p. 12 | No Place for Boys

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Feb 2, 1905

No Place for Boys

WHAT can a boy do, and where can a boy stay, If he always is told to get out of the way? He can not sit here, and he must not stand there. The cushions that cover that fine rocking-chair Were put there, of course, to be seen and admired; And a boy has no business to ever be tired. The beautiful roses and flowers that bloom On the floor of the darkened and delicate room Are not made to walk on, at least not for boys; The house is no place, anyway, for their noise.

Yet boys must walk somewhere, and what if their feet, Sent out of our house, sent into the street, Should step round the corner and pause at the door, Where other boys' feet have paused often before, Should pass through the gateway of glittering light, Where jokes that are merry, and songs that are bright, Ring out a warm welcome with flattering voice, And temptingly say, “Here's a place for the boys”?

Ah! what if they should? What if your boy or mine Should cross o'er the threshold that marks out the line 'Twixt virtue and vice, 'Twixt pureness and sin, And leave all his innocent boyhood within? O, what if they should, because you and I, While the days and the months and the years hurry by, Are too busy with cares and with life's fleeting joys To make round our hearthstones a place for the boys?

There's a place for the boys. They will find it somewhere; And if our own homes are too daintily fair For the touch of their fingers, the tread of their feet, They'll find it, and find it, alas! in the street, 'Mid the gildings of sin and the glitter of vice; And with heartaches and longings we pay a dear price, For the getting of gain that our lifetime employs, If we fail in providing a place for the boys.

A place for the boys—dear mothers, I pray, As cares settle down round our short earthly way, Don't let us forget, by our kind, loving deeds, To show we remember their pleasures and needs, Though our souls may be vexed with the problems of life, And worn with besetments and toiling and strife. Our hearts will keep younger—your tired heart and mine— If we give them a place in their innermost shrine; And to life's latest hour 'twill be one of our joys That we keep a small corner, a place for the boys.

—Selected.