p. 387 | The Small Boy

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 25, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 25.

The Small Boy.

THE small boy of the age sadly needs pruning. He is not only something of a nuisance at present, but he is not a promising citizen for the future. If the child be father of the man, it looks as if we are called upon to discipline the parent. The small boy of old was led to believe by his father and mother that he should be seen and not heard; that he was always a subject, only earning independence when he deserved it, and the fact was impressed upon him that there were a great many things he could not handle until he had grown to be a man. Nowadays the small boy puts on the man early. He is forward, not to say impertinent; he is encouraged to show his precocity, especially before strangers, and he is allowed to go out into the world and forage for amusement before he is well through his alphabet or has heard of the ten commandments. It is not alone independence of spirit he is taught; it is independence of all responsibility, moral and otherwise. The small boy of old knew that a good many of his father's habits were those of a grown up individual, which he could not assume until he had matured. He was led to respect old age—all people older than himself; he was educated to be civil and polite, and never under any consideration to be rude. Today the proud parent laughs over what may be rather funny, but is impertinence, and excuses dangerous exhibitions of depravity on the score that he "is only a boy." The first thing the small boy gets hold of, just as soon as he can borrow, or beg, or obtain money, is a pistol. He is accustomed to see his father every night take out a revolver from his pocket and put it somewhere handy. What his father does is good enough for him, and although he has sufficient sense to know that there is a danger of punishment and prison in shooting anybody, he still believes it manly to threaten his antagonist with a pistol, however slight the quarrel may be. There are fathers who go so far as to give their small boys a pistol as a Christmas present, and provide them with cartridges. Does it call for any argument that there is enough temporary insanity and transitory mania in ordinary human nature without training the young child to settle children's disputes with a pistol?

The small boy indulges in cigarettes. This is popularly supposed to be a harmless amusement. It is an accessory of the most dangerous dissipation. It is a habit that is not compatible with cleanliness in boys, or proper development of taste and self-respect. It simply trains a boy to the use of a weed that has its benefits, when judiciously used, but which in his case lays the foundation for stronger and more dangerous stimulants, when cigarettes have grown too mild for the system. There are small boys whose parents permit them to have a night off, when they may go down town and stay out all night if they feel so inclined. No questions are asked, and if they do come home in the middle of the night, drunk, they may be mildly admonished, but not seriously. They are only boys. But there is still a more serious side to the small boy. The bad language he is allowed to indulge in is bad enough. The freedom and license he enjoys are reprehensible in the extreme. But the small boy has his love affairs with the female sex at a very early age, and they are not innocuous. They are patent to disinterested people, but it is a curious freak of human nature that parents can see their boy's every-day companions indulging in very suspicious immorality without being able to suspect their own flesh and blood, and when, some day or other, the young hopefuls are caught in questionable devices the fond parent gives him a little lecture, which does not impress him that the thing is wrong, but that he is displaying bad taste. Then he solaces himself with the thought, "Boys will be boys," and seems to feel it nothing but justice that his boy should be allowed to indulge in depravity because other boys do it and other parents are equally reckless.

In a country so democratic as this there is a great danger to public morals in the careless bringing-up of boys. Where class rules, one material danger is avoided,—the risk of the dominance of the lowest forms of taste and vice. But where one man is as good as another, and social intercourse is untrammeled to a great degree, and where there is altogether greater and more generally possessed wealth, the natural tendency is to the development, not so much of crime, as moral depravity.—San Francisco Chronicle.