Mary's Boys by Lillian Trott

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 7, 1904

Mary's Boys

By Lillian Trott

A COUNTRY girl whom I have known since her marriage carried her healthy country ideas of work into her city home. When her boys reached the age when other boys become problems, she merely gave them room and guidance. When the home was selected, she chose an unfashionable quarter in the suburbs, paying for wide grounds instead of for stylish neighbors and surroundings. These grounds were made as delightful as trees, arbors, walks, and flowers could make them, and the back yard was given over entirely to the boys, who in their tender years had a sand bank, a tent, a swing, a ball ground, and pets there.

As they grew older and evinced the normal boy's craving for tools, the loft of the big shed was set apart for their use, and a work-bench put in. They were allowed to use their spending money in their own ways, and gradually an extensive set of tools found their way up the stairs. The tools earned the wherewithal to gratify other tastes. They partitioned off one end of the apartment for a toy steam-engine, and the opposite corner furnished a telephone office, whence they ran wires to the rooms of their near-by boy friends.

Benches, tables, and shelves they made to suit themselves, and in time a second-hand typewriter, a small printing-press, a phonograph, and a fiddle found their way here. For a time they made the press a real education by editing a tiny paper, and soliciting subscriptions and contributions from their friends.

One of the boys is an inveterate collector, and his glass cases of specimens—insects, eggs, stones, shells, plants—are carefully shelved in this big room. The other has a mania for mounting birds and small animals; and, although each has a separate bedroom with tables and shelves, they prefer to do all littering work here. He is so interested in the work that he is learning with a specialist, not because his parents expect him to make taxidermy his calling, but because it is a cheap and useful recreation for the boy. Such employments out of school are broadening. In working and playing hours, boys must be occupied, filling their youthful minds with knowledge of some kind; and it would better be enjoyable and elevating—and off the street. Their country vacations, too, were colored by their tastes.

“But not all their amusements exclude father and mother,” Mary adds. “We make our boys’ interests ours. They have fitted up a dark room in the

house to develop their photographs in, and put a skylight in one slope of the attic roof, because they imagine faces can be better ‘taken’ with the light from above. We have a telescope, too, and study the heavens by way of that same skylight. Then we read and play games together evenings and rainy days. No, my boys have no inclination toward doubtful company. They are so engrossed with home pursuits that they even decline an occasional invitation to a party. In my country home my brothers had room for all such diversions; and I made up my mind that, if we couldn’t manage space enough to give my boys room to swing around with both arms outstretched, we would have to move back.” —Lillian Trott.