pay for it with your own money, the temptation 
 will be all the stronger for you to see what is in it; and, 
 if you have any persistence, having once begun it, you 
 will be sure to stay with it until you have finished it. 
 The reading of one book almost invariably leads to the 
 reading of another, and so gradually the habit fastens 
 itself upon you. 
 
 The difficulty which most men have in college or later 
 in life in accomplishing as much reading as is set for 
 them to do, is due to their not having cultivated the 
 habit of reading rapidly. The ability to read rapidly 
 comes from experience; if you have read little you are 
 quite likely to read slowly. Reading is very largely 
 a mechanical process acquired through daily practice 
 like playing the piano or operating a typewriter. If 
 
110 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 it takes you all the evening to get through a few pages, 
 it is quite certain that you have not cultivated very 
 fully the reading habit. Here, again, the value of 
 beginning while young and while you have leisure to 
 cultivate the habit of reading rapidly and reading widely 
 is apparent. 
 
 The wider the range of your reading, the more en- 
 jojmient you will get out of it, and the greater will 
 be the development of your knowledge, your sympa- 
 thies, and your imagination. Everyone should read 
 the daily newspapers in order that he may have an in- 
 telligent knowledge of the world and its progress at home 
 and abroad. No intelligent boy can now afford to be 
 ignorant of the progress of events in all lands. The 
 world is, after all, a pretty small place, and it is not very 
 hard, if one tries, to know something about a good deal 
 of it. If you read the newspaper as you should, you 
 will read it pretty thoroughly from the feature news on 
 the first page through the editorials to the market reports 
 on the last page. The cartoons, the jokes, and the sport- 
 ing page will, of course, interest you most, but you can 
 easily cultivate an interest in other things. 
 
 You should keep up with the literature of the profession 
 or business in which you are engaged or in which you ex- 
 pect to engage. It is npt enough, however, if you are in- 
 terested in farming to be satisfied with reading an agri- 
 cultural journal and the local weekly paper. I know a 
 good many fanners who get no further in their reading 
 
BOOKS AND READING 111 
 
 than the perusal once a week of a stock journal. These are 
 not very progressive men, however. The newspapers and 
 the technical journals are for information largely. You 
 should read something regularly for inspiration, for kind- 
 ling your imagination, and for developing your ideals. 
 Read poetry. The better magazines are full of pleasant 
 and inspiring verse, and there is always, to fall back upon, 
 the good old standbys which you have studied and are 
 studying in high school. You will never be sorry if you 
 form the habit early of committing to memory such lines 
 or stanzas or whole poems as especially please you. All 
 through your life these lines will come back to you to be a 
 source of pleasure and a stimulation to happy memories. 
 Middle life and old age seem to you now very remote pos- 
 sibilities, but they will be on you, especially if you lead 
 a busy life, almost before you know it. You will always 
 be glad if while your mind is plastic and easily impressed, 
 you let it dwell upon thmgs that are pleasing and beauti- 
 ful, and if at will you can recall passages from the best 
 things that have been written. 
 
 Nearly everyone reads fiction of some sort, of course — 
 adventure, romance, mystery, character study, philos- 
 ophy — there are many things treated in the modem novel 
 or short story, and every day, almost, there seems to be a 
 new magazine springing up filled with fiction and feature 
 stories and attracting the eye with its bizarre and parti- 
 colored cover. Most of these are rather trashy, — a good 
 deal of the fiction of today is hardly worth the time 
 
112 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 it takes to read it. The magazines which our fathers read 
 and which have stood the test for fifty years or more, are 
 still the best, and one of these, at least, you ought to read 
 regularly. A magazine usually announces both the qual- 
 ity and the character of its contents by the refinement and 
 taste of the design on its cover. The quiet ones are the 
 most conservative and the most worth while. 
 
 You will have to read some books of the present day; 
 you would be thought ignorant and behind the^times other- 
 wise. People will continue to talk about last month's "best 
 sellers, " and though very often there is httle reason why 
 these books should sell so well, you will miss something 
 if you are unacquainted with them. Your greatest pleas- 
 ure in reading, however, will be in the books that have 
 stood the test of time — in Scott, and Cooper and Dickens, 
 and Ehot and Thackeray and Hawthorne and Steven- 
 son, of whose infinite variety you can not tire. If you 
 have not already made their acquaintance, you should be- 
 gin at once. If you have not before this read the most 
 that they have written, you have to look forward to one 
 of the great pleasures of your life. 
 
 Since I began the writing of this paper I have been read- 
 ing aloud Dickens' David CopperfieM. I read it first when 
 I was ten with the greatest pleasure and interest; I have 
 read it since a half dozen times, I have no doubt, and yet 
 I think the fact of any former readings adds rather than 
 detracts from the pleasure which I get from it today. As 
 long as I live it will give me joy to go through its chapters. 
 
BOOKS AND READING 113 
 
 Sometimes I hear boys say "I don't like Stevenson," or 
 " I don't like Dickens. " In such cases, however, I usually 
 find that they have read very Uttle of these authors- 
 one book perhaps — and have based their judgment upon 
 that one volume. Don't be discouraged if you are not 
 pleased the first time you dip into an author; try some- 
 thing else. No two books are more unlike than The 
 Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations and any 
 one who has read only Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
 might not suspect that Stevenson wrote a book like 
 Treasure Island or The Wrong Box. An author, 
 like any other normal human being, has different in- 
 terests and different moods, and we can not honestly 
 judge him until we have seen him under different condi- 
 tions. 
 
 If from your high school course you get nothing else 
 than the abiUty to read inteUigently, an appreciation of 
 books, and a liking for their companionship, the years in 
 school will not have been spent in vain. If you come away 
 from your high school training with a dislike for study, 
 and with little or no interest in books, and no joy in the 
 anticipation of reading you have missed much of what 
 you should have gained. 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 
 
 The social activities of the young ahnost always seem 
 excessive to the middle-aged. There are few things we 
 forget so easily as the escapades of youth. A middle-aged 
 father was advising his young son against the evils of 
 dancing. 
 
 "But you danced, father, when you were a boy," the 
 son protested. 
 
 "True," the father replied, "but I have seen the folly 
 of it." 
 
 "Well," the boy replied, "I want to see the folly of it, 
 too." 
 
 It is a very normal desire for a young boy to want to 
 have regular and pleasant association with other young 
 people both gu:ls and boys, and in what I say in this paper 
 I do not overlook this fact. It is a desire the gratification 
 of which may very easily be carried to excess; it is a desire 
 which parents, especially fathers, are wont to forget that 
 they ever themselves felt. I have never had a son, I am 
 sorry to say, to whom I could tell how hard I worked when 
 a boy, how little money I spent, how seldom I stayed out 
 at night or went to social parties, but I have listened to 
 other fathers discoursing thus virtuously to their sons, so 
 I know that they had forgotten their youth as I might 
 have done had I but had a chance. Social customs change. 
 
 114 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 115 
 
 We should not expect our children to enjoy themselves 
 quite as we did at their age. The pleasures in which I 
 indulged as a boy are very different from those in which 
 my young nephews take delight, though I can not see 
 that mine were either saner or more restrained than theirs, 
 and I try to remember this fact when I am tempted to 
 criticise the social life of the young people of today. I 
 should hardly be excusable, however, if I did not try to 
 give them the benefit of my experience. 
 
 Men, young and old, are social animals. All of us like 
 to join things. It is as difficult for me to refuse an invita- 
 tion to become a member of a club or a fraternity or an 
 organization as it is to resist the seductive talk of a book 
 agent when he spreads his attractive wares before my eyes. 
 I feel hke a hero if I can summon the courage to turn him 
 down. We joined church or the Democratic party, I 
 have no doubt, not so much from any strong religious or 
 political convictions as from the fact that we were asked; 
 we found it difficult to resist a chance to join, and we 
 yielded. I am not arguing, however, that there is always 
 profit in joining. Boys feel very much about joining things 
 as men do. When they go into a high school fraternity, 
 they are but imitating their fathers or their older brothers 
 in college each of whom, no doubt, has his club or his fra- 
 ternity. Yet, on the whole, I am convinced that mem- 
 bership in a high school fraternity is not a good thing. 
 
 Such an organization might be beneficial if it were based 
 upon more strictly democratic principles than it often is. 
 
116 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 Boys are chosen usually for membership not so much be>- 
 cause of similarity of tastes and similarity of character as 
 from similarity of their fathers' income and social or busi- 
 ness position. Even in the country town in which I live, 
 I could without much chance of error pick out the boys 
 who, when they leave the graded schools, will be asked to 
 join one or another of the high school fraternities existiug 
 in the local high school, and I could do it without 
 knowing the boys personally at all, but simply from my 
 knowledge of their parents and from my acquaintance 
 with their financial rating. A boy in moderate or meager 
 circumstances very seldom gets into such an organization, 
 unless perchance he be an athlete, who is likely to be taken 
 because he is a hero. The poor boy can not afford to be- 
 long; the boy without social prestige would queer the 
 others. 
 
 The high school fraternity, excepting in private acade- 
 mies and boarding schools, exists not so much to bring boys 
 together and to strengthen the friendly relations existing 
 between them as to develop a rather excessive social life 
 in which girls are also to a large degree involved. In a 
 private or boarding school the conditions of living are 
 different and the necessity for banding together more 
 justifiable. Such boys are away from home, and they 
 miss their customary social life, and whatever helps to 
 make for them some of the -associations and comforts of 
 home is good. A boys' fraternity in a private academy, 
 is, in a large degree, like a college fraternity and usu- 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 117 
 
 ally is free from the objectionable features which charac- 
 terize such an organization in a city high school. It is 
 largely to make boys acquainted with each other, and 
 not so much to bring the members into closer and more 
 frequent association with girls. It makes for healthy 
 friendship. 
 
 The high school fraternity is too frequently little more 
 than a dancing club. Its meetings are taken up largely 
 With discussions of the girl friends of the members, in 
 making arrangements for the next dance, or in trjdng 
 to determine how best to meet the expenses of the last 
 one. If it gave boys definite work to do, if it developed in 
 them qualities of leadership, or helped them the better to 
 assume responsibility while giving them social training, I 
 should not so much object, but as I have seen the members 
 of such an organization after they are out of high school 
 and in college, I can not see that it often does any of these 
 things for them. 
 
 My observation of the high school fraternity man after 
 he has entered college is that he is usually a very in- 
 different student with little scholastic ambition. His 
 ambitions are mainly social. He makes a poor fra- 
 ternity man in college, beause he has not realized in his 
 high school fraternity any of the fundamental principles 
 of adult fraternity life. Fraternity officers all over the 
 country are agreed upon this point, and have passed a res- 
 olution that after 1920 no high school fraternity man will 
 be eligible for membership in a college Greek letter fra- 
 
118 TBCE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 ternity. The reason for this action is that the high school 
 fraternity man is selfish, undemocratic, hard to control, 
 and unwilling to assume responsibility. 
 
 The expense of membership in such an organization, 
 even for people in good circumstances, is not to be 
 overlooked. The high school fraternity member con- 
 siders himself quite grown up, and is not content in 
 his social activities to be considered other than a man 
 with all the accessories that accompany adult, manly, 
 social life. Taxis and candy and flowers and evening 
 clothes all form a part of his social functions; dinner 
 dances and all night sessions are not unusual. The 
 high school boy attempts to imitate all the social ex- 
 cesses and extravagances of his older friends and ac- 
 quaintances. Sometimes there are even rumors of drink- 
 ing and gambling and immorality^ exaggerated perhaps, 
 but having, no doubt, some small foundation in fact. 
 
 Only last year I called to my office two freshmen in col- 
 lege who were developing a reputation for idleness and in- 
 temperance. They came from conservative, religious, and 
 well-to-do families, so that I could scarcely believe the tales 
 concerning them which were floating about the campus. 
 They admitted, however, that they were drinking, but of 
 this fact their parents had no suspicion, they said. 
 
 "When did you begin? " I asked. 
 
 " When we were sophomores in high school, " was the 
 reply. "The fellows in our fraternity all thought it was 
 smart to drink. " 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 119 
 
 It is the secrecy of the fraternity no doubt, that encour- 
 ages such escapades. It is one of the privileges of club life, 
 the boy thinks, to be able unmolested to attempt risqu6 
 things, and being alone in his deliberations and free from 
 the guiding hand or the warning voice of older men, he 
 slips easily into temptation. 
 
 The high school fraternity is in little or no sense a 
 real brotherhood. Its purpose is not to bring boys to- 
 gether for mutual self-help. It seldom inculcates high 
 moral ideals or develops interest in good scholarship 
 even if it does not actually discourage these things. The 
 members are not selected because they show fitness 
 for doing well the work of high school, but rather because 
 they dress well, dance well, are popular with the girls, 
 and are able to spend money freely upon social pleasure. 
 The high school fraternity seldom if ever has for its pur- 
 pose the improving of general social conditions in the 
 school or the desire to be an aid to the school authorities in 
 the intelligent and satisfactory control of school affairs. 
 On the contrary it often pulls down scholastic standards, 
 it is a hindrance rather than a help in school man- 
 agement, and it contributes to the pleasure of only a 
 very limited and select number of students. Healthy 
 social activity in the high school should be general, demo- 
 cratic, an activity into which every respectable and 
 well-mannered member of the school may enter, and not 
 limited to a few people who are possessed of money. 
 
 I have seldom known a high school fraternity which 
 
120 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 did not stir up trouble. The exclusiveness of it arouses 
 envy in the minds of those who are not invited to join. 
 It develops cliques and factions, and breaks down rather 
 than strengthens high school spmt. It often makes a 
 boy arrogant and something of a cad. For all these 
 reasons I believe the high school fraternity is in a ma- 
 jority of cases not the healthiest and best medium for 
 the social activities of the high school boy. It develops 
 social selfishness, its members are likely to overestimate 
 their own social importance, it encourages extravagance 
 in money matters and a contempt for others who are 
 outside of this social aristocracy. If I had a boy I should 
 be sorry if he became a member of such an organization. 
 A few evenings ago I attended a dance to which one 
 of these high school fraternity boys had been invited. 
 He came in his own car and brought with him his "steady 
 girl." He was dressed with extreme care in a decidedly 
 extreme style. She was fifteen perhaps, and he a year 
 older. She showed all the toilet artifices, all the shades of 
 coloration, of the beauty parlor. They danced together 
 continuously throughout the evening, they exhibited the 
 most extreme contortions and gyrations of the "shimmy" 
 they omitted the usual courtesy of speaking to the chaper- 
 ones, and held themselves entirely aloof throughout 
 the evening from contact with their conservative com- 
 panions. They admitted by their actions that they 
 were the social elect, the aristocracy who could not bring 
 themselves to the vulgar level of the crowd. 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 121 
 
 I should not, perhaps, blame the boy's lack of good 
 maimers and good taste upon his fraternity any more 
 than I should hold it responsible for his failure to pass 
 his high school course in English, but the fraternity, 
 when it took him in, knew what he was, that he had 
 neither moral nor intellectual ideals, that he had no 
 conception of good manners, though his father, it is true, 
 is a prominent professionalman. It was this last fact 
 that weighed most heavily m the balance when the boy 
 was being considered for membership. My quarrel 
 with the fraternity lies in the fact that having taken 
 him in it has done nothing to improve him, but on the 
 contrary has rather encouraged him in his extreme habits. 
 It is not giving him the sort of social training that a boy 
 should get in high school. 
 
 We can never quite get away from the fact in the 
 discussion of a high school boy's social activities that 
 most high schools are coeducational. In considering 
 boys, we can not ignore the fact that girls, too, come in 
 for a large share of consideration. It is a good thing for 
 a young boy to have a healthy conventional association 
 with girls. It helps him morally and socially. I think 
 that a boy can have no stronger moral influence than 
 the companionship of a high-principled, well-balanced 
 girl. The boy, however, who limits his associations to 
 girls, or especially to one girl, or who gives a considerable 
 part of his leisure time to such an association is weakened 
 by it. He becomes soft and mushy; he moons around 
 
122 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 sentimentally taking little pleasure, usually, in the vig- 
 orous physical sports which go far to make a man. He 
 develops feminine rather than masculine traits. Highly 
 as I regard the benefits which come to a young fellow 
 from his regular relationships with the right sort of girls, 
 I have no hesitancy in saying that the strong, aggressive, 
 manly qualities which we all want to see in a developing 
 boy come from his regular contact and association with 
 those of his own sex. Constant and uninterrupted as- 
 sociation with girls induces fastidiousness and over- 
 refinement in a boy. It takes the fight out of him, it 
 tends toward laziness and lassitude. Such a boy drops 
 easily into a rocking chair or a porch swing. He 
 learns usually to play some stringed instrument like the 
 ukelele or the rnandolin, and he talks sentimental non- 
 sense. 
 
 The young boy with the steady girl is the worst of 
 all. Whenever a boy begins to sing with feeling : 
 
 Only one girl in this world for me. 
 Only one girl has my sympathy, 
 
 his high school work is likely to go glimmering. It is 
 not always helpful to have a half dozen to divide his 
 attention during his leisure hours; it is positively hope- 
 less if he can see only one on the horizon. The high 
 school boy who devotes his social attentions exclusively 
 to one girl gets little social training or experience. He 
 does not learn to adapt himself to different tempera- 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 123 
 
 ments, he is likely to become lax in his manners and to 
 ignore social conventions. He comes to know the girl 
 so well that he often does not take the trouble to be 
 scrupulously polite to her. There is likely to develop 
 a dangerous familiarity which breaks down the respect 
 and the courtesy which every boy ought to show to the 
 girls of his acquaintance and to women generally. " Spoon- 
 ing " is ruinous to a boy, morally and socially. 
 
 Such a boy I see every day. He is in reality girl crazy. 
 Every morning he walks down the street to meet her 
 and to carry her books to school. Twice a day they 
 walk back and forth together, each quite oblivious of 
 any presence but the other. They hang on each other. 
 Every evening, if the weather permits, they go strolling 
 untU long past the proper hour for children to be in bed. 
 Late at night I often recognize his sentimental whistle 
 as he goes back home after being with her during the 
 evening. He is failing in his studies; he could be expected 
 to do nothing else, for he sees nothing, thinks of nothing, 
 dreams of no one but the girl; and he treats her and 
 speaks of her with a suggestion of ownership that is 
 disgusting. In this relation as in many others, there 
 is safety in numbers, for if there were a half dozen he 
 would waste far less time and energy than in the present 
 instance, and he would learn more that is useful and help- 
 ful in social matters. 
 
 There is the boy in high school ' also who goes to 
 the opposite extreme — ^who "can't see a girl at all." 
 
124 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 He is speechless when in the presence of the girls, he 
 blushes crimson if one addresses a remark to him, he 
 has no interest in social activities, and no finesse in 
 social conventionalities. When he comes into a room 
 he is all hands and legs; the furniture seems to become 
 animate and to take delight in getting into his way 
 so that he may the more easily stumble over it. It 
 agonizes him to enter a room where there are girls, it 
 is utterly impossible for him unassisted to get out of 
 one. He can never think of anything to say. 
 
 Such a boy would be benefited immeasurably if 
 he forced himseK a little more into social activities, if 
 he studied to some extent how to carry on a conversa- 
 tion, how to please people, how to come and go without 
 awkwardness and embarrassment. Nothing causes self- 
 consciousness more than a lack of acquaintance with 
 social usage and social forms, and nothing acquaints 
 one with these details more quickly than a little practice 
 and experience. No boy is so awkward or so crude or 
 so shy that he can not learn with a little training to over- 
 come these traits and to enjoy his social relations with 
 other young people. As soon as he overcomes his first 
 embarrassment he will be surprised at his former point 
 of view. 
 
 There is a real value to the growing boy in social ac- 
 tivities, in learning to meet men as well as women, and 
 older men and women as well as those who are of their 
 own age; boys can learn how, and it should be considered 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 125 
 
 a necessary part of their education that they do so. 
 I was settling down after dinner, not long ago, to a quiet 
 evening of reading before the grate fire when the telephone 
 rang. I answered the call. 
 
 "It's Billy Charters," I explained, as I came back with 
 a rather downcast air. "He has just come to town, and he 
 wants to come over and call this evening. It's a trial, I 
 know, but I couldn't in decency say less than that we'd be 
 glad to see him." 
 
 We had known Billy's uncle a number of years ago, and 
 had met his mother once on a visit to Boston; there was no 
 mistaking om* duty, and we braced up for a dull evening. 
 The prospect seemed all the more dull in view of the mem- 
 ory of Barker's call on the previous Sunday afternoon. 
 Barker is a neighbor's boy who had arrived just after 
 dinner — we have dinner at one on Sundays — and we wore 
 ourselves to a thin edge in an attempt to introduce top- 
 ics of conversation that would arouse even a remote in- 
 terest and enthusiasm on his part. He could not be made 
 to talk, so we lapsed into silence and filled up the time 
 by playing band pieces on the victrola. Other callers came 
 and went, but he hung on. 
 
 He was eager to go, but he did not know how. Finally 
 he arose and expressed an intention of bringing his call to 
 a close. Everyone stood — and continued to stand twenty 
 minutes — watching Barker trying to get out. It was only 
 by my moving him gradually toward the front door and 
 all but pushing him into the street that he ultimately got 
 
126 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 away; and yet Barker was having as unpleasant a time 
 as we were. He had had no social experience. 
 
 I heard Billy's step on the walk at a quarter of eight, 
 and I laid down my book with a regretful sigh to usher him 
 in. He proved to be a healthy, cheerful feUow of eighteen 
 who settled down in one of our arm-chairs with a com- 
 fortable, easy air that relieved the situation at once. He 
 asked for the people whom he had met when he had visited 
 in our town as a child. He brought us cheerful messages 
 from his uncle's family, and he related a few hilarious tales 
 of his experiences in learning to fly. He seemed inter- 
 ested in all that we had to say, and followed up every con- 
 versational lead with a few ideas of his own. If the talk 
 ever gave signs of lagging, he was ready with a question 
 or a remark. He was in no sense fresh; he was simply 
 alert and ready to do his share of the social drudgery. He 
 showed that he had made the most of his social expe- 
 riences. He rose at a quarter past eight. 
 
 "I knew it was a shame to disturb you on an evening 
 like this," he said, "when you'd no doubt far rather read 
 than be bored by me, but it will please mother to know that 
 I've called, and you've given me an awfully pleasant half 
 hour. May I come again? " He shook hands, and in a 
 moment we heard his quick footsteps going down the walk. 
 
 "What a nice boy Billy Charters is," my wife said to 
 me as we were going up stairs after a pleasant two hours 
 of reading. "I believe we ought to ask him to dinner next 
 Sunday," 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 127 
 
 "That's just what I was thinking," I replied. And yet 
 all the difference between Billy and Barker was that Billy 
 had learned by observation and experience and Barker had 
 not. 
 
 Too much of the social energy of the high school boy at 
 the present time, especially in his relations with girls; is 
 expended in dancing. There is scarcely an organization of 
 young fellows, no matter what its primary purpose seems to 
 have been, whether athletic, philanthropic, religious or ed- 
 ucational, which does not, when it comes to any expression 
 of social life, think first of giving a dance. It seems, bar- 
 ring the practice of strolling aimlessly about the streets, the 
 only way a boy can conceive of to give a girl a good time. 
 He could play termis with her, if he only thought so, and, 
 even if her serve is not so good as his, it might improve 
 from practice and under his careful teaching. He could 
 develop her interest and her skill at golf and by so do- 
 ing contribute to her pleasure and her physical health. 
 He could take her for a walk into the country, he could 
 teach her to row a boat or to drive a car, or perhaps some 
 time she might teach him one of these things. He may 
 object to some of these pastimes on the ground that 
 they are too strenuous and tiring, but I am sure it 
 can easily be shown that to drag oneself over a none 
 too smooth floor for four hours or so, in an atmosphere 
 that is often close and stuffy and full of dust is quite as 
 tiring and much less stimulating than is an equal amount 
 of exercise in the open air. In the open air, moreover, in the 
 
128 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 cultivation of those sports to wJiich I have referred, there is 
 a chance for far more friendUness and far less familiarity 
 than in dancing. There is, too, the opportunity for the de- 
 velopment of courtesy and thoughtfulness, for the culti- 
 vation of Uttle poUte attentions which are good for a boy 
 to know and to practice. 
 
 Before he gets through the high school a boy should 
 have learned a good many things about conventional so- 
 cial customs, and should have gained a certain respect for 
 them. In themselves these customs may mean very little, 
 but observance of them marks us as experienced and 
 thoughtful,, and failure to observe them generally indicates 
 that we are crude and careless. It is a little thing to call 
 after one has been invited to dinner, to rise when a lady 
 comes into the room, to speak to the hostess or the chap- 
 erones at a party, to take your hat off when you talk to a 
 woman on the street, or to eliminate "say" and "listen" 
 when beginning a conversation, but these are the little 
 things which prove either that one has kept his eyes open 
 and has seen how really careful, experienced people act, or 
 that one has gone about with those whose social activities 
 have been pretty limited. 
 
 If there were no other reason for a boy's not confining 
 his attentions to but one girl the reason I have suggested 
 above would be sufficient. Social activities are for train- 
 ing as well as for pleasure. Through his associations with 
 other young people a boy comes to know how to adapt 
 himself to varying conditions and varying temperaments. 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 129 
 
 He learns how easily to meet different sorts of people and 
 ultimately to enjoy different sorts. The man who travels 
 from one state to another or from one county to another 
 comes in time to have a broader view of things. He gains 
 in experience at each new stopping place, he finds new 
 pleasures and new interests wherever he goes, and more 
 than this he develops new powers of enjoyment. The man 
 who knows but one city or who has lived in a country town 
 all his life does not know what his powers of enjoyment 
 are until he has given himself a chance to see what other 
 places there are to give him pleasure. So every young 
 boy in the developing of friendly relationships between 
 his boy and girl associates should give himself as diversi- 
 fied an acquaintance as possible. The more people he 
 knows the better; the more girls he knows the safer for 
 him. It is only through experience and the testing of our- 
 selves that we really come to know the sort of people the 
 association with whom will give us most help and most 
 happiness. 
 
 I have seen a good many young fellows who in high 
 school settled their girl friendships for life. It is usually a 
 mistake. Boys are too inexperienced and too immature 
 at that age to determine what will satisfy them later in 
 life. High school friendships are healthy and stimulating; 
 high school engagements are more often than otherwise a 
 handicap to intellectual and business progress. The high 
 school boy who comes to college engaged to be married sel- 
 dom does well in college, and is imlikely to get out of col- 
 
130 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 lege life as much as he should. He is like the college boy 
 who always goes home at week ends; his interests are di- 
 vided, his heart is in two places, and he does justice to 
 neither. 
 
 In his eagerness for a good time the boy, like his older 
 brother at times, is rather careless in his choice of his girl 
 associates. He chooses the girl who is a "good fellow," 
 who is not too prudish and exacting in her insistence upon 
 conventionalities, who is ready for any sort of lark, and 
 who, while she is not in any sense of disreputable character, 
 is at least careless and thoughtless and "easy" to get on 
 with. She does not hold him to his best behavior or criti- 
 cise him when he is careless in his talk or familiar in his 
 manner. It is doubtful if such a relationship, and there 
 are far too many of them, results in any more enjoyment to 
 either of the persons concerned. It is quite certain that 
 such a girl always loses the respect of the boy who takes 
 advantage of her weakness and carelessness, neither de- 
 rives any helpful social training from the relationship, 
 and one of them at least loses something of idealism and 
 cleanness of character. 
 
 I watched a cheap show unload at the railway station 
 the other day. It had come to town for a nine-days run 
 in the open air. There were following it all sorts of care- 
 less and disreputable women. The disheartening thing 
 about it all was the rapidity with which these women 
 picked up the young boys standing about. Most of 
 these young fellows had no evil intentions, but the daring 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 131 
 
 and the adventure appealed to them. They thought it 
 was good fun; it was something to joke about later. I 
 wish I could make it clear that nothing stains a boy's 
 character and lowers his ideals, nothing leaves so per- 
 manent a vulgar impression upon his mind as associating 
 with women whose character is low. It leaves the stain 
 that will not come off. 
 
 A boy who wants to get the greatest good and the 
 greatest permanent satisfaction and happiness out of life 
 will keep his social relationships on the highest possible 
 plane. The girl who keeps him at a distance, who holds 
 him to his best manners and his best behavior is giving 
 him the best training and in reality the best time. 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 
 
 I was looking through the book shelves the other day 
 in search of a misplaced book which I was wanting, when 
 I came upon a pretentious volume that took me back al- 
 most to the beginning of time for me. Gaskdl's Com- 
 pendium of Forms it was called, and a perusal of it was 
 guaranteed to prepare one thoroughly for every line of 
 endeavor, and for every emergency of life. The author 
 was equally at home in science and in literature, in rehgion. 
 and in art, and in all the finesse of social etiquette and po- 
 etic expression. 
 
 I was fifteen when' I bought it, filled with the first im- 
 pulses to attain a distinct social success in the rural com- 
 munity in which I lived, and yet modest enough to admit 
 that there were many of the graces of society which I had 
 not yet acquired, and many of the exactions of good man- 
 ners with which I was not familiar. A smooth-tongued 
 college student, trying to earn enough money during the 
 summer to keep him going through the winter, sold it 
 to me, and guaranteed it to give satisfaction or the money 
 would be refunded. The price was $5.50 in exquisite silk 
 cloth and $7.00 in full morocco. 
 
 The book contained everything from how to grow beets 
 to the ten commandments; it gave expUcit information on 
 the widest variety of topics from how to open a set of ac- 
 
 132 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 133 
 
 counts to the proper method of approaching a young 
 woman with an offer of marriage. I can not say that it ever 
 got me very far, however, in any of the arts which it pro- 
 fessed to teach except, perhaps, to impress me more 
 strongly with my ignorance, to convince me of how little 
 of manners and morals may be learned from books, and 
 yet to cause me to see how necessary it is that we have 
 some knowledge of these things and practice them early 
 in life. Tne ill-mannered, crude boy in high school seldom, 
 in my experience, develops into the gracious, easy man- 
 nered man. The high school age is the habit-forming age; 
 it is the age when principles of action are developed, and 
 when moral and social ideals are set up. For these things 
 the school and the home have pretty heavy responsibilities 
 resting upon them, and these things are not likely to be 
 learned from books. 
 
 We are tremendously practical these days. Our idea 
 of education is that it consists mostly of facts and general 
 information concerning mathematics and literatiu:e and 
 science and language. We must know the immediate and 
 practical purpose of these facts, too, if we consent to as- 
 similate them. The average boy who follows a curricu- 
 lum in high school or who studies any particular subject 
 wants to be shown where he will profit by it. Unless he 
 can see that he can cash in on his work before he has gone 
 far, his enthusiasm wanes. The doing of a thing for its 
 own sake makes no appeal to him; there must be a definite 
 and specific financial consideration assured him. 
 
134 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 There are few things, excepting good morals, which are 
 of more real value to a boy than good taste and good man- 
 mers; they are among the things that pay. Both the prin- 
 ciples and the practice should be learned in school, for 
 principles here are of little value unless they can be car- 
 ried into practice every day on the street, in the home, 
 and in the classroom. I asked a well-known engineer in 
 New Haven once what advice he would give to a young 
 technical man who was hunting a job. 
 
 "Tell him," was the answer, "to choose his neckties 
 thoughtfully and to be careful of his manners." 
 
 I asked another prominent man of affairs not long 
 ago what special criticism he made of the young fellows 
 who came to him for employment. 
 
 "Their English is poor, and their laundry bills too 
 small," was his reply. 
 
 Good manners will accomplish a great deal for a boy 
 when other things fail. As an executive officer, I am 
 charged with the responsibility of giving or denying 
 special privileges to students in the institution to which 
 I belong. I try to be as consistent and imprejudiced 
 as any one with human instincts and emotions can be, 
 and yet I am sure I am often uneven in my decisions; 
 I am often "worked," as boys say. 
 
 Carter came in at Thanksgivii^ time to ask for an 
 extension of leave. He is a freshman and had not. been 
 home since September. His case was fair, but he presented 
 it badly. When I hesitated, he grew irritated and as- 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 135 
 
 sumed a rather arrogant and impudent manner. If I 
 did not let him go it was a " rotten shame, " and not in 
 any sense giving him a "square deal," he asserted. There 
 was nothing to do but to refuse his request if I were to 
 keep my self-respect, and he flushed hot and banged 
 the door furiously as he went out. 
 
 Then Hughes came in, smiling and gracious and 
 frank. 
 
 " We boys are a terrible bother to you, aren't we ? " 
 he began. 
 
 "Not always," I said. "What would you like?" 
 
 "It's nervy in me to ask, I know," he went on, "but 
 I don't want to come back until Tuesday morning after 
 Thanksgiving. I haven't much of an excuse you'll think, 
 but there's a party Monday night, and there's a girl 
 at home I know, and — and I'd like to take her to the 
 party." He looked up blushing. 
 
 Well, there was a girl once I knew — there is yet in 
 fact— whom I Uked tremendously well to take to a party. 
 
 "That'll be all right, Hughes," I said; "give her my 
 love." 
 
 Now, when I thought it over at night, I wasn't quite 
 sure that I'd been fair to Carter. He had as good a case 
 as Hughes; he had simply put it unfortunately. He 
 didn't have good manners, and I had refused him only 
 because he was not quite polite. I have an idea that 
 many people do the same sort of thing for a similar reason. 
 
 Good manners must be genuine to make a permanent 
 
136 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 impression, must be based upon a real desire to give 
 pleasure and comfort to others. When people first met 
 McKee they thought him the most charming boy im- 
 aginable. He was always on his feet when a lady came 
 into the room; he never talked to a girl without taking 
 off his hat, as any polite boy would do; he showed all 
 the externals of respect for his teachers and for his elders. 
 He was as puiictiUous in standing at attention and say- 
 ing "sir" as a boy just out of military school. He was 
 quiet, attentive, and thoughtful. But when one came 
 to know him better one re'alized that he was tricky, 
 deceitful, given to profane and vulgar talk. His ap- 
 parent politeness was only a subterfuge for the accom- 
 plishment of his selfish purposes. When those who had 
 to associate with him found out his real character, his 
 false politeness became an insult and a lie. 
 
 A boy is, of course, supposed to learn good manners 
 at home, but as often as not he fails. He is not judged 
 at home with an impartial eye; his little slips are over- 
 looked or condoned. If he is the youngest or the only 
 child or the child of well-to-do parents, he is usually 
 spoiled and made selfish, and as I have just said, the 
 selfish boy is seldom polite. Sometimes he comes from 
 a home where the courtesies of life are little known or still 
 less practiced, and where there is little for him to learn. 
 In more cases than otherwise it falls back upon the schools 
 and especially upon the high school and the academy 
 to inculcate in him the principles of good manners. It 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 137 
 
 is upon his teacher that he must rely both for princi- 
 ples and for illustration of their practice. 
 
 There was a letter in my morning mail a few days 
 ago from Porter that brought me pleasure and surprise. 
 Most of my letters from undergraduates begin: "You 
 will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, but the fact 
 is I want something," but Porter wanted nothing. He 
 is only seventeen. His father is a working man; his 
 mother is without education and is busy from dawn to 
 dark with the household cares incident to a large family. 
 The boy has had no social experience; and one could not 
 reasonably expect much social finesse in him. The note 
 which he had written me was carefully written, in un- 
 questionably good form. It was frank and boyish but 
 phrased in as throughly good taste as might have been 
 shown by a trained social secretary. 
 
 I had done the boy a trifling kindness when he was 
 ill in the hospital — ^an attention which a thousand boys 
 had received from my hands — or yours perhaps-r-be- 
 fore and had passed by unnoticed and unacknowledged. 
 His note was to express his appreciation of my courtesy 
 and to thank me for it. It had pleased both him and 
 his parents, he said, to have me come and see him, and 
 the book I had loaned him he had thoroughly enjoyed. 
 His thoughtfulness touched me; it made me happy all 
 day long, and it left a pleasant memory which will not 
 soon fade. I knew where he received his inspiration. 
 It was from some teacher in the high school — sensible. 
 
138 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 sympathetic — ^who had given him the idea and left the 
 impression in his mind. 
 
 In contrast- to this was another experience I had only 
 a little while ago. A yoimg fellow came to see me who 
 had been dismissed from one institution and who wished 
 to enter another. He was the son of a well-to-do man; 
 he had been brought up under good social conditions; 
 he might very reasonably have been expected to have 
 an acquaintance with good social form. I listened to 
 his story, and I saw that his situation was a most diffi- 
 cult one and one that very much required that he have 
 a friend at court to make a strong plea for him. I had 
 never seen him before, but I undertook to help hitn. I 
 wrote a letter to a college oflBicer in another institution, 
 a man with whom I had an intimate acquaintance, and I 
 gave it to the boy. I learned afterwards that it accom- 
 plished the purpose for which it was written and se- 
 cured for the young fellow admission to the other institu- 
 tion. I have no recollection that he thanked me when I 
 gave him the letter, and I know that he has not done so 
 since. I have never had a word from him, and some way 
 I can't help but wonder who taught him EngUsh com- 
 position in high school, who is responsible for his manners. 
 
 A friend of mine not long ago invited to dinner a half 
 dozen boys just out of high school and away from home 
 for the first time. The invitation was given in all kind- 
 ness. She hoped to give pleasure to young fellows whom 
 she imagined to be homesick, and it was at no little 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 139 
 
 trouble and self-sacrifice that she prepared the meal. 
 Two of the boys did not reply at all to her note, the other 
 four accepted her invitation, but only two showed up 
 at the dinner. Not one has called on her or in any way 
 acknowledged her courtesy since, and yet they had all 
 come from excellent high schools and some of them had 
 been brought up in families who admitted they were 
 above the middle classes. It was annoying to the hostess, 
 but, of course, the person who really suffered the most 
 was the boy himself whose training had been so inade- 
 quate. 
 
 Every autimm I watch the long line of freshmen just 
 out of the academy or the high school as they go 
 through the preliminary steps to enter college. The 
 registrar's office is just across the hall from my own. 
 Half the boys do business with their hats on, though 
 most of the registrar's clerks are young women, and 
 other attractive yoimg women are standing about them 
 — standing sometimes even when the young men are 
 sitting. Taking the hat off is, of course, only a con- 
 vention meaningless in itself, but it has come to suggest 
 respect for women, respect for authority, respect for 
 the house that shelters us, and no gentleman can afford 
 to ignore it. I see these same boys later smoking at 
 parties or as they walk down the street with young women, 
 unconscious of the fact that by so doing they are pro- 
 claiming their lack of good breeding. 
 
 There are a thousand courtesies and conventions to be 
 
140 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 learned in high school — courtesies to women, respect for 
 authority, the acknowledgment of kindnesses received, 
 attention to the wishes and comforts of others, regard for 
 one's elders, attention to the conventionalities of the 
 society in which we live, the expression of sympathy in sor- 
 row, of joy in success, of congratulation in the accom- 
 plishment of what our friends and acquaintances have at- 
 tempted. Much of this finds expression in the thoughtful 
 words which we may utter when face to face with friends, 
 but more of it will be seen in the note of thanks or congrat- 
 ulation or condolence which requires only a few moments 
 to write and which brings the greater pleasure often be- 
 cause it is unexpected. A brief, frank, well-worded note 
 will often bring more pleasure to the recipient than a 
 costly gift. 
 
 But after all you must have something more than mere 
 good manners. Every day, almost, I am called upon 
 to write letters recommending young fellows whom I 
 have known while they were in college. Those who make 
 inquiry always want information in very specific things. 
 Is the man honest, can his word be relied upon, is he a 
 fellow of clean and temperate habits, does he gamble? 
 The men themselves who ask these questions may not be 
 wholly exemplary in their own conduct, but they do not 
 care to employ men who can not furnish a clean record. 
 It is during the years of physical and mental development 
 in the high school that moral principles are formulated 
 and strengthened quite as much as at home. 
 
MANNERS AND MORAI.S 141 
 
 Sometimes the boy with good maraiers and rather un- 
 certain morals seems to manage as well as if his principles 
 of conduct were quite above reproach. One of the best- 
 mannered boys I have ever known was of this sort. He 
 was good-tempered, polite, thoughtful of others, clever, 
 a veritable Steerforth, in fact. He never seemed either to 
 say or do the tactless thing, and he was loved by many 
 people and thought charming by more. But one did not 
 know him long until it became evident that he was selfish. 
 He never did a kindness that involved a personal sacrifice. 
 He never gave up or resisted anything that furnished him 
 personal or physical pleasure. The result was inevitable. 
 He made friends only to use them for his own ends; he 
 was honest only when honesty subserved his purpose. He 
 wasted his money, he learned to gamble, to drink, to en- 
 gage in the most unclean practices simply because he had 
 no real moral principles. He is charming still at forty, 
 but no one trusts him; he picks up a precarious liveli- 
 hook by the most irregular business methods. He might 
 have been anything he chose if he had been honest and 
 clean. 
 
 Sometimes the boy with good morals and without the 
 finesse of good manners grows a trifle discouraged. 
 
 "It doesn't pay," he aflarms. "It is the smooth guy 
 who gets by." 
 
 He finds himself unpopular, ignored, made fun of, and 
 he attributes the result to his rigid prmciples rather than 
 to his lack of tact, or to his crude manners. A boy with 
 
142 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 good principles and good manners is invincible. He haa 
 friends, he commands respect, he has two strong and 
 trusty weapons with which to combat temptation and to 
 meet difficulty. 
 
 First of all you will have to be honest. The line be- 
 tween what is honest and what is not is not so widely 
 drawn even among men of experience that it is not strange 
 that young boys should often become confused in the 
 matter, and yet the distinction between what is mine and 
 what is thine, between borrowing and theft, between 
 crime and a practical joke ought to be distinguishable. 
 
 Few boys would give a burglar a leg into the window of 
 a house which he was about to rob, yet it takes more prin- 
 ciple than most boys possess to refuse to give help to a 
 needy friend or even to a passing acquaintance who asks 
 for it in a school examination. If he demurs at all, it is 
 quite as often from the fear of being detected as from any 
 moral principle which actuates him, though one act is as 
 undeniably dishonest as the other. I have put the question 
 to scores of boys, yet I have seen few who did not feel that 
 it was rather a virtue than otherwise to help a man who is 
 in trouble even though the help was simply an aid to dis- 
 honesty. I have even known fathers who, while they 
 would have been sorry to have their sons crib, were yet 
 rather proud that these same sons had aided some one else 
 to be dishonest. 
 
 There is often a feeling among boys, also, that an exam- 
 ination in school is not a test of their knowledge but a con- 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 143 
 
 test between teacher and pupil — something similar, in 
 fact, to love or war where anything is fair if it is not fomid 
 out. They do not realize that when they write their 
 names on an examination, they are virtually sajmig "The 
 contents of this paper are absolutely mine. " 
 
 "I must run along," a high school boy calling at my 
 house said to me not many evenings ago. "I have to 
 write a theme for Blanche; she loaned me her algebra prob- 
 blems, and I must pay her back." 
 
 His is a common practice, but it is the begiiming of a 
 sort of dishonesty which helps to weaken principle and to 
 undermine good scholarship. 
 
 A young friend of mine came home from school one even- 
 ing in spring with a big bunch of roses in his hands. 
 
 "Where did you get the flowers, John?" his father in- 
 quired. 
 
 "Out of Mrs. Perkins' yard," was the reply. 
 
 "Did she give them to you?" 
 
 "No, Fred and I just took them." 
 
 Fred was standing by holding an even larger bunch. 
 
 "Go to Mrs. Perkins and give her back the roses," the 
 father said, "and tell her that you didn't realize when you 
 took them that you were actually stealing." 
 
 "But, father, I don't know Mrs. Perkins," John pro- 
 tested. 
 
 " You'll know her when you have had this talk with her," 
 was the reassuring reply, "and I'm sure you will find it 
 easier next time not to take other people's property." 
 
144 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 "I should not have humiliated my son in that way," 
 Fred's father said to John's later when they were talking 
 the matter over. 
 
 "Such a trifling humiliation is not to be considered," 
 the other man replied, "if I help to make my son 
 honest." 
 
 I was going down town not long ago, and I invited Bill 
 to go with me. We were to take the street car, and it was 
 naturally to be supposed that, since I had extended the 
 invitation to him, I would be responsible for the fare. I 
 ran my hand into my pocket as we started and found a 
 quarter there, so I knew that I could finance the trip 
 easily. We did our errand, and were on the car coming 
 back when I discovered that I still had the twenty-five 
 cen^s unbroken in my pocket. The conductor on the 
 down trip had evidently passed me up when collecting 
 fares, and it had escaped my notice. As he came up to me 
 now, I handed him the coin, saying " Two fares. " He rang 
 up two but gave me twenty cents in change. 
 
 "What shall I do? " I asked Bill. "We did not pay our 
 fares going down, and the conductor has just short changed 
 himself a nickel." 
 
 "Your're a fool if you give the man the fare for the 
 down town trip, but you should pay him the nickel on 
 which he just now made a mistake." 
 
 "Why?" I inquired. 
 
 "The dime is the company's loss, and it was their fault 
 they didn't collect it. The conductor will have to make 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 145 
 
 good on the nickel when he cashes in, if you don't give it 
 to him." 
 
 I have put the case up to a hundred boys since that time, 
 and they have all given me the same answer. It is all 
 right, they think, to steal from a corporation, but not 
 quite honest to steal from an individual or profit by his 
 mistake. They fail to see that real honesty will not per- 
 mit us to steal from anyone. 
 
 I have done business for many years with all kinds of 
 boys — the lazy and the shiftless, the selfish and the care- 
 less, those who have been thoughtless and those who have 
 been dissipated and immoral. I can get on better with 
 any one else than the liar. Truth is at the foundation of 
 confidence; no business can be done satisfactorily with- 
 out it; it is one of the cardinal principles of character. 
 There is, of course, too, the half truth that is the worst 
 sort of lie — ^the words which are themselves not false in 
 their meaning, but which are so uttered as to convey false 
 impression. 
 
 Robey, wljose allowance was quite adequate, had been 
 very neglectful in the payment of some of his bills. I 
 spoke to him about the matter, and he assured me he 
 would take care of the bills at once. A month later I 
 found that he was still owing on one of the old ac- 
 counts. 
 
 "I have written the check today," he said when I called 
 him the second time. I said nothing more, because to my 
 mind his statement meant that the bill was paid. I was 
 
146 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 very much surprised to find six weeks later that nothing 
 had been done about the matter. 
 
 "I'm afraid you did not tell me the truth," I said to 
 Robey when he came in response to my call. 
 
 "I didn't tell you I'd paid the bill," he said in explana- 
 tion, "I said I'd written the check. I just didn't send it." 
 
 "But you meant me to think you had sent it, didn't 
 you?" 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 And now Robey thinks it a trifle unfair when I hesitate 
 to take his statements of fact without pretty careful analy- 
 sis. 
 
 Sometimes it is hard to tell the truth — especially when 
 it involves some one else or reflects upon your own char- 
 acter or conduct. There is, in my estimation at least, a 
 generally prevalent false sense of honor which makes it 
 wrong to tell the truth when the facts if known would not 
 be creditable to some one else. I have never understood 
 why. It is certainly not so in legal proceeding or in 
 adult life. It demands unusual courage often to tell the 
 truth especially when the consequences might be avoided. 
 
 McDonald was waiting for me when I came into the of- 
 fice one morning a short time ago. 
 
 "I want to tell you something," he said. "It isn't 
 creditable to me, and possibly you'll think when I'm 
 through that I'm a pretty poor chap; but I want to get it 
 off my mind. I've got to have my own self-respect if I'm 
 to be happy." 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 147 
 
 Then he told me that when he had presented his cred- 
 its from high school in the fall, the record had not been 
 correct — he had been given credit for subjects which he 
 had never taken, and, though he recognized the mistake, 
 he had said nothing about it. Now he wanted the mat- 
 ter straightened out, even if he were dismissed from col- 
 lege. 
 
 "What are you going to do to me?" he asked when 
 he was through with his story — a story which he had told 
 with much embarrassment. 
 
 "We'll first have your high school record corrected," I 
 said, "and then we'll forget all about the rest of the story. 
 Only I want to say that you are a thousand times better 
 and stronger boy for having told the truth." 
 
 I said that many boys find it embarrassing and diffi- 
 cult to tell the truth when the facts to be revealed are 
 discreditable to some one else. I have no reference to 
 trifling derelictions which are often a matter of personal 
 opinion and which do not concern the well-being of the 
 community, but to matters of real moral significance 
 which vitally affect the interests of others. In the former 
 case every sensible person would respect the boy who re- 
 fused to say anything at all. What I have in mind con- 
 cerns real inunorahty. 
 
 There had been in our gymnasium considerable steal- 
 ing of watches and money and clothing of all sorts. I was 
 pretty well convinced who had done it and was trying to 
 confinn my convictions. I was sure that Moore would 
 
148 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 be able to help me out if he would tell what he knew, and 
 I called him. 
 
 "I couldn't tell you about that," he said, "I've been 
 brought up to believe that it is not honorable to give an- 
 other fellow away." 
 
 "I respect the general principle," I admitted, "but 
 this man is a thief who is living on the community and is 
 robbing boys who will be forced to leave college if the 
 thing continues." 
 
 "That doesn't make any difference," Moore replied. 
 
 Ultimately the real thief when he was caught (and he 
 did prove to be the acquaintance of Moore whom I had 
 suspected,) accused Moore of the theft, for any thief will 
 he in order to cover up his own dishonesties, and he is sel- 
 dom discriminating in choosing the men whom he accuses. 
 
 I have known many boys with the false standard of 
 responsibility who held that it was wrong under any cir- 
 cumstances to involve others than themselves in any dere- 
 liction and who considered that they were doing a virtuous 
 act when they lied to keep a guilty companion out of 
 trouble. We are forced to change such standards as these 
 when we become adult members of society, for the courts 
 do not allow such a view point, but on the other hand hold 
 that the good citizen is not only responsible for his own 
 conduct but must exercise restraining influence upon his 
 neighbor and inform on him if he is a law breaker. 
 
 Every boy is under a moral obligation to work hard, to 
 carry through what he begins whether or not it is agreeable 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 149 
 
 or interesting, to keep his promises even though the keep- 
 ing be difficult or disagreeable. At home and in school 
 we have become so accustomed to following the line of 
 least resistance, to choosing for study only such subjects 
 as we find easy or entertaining, to doing only those things 
 which we like, that we balk when it comes to any hard or 
 disagreeable work. 
 
 Frank's teacher in astronomy reported that he was not 
 going to class. Since he had signed up for the course and 
 was under obligations to attend it unless released by the 
 Dean, I called him to inquire the cause of his absence. 
 
 "I don't care for it/' he said. "It's hard, it doesn't in- 
 terest me and I just quit it. I don't see what good astron- 
 omy is going to do me." 
 
 He had no sense of obligation to carry through what he 
 had begun, no pride whatsoever in his class record. He was 
 looking for the snap, for something that in itself awakened 
 his interest; he had no conception of the moral and in- 
 tellectual benefits of hard work. 
 
 There is no moral principle which is more fundamental 
 for the high school boy to learn than that which has to do 
 with the clean personal life. If the army taught anything, 
 it taught us that. Every year I give to the freshmen who 
 are just entering my own institution from high school a 
 series of talks on personal hygiene including the dangers 
 and physical effects of drinking and of bad sexual prac- 
 tices. The thing that surprises me always is how little 
 they know and how little of what they know is true. They 
 
150 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 have the most distorted ideas of a nonnal healthy sexual 
 life and of the effects of sexual disease. If they follow im- 
 moral or intemperate practices in college, in nine cases out 
 of ten they have begun these practices long before they 
 were ready for college, and have pitifully little conception 
 of the ultimate dangers to character and health involved. 
 A beginning in self-discipline should be made when im- 
 pulses and imagination first lead a boy into untoward 
 things, and this is at the beginning of high school rather 
 than at the beginning of college. A boy's moral status is 
 pretty well settled when he enters college. Someone 
 should have laid down for him definite principles of per- 
 sonal thinking and personal conduct. Some one should 
 have had the courage and the tact to tell him frankly and 
 straightforwardly of his physical being, of the sacredness 
 of his body and the necessity of his keeping it morally 
 clean. If this is not done in the high school, there is very 
 little likelihood of its being done at home. 
 
 A father sat in my office a few days ago talking about 
 his freshman son. He had come in response to a letter 
 from me. The boy was doing no good in college, his 
 habits were bad, he was the victim of disease. I told the 
 father the wretched unpleasant truth as gently as I could, 
 and he seemed surprised, stuimed. 
 
 "But my boy has always been a good boy," he said. 
 "How has it been possible for college to ruin him so 
 quickly? " 
 
 "You are mistaken," I answered. "Every experience 
 
MANNERS AND MORALS 151 
 
 he has had in college he had tried before he came. If 
 you think I am wrong ask him. " 
 
 I knew I was right, for the boy had told me so, and he 
 had told me also that neither at home nor in the high school 
 had he been given any specific or friendly instruction as 
 to the danger to his mind or to his body of the habits which 
 he began early to form. 
 
 "If you want us to live a clean life, to stand for the 
 highest moral principles," one of my freshmen said to me 
 not long ago, "don't wait until we get to college before 
 you set before us the ideals we should follow; begin in 
 high school before we have begun the practices which 
 are sometimes almost impossible to give up." 
 
 Every boy comes to the time when his moral principles 
 are tested, when temptation stares him suddenly in the 
 face, when he must prove to himself and to his friends 
 whether these principles are a pretense or a reality. As 
 their foundations were laid early, as they have been held to 
 firmly and honestly they will stand, for the ultimate test 
 of any boy's manners or morals is how successfully he will 
 meet the unexpected social or moral crisis. 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 
 
 I suppose that at one time or another in his life, every 
 boy plans to be a street car conductor or a railroad en- 
 gineer, or at least to follow some pursuit of an active me- 
 chanical nature. Most boys like to see the wheels go 
 round. As for me, I was determined to be a doctor. I im- 
 agine I was led to this conclusion through watching 
 Doctor Triplett who visited the sick in our country com- 
 munity in his two wheeled sulky drawn by a rangy 
 spirited gray horse., It seemed to me there would be more 
 pleasure and less hard work in such a vocation than in 
 any other with which I was familiar. I did not take into 
 account the long dreary rides through the bitter cold of 
 winter or the bottomless mud of early spring to visit 
 people who never paid, perhaps. I saw only the pleasant 
 side of it. 
 
 As society is run now it is essential that every one have 
 some business or profession by means of which he may eat 
 and be clothed and have some recreation. Excepting that 
 we are healthier and happier as a result of regular work, 
 and that for most of us it is necessary to existence, I im- 
 agine that most of us would not concern ourselves as much 
 with work as we now do. I have never believed, and a long 
 experience has not tended to change my opinion, that every 
 young fellow is cut out for so definite and specific a job 
 
 152 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 153 
 
 that if he does not hit upon this particular position, he is 
 ruined for life. No more do I think that there is in the 
 world somewhere for every man a particular woman, 
 whom he must meet and win or be forever unhappy. Men 
 are for the most part adaptable; they can as often as other- 
 wise fit equally well into various positions or professions, 
 and can find happiness with many sorts of people. A good 
 lawyer might very easily have made an equally successful 
 physician if he had gone into the latter profession with 
 earnestness. 
 
 There are in some people, however, peculiar weaknesses 
 which are diflBcult to strengthen; peculiar talents which 
 fit them for particular work. Some people could be musi- 
 cians or plumbers and little else. Such people should 
 choose a profession thoughtfully and carefully. The less 
 balanced and normal the brain, the less evenly developed 
 one's powers are, the more one is a genius, the more nec- 
 essary it is that one should get into the kind of work to 
 which he is particularly adapted, or evade that which 
 he would find impossible. If a boy is intending to study 
 engineering he should have special ability and interest in 
 mathematics; if he is to be a clergyman, he ought to have 
 some leanings toward religion. A prospective surgeon 
 should be adept in the use of his fingers, and anyone pro- 
 posing to study law should be capable of logical reasoning. 
 
 One can not always with certainty decide whether 
 or not he has special fitness in one profession or another. 
 A boy's father assured me not long since that he was 
 
154 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 convinced his son would make an excellent lawyer be- 
 cause he was such a ready talker. If the ability to talk 
 readily fitted one for the practice of law, women, some 
 people think, would have a distressing handicap over 
 men. Fluent speech is, of course, often a help to a lawyer 
 if it is accompanied by other talents, but fluent speech 
 which is not induced by logical reasoning and an accu- 
 rate knowledge of law may as likely as not be a handicap 
 instead of an asset to a man attempting to practice law. 
 Lawyers have been known to lose their cases by not know- 
 ing when to stop talking. Again parents frequently assure 
 me that their young sons have unusual fitness for engi- 
 neering work because, perhaps, they have constructed 
 an electric motor, or made a water wheel, or fixed a 
 refractory lawn mower. Such mechanical ability is often 
 an aid to engineering work, but it is in, no way an abso- 
 lute necessity or a manifestation of engineering genius. 
 It suggests the mechanic rather than the engineer. 
 
 So far as it is possible, however, one should find out 
 whatever special fitness he may have for any one work 
 and devote himself to that. Teachers can help in this 
 decision; parents should recognize the talents of their 
 children and try to make the most of them; the boy 
 himself should analyze his own special fitness. I have 
 never been sure as to just how accurately the average 
 man can judge of his own individual ability. A shrewd 
 executive whom I once knew used to say that when a 
 young man confessed to more than ordinary skill in any 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 155 
 
 one direction or thought himself especially fitted for a 
 particular type of work, it was rather conclusive evidence 
 that he might better take up some other. However 
 that may be, I have seldom in teaching English compo- 
 sition, found that the man who laid claim to any particular 
 skill in writing actually possessed much. Accurate self- 
 judgment is difficult, but too much self-assurance is often 
 an evidence of weakness. 
 
 Granted that a boy has unusual mental gifts; a peculiar 
 danger often confronts him — the danger of depending 
 upon his unusual ability to carry him through without 
 work. It is an old saying that the only genius worth 
 much is the genius for hard work. I have known a few 
 geniuses, but I do not now recall more than one or two 
 who got far in the professions which they adopted, 
 because very few of them were willing to work regularly 
 or seriously. Knowing their abiUty, they grew to depend 
 upon it to carry them through at the last moment with- 
 out any regular hard labor on their part; not willing to 
 work hard and regularly, they did not increase their 
 power; they were no more able to accomplish results 
 at the end of ten years of practice than at the beginning 
 of their careers. 
 
 "Can't I come back next September," a freshman 
 who had failed asked me, "and start all over again as 
 if nothing had happened? " 
 
 It was hard for him to see that a year of loafing had 
 had an effect on him which could not be eliminated by 
 
166 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 forgetting the past. Powers that are not increased wane; 
 the mind will not stand still in its development. 
 
 If you are taking up any work or profession it is wisest 
 to understand beforehand what it involves. E^ad books on 
 the subject; if you are thinking of engineering or medicine 
 or law, get hold of some successful engineer or doctor or 
 lawyer and ask him about the training necessary to suc- 
 cess in his profession and the difficulties incident to it. 
 He will probably advise you to try some other profession. 
 He will enlarge on the difficulties, no doubt, of his own 
 particular calling, but this fact need not serve to dis- 
 courage you. You will find often that what on the surface 
 seemed easy sailing has been a hazardous voyage full of 
 storms and often suggestive of shipwreck. Men will 
 advise you to keep out of the profession which they are 
 following, because knowing as intimately as they do 
 the hardships of their own calling, and being acquainted 
 only with the externals of others, they imagine then: 
 own to be the most difficult and wearing and unsatis- 
 factory of all. Fathers especially are loath to seeing 
 their sons take up the line of work in which they them- 
 selves have become estabUshed and have succeeded. 
 
 "I don't want my son to take up my profession," 
 I hear scores of fathers say. "There is nothing in it but 
 hard work." 
 
 So, too, men who have come up to affluence through 
 sacrifice and toil, say, " I never want my son to go through 
 what I have gone through," not reaUzing that what 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 157 
 
 they went through gave them the strength and the suc- 
 cess which they attained. 
 
 There is always the misleading suggestion by these 
 men that in any other profession but their own efficiency 
 and success are attained without labor, and that hard 
 labor is if possible to be avoided, while the truth of the 
 matter is that no one is likely to ,get far in any sort of 
 business without persistent, steady, hard work. Don't 
 be discouraged because your proposed profession in- 
 volves hard work. 
 
 There is often a considerable advantage to a boy 
 in choosing to ' carry on the business which his father 
 has followed. His unconscious observation of the details 
 of his father's business gives him a handicap over another 
 man going into the same business wholly without ex- 
 perience. He is likely to know more about his father's 
 business than any other. The counsel and advice which 
 the older man could give the younger should never be 
 disregarded, and the ready opening which the younger 
 man might find in his father's profession or establish- 
 ment when his education is completed should not be 
 imdervalued. The fact that such a man will be prepared 
 for the difficulties and the discouragements of his pro- 
 fession, and will not be surprised or caught unawares 
 by them will contribute somewhat to his success. There 
 is more independence, of course, in starting out alone, 
 and most boys like so far as possible to feel that they 
 are under obligation to no one, and have been the cause 
 
158 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 of their own success. It is better, however, to be a good 
 fanner on the old home place than it is to be a second- 
 rate engineer on your own account. 
 
 It is usually a mistake to let some one else make the 
 choice for you, even if the person who offers to do so or 
 who insists upon doing so is your father or mother. I 
 know parents who select the professions for their chil- 
 dren and map out in minute detail the line of education 
 each one is to follow, and who have everything all settled, 
 perhaps, even before the child is bom. It is a process 
 which more often than otherwise results in a lack of en- 
 thusiasm if not in failure on the part of the child. I can 
 at this time recall only one young fellow whose father, 
 contrary to the boy's own desires, picked out a profession 
 for his son, who ever accomplished much that was worth 
 while in the work he undertook. It is about as safe to 
 allow some one else to select for you the girl you are to 
 marry as it is to let him, without regard to your interests 
 and desires, pick out for you your life work. The choice 
 ought to be your own. 
 
 Chilton, stumbling through his sophomore year in col- 
 lege, had been making a sad failure; he showed no enthusi- 
 asm, no interest, no energy in the work for which he was 
 registered. 
 
 "Why are you taking engineering?" I asked. "You 
 don't like mathematics, and mechanics is a closed book 
 to you." 
 
 "Well, I never wanted to do it," he replied. " I really 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 159 
 
 wanted to go into business, but father insisted on my 
 studying engineering because he thought it offered the 
 best opportunities to a young fellow of anything going, 
 and because Uncle John is in a position to give me a job 
 and a good start when I have graduated. " 
 
 Chilton will never make an engineer no matter how hard 
 his father sets his jaw and no matter how good a job his 
 Uncle John has waiting for him, because he hasn't a math- 
 ematical brain, he doesn't like engineering, and he has not 
 learned to do anything well which he doesn't like. 
 
 This leads me to say that there is probably no more 
 foolish practice than to choose a business or a profession 
 purely because in itself it seems to offer peculiar oppor- 
 timities or attractions. All through the summer following 
 their graduation from high school, boys come to see me or 
 write to me concerning their entrance to college. 
 
 "What do you think is a good course for a fellow to take 
 up?" they ask me, with the idea in mind that there must 
 be some work par excellence in itself, regardless of the indi- 
 vidual or of his attitude toward his work. They do not see 
 that it is the man and not the profession that brings about 
 success. They argue that because electricity is the coming 
 motive power, electrical engineering is really the only 
 course to pursue if they are going to college, or possibly 
 that because chemistry has played such a wonderful part 
 in the war and will play an even more wonderful part in the 
 reconstruction which follows the war, chemistry is an un- 
 usually good field for a boy to enter. They are, no 
 
160 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 doubt, correct in supposing that chemistry and electricity 
 will be more generally than ever put to practical use in the 
 coming years, but no course is in itself a good course, and 
 no line of work offers special opportimities unless the 
 men who pursue them show special fitness. 
 
 There was a letter in my mail only a few days ago from 
 a yoimg fellow just graduated from high school, who, with- 
 out money, was considering the possibility of going to 
 college. 
 
 "I should like to know," he wrote, "just what special 
 inducements your University will offer me in the way of a 
 chance to earn my Uving. I want to go to college, and I 
 am intending to choose the college which will make me the 
 most attractive offer and the course which suggests the 
 greatest future." He mentioned no special fitness, no tal- 
 ents or training or experience which should give him pref- 
 erence or precedence over other boys. 
 
 I replied that he was looking at the matter from the 
 wrong angle. The college welcomes the boy who has most 
 ability, who can do something better than common, who 
 has special fitness for a definite job, and such a boy can get 
 a job almost anywhere he goes. It is in such a way as this 
 young fellow was looking at his job in college that some 
 men regard a profession. They are willing to sell them- 
 selves to the profession which bids the highest, not realiz- 
 ing that it is their own personal qualities and interest 
 which determine whether or not the job is worth while. 
 I am conArinced that many of the failures which young 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 161 
 
 fellows meet in all lines of business and especially in techni- 
 cal courses in college come largely from the fact that men 
 have gone into them not because of any special fitness or 
 of any special interest in the work or liking for it, but be- 
 cause they felt that the particular business or profession 
 which they were taking up offered an easy and sure ap- 
 proach to success. 
 
 In choosing a profession one ought to be willing to reach 
 success slowly and by reasonable stages. 
 
 Cowan did well in high school and college. He was not 
 afraid of work, he showed enthusiasm, and he was de- 
 pendable. His character was above reproach, and his per- 
 sonality was imusually attractive. I used often to marvel 
 at the ease with which he met people, the rapidity with 
 which he made friends, and the facility with which he dis- 
 patched business; but yet he did not get on. He tried life 
 insurance but gave it up at the end of a few months; he 
 took up the real estate business; he was a traveling sales- 
 man for a tractor company; he went in with a reputable 
 manufacturing concern; but he did not stick long. He 
 drifted from one thing to another, and at the end of ten 
 years he had got nowhere; yet everyone admitted his 
 ability. 
 
 The real cause of his failure was tha't Cowan wanted 
 to succeed at a bound; he was looking for something that 
 would make him rich or famous or independent in a short 
 time. He was not willing to go through the long period 
 of servitude and drudgery that practically every success- 
 
162 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 ful or professional or business man has found necessary 
 before he reached the goal of his ambitions. So he rushed 
 from one rainbow end to another in a vain endeavor to 
 find the pot of gold without digging for it. 
 
 Two friends of mine, a steady, successful, middle-aged 
 couple, were stopping for a time at a high-priced hotel in 
 the Allegheny mountains. 
 
 "Isn't it strange," Mrs. Granger said to her husband, 
 "how few young people there are here. Almost everyone 
 is middle-aged or past it." 
 
 "That's easy," her husband responded. "A man has to 
 be forty-five before he has made enough money to afford 
 to come here." 
 
 It is a hard lesson for a boy to learn that in any pro- 
 fession or business that is worth while success comes 
 slowly. Persistence is necessary; faithfulness, courage 
 and willingness to wait for results. It is the hardest, after 
 all, for a boy to learn to wait, for him to realize that the 
 profession or business that promises immediate success is 
 frequently, like the skilfully gilded brick, a thing to be 
 wary of. 
 
 One should not choose a profession in which he has no 
 special interest and for the work of which he has 
 no liking. A month or two ago a high school senior 
 from a neighboring state brought to me a letter of in- 
 troduction from a former student of mine with the re- 
 quest that I should give the boy advice as to the choice of 
 his profession. The young fellow seemed normal in every 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 163 
 
 way. His course in high school had been well balanced 
 and was made up of mathematics, and language, and sci- 
 ence varied enough to test his ability. He had done one 
 thing about as well as another. It did seem, however, 
 that he had rather unusual talents in music. The his- 
 tory of his family on both his father's and mother's side 
 showed musical appreciation and technical skill. He was 
 himself a more than ordinarily skilful pianist. It was my 
 friend's opinion that the boy ought to study music and 
 prepare himself to become a professional musician rather 
 than to take scientific or technical work. I talked with 
 him for some time to get his reactions. 
 
 "What do you want to do?" I jQnally asked him. 
 
 "I'd rather be a chemical engineer than anything else 
 in the world," was his reply. "I'd be willing to work my 
 head off, if I could get a chance to study chemistry." 
 
 His point of view is the only safe guide to the solution 
 of the problem of choosing a profession. Interest, desire, 
 the willingness to work at a thing because one likes it — that 
 is the test which every boy should apply to himself when 
 he is making the choice of the work which he is to take up 
 for life. Every business, every profession is full of men 
 who are working because they have to do so and not be- 
 cause they want to do so, who drag themselves to their 
 tasks with lagging steps and unenthusiastic spirits. The 
 most favored positions in life are full of difl3.culties. Every 
 position and every profession has its trials and its hard 
 problems that will test the courage and try the temper of 
 
164 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 the best of men. Unless one likes his work, unless he can 
 show interest and enthusiasm in it, his lot is a sad one.^ 
 One should cl^oose for his life work something in which he 
 will find pleasure, he should go to it every morning with 
 delight and should leave it with something like regret. 
 Otherwise there will be for him constant grumbling, un- 
 rest and discontent. 
 
 It is easy to find illustrations of the fact that interest 
 and enthusiasm will work wonders. Not many years ago 
 a young fellow from a country town in the middle west 
 apphed for admission to one of our middle west educa- 
 tional institutions. He had had no high school training, 
 and the admission -requirements of the institution were 
 severe. He was past twenty-one years of age, however, 
 so tliat he was admitted on trial as a special student and 
 allowed to attempt to carry the regular work of the fresh- 
 man year of the course in which he was interested. It 
 was his greatest pleasure to have a chance to study the 
 subjects which he liked, and he carried that same inter- 
 est and enthusiasm to all other subjects which he at- 
 tempted or which he was required to take. During his 
 leisure hours he devoted himself to the high school work 
 which he had missed as a boy, passed it off by examin- 
 ation, and at the end of four years and a half he gradu- 
 ated as an honor student. 
 
 No one ever thought that he had a brilliant mind; 
 he had interest and he was willing to work. If such a 
 man as he without adequate preparation, and with 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 165 
 
 only average brains, could through desire and interest 
 mamly, accomphsh such gratifying results, what could 
 a thoroughly well-prepared man not do? And what is 
 true of one sort of work is true of another. It is the 
 man who is workiug because he enjoys it who throws 
 his whole soul into what he is doing and who can not 
 be excelled or defeated. It is the men who have no 
 enthusiasms, and who can't get down to work, who are 
 always in doubt as to whether or not th^y have chosen 
 correctly, and who seldom succeed. The young fellow who 
 knows what he wants to do and is willing and eager to 
 do whatever is necessary to accomplish his purposes is 
 a long way toward success. The man who doesn't know 
 his own mind, who is waiting for someone to pick out 
 for him a good job, or to set him up in a successful busi- 
 ness, has little chance of getting anywhere. 
 
 Men say sometimes that the thing they would like 
 most to do requires so much preparation before they are 
 ready to go on with it, that they can not afford the time 
 or the money required to fit them to begin. They would 
 Uke to be lawyers or physicians or preachers or architects 
 or whatever it may be, but to be a well-prepared phy- 
 sician requires seven or eight years of study and prepara- 
 tion not to speak of the sum of money to be expended, 
 and they feel that they will be half through life before 
 they are ready to take up its duties. Men excuse them- 
 selves for not finishing a college course which they have 
 begun, on the ground that they have found a good open- 
 
166 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 ing or have been offered an unusually attractive position 
 and they fear that if they wait to complete their education 
 all the good jobs wiU be gone. Opportunity knocks 
 but once, they say, and they are convinced that he is 
 now at their door. 
 
 Over against these facts, however, are others. No one 
 has ever been heard to regret, no matter what sort of 
 business or profession he is in, that his preparation was 
 too carefully made, that he put in too much time or too 
 much money on his preliminary education, or did too much 
 studying before he began. On the other hand, there are 
 illustrations without number of men who bemoan the 
 fact all their lives that they gave too Uttle time to prep- 
 aration and that they made their greatest mistake in 
 not finishing their education. Illustrations innumerable 
 can be found, also, of men who even in middle life got 
 into the professions for which a delayed preparation 
 had been made and who have more than made good. 
 
 The boy or the young man, therefore, who hesitates 
 about taking up the profession or the business which 
 he likes best because of the time or the money neces- 
 sary to prepare for it, or the man who rushes into work 
 ill prepared because he is afraid all the good jobs will 
 be gone if he waits, is making a serious mistake. It is 
 far better to take up a profession we like even late in 
 life than it is to drag out a dull existence in doing the 
 things mechanically which fail to bring out our best efforts. 
 It is better to finish one's preparations as thoroughly 
 
CHOOSING A PROFESSION 167 
 
 as possible and trust to the fact that there are always 
 good jobs for the man. who is fitted to hold thein. 
 
 Fitness, interest, enthusiasm, wilUngness to work, 
 thorough preparation — these are the vital things to be 
 considered by any young fellow in the choice of a profes- 
 sion. 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 
 
 I am convinced that far too many boys go to college. 
 It is not thatT miServalue the worth of aTcoHege educa- 
 tion — ^far from it — ^but too many fellows go who have 
 no appreciation of what a college education means, no 
 special interest, no impelling motive, no desire for what 
 college gives. When I entered college, it was a great 
 event in our country community for a boy to break away 
 from his environment and go off to a higher institution 
 of learning; the neighbors all turned out to see me off. 
 Now everybody goes; it is as common a thing for a boy 
 to go to college as it is for hirri to take a summer vacation. 
 I often ask the young fellows in our freshman class who 
 come in to see me why they are in college, but I seldom 
 get a v^ry thoughtful or a very specific answer. 
 
 I asked Parker the other day. He is a boy of good 
 brains and attractive physique. He has plenty of money, 
 and every chance to do well, but his work is ragged and 
 commonplace, he gets no pleasure out of books, he has 
 no enthusiasm for study; he is quite as likely to fail as 
 to pass when the test of final examinations comes. 
 
 "It wasn't because I wanted to come," was his reply. 
 "My brother George finished here two years ago, and 
 he wanted me to come. Father would have been disap- 
 pointed if I had not done so, so what was I to do?" 
 
 168 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 169 
 
 He showed about as much animation and pleasure 
 as a young fellow might do who was taking a dose of 
 cod liver oil to please his grandmother. 
 
 Down the street a block or so was another boy to whom 
 his college course is a source of constant joy. He has been 
 an orphan for many years, he has no resources but those 
 which come from the labor of his own hands. Ever since 
 he was a small boy he had looked forward to being in col- 
 lege as one of the hoped-for but nearly impossible things. 
 It was to him like a dream of fairy-land not likely to come 
 true. 
 
 He worked his way through high school, he got a good 
 job the following summer, he won a scholarship by ex- 
 amination, and then he began to feel that possibly his 
 dream might be realized. He is in college now, and he 
 finds it all a delight. He has no money and few pleasures, 
 but he is full 'of enthusiasm, he laughs at the sacrifices 
 he must make, he counts it a privilege to be able to pursue 
 the subjects which he enjoys, and he knows very well 
 why he came to college. His four years in college will 
 be full of hard toil, but they will bring him constant and 
 keen pleasure. 
 
 Too many boys go to college for the same reason that 
 scores of fellows went into the army in 1917 — it is the 
 easiest thing to do; it is the thing which a large nimiber 
 of his friends are doing. To others it seems more attrac- 
 tive, perhaps, and more likely to result in a hilariously 
 good time than going to work. There is a generally 
 
170 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 accepted belief extant, also, that the man who goes to 
 college is likely in some way to have an easier time than 
 the fellow who does not do so. No one seems to ap- 
 preciate the fact that the man who secures an edu- 
 cation is also sure to fall heir to pretty heavy responsi- 
 bilities. 
 
 Now why should a boy go to college? Not to any 
 large extent because other fellows are doing so, though 
 of course, custom is not a thing to be wholly ignored 
 even in following educational practices; not so much as 
 most people think to acquire information or to acquaint 
 oneself with facts, though the accumulation of facts is 
 a necessary detail in any system of education. More 
 than for anything else, one should go to college for the 
 symmetrical training of the mind, for the learning of 
 self-control, for the disciplining of all the faculties, for 
 the development of ideals. 
 
 I studied calculus and conic sections while I was in 
 college; I pored over Anglo Saxon texts, and spent a 
 considerable time in the chemical laboratory working 
 out experiments and developing formulas. Most of 
 these things I have forgotten, and few if any of them 
 have I had any occasion to use in the routine business 
 which has engaged my attention since I left college. I 
 do not for this reason, however, in any way underesti- 
 mate the permanent value of these subjects to me. They 
 developed my brain, they caused me to think, they helped 
 me to draw conclusions quickly and gave me a broader 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 171 
 
 and clearer outlook on life, and these powers have 
 helpejj me every day of my life since, in every relation 
 which I have borne to my fellow men. It is seldom that 
 I have needed the specific information which I derived 
 from these subjects, but all through the years I have 
 depended upon the training which I thus received. It 
 is this training and discipline which in my mind is the 
 most valuable thing the college gives. 
 
 There are several sorts of men who should not go to 
 college. The man who does not like to study, who finds 
 no real pleasure in books, to whom the incidental things 
 of college are the main consideration, has little business 
 in college. I jivas talking to Rogers about his work this 
 quarter. He is doing poorly, he can not get up in the 
 morning, he finds class attendance irksome, and books 
 and study bore him. 
 
 "If I can not make the ball team," he confessed to 
 me, "there is little use of my stasang in college. I'd a lot 
 rather hold down the second sack than be elected to Phi 
 Beta Kappa." 
 
 The facts are, however, that there's a slim chance of his 
 attaining either distinction, for he will not be allowed to 
 play ball at all if he doesn't carry his studies, and the 
 likelihood of his making Phi Beta Kappa is about as re- 
 mote as the establishment of an aeroplane route to Mars. 
 
 "You'd better apply for admission to one of the minor 
 leagues," I advised him, "college is no place for you." 
 
 There are those who look upon college as a kind of 
 
172 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOV 
 
 resting place between youth and manhood where one forms 
 associations only, or absorbs a few facts or a little culture. 
 They do not for a moment consider it a place where a 
 young fellow should get down to business and work hard, 
 but rather a place of leisure, or recreation, a place to 
 dream and smoke, and sleep late in the morning, and talk 
 nonsense to pretty girls while one is waiting for the real 
 work of life to begin. It is this sort of man who yawns or 
 turns up his nose when the subject of scholarship is intro- 
 duced. He doesn't want to get high grades, not he. He 
 is going to have to go to work quite soon enough, he de- 
 clares, so why spoil the best years of one's life by digging. 
 Peters was that sort. He could prove by statistics 
 gathered from all kinds of, to him at least, reliable sources 
 that the commonplace man in his studies in college always 
 develops later into a captain of finance or a world leader. 
 He spent most of his time cultivating an effective shot at 
 billiards or sitting in front of the fire smoking cigarettes 
 and outlining to the other fellows who would listen to him 
 the business and social conquests he expected to make 
 when his college career should close. Unfortunately it 
 closed somewhat sooner than he anticipated, for the fac- 
 ulty took another view of things than that held by Peters, 
 and dropped him at the end of his sophomore year for 
 poor scholarship. Peters is only one of the many illustra- 
 tions I have known of the fact that there isn't much place 
 in college for the loafer, or for the man who is trying only 
 to pick up a little social experience or to acquire a little 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 173 
 
 intellectual polish without labor, before he gets into the 
 real hustle of life. 
 
 There are a few boys undoubtedly who finish high school 
 whose mental equipment is not quite adequate to the work 
 of college, who are not natural students, who are better 
 fitted for a trade than for a profession, and who would 
 seldom have had their minds turned toward a college 
 course were it not for the fact that so many of their mates 
 were continuing their education beyond the high school. 
 The number of these is not large, possibly, but it is suffi- 
 ciently in evidence for a boy seriously to ask himself the 
 question, "Am I mentally fitted to take up a college 
 course?" 
 
 A good many boys can not afford to go to college. Some- 
 times home duties are arduous and can not be shirked, 
 and though, if he followed his own personal desires, he 
 would go on with his education, he realizes that he is 
 under obligation to make the sacrifice. Sometimes the 
 boy could get away, but there is no money available. The 
 old theory was that any boy who had the desire for an 
 education could always meet his college expenses in some 
 way through manual labor. In fact there are many other- 
 wise sensible people still who imagine that the self-sup- 
 porting student in college is not only better off than other 
 boys but is always near the head of the class. I have even 
 known fathers who were quite able to pay the expenses 
 of their sons in college who refused to do so because they 
 exaggerated and idealized the intellectual advantages of 
 
174 TBE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 being poor. There is always to substantiate their theory, 
 the story of Webster setting off to Dartmouth with his 
 one pair of homespun trousers — ^later ruined by the rain — 
 and a bag of potatoes for his subsistence. They do not 
 suspect how much pain and suffering he would have been 
 spared, how much better he might have done, had he been 
 properly clothed and decently fed. 
 
 The real facts are that the self-supporting student in 
 college misses a tremendous lot usually of what one should 
 get from college, and in a good many instances fails en- 
 tirely. 
 
 "I know absolutely nothing of what real college life 
 is," a junior said to me only a few days ago. " I've earned 
 my own living ever since I entered, and I've had my nose 
 on the grindstone ever since I struck the campus. I some- 
 times wonder if it pays." 
 
 Such a student picks up an inadequate living, and he 
 sometimes falls down on his final examinations. The rea- 
 son is perfectly evident. The college course, if it is well 
 carried, requires the most of a man's time. The self- 
 supporting student is attempting two tasks either of which 
 have ordinarily been considered sufficient to occupy a 
 man's whole time and energy. 
 
 There is also extant another notion to the effect that in 
 a college town it is easier to live on nothing or to pick up a 
 good job than in any other place. Many a young fellow 
 gravitates to a college town thinking he can get work there 
 more readily than in any other place. Quite the contrary 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 175 
 
 is true. The average college town is the most expensive 
 place to live one can find, and the fact that there are al- 
 ways hundreds of young fellows hunting for something to 
 do to eke out an inadequate income, makes the oppor- 
 tunity for lucrative employment quite uncertain. 
 
 There are men, of course, in every college who earn all 
 their living and who do well in their studies, but their num- 
 ber is small. Such men usually have some peculiar talent, 
 such as the ability to play a musical instrument well, 
 for instance, which enables them to earn a considerable 
 amount of money in brief periods of time. I have spoken 
 to a boy since I began to write this article who is earn- 
 ing his expenses through college, and he tells me that 
 during the past week he has earned $39.00 by playing the 
 piano in an orchestra for four evenings. There are not 
 many like him, however. 
 
 The man who works his way in college must have 
 concentration and a quick, alert mind which will enable 
 him to get his lessons in a short time. He must be re- 
 sourceful, and let his head help his hands in earning his 
 living. He must be physically strong and robust, for often 
 he will need to get on for a time on less sleep than the aver- 
 age man, or his sleeping hours, at least, will be interrupted 
 or irregular. He will have to be capable of sacrifice, for 
 the man without money can have few of the social pleas- 
 ures which fill so much of the leisure time of the college 
 man. He can never afford to be an athlete, for participa- 
 tion in athletics will take up all his leisure time and leave 
 
176 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 him no opportunity to earn his living. He should not be 
 too sensitive or given to despondent spells, for his work 
 will not always be pleasant or to his liking. He will often 
 have to wait on his inferiors and say nothing when they 
 treat him with condescension. I should never advise a 
 boy to attempt to earn his living in college if he does not 
 have to ,do so; often I think it is better to delay en- 
 trance to college until a respectable sum has been saved, 
 and sometimes I am sure it is better not to go to college at 
 all than to make the sacrifices and to do the worse than 
 commonplace work which many self-supporting students 
 find it impossible to avoid. I should rather enter college 
 at twenty-two and do good work than to graduate at the 
 same age and leave behind me a record that was not to 
 my credit. 
 
 The boy who is always looking for practical things, who 
 does not want to study anything that fails to reveal at 
 once its practical appUcation or its immediate availability 
 as a money getter, is better off usually out of college than 
 in. I see such men every day. They are never able to 
 "see any use" in Latin, or philosophy, or literature; they 
 are constantly objecting because certain courses in which 
 they are registered are not what they thought they would 
 be; they are not getting anything out of them, they say, 
 quite likely because they are putting less into them them- 
 selves. Such men see very little in a college course, and 
 for them in fact there probably is little, for though the 
 college man is very likely to earn money more readily 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 177 
 
 because of his college training than other men, the fellow 
 who goes to college solely because he thinks it will prove 
 the readiest means to an easy and profitable job, might 
 better stay at home. 
 
 The choice of a college is a subject which should be 
 given some attention. The question is one often decided 
 by sentiment, by prejudice, from practical considerations 
 and from a thousand and one things sometimes trifling in 
 themselves. The boy who goes to college in his home town 
 is usually making a mistake. The only advantage such a 
 young fellow derives is a financial one. It is generally 
 cheaper to live at home than away from home, and, when 
 the matter of finances is a vital one, it is better for a boy 
 to go to college in his home town than not to go at all. 
 I have never, except for financial reasons, advised any 
 parents to move to a college town in order that they might 
 look after and care for their sons while they were under- 
 graduates in college, and I do not now recall the names of 
 any sons who were strengthened by having their parents 
 with them during the college course. 
 
 The boy living at home is usually less independent, less 
 aggressive, possesses less initiative than the one who is 
 thrown out upon his own resources to fight his own bat- 
 tles, to meet his own temptations, and to settle his own 
 difiiculties. The college practically always throws about 
 him sufficient restraint to keep him from going on the 
 rocks, and yet leaves him free enough to develop in- 
 dependence. If he is at home, his father, or especially his 
 
178 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 mother, undertakes to decide for him in most critical emer- 
 gencies and, though the judgment of the older person is 
 likely to be more dependable than that of the younger, 
 there is no training for the boy in depending upon his 
 elders' judgment. 
 
 The boy from the west will often gain an advantage by 
 going to an eastern institution for his education. Not that 
 he will be better taught there, or live La a more refined or a 
 rarer intellectual atmosphere, but because he will meet 
 different sorts of people, he will need to adjust him- 
 self to quite different conditions from those to which he 
 has been used, and he will get a broader outlook upon life. 
 Such an experience will not be at all likely to make him 
 dissatisfied with his own particular part of the country, 
 but on the contrary will cause him to value it more highly. 
 When I go to the mountains I always come back to the 
 prairies with a sense of joy and satisfaction. 
 
 For this reason the New Englander or the Southerner 
 would often be immeasurably benefited by taking his 
 college training in the west. It would modify his provin- 
 cialism, it would disabuse his mind of the idea that the 
 most of the United States lies east of the Hudson river 
 or south of Mason and Dixon's line, it would humanize 
 him and teach him democracy, and, best of all, if he chooses 
 his college wisely, it would give him as excellent a training 
 as he could get anywhere else in the country, and often at 
 considerably less expense. 
 
 Each college has its own traditions, its own atmosphere, 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 179 
 
 its own ideals and character. It is well worth while look- 
 ing into these things in choosing a college. It is almost as 
 necessary to avoid incompatibihty of tastes in choosing 
 a college as it is in choosing a wife. There is the conserva- 
 tive college and the liberal; the college in a country 
 town and the country town about a college; there is the 
 college in a city and the college near one. Whether one 
 Ukes one sort of situation or another depends very much 
 upon the individual himself. 
 
 The subject of the large institution versus the small one 
 has been much discussed. I have been a student in a 
 large institution where I knew nobody and where nobody 
 had the slightest curiosity or desire to know me; I have 
 been a teacher in a small institution which grew during 
 my term of service to one of the largest universities in the 
 country. Each type of college has its own advantages. 
 
 The main argument in support of the small college as 
 opposed to the big university is about the same as that 
 offered in defense of the country town as contrasted with 
 the city. The small college is more democratic, perhaps. 
 Students in it come more closely into touch with the older 
 members of the faculty and with each other. The number 
 of extra-curriculum activities does not vary materially 
 from those in the larger institution, and, since the enroll- 
 ment of students is small, the competition for student 
 honors is very much less keen. While in a big institution 
 there might easily be one thousand students in the senior 
 or junior class, in the small college there would not be one 
 
180 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 tenth as many. There is more chance, therefore, in the 
 small college for the shy, unaggressive, commonplace man 
 to gain prominence than in the larger one. There is, per- 
 haps, more general comradeship, brotherly feeling, the life 
 is more like home life, though the nimiber of men whom 
 one can know in a small college is not greater if so great as 
 is possible in a big university outside of a great city. 
 
 The larger institution makes the stronger appeal to the 
 man with initiative because it offers to him greater pos- 
 sibilities. To be manager or editor of a great college 
 daily, to be captain of an athletic team whose vic- 
 tories are heralded from New York to San Francisco, to 
 be president of a student organization in which there are 
 five thousand votes to be considered, makes a strong ap- 
 peal to the ambitious student. The opportunity, too, to 
 touch elbows with men from all over the world, such men 
 as one finds in a big university, is no small matter. The 
 student in any large American university has a chance to 
 know men from almost every civiUzed country in the 
 world. The varietyof interests, also, in the big institution 
 is worth considering. I count it as one of the most valuable 
 experiences of my college course, that though I was pri- 
 marily interested in languages and literature while I was 
 an undergraduate, yet I had daily associations with en- 
 gineers and chemists, with prep-medics and mathemati- 
 cians, and that, without consciously doing so, I acquired a 
 considerable body of information and grew interested in 
 a thousand incidental things through this association. One 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 181 
 
 is more alone in a big institution, one has more freedom, 
 one must more often fight single-handed one's own battles. 
 There is more chance of being lost in the crowd and more 
 honor if one rises above it. 
 
 One would suppose, if he did not know otherwise, that 
 a freshman in college barring the matter of a few months 
 difference in age, is quite similar to a senior in high school, 
 but whoever assumed such a premise would be far from 
 the truth. One can always tell a freshman at college, just 
 as, with few exceptions, one can tell an American college 
 man when he sees him whether in Duluth or Singa- 
 pore. The freshman may be as self-possessed as possible; 
 he may dress as he chooses; he may ask no foolish questions 
 or show no lack of familiarity with the college customs; but 
 he is a marked man the moment he sets foot on the campus. 
 Whether he comes from South Hadley, Massachusetts, or 
 a country town in Kansas with one general store and a 
 post office, it makes little difference, he can not conceal 
 the fact that he is a newcomer beginning his experi- 
 ence in college. He is like the American in Paris, or Rot- 
 terdam, who thinks that if he does not speak no one will 
 know him for a foreigner, but who is spotted a block away 
 by every small boy, and fakir, on the street. 
 
 No one knows how he tells a freshman — it is probably 
 a matter of intuition. But the freshman learns rapidly 
 to adapt himself to the new situation; he picks up at once 
 the ways of the campus; by Thanksgiving he seems Uke 
 an old settler, and by the end of the year he is ready to 
 
182 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 meet incoming freshmen with unerring recognition and 
 condescension. Sometimes he adapts himseK too incom- 
 pletely to his new environment. It is as much a fault to 
 cling rigidly to one's home manners and habits and dress 
 as it is to throw these to the winds and adopt the ex- 
 tremes of college customs and fads. In the unimportant 
 things of coUege life it is well for the freshman to keep his 
 eyes open and to "do as the Romans do"; it is not wise 
 for him, however, on his return home at Thanksgiving to 
 attempt to reproduce and to establish the customs of 
 Rome in his home community. 
 
 The differences between high school and college are 
 marked. The methods of wotk and the ways of living are 
 quite different from those in high school — quite different 
 in fact, from what the boy thinks they are. It is not sur- 
 prising that a high school boy's idea of college life is an 
 erroneous one. What he knows of college he has most 
 frequently gained from the exaggerated accounts of stu- 
 dent escapades which he has seen in the newspapers, or 
 from the stories which he has heard related by his big 
 brother or a local athlete who has returned home from the 
 scenes of his scholastic triumphs. Such tales are usually 
 unhampered by facts, and concern themselves more with 
 the unusual and the unimportant things of college than 
 with its real work. If he has visited college at all it has 
 more than likely been at the time of an important athletic 
 contest, or of an interscholastic meet, when nobody works, 
 or talks of work, and when the main thing under consider- 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 183 
 
 ation is the athletic victory, and perhaps the celebration 
 which follows. As he saw college then, it was a collection 
 of carefree young fellows with httle to do but to enjoy 
 themselves, and perhaps occasionally, if nothing more im- 
 portant prevented, to attend a few lectures. In point of 
 fact college life is a strenuous life, where every man should 
 be about his own business seriously and continuously. If 
 one is to get on well in college, or in life for that matter, 
 the sooner one recognizes this fact and adapts himself to 
 the situation the better. Failure in college comes from 
 a failure to recognize the fact that the aims of the college 
 are different from those of the high school, that the 
 amount of work required is greater, and that the methods 
 of doing it must, also, be different. A man must adjust 
 himself to these changed conditions if he would get on. 
 
 The high school boy has seldom worked independently. 
 He knew that if his work were not done when it should 
 be, his teacher would remind him of the fact. When he 
 was in difficulty there was some one to get him out. What- 
 ever he did, or thought, was somewhat under the super- 
 vision of someone older or more experienced than him- 
 seK. He judged of his success, or his progress, by what 
 these people said of him or to him. In college it is different. 
 Everyone must look after himself; much of his training 
 consists in his doing sq. If he doesn't hustle, no one is 
 hkely at once to call his attention to the fact. 
 
 The problem of living has not materially concerned a 
 freshman before he comes to college. He has lived at 
 
184 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 home, and his comings and goings have been under the 
 direction of the older members of the household. Most 
 of his wants have been provided for without much thought 
 or attention on his part. Mother has darned his stockings 
 and picked out his neckties, and father has paid the bills. 
 This matter of paying the bills is not to be ignored. The 
 college man will get on more happily, he will more readily 
 learn business methods, and he will live comfortably on 
 a smaller amount if he has a stipulated monthly allow- 
 ance. It ought to be suflBcient to enable him to live com- 
 fortably, and it ought not to be so much as to necessitate 
 wasting his time in order to spend it. The most discon- 
 tented students about college and those who give college 
 officers most concern are the students who have too little 
 money to spend and those who have too much. 
 
 The habits of the boy going to college are as much the 
 result of the conventions and customs of the community 
 in which he has been brought up as of his own tendencies 
 or inclinations. If he learned to dance it was because all 
 the fellows did, if he went to church regularly, that was 
 no necessary indication that he was religiously inclined; 
 it was simply the custom. When he needed anything he 
 asked for it without knowing much as to what it cost or 
 where it came from. His comings and goings were some- 
 what supervised. 
 
 At college when his study program is decided upon, the 
 disposal of his time is largely in his own hands. He may 
 study one thing or another, or he need not study at all. 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 185 
 
 He may read in the library, or walk down town, or watch 
 the team practicing on the athletic field; there is no one to 
 call him to account. If he attends regularly upon classes, 
 and shows a reasonable intelligence regarding his studies, 
 he may employ his time as he pleases. He may choose 
 his own companions, and act with absolute independ'- 
 ence. There is a delightful freedom in all this which 
 is sometimes deceiving. He may assume that since no 
 one calls him to account today there will be no reckoning 
 tomorrow, but in this he is mistaken, for he is in reality 
 being looked after pretty carefully. His time is his own, 
 but it is his own to use wisely, and if he fails in this regard, 
 he will suffer in the final reckoning, and that reckoning 
 comes all too soon. 
 
 On entering college every freshman will have some 
 definite problems to face in a more personal way than 
 they have ever before been presented to him. In most 
 cases he has previously been familiar more or less closely 
 with all the temptations which are to be found in college, 
 but at home he has often been shielded from them — they 
 have been more a name than a reality to him. Sooner or 
 later every man must meet temptation face to face and 
 say yes or no to its proposals. To many a yoimg fellow 
 the critical time comes at about the age when he goes to 
 college. For this the college is in no way responsible, 
 though many conscientious men have tried to hang the 
 blame there. 
 
 I should not feel that I was quite doing my duty if I did 
 
186 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 not say a word about the temptations peculiar to young 
 men at the age when they enter college, and which in col- 
 lege, perhaps, are touched up with peculiar allurements 
 and attractions. It is true that a large majority of 
 young men are little affected by these temptations and 
 still fewer are permanently injured by them, but those 
 who fail in college do so usually not from inability to do the 
 work, but because they are led away by these other things. 
 
 May I speak in a more personal and direct way to 
 the boy entering college? First of all there is the habit 
 of loafing. Before you leave the train which is carrying 
 you to your college town, sometimes unfortunately even 
 before you are out of high school, you will have made 
 engagements for days and weeks in advance which will 
 often seriously interfere with the real work of college. 
 There is the fraternity rushing, and the open grate fire, 
 and the pipe, and the vaudeville show, and the new- 
 found friend, and the moon smiling down and inviting 
 you out to stroll, and all these pleading in the strongest 
 terms for self-indulgence, and self-gratification. There 
 are a thousand other new and fascinating things which 
 you may call by any name you please, but which after 
 all are only other names for loafing. If you get into 
 the habit of dawdling away your time, you can conjure 
 up a hundred apparently good excuses for not studying, 
 and for not going to class. 
 
 Perhaps one of the main reasons why it all seems so 
 attractive and so safe is because the days are so long. 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 187 
 
 and the time of final reckoning so far ahead and youth 
 is so optimistic. I seldom call a man for procrastination 
 and neglect of duty who does not tell me that it had 
 been his serious intention to see me that day even if 
 I had not called him, and I presume he is often telling 
 the truth. I seldom talk to a loafer who has not promised 
 himself, even before I urge him to get down to serious 
 work, that he will stop loafing at once. The loafer has 
 a sensitive conscience. 
 
 "I was coming in to see you today even if you had 
 not called me," Walsh said to me this morning. "I 
 know what you're going to say; I'm a loafer." 
 
 Loafing is a habit easily learned and hard to break, 
 and it ruins more college careers at the very outset than 
 does any other vice. 
 
 Then you should have a regular time for going to work 
 each evening. You should not be turned from the habit 
 by alluring invitations to get into card games, or to stand 
 around the piano and develop your taste for poor music, 
 or to waste the evening in attendance upon a low-class 
 vaudeville show, or a racy moving picture performance, 
 or even to sit in front of the fire and talk about politics 
 or the girls with your room-mate. When the time comes 
 for study, you should go to it as if you liked it, and do 
 this six days in the week and three or four hours a day. 
 If you do this for a month or two there will be little likeli- 
 hood of your developing into a chronic loafer. I have 
 said all of this knowing that every healthy young fellow 
 
188 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 will want pleasure and relaxation and knowing also that 
 he ought to have it. But the day furnishes time enough 
 for class work and study and recreation and sleep if 
 the twenty-four hours are intelligently utilized, and 
 there is plenty of healthful recreation for the body and the 
 mind if one will look for it. 
 
 The temptation to waste time in gambling is an ever- 
 present danger. There is a fascination in risking your 
 judgment in a bet with another fellow or in a game of 
 chance, which many a young man finds it hard to resist. 
 It is so easy to argue that one must have some recreation, 
 and, that if the time spent in playing games of chance 
 is not intemperate or in excess of what one can afford, 
 there should be no objection to the practice on the part 
 of any sensible people. As to the money lost or won (for 
 some one usually wins) it is often a negligible quantity, 
 and in most cases not more perhaps than you might 
 spend on a first class show or entertainment of any sort. 
 
 "What is the harm to me?" a young man asked me 
 not long ago. "I can afford the time and the money 
 it costs me. Why should I not play poker for money?" 
 
 I should answer that it is a dangerous habit, because 
 it almost invariably leads to excesses. The gambler 
 learns to take risks which he can not afford, to waste 
 time that should be given to something else, to bet and 
 to lose money which was not intended for this purpose, 
 and he develops at once a reputation for unreliability. 
 No business man, even if he himself gambles, cares to em- 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 189 
 
 ploy a young fellow who has, or has had the habit, simply 
 because he knows the dapgers which surround it. I have 
 known few men who began the habit in college who found 
 it easy to break, and I have known none who, even though 
 he played for small stakes and won or lost very little 
 money, was not injured by it. If the habit is nothing 
 more, it is a time waster and leads into associations which 
 it were usually better not to have formed. 
 
 As to drinking, perhaps, now that prohibition has 
 become nation wide, we shall have little or none of that 
 in college. Many fellows say to me that they learned 
 to drink at home with their fathers and mothers about 
 the dinner table. If it must be done, I know of no better 
 place to do it. The drinking habit as I have seen it prac- 
 ticed in a college community has never been a help nor 
 an advantage to any student, and it has usually been 
 a distinct injury. The only excuse for it is that it is 
 supposed to encourage sociability and to promote good 
 fellowship; but the sort of good fellowship which it en- 
 courages is not of very high order. The men and women 
 whom you are likely to meet at drinking places are not 
 the kind that a college student will be benefited by know- 
 ing, and the time spent in their society is not usually spent 
 in such a way as to make him a better citizen. It is a fact, 
 also, that practically all the young fellows I have known 
 who speak of the harmlessness of "taking a glass of beer 
 occasionally" at one time or another take more than they 
 can cany and are the worse for it. The safest plan if you 
 
190 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 are going to college with the idea of doing honest, satis-' 
 factory work is to leave the drinking of intoxicating U- 
 quors to those who have no real interest in the develop- 
 ment of their moral and intellectual powers, for the drink- 
 ing habit will invaribly play havoc with your college work, 
 not to speak of your morals. 
 
 Smoking, too, although it can scarcely be called an 
 immoral habit, has upon nervous and growing young 
 fellows a bad effect. It is likely to develop restlessness 
 and indigestion with the result that your power of con- 
 centration is weakened, your brain dulled, and the likeli- 
 hood of your doing good work very much lessened. The 
 habit of using tobacco is in these days so common 
 among young men that it seems almost a waste of 
 time to speak against it. I have, however, seen too 
 many nervous systems weakened by its use, and 
 the work of too many students injured irreparably, 
 not to utter a word of warning against it. Though 
 the number of young fellows in college who smoke is 
 regrettably large, you will gain nothing either in prestige 
 or dignity by doing so. The ability to hold a pipe between 
 the teeth or to puff at a cigarette does not make you 
 more of a man even in a college community, and the fact 
 that you do not smoke brings you into no discredit. No 
 one need to say that he was forced into smoking in col- 
 lege or that he was made uncomfortable by refusing to 
 do so: If you find, therefore, that smoking is injuring 
 your temper and your pocketbook and your studies, give 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 191 
 
 it up; you will be quite as popular as you were before, and 
 maybe more of a man. 
 
 If you have come from a healthy home where you 
 have been taught by a good mother to live a clean life, 
 and to respect all women, you may be shocked at first 
 by some of the views which are presented to you, and 
 later you may even come to the point of asking yourself 
 ■ if you have not been a trifle prudish in your ideas, and if 
 the other fellow may not be right in his views. There will 
 be those who will try to teach you that it is not only 
 not necessary for you to lead a chaste clean life, but that 
 it is positively not a healthy thing for you to do so. They 
 will teach you that if you desire to gain your highest 
 physical development you must gratify your physical 
 desires, and such men are only too willing to show you 
 how this may be done. The statements of thousands 
 of reputable physicians are to the effect that no young 
 man suffers physically by living a life of chastity, but 
 on the contrary he gains in strength and endurance by 
 such a course. The young man who allows himself to 
 be led into the associations of lewd women either through 
 curiosity or the desire to know something of "real life" 
 is running the gravest sort of danger. Most men who 
 submit themselves to such temptations fall a prey to 
 them, and the result in most cases is a weakened will, 
 a lowered moral tone, disease, a wrecked body, and eternal 
 regret. 
 
 Only a few months ago I stood beside the operating 
 
192 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 table where a young college student was about to submit 
 to a critical operation to alleviate a disease which he had 
 contracted from a prostitute. He was thinking, I know, 
 of the pain which he must endure and of the danger 
 to his life, and looking up into my face he said, having 
 in mind the many fellows to whom I talk every year, " Tell 
 them they always have to pay for it; they always have 
 to pay for it." Through many years of observation on 
 thousands of students I have come to know that the 
 boy's words are true. The clean, continent life is the 
 only safe one, and those young men who think other 
 wise and who gratify their physical passions "pay for 
 it " ultimately in ruined health, and ruined characters, 
 and ruined studies. The student with a clean mind 
 and clean morals has the best chance of winning high 
 scholastic standing. One other thing that you should 
 well keep in mind — some day you are going to have 
 a home of your own; and to take to it the girl whom you 
 have chosen to be your wife. If at that time you can 
 come to her with a body free from the effects of disease 
 and a past life clean and wholesome, you may count 
 the sacrifices of self-control as nothing compared with 
 the satisfaction you will then feel. 
 
 In going to college most young fellows find themselves 
 away from the restraints of home for the first time. Fa- 
 thers and mothers often feel that this sending the boy 
 away from home and putting him in the way of temptation 
 and upon his own responsibility is a danger which they 
 
GOING TO COLLEGE 193 
 
 can not risk. Sometime or other, if one is to leam to 
 swim, he must be thrown into the water, and allowed to 
 make the struggle alone. It is not likely to work any dam- 
 age if some one is sufficiently interested to stand by and 
 watch the struggle, and if drowning is imminent, which 
 is seldom the case, to extend the helping hand. Usually 
 the swimmer learns because he has to, as the muskrat 
 was said to leam to cUmb a tree. Having been given 
 preliminary training he must be allowed to work out his 
 own methods; he may go under a few times and take in a 
 little water, but he learns in the end to swim. 
 
 It is equally true of the college man. He must learn 
 independence and self-reUance, and self-direction in the 
 same way that young people learn to swim. One of the 
 greatest sources of satisfaction to a college officer is to 
 see how few suffer real disaster in the learning, and, when 
 these unfortunate results do come, the trouble is quite as 
 often at home as elsewhere, and would very likely have 
 occurred no matter where the young man had been. 
 
 The matter of your associates is a serious one. The 
 majority of the people with whom you are most intimately 
 thrown you may very likely have never seen before; of 
 their habits and their ancestors you can at first know 
 but little. You should use caution, if you are to choose 
 wisely. You will be better off and safer in the end if you 
 go slowly and look about you before you plunge into too 
 fast friendships, either literally or figuratively. Your 
 friends are most likely to be your making or your 
 
194 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 
 
 undoing. You have your opportunity to choose them con- 
 sciously, and you should do this with a full knowledge 
 of what your choice may mean. Good friends will lead 
 you in the right direction, will help you to cultivate 
 healthy, right habits, and will aid you in getting out of < 
 your college course the best there is in it. Ill chosen 
 friends may easily defeat all the right purposes for which 
 you have come to college. Now, as always, a man is 
 judged by the company he keeps. 
 
 All these problems are diflBcult, but they are possible of 
 solution, and they are only a part of the training in the 
 discipline of the mind and of the body which forms the 
 major part of education. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America.