THE HOUSEHOLD | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1878

THE HOUSEHOLD.

"What Shall We Do with Our Boys?"

SET them to work. "Twenty devils employ the man who does not employ himself," says a Spanish proverb; and boys are no exception. They have a superabundance of animal life, which is always boiling over, and it must run into one of two channels—the channel of mischief or the channel of use. And it depends altogether which channel it takes as to which one of the two types of character will be found in manhood—that of shiftlessness or that of thrift.

About one hundred miles from Boston is a village in which resided the families of Doctor Pillberry and Farmer Bloomfield. Doctor Pillberry had seven boys, who became very decided characters, and were very much "developed" and "progressed." The doctor was called early in the morning to see his patients, and returned late at night; and the boys out of school-time had abundant leisure and opportunity to seek seven other spirits like themselves, and hang about stores and taverns, lounge in the streets, learn to fight and swear, and get down the gun and trample the clover-fields to blow bluebirds and robins in pieces. The Bloomfield boys were kept at work on the farm when school was not in, except when a holiday came around, such as the old election and general training days. At first they thought it rather hard, and they quoted to their Father the case of Tom Pillberry, who had a good time, and had such a fine chance to be somebody, while they were kept at work. Tom had time allowed him to hunt and fish, skin live eels, stone windows, rob orchards, steal melons, torment the cat, shoot at marks, smoke cigars, and all such pleasant pursuits and recreations; while the Bloomfield boys had to drive cows, dig over potato-patches, and do the like tedious and vulgar things. It was rather hard, and they wished their father had been a doctor, a minister, or a lawyer. However, Farmer Bloomfield knew what he was doing; and the boys finally learned to love their duties, and took pride in raising the largest potatoes and pumpkins in the town; though it mortified them when the Pillberry boys flourished over them at election-balls and fourth of Julys, where the Pillberrys always appeared exhaling essences and strutting in buckram.

Thirty years makes a wonderful shifting of scenery on the theater of life, and—presto!—the Pillberrys and Bloomfields are coming up now in the fifth act. Exeunt the Pillberry boys and enter the Pillberry men. They have exhaled all their cologne and pomatum, and the buckram has got all its stiffening taken out, and they look draggled and forlorn. They have gone into business and failed, married wives and have families they cannot support, have not forgotten the store and the tavern—in short have "progressed" into general thriftlessness and dissipation. They run in debt and never pay, and never mean to; borrow and never return; have added chewing and drinking to their first narcotic accomplishments, and are generally loose in their habits. The Bloomfield boys have gone into business and succeeded; one of them holds a high office in the state; and the chief enterprises of the town depend mainly upon them. And whenever anything is started requiring perseverance, hardihood, energy, public spirit, conscience, generosity, and capital, people always call first upon the Bloomfields.

This, we pledge our readers, is no fancy sketch, but a chapter of history.

Now for the "improvement" of our sermon, or story rather, showing the advantage of giving boys occupation.

First, it is the best physical education they can have, giving them good digestion, hard muscles, and robust frames; and you will not be obliged to put them on spare diet for dyspepsia, to send them abroad to be turned blue in water-cures, or put them on beef-tea and water toast at home.

Secondly, it is the best way to keep the twenty devils out, by first bringing the opposite virtues in; for then the virtues have the ground by the right of pre-emption, and the vices will be kept out forever by a moral statute of limitations.

Thirdly, they very soon learn, and in the only way they ever will, that life is a serious matter, and is not a frivolity and a farce—a thing which a great many people do not learn till they learn it to their sorrow.

Fourthly, you give practical point to your moral instructions, instead of spending your breath for nothing in giving advice. Moral instruction is well, but standing alone it is worthless; and to apply it to boys boiling over with animal life, and with nothing to do, is like reading the ten commandments to a tornado.

Fifthly, you settle practically the question about corporal punishment; for, generally speaking, only idle boys will need it.

Lastly, and summing up, and putting it as a maxim of education, as fast as the faculties develop, give them something useful to do.—Religious Magazine.