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That Boy of Yours

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 25, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 33.

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That Boy of Yours

By Frederick E. George

By Frederick E. George
A PHOTO lies before me — the photo of a boy — a beautiful boy. He reclines against a great tree, one arm thrown around the gnarled gray trunk. An ivied wall forms a picturesque background.
Dark curls tumble from his finely shaped head, encircling it like an aureole, and falling in soft undulations on his shoulders. His upturned face at once compels attention, for it is not an ordinary face. The exquisitely molded features, the great brown eyes with their long, fringelike lashes, beaming with hope, innocence, imagination and the joy of living; the fine aquiline nose and pensive curving lips all unite to form an ideal picture such as might inspire a poet or be the envy and the despair of a sculptor. What a perfect specimen of boyhood! What pride must fill his father’s heart! What joy must thrill that father’s hopes and aspirations as he looks down the long vista of years and beholds his boy — a man!
Years pass. Seated in my study my thoughts wander back to the old days. I think of all “my boys” out in the world now — some in college — some already in business — and I wonder how they are “turning out.” I wonder if any of the little lessons have struck home and if they find life a little pleasanter for my having lived.
“And teach him and train him to be like a man.”
“And teach him and train him to be like a man.”
A knock at my door and a letter is handed in. As I hastily open it, a photo falls to the floor.
“— University, “Oct. 5, ’07.
“Dear Professor:
“It was very kind of you to remember me on my birthday. I have read the book you sent me and wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart for it. I wish my father had given me something like that to read two years ago.
“I am trying to live up to the standards you set before me, but it is very hard to do so in this place. There is no restraint whatever on the boys. They come to lectures or stay away as they please, and nobody seems to care.
“Thanks for your words of encouragement. I am trying to keep cheerful and to make each failure a stepping-stone to success, but I get blue very often. But I am trying, and you are helping me to lift myself up.
“Write soon again.
“M——.”
Little M——! Six years since I have seen him! Six short years and now he is in college.
Ah, the photo! What? Impossible — but yes! there is that finely poised head and those glorious, luminous eyes — the same — but with what a difference! The innocence, the straightforward frankness is gone; one eyelid seems to droop; those lines — that indecision, cigarettes — and — and other things. Yes, other things.
I gaze earnestly at the picture of the youth, and then I draw from an old book the photo of the boy, with head erect, one arm thrown around the gnarled gray trunk of a great tree.
How can I help condemning a humanity that allows such things to be? Our educational system, our modern ideas of modesty, are all wrong. It is false modesty that prevents the parent from giving a straightforward answer to the natural questionings and wonderings of his son! False modesty that turns a pure, innocent child to the gutter for an answer which he always gets — clothed in the vilest and most filthy language! False modesty that prevents our schools from giving our boys, in a clean, truthful manner, the knowledge necessary for their very existence.—National Purity Federation Literature.