Boys Out After Night-fall.
Is not this a serious evil which should commend itself for correction to parents and guardians? asks a correspondent, who has long been an observer, and is a sympathizing lover of boys, who likes to see them happy, cheerful and gleesome, and is not willing that they should be cheated out of their share of the pleasures of youth. Really, it is difficult to understand how a hightened, useful man, can be the ripened fruit of a boy who has not enjoyed a fair share of the glad privileges of youth. But while the friend of the youth watches with a jealous eye all customs which entrench upon their rights and privileges, he is equally fearful lest parents permit their sons indulgences which ruin their morals in almost all instances, and knows of none more dangerous than that of allowing their sons to be in the streets after night-fall. There they will learn many evil practices, such as theft, drunkenness and profanity. They acquire, under cover of night, an unhealthy and excited state of mind, bad practices, and criminal sentiments, which it will take years of the most judicious training to eradicate. Indeed it is in the street after night-fall that boys principally acquire the education that fits them, in after years, for becoming dissolute, criminal men, and makes them fit subjects for the penitentiary. *Parents should adopt an inflexible rule never to permit their sons, under any circumstances, to go into the street after night-fall, to engage in out-door sports, or to meet other boys for the purpose of lounging around groceries and saloons, but rather let them have some innocent amusement in-doors, with plenty of juvenile books and papers. Many a young man has been ruined in health, business and character, who can trace the commencement of his ruin to the evenings spent in the street.