IN a late number of Punch, a prodigal son who has gone to the bad is represented as saying to his father in answer to a stern rebuke: "Ah, it's all very well for you to talk, father. It's precious easy to keep straight on nothing a year, and you were thrown penniless on the world at fourteen! I should like to have seen you in my circumstances, after a public school and college education, and an allowance of £500 per annum ever since!" It must be admitted that the young man's defense was unanswerable—a father who had been guilty of such lack of wisdom in the training of his son had no right to blame anybody but himself if the son turned out badly. He had, in fact, tempted his boy to dissipation, and then chided him for yielding. This is a fair example of the way in which scores of boys are ruined yearly, especially in our large cities. Parents supply them liberally with money, permit them to spend their time as they please, and are horrified some day by the discovery that their darling boy is a sot or a villain. Nothing can be more disastrous for a boy than too much spending-money, and too much spare time to spend it in. Of course we all think that our boys are the best in the world; that we have so carefully instilled the principles of right living into their minds that they will not fall victims to the temptations that swallow up other boys. And in this blind confidence many parents go on till some disgraceful or criminal act opens their eyes to the real state of the case. New York is full of young men, the sons of rich fathers who themselves began life as poor boys, who have nothing to do but to spend their large allowances in the way that will do them the most harm. Their days and nights are passed in the companionship of youths as empty-headed as themselves, varied by association with men of doubtful reputation and women whose reputation is not in the least doubtful. What but misery, degradation, and crime can be the ultimate result of such a life? If fathers will sow the wind, they must not complain when they reap the whirlwind. Only less disastrous than rash indulgence is the policy of stern repression. Some rich fathers, frightened by the ruin of their neighbors' boys, bring up their own in the most rigid way. Their boys never have any spending-money that they do not have to account for, to the last cent, and not much even on those terms. Their boys are kept under strict surveillance, and are not allowed to go anywhere without permission. When their education is finished, they are put into the counting-room or the office, and compelled to work as hard as any poor boy. No attempt is made to interest them in the business or profession thus chosen for them, and they naturally feel for it only disgust and repugnance. Well, one day the father dies, and a large fortune falls to the boys thus trained. They proceed to make ducks and drakes of it after the most approved fashion. Never having been trained to the right use of money, they spend it more profusely than the boys who have always had it; and having always been kept under special restraint as to their habits, they plunge into the wildest kind of dissipation. The very anxiety of the father to keep his sons429from evil has turned out to be the chief instrument of their ruin. These are the two extremes which are seen every day in such a city as New York. It is of course true that in the great majority of homes no such desperate state of things exists, but the cases we have typified are all too common. The safe middle course between over-indulgence and undue severity is not, perhaps, easy to hit, yet it must be attained approximately unless a boy's character is to be hopelessly spoiled. On the whole, we suppose that over-indulgence is responsible for the ruin of more boys than any other cause. The tendency of American fathers and mothers is too much to live for their children only, to sacrifice themselves in order to gratify their whims and extravagant notions, to efface themselves socially for the sake of their advancement. When character is not utterly ruined by such a system, there is great danger that it will be marred by selfishness, and by the lack of that consideration for others which marks the Christian gentleman.