nrnia I r lit, ^SvwS % ■ THE BOY PROBLEM BY WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSIl Sixth Edition — Rewritten BOSTON QJtfr pilgrim Jfrraa New York Chicago nov iyu/ Copyright, Upl, 190», vm\7 By William Bykon Fohbubh Shr If art ^tll V * * * * Samuel Usher it* high iti1iit. aoston, ma»». Ha tjst PREFACE In the first edition of this book the author said : " There is a time when a boy emerges from the narrow bounds of a dependent self-life, and from the limits of the school and the home, and seeks the larger social world of the street and the ' gang.' The instinct is legitimate and masterful and full of possibilities of danger or help. Its recognition is recent, and literature upon it is slight." During the six years since these words were written the recog- nition of the gang-spirit among boys has rapidly developed, and the literature upon the subject has multiplied. To clrronicle the results of this recognition and this literature, the author has been in a quandary whether to write a new book or to revise this one. With the desire still to confine the necessary practical helps upon this subject within the covers of a single small volume, the author has preferred to rewrite the original book, to cast out whatever has come to seem of temporary value, and to add whatever is new that seems also to be good. In the belief that social work with boys has now pretty well crystallized into form, the bibliogra- phies at the close of each chapter are prepared this time with the view of making as few changes as possible necessary in the future. Naturally, the months since this book was first issued have brought to light much information which has altered the author's opinion upon many supposed facts of boy life and upon some methods of social work. But he is glad to bear testimony that regarding the importance of persistent social endeavor for boys in general his enthusiasm is greater than ever. If this revision bears any change of emphasis, it is in an increased seal tor spirit and personal service rather. than for devices. Hut the chief distinction between this and earlier editions of this book is that it has been rewritten with the interests of the parent rather than those of the religious and social Worker chiefly in mind. This has been done ljecau.se the author knows 3 I' U E FACE that many parents, noting the title of the book, have sought in n help which it was not originally intended to give, and because the author is persuaded that it is the parent rather than the sociologist who can solve the problem if he will. With the humility which every Father must feel, who knows in his heart that most of the parental responsibility has been borne by his wile, ami who has no desire to present his own partly-evolved offspring as samples to the universe, the author has also yielded to many requests by adding a special chapter bearing on the boy in the home. In this, even more than in the rest of the book, the individual boy is recognized, and some suggestions are made as to hia nurture. In many respects, therefore, the book is a new one. WILLIAM BYRON I'ORBUSH. CONTENTS Pack I. Boy Life: A Study of the Development and Espe- cially the Social Development of the Boy .... 7 II. By-Laws of Boy Life: Some Exceptions to and Limitations of Generalities about Boys 40 III. Ways in Which Boys Spontaneously Organize Socially: A Study of the "Gang" and Child- Societies 56 IV. Social Organizations Formed for Boys by Adults: A Critique of Boys' Clubs and Church Work for Boys 66 V. Some Suggestions as to How to Help Boys: A Constructive Study 130 VI. The Boy Problem in the Church 175 VII. The Boy in the Home 193 General Bibliography 209 Index 211 " Ilifi inHmado8, to confess a truth, wore in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He never cured greatly for the society of what are called good people. . . . He had a general aversion of being treated like :i grave or respectable character. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much <>f t lie boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, ami he resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses; bul such as they were, they are a key to Licate some of his writings." — From the preface to The Last Essays of Elia. THE BOY PROBLEM BOY LIFE The period of a boy's life is roughly divided as follows: Infancy, from birth to about six; childhood, from six to fourteen; adolescence, from about fourteen to manhood. It is not until about six that, with the rise and sensitization of memory, the continent of child-life appears above the sea to vision. Those years of molding and upheaval which we do not remember as to ourselves, and of which it is im- possible to secure verbal testimony, though silent, are not unimportant. Physically, infancy is characterized by the most restless, impulsive activity. " The period of greatest physical activity in a man's life ends at about six." The infant is like the wild creatures of the wood, and it is as cruel to confine the physical activities of young children as those of squirrels and swallows. Physically, these activities are struggles for what we call " a constitution." Mentally, they are the outreaching tendrils of instinct to grasp and com- prehend the furniture of life. Indeed, the infant boy appears to consist mostly of a bundle of instincts. Of these the simpler ones of grasping, locomotion, curi- osity, etc., are means of self-education, but the most marked is imitation. " These instincts are implanted 7 T ii i: u o v PRO u L E m for the sake of giving rise to habits. This purpose accomplished, the instincts, as such, fade away." Mem- is now almost entirely concrete, and the infant cannot reason because he has no frontage. The im- agination is active but crude; as his intellect awakes child questions omnivorously, but he is credulous and superstitious. Religiously, his ideas are primitive; conscience is vague; he is " an innocent Pharisee "; the will is as yet untrained and uncontrolled; endeavor is wholly self-regarding, and the infant's religious life consists simply in practising the things that he has learned are right. Childhood is marked by less violent hut more self-directed physical activity; in its earlier part by frequent contests with the con- tagious di and a further struggle for constitu- tional vitality (with a peculiarly sickly year al about eight); the development of the higher instincts rather than those of a merely animal quality; and the ernerg- e of the memory, the emotions, the imagination, and the self-consciousness. This period is a continuation • rather than the introduction to the third. These first two form that age of immaturity and de- pendence, longer than thai granted to any other of the animal order, given to childhood for its protection and iration in the home and the school for the larger trial and independent manhood. The instinct which is most prominent The Instincts , . .... , in Childhood m fcnu Period is the play-mstinct. It is both expression and means of education. 1 i wakening instincts, and so teaches us what the child's nature is. It is the natural way by 8 SOCIAL DEVELOP MENT which the child finds out things. The child's manner of play at different ages is distinctive. Mr. Joseph Lee classifies the child in play as, in order, in the dramatic, the self-assertive, and the loyalty periods. The infant plays alone, by creeping, shaking, fond- ling, etc., developing the simpler instincts through curiosity and experiment. The boy-child begins to imagine and to personify in his games, and wishes often to play with others. But that this social inst hut is as yet incomplete is shown by the fact that in games it is each one for himself; the team-work so admirable among young men is entirely lacking, and even in playing team-games each player seeks his own glory and repeatedly sacrifices the welfare of the team to himself. To take advantage of this play-instinct, which enfolds in itself so many other instincts, is the newest problem in education. We may trust the school-teachers to utilize this play- instinct to its fullest in the schoolroom in so far as there is opportunity. But it remains for us in the home to do what the hurried teacher has little chance to do, — develop and encourage that side of the in- stinet which is expressed in the exercises of dramatic play and story-telling. If we are to have a generation of men who are more than money-grubbers, there must bo a long era of free fancy in childhood, and, what with fairies driven out of the forests, and the forests them- selves cut down, and Santa ( llaus exiled from t he home, and gnomes unknown in the firelight, — because we have no more firelight in our modern houses, - h Ifl a very hard thing to do. Something may be accom- plished by people who are willing to try to do what 9 T II I) BOY P R () It L E M Alice did after the White Rabbit left her — find the golden key and peer once again into that Wonderland where Master Fourfeetfour lives, into which it is no use to hope t<» eidor unless one performs that feat so much harder than being a child, namely, becoming one. The oearesl approach to the proper state of mind possible to an adult seems to be to be rested and to try t<> look pleasant. This is the only feeble imitation of perpetual youth which most of us can reach, but it may do as a point of contact. It is as important for a parent to take time to be happy as to take time to be holy. A friend of mine has remarked that when the Al- mighty made the first man he made the world signifi- cant, but thai when he made the first boy he made it interesting, lie further went on to say that if God made man otd of dust, he surely made boys out of dust and electricity. " It is the electricity that con- stitutes the boy problem." The electricity of childhood consists Avidness of Life ~ chiefly of Avidness of Life. The boy is all alive and alive all the time. Plis tendency to yell is simply the escape-valve of periodic physical explosions. Neither the good nor the bad boy dies young. By ten years of age the boy is per- fect |\ healthy, having had all the contagious diseases, •pt falling in love. He goes to bed dressed in order to be up in time for the whole of an anticipated to-morrow. It is hard to L'et him to bed at all, he is ■ lid ome fun may happen in the world while he leep th.it he may miss. It is this, I am sure, more than fears of what -ome one calls " the predatory dark," that makes him linger. And much of the time 10 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT when he is awake he is like the man Paul knew, caught up into the third heaven, and whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth. His con- ception of being grown up is, like what Ian Maclaren said was the English business man's idea of heaven, a social function to which an invitation is an honor, but which it must be highly tiresome to attend. „. , To children everything is in the Kingdom T jo of Now Kingdom of Now. Materials are gath- ered from its oldest sources, but they are all stamped with to-day. You have heard of the Sunday-school teacher who told the story of Elijah with a vividness born of a trained pedagogue's instinct, and bethought herself at the close to ask the boys at what era they supposed his heroic deeds occurred. " Last week " was the unanimous response. As boys, " we were the new heirs of creation not yet finished, and taking kindly to our original dust. If our sires were already looking forward to an inheritance beyond the grave, to us more particularly belonged the earth and the fulness thereof. We possessed the land and the sea. We diffused our own radiance, and the very skies were blue for our sake." Cannot we keep this winsome eagerness which so few adults of our time have succeeded in retaining? Or must we crush it out in the processes of education? Dr. Stanley Hall once said that the real fall of man is to do things without zesl . Th „ I spoke of the instincts as tendrils. of the instincts They are * ne tendrils of character. The trite analogy of the tadpole is the most forceful one we have. The tadpole has a tail, 11 T 11 E BOY P R O » L E M which disappears when he becomes a frog. Appar- ently we might as well amputate this useless and un- sightly appendage, but if we do we shall never have a fully developed frog. These savage instincts have no place in mature manhood, but if we commit surgery upon them, instead of using hygiene, we shall never get real manhood. Dr. Balliet was referring to the instinct of pugnacity once when he said: " If you crush the fighting instinct, you get the coward; if you let it mow wild, you have the bully; if you train it, you have the strong, self-controlled man of will. It was Dr. Balliet, again, who remarked that the instincts form what has been known as " original sin." Gerald Stanley bee has also said that " the mischief in a boy is the entire basis of his education. A boy could be made into a man out of the parts of him that his parents and teachers are trying to throw away." Now, of course, it is nonsense to say that original sin, or any other, when it is finished, bringeth forth holiness. The query is whether we have been correct in calling mischief and natural instincts original sin, when their chief harm is not that they are wrong, but that we adults find them annoying. Is it not possible that if we take out of a boy, or neglect in our intercourse with him, the desire to play, move about, make a noise, and find out things by experiment, to whittle, camp out, and give shows, we are using surgery where simple h died for? " 1 am the tadpole of an arch- angel," Victor Hugo once extravagantly exclaimed. d in making archangels it seems extremely probable .vo urn i ■'•< and await 1 he tadpole stage. If the man is to retain a wholesome humanism it 12 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT must emerge from the joyous savagery of his own childhood. The years between five and twelve in childhood are the seven full years of Joseph's vision, during which the chief part of wisdom is to store up food for the leaner years that are to come. During this period the boy has been in Childhood changing from a bundle of instincts 1 > a bundlofof habits. The trails are be- coming well-traveled roads. Boyhood is the time for forming habits, as adolescence is the time for shaping ideals. This is the era for conscience-building, as the later is the era for will-training. Politeness, moral con- duct, and even religious observance may now be made so much a matter of course that they will never seem foreign. The possibilities for wise parenthood to pre-~ empt the young soul for goodness are incalculable. We who are older know, as children cannot, that the habits formed in this period are strongly determinative of the future trend toward righteousness or wrong. Upon the very molecules themselves an implacable and un- erasable register is being made. One reason why this is true is because verbal memory is more acute than at any other period. " The besl period for learning a foreign language ends before fourteen." This power of absorption forms the char- acteristic of this second period. Our duty now is to feed the child. The boy of this period who was asked what he regarded as the essentials of a good church boys' club and who replied succincl ly, " Feed and fun," Bummed up the needs of his age most excellently. The boy can absorb inure nutriment and also inure iufunna- 13 T II E BOY PRO B I- E M tion, more helpful or hurtful fads, more proverbs of wisdom, more Scripture and hymns, for future use, than ever again in his life. In this absorptive rather than in an originative quality is (lie strong distinction be- tween this period and that which follows. Another reason why drill counts so A ftp of LflW Btrongly in this period is because it is peculiarly the A.geof Law. Sir Joshua Fitch says it cor- responds to the Exodus and Leviticus stage of Israel's development. Children now have the sense of authority .in. I conformity even in their games. All adults are to them gigantic ( Hympians, and they are willing to accept the dictates of these lawgivers without asking why. Together with the ideas and ideals p e . which the boy absorbs by precept and Responsibility imitation there begins to appear sofne- time during this period the Sense of onal Responsibility. This manifests itself not in the form of intellectual doubt or deep inquiry, but rather in the acknowledgment of being undo- law. The dawn of the sense of personal responsibility is often most painful. In infancy conscience was mostly hear- Bay, and 'he child would now fain prolong his too brief • of the ( tardea of Eden. But here stands the angel of the flaming sword to tell him that henceforth he must earn his own moral decisions and, what is imme- diately more bitter, suffer for his own mistakes and mis- deeds. Life is no longer merely a play, with acted It i- now the real thing. The boy of this age is not mere animal. Ilis emotional instincts are .ing. And of these love is one of the deepest and 14 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT one of the first. Although it be true, as Paolo Lom- broso says, that " the child tends not to love but to be loved and exclusively loved," yet his early attacks of love mark the brightening dawn of the social and altruistic instincts; and so love for mother, for teacher, for some older friend who is an ideal, love for truth which is so startling in the unperverted child, love for God and good things as he and they are understood, — these are all characteristic of the warm-hearted days of boyhood. " But," adds an unknown writer, " nothing was so rare among us as a self-confessed and mortified sinner; for in those days our sins distinguished us more than our virtues did afterward. Besides, humility was an unknown sentimentality with us. Our very Pharisa- ism consisted in thanking our heavenly bodies that we were not as good as some were." The religious life of a normal boy between six and twelve consists of good will and good conduct. The psychologist, who believes that th R Lif eacn child reproduces the Race Life, re- gards the years of infancy as rehearsals of prehistoric and feral ages, and the years of early childhood as reproductions of the protracted and rela- tively stationary periods of the barbarian days. It is because these ages were so long and so deep, because man has been a savage so much longer than he has been a Christian, that this subconscious heritage needs to • be recognized, and the work of habit-making, which is the analogue of that past, must, during childhood, be made the central endeavor of all nurture. This work of nurture Dr. Coo. finely calls " capturing a boy's pre- 15 T II E It t> \ PROBI K M suppositions." It is conscience-building. We do well probably t<> button our own moral codes, like aprons, around the child for a time, hut we do hetter if we train him always to " speak the truth in his heart." These barbarous manifestations are modified con- stantly by the fact that the child is living in modern conditions and influences. Says an editorial writer in the I nili j» mil nt: " We were cave-dwellers who stormed sixteenth cent ury castles; Roman centurions setting up modem republics; we were Don Quixotes in valor; martyrs and fanatics in religion, but at heart we always communists, who understood the com- mon law of possession hetter than some latter-day economists." In summary, we may call this the Old Testament era of the boy's life. The Bible, thai marvelous manual of pedagogy, has been thoughl to reflect in either Tes- tament childhood and adolescence. "The key of the Old Testament," says Sheldon, " is obedience." This we have said is the key to childhood. The law must (Mine before 1 1 el, I lie era of nature before the era of grace. Those old heroes were only great big hoys, and it is an underlying sympathy with them which explains why boys of this age prefer the Old Testa- ment to the New. There are sound reasons why it ould first be taught them. ally in religious ideas are boys ^'■??, under twelve much like the ancients, in Childhood .Many times they actually pass through the of religion passed through by primitive peoples, namely, nature worship, mythology, fetichistie HBtition. The contents of many a boy's mind and 10 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT pocket reveal a recourse to charms, incantations, and anthropomorphisms. At the best the God of one's childhood is but a great man, and it is a solemnizing fact that he often bears the face and nature of the child's own earthly father. " Having no enemies to forgive, our prayers were short, but our faith was expansive. We believed everything and sighed for more. Somewhere in the cool green shadows were good spirits that we never saw, whose influence our little pagan souls confessed. We dealt in miracles and prophecies as sincerely as ever did a Hebrew prophet. A chirruping cricket was the harbinger of fortune; if the leaves of a little whirlwind passed but once around our devoted heads we were invincible, and should a butterfly chance to brush our cheek with its happy wings, that was a token of joys to come. All things were to us the signs of blessings." Dr. Coe, in tracing the normal religious development of a child of this period, shows that from the first the 6 of dependence, which is the oldest and earliest type of religion, is answered to by a world of persons in the home. During this nature-worship period the child is led to discriminate between his parent and God. The age of fairy tale that follows corresponds to the myth-making period in history; and here, again, the question-impulse leads the child on into a world of higher and truer ideals. Then in the law-period " the family is the moral universe of the child," but the child soon discovers thai " the parents arc n«>f the source of the law but the subjects of it, and so he projects into his ideal world a 'qui me moral will." 17 I II E BOY P R O B L E M Adolescence is bounded at the be- ginning by approaching puberty, and at the end by complete manhood. The so-called Ameri- can boy, win) was really a Persian in his love of war, «>r an Athenian each day telling or hearing some new thing, or a Hindu in his dreams, or a Hebrew in his business sense, is rapidly coming down through the millenniums, and has reached the days of Bayard and Siegfried and Launcelot. It is the time of change. By fifteen the brain stops growing in girth, the large arteries increase one third, the ten i] >eia lure rises one degree, the reproductive organs have functioned, the voice deepens, the stature giows by bounds, and the body needs more sleep and food than ever before. The Emotional " Pubert y>" sa y s Dr ' W ' S ' Christ °- A pher, " is the period of greatest strength and endurance and capacity for the mass of children. It is also the period of life when every feature of the physical being finds its greatest range of variety among individuals." It is the emo- tional age. No songs are too gay, no sorrows ever so tearful. It is the time for slang, because no words in any dictionary can possibly express all that crowds to utterance. It is the time for falling in love most thoughtlessly and most unselfishly. The child wants to be entertained constantly. This is a natural con- flit ion. ' It is as necessary to develop the blood- elfl of a boy as crying is those of a baby." It is the enthusiastic age. The masklike, impassive face at this age is a Bign of a loss of youth or of purity. " He who is a man at sixteen will be a child at sixty." 18 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT This emotional, restless disposition, which is so closely associated with rapid and uneven growth, the new sense of power and of self-life and dreams of adventure, is often manifested in a craving to roam, to run away from home, to go to sea. There is a certain wild generousness and rude piety about this adventure-period. With what brilliant in- sight Mr. G. K. Chesterton has characterized it! "This feeling for strange faces and strange lives, when it is felt keenly by a young man, almost always ex- presses itself in a desire- after a kind of vagabond beneficence, a desire to go through the world scattering goodness like a capricious god." Physical restlessness is often associated with intel- lectual restlessness and curiosity. It is a time of stub- 1 >orn doubts, painful and dangerous, but signs of mental and moral health. Starbuck fixes the acme of the doubt-period at eighteen. Together with the doubts there is frequently an obstinate positiveness, so that, as Gulick says, " The boy is a skeptic and a partisan at the same time." For several years after twelve a boy is apt to be filled with the feeling that there is some- thing about himself that needs to be settled. This widening of interests, emotional Social Devel- an( j intellectual, is accompanied by a Adoi^ce™* 6 ra(lual social broadening. While in the early part of this period egoistic emotions are apt to be disagreeably expressed, vented sometimes in bullying and again, in an opposite way, by extreme self-consciousness and bashfulncss, this Booner or later develops into a clearer recognition of one's self and a finer recognition of others. Adoles- 19 T HE BOY P It O B L E M cence has been termed an unselfing. There is a yearn- ing to be with and for one's kind. This is seen in the growing team-work spirit in games, in the various clubs which now spring up almost spontaneously, in the slowly Increasing interest in social gatherings and in the other sex. The suddenness with which loyalty to the gang is felt is illustrated by this story told by Mr. M. D. Crackel, superintendent of the ' Side Boys' Club of Cleveland. The boys were lining up on the gymnasium floor for a game. Two divisions were being formed by taking each alternate For convenience, one group was designated the " V. ' the Other the " B's." The leader found that a mistake had been made in counting, and he asked the nearest buy to transfer from one side to the other. " Not much!" responded the loyal lad; "I'm an 'A' man to the backbone! " Mr. J. Lewis Paton, the headmaster of the Manches- ter, England, high school, illustrates how readily this gang-spirit begins to shape ethical codes of conduct by tin- following incident: When Wellington College was founded, it was arranged, in order to prevent confusion, that one half the buys should report on Monday and the remaining half on Tuesday. One boy came on Tuesday, and in the course of a stroll proceeded to make a suggestion to one of the veterans of Monday. He proposed a certain line of action, whereupon the •an observed, " We don't have anything of that here." It is probably from the gang that most boys learn how to codify their conduct, ami while this code of 20 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT honor is imperfect, it is apt to be pretty sound. This list of " things a feller won't do " soon becomes such a mighty judgment of the individual conscience that, as Mr. Paton goes on to say, "Of no other society can it be said with more truth that whatsoever sins it re- mits, they are remitted, and whatsoever sins it retains, they are retained." Parents may have slaved a life long; they may have made the inculcation of morals a daily care; these new r companions have been known only six days, but they are Public Opinion. The fact that the gang-spirit is born in play no doubt explains its fascination. As Jean Paul says, " The first social fetters are woven of flowers." The code of the boys' gang has the same fundamental element as that of the thieves' gang — loyalty. Whether it has more than that depends upon who is the leader. Now loyalty is a much overestimated virtue. It means lit-1 le more than organized selfishness. As Miss Addam •• has pointed out, it relates itself to medievalism and is not near so fine a thing as companionship. Loyalty means to follow a leader, to protect each other, right or wrong, and often to prey upon outsiders. It means that in nations as well as in gangs. But companion- ship is loyalty lifted up to the level of following not a leader, but an ideal, doing things not because the stronger so, but because they represent the ideals of the group. There is no limit to the height of level to which companionship, under enlightened direction, may carry a group of hoys. An Early Risers' Bible . 'ass and a Student Volunteer Band are the incredible actualities found among groups of boys in the Young Men's Christian Association, and even if they represent 21 T II E MOV P R O B L E M artificial standards and forced precocity, they seem to In- genuinely pursued and enjoyed. The way the gang-ethics evolve is through the mob- spirit — that blind, conscienceless movement of men when in contact, which is seen in such extremes of manifestation as the French Revolution and the modern revival meeting. Its result is conduct with and for the tribe such as no boy would ever think of accomplishing when by himself, a sort of least common denominator of the ethics of the constituent individuals. A group of boys is on its way to school. They pass beneath Farmer Snodgrass' overhanging apple-trees. One boy has a stick in his hand, and as he carelessly throws it up into a tree it brings down an apple. " I'll bet you can't do that," he remarks to his nearest companion. That lad, to make sure, tries it with a stone and suc- ceeds. Others grasp stones and make the same ex- periment. It is not long before all are up in the tree, pocketing and throwing down apples. No one of them wants any a]. pies; all have just had breakfast, and there are apples in plenty at home, but the contagion of the group has carried them whither they would not. The buy who can resist such an influence, electric with enthusiasm and barbed by ridicule, either upon any one occasion or continuously, is either a natural-born leader of others or a misanthrope. The dangers of the gang are at first Schooling s '& nt more oov J° us than the opportu- nities. Yet there are some things a boy learns through the gang which he can learn in no other way. When I see a city boy who wears gloves and has the high hand-shake, I wish fervently that the gang 22 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT might get hold of him. The only place where a boy can learn the brotherhood of man is in the school of the gang. Sometime in adolescence, probably be- tween fourteen and eighteen, most boys have what might be called an anti-domestic instinct. They would rather be anywhere else than at home. This truancy from the home is because the home, and par- ticularly the modern home of one or two children, is not a large enough social circle for the suddenly ex- panded heart of the boy. Out among his peers God intends that he shall go, to give and take, to mitigate his own selfishness and to gain the masculine standpoint which his mother, his nurse, and his school-teacher can- not give, and to exercise a new power, which is one of the most precious ever given to man, that of making friendships. The centripetal power of a gang is almost always represented in one person. If he be within the gang, as is usually the case, it is that virile lad who has constituted himself the chieftain. He is the key-boy of the group. If it be a person outside the gang, it is the adult whom the group has agreed to make its hero. For the thing that is at the bottom Hero- Worship , ' , , , • i of the most lawless gang is a good thing. It is hero-worship, and hero-worship is, of course, a form of idealism. Some one has said that boys always idealize in biography. They don't crave to be chaste, honest, religious, and no boy likes to be called " a good boy," but they are quite willing to be like strong men who may perl aps have all these quali- ties. For it is strength that makes a man a boy's hero. He likes the dime novel, because men there arc fierce 23 T II E HOY P R O B L E M and to! cei ul. lie would much rather shake hands with Jim Jeffries than with throw stones over upon the tents. Instantly their war-cry rang out, " Knights of King Arthur to the rescue I ' and the whole group, which a few week before would have heartily engaged in the same acl of mischief, sallied out, with equal heartiness, to chastise the maraud* In the home, ;,! any rate, I think our besl part is to i he gang for all it is worth, to chaperon il nnob- ively, to win its gratitude by inn when THE BOY P R O B L E M its own resources give out, and to try to enter into its activities with something more than a spirit of resigna- tion. I said " the gang," but I ought to have said the gangs, for the peculiarity of brothers is that they never play together when they can play with an out- sider, and they never belong to the same gang. The vaccine of maternal sympathy generally makes the gang instinct harmless, for it is to be noticed that the worst boy, if he is a visitor and is watched, be- comes bland and plastic and even almost pious. The boy I pity is the boy who is the outsider, poor little old man, who has not been admitted into any of the mystic fraternities of the playground, and whose resource has to be books and botanizing and playing with girls or little boys! I don't know whether he misses as much as he seems to, or is as lonely as he looks, but while I have a fancy that he usually grows up to be very rich or very good, I also feel that he is always an exile from paradise. This is also a time of moral activity Spiritual am ] ideals. "A new dimension, that of Development (1 t , ^ bei &dded » « Character in during . . 7 . . , .. ,, . . . Adolescence mtancy is all instinct; in childhood it is slowly made over into habits; at adoles- cence it can be cultivated through ideals." Boys now begin to day-dream and make large plans. A boy is capitalized hope. He may become morbidly conscien- tious or painfully exercised with the search for absolute ith. Those very emotions which lead to bullying and showing off are capable of being diverted into courage and chivalry. This is the age of hero-worship, conversion at this age many are eager to exercise 20 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT their social consciousness and emulate their heroes by becoming ministers or missionaries or slum workers or men of achievement. Boy-ideals are always immediate. Like a vine, they must twine around some standard. As Prof. H. M. Burr says, " If the boy's ideal of man- hood is Fitzsimmons, he immediately sets about punch- ing some other boy's head. If he thinks the life of an Indian the ideal, he straightway takes to the woods or whoops it up in the alley, as the case may be." For this reason the wise boys' club leader who proposes an attractive new plan will take heed always to carry it into effect at the very next meeting. The encourage- ment and direction of these ideals into orderly and definite channels is a matter of infinite importance. But the peculiarity of this period that most attracts attention is that of crisis. It seems to be well proven that there comes a time in the adolescence of almost every boy and girl when the various physical and moral influences of the life bear down to a point of depression, and then rise suddenly in an ascending curve, carrying with them a new life. There is first a lull, then a storm, then peace; what results is not boy, but man. This crisis, in religious matters, is called conversion, but is by no means confined to or peculiar to religious change. " It is," says Dr. Hall, " a natural regeneration." If the Hughlings-Jackson three-level theory of the brain be true, there is at this time a final and complete transfer of the central powers of the brain from the lower levels of instinct and motor power to (he higher levels. " It is," Bays Lancaster, " the focal point of all psychology." Dr. Starbuck's careful though diffusive study shows that this change is apt 27 >' T II E B O Y P It () Hi L E M to come in .1 great wave at about fifteen or sixteen, preceded by a lesser wave at about twelve, and followed by another at about seventeen or eighteen. It con- sists in a coming out from the little, dependent, irre- sponsible animal self into the larger, independent, responsible, outreaching and upreaching moral life of manhood. Professor Coe says: " I do not think it should lie called conversion, but commitment. It is a ratification rather than a reversal." He also shows that the first wave is that of most decided religious impressibility and of spontaneous spiritual awakening, although the number of conversions that can be dated is greater in the second period. There is a marked difference in the way this " per- sonalizing of religion," as Coe calls it, comes to boys and to girls. With boys it is a later, a more violent, and :i more sudden incident. With boys it is more apt to be associated with periods of doubt; with girls with times of storm and stress. It seems to be more apt to come to boys when alone; to girls in a church service. Next to the physical birth-hour this hour of psychical birth is most critical. For " at this formative stage " — 1 quote from the Committee on Secondary Educa- tion " an active fermentation occurs that may give wine or vinegar." "This," says President Hall, "is the day of grace that must not be sinned away." The period of adolescence is by many divided into three Btages, embracing respectively the ages from twelve to sixteen, sixteen to eighteen, and eighteen to tty-four. These mighl be termed the stages of ferment, crisis and reconstruction. Mr. E. P. St. John them as physical, emotional and intellectual 28 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT stages. Goe marks them as impulsive, sentimental, and reflective. Rev. Charles E. McKinley marks them in character as solitary, self-willed, and social, and in result as discovering personal freedom, discovering life, discovering social relations. The three waves of religious interest correspond with these stages. I have not attempted to classify the phenomena of these stages here, desiring rather to give the impression of the period as a whole. Most of the phenomena which I have spoken of begin in the earliest stage, reach their culmination in the second, and begin in the third to form the fabric of altruism and character. Of course the instinctive, the sensuous, and the sentimental are apt to precede the rational and the deliberative. While we may not pretend to comprehend the whole philosophy of the entrance into the religious life, there are some things which seem to be assured. Such are these: The boy is not irreligious; he is rather in the lower stages of the religious life, the imitative, habitu- ated, ethical stages. Conversion is the human act of turning to God, not a special cataclysmal kind of ex- perience during that act. Mr. E. M. Robinson has put the various ways in which boys seem to enter the religious life in a homely but vivid statement: " Boys enter the religious life in at least as many ways as they enter the water for swimming: (a) Some plunge in — a definite decision which settles once for all what their attitude toward right and wrong shall be, what their relation to their God shall be. (b) Some wade in — deliberately, cautiously, step by step, each step revealing that another step is desirable, (c) Some run in a little way and then come out again, but con- 29 THE B O Y PROBLEM linue to run in a little farther each time, till at last they .swim off — a number of changes of mind, (d) Some are forced in. They may, finding themselves in, decide to remain, or they may make frantic struggles tn gel out. (<) Some sit down on the beach and simply let the tide come up about them, till it floats them off — by not resisting the tide about them they practically accept the situation. A boy enters the religious life by deliberate, comprehensive decision, by an accumu- lation of little decisions, by non-resistance to influence about him, which is a decision. In all cases, by his own choice accepting, or ' decision.' " These differences seem to be temperamental, where they are not partly artificial. The kind of crisis will bo of the kind that is sought for. In one church the child is taught to believe that he is by the covenant a child of Clod. At adolescence the confirmation class awaits him and his crisis is likely to be one of forming fresh ideals only. In another communion boys are told thai they are children of the world and the flesh, if not of the devil, and they expect, strive after, and very often attain a very sharp crisis of definite religious purpose. Nature seems to point to a proper time in the devel- opment of a boy when the psychical crisis should be expected and encouraged. If it be hastened, John Stuart Mill's well-known simile applies, that such chil- dren are like too early risers, conceited all the forenoon of life and stupid all the afternoon and evening. If it !>e delayed, conversion is apt to be aridly intellectual and t<» miss that emotional glow which is the beautiful birthright of the soul. 30 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT We are evidently approaching the The End End of the p lastic p eriod# The instincts of tne Plastic Period nave a11 been g lven - The habits are pretty well formed. There is plenty of time to grow, but not much to begin. The character of most boys is fairly determined before they enter col- lege. Now the father looks one day into the eyes of what he thought was his little boy and sees looking out the unaccustomed and free spirit of a young and un- conquerable personality. Some mad parents take this time to begin that charming task of " breaking the child's will," which is usually set about with the same energy and implements as the beating of carpets. But the boy is now too big either to be whipped or to be mentally or morally coerced. We hesitate whether to be more afraid of or alarmed for this creature who has become endowed with the passions and independence of manhood while still a child in foresight and judgment. He rushes now into so many crazy plans and harmful deeds. Swift states that a period of semi-criminality is normal for all boys who are healthy. Hall calls it an age of temporary insanity. This age, particularly that from twelve to sixteen, is by all odds the most critical and difficult to deal with in all childhood. It is especially so because the boy now becomes secretive; he neither can nor will utter himself, and the very sensitiveness, longing and overpowering sense of the new life of which 1 have spoken is often so concealed by inconsistent and even barbarous behavior that one quite loses both compre- hension and patience. These are the fellows who, though absent, sustain the maternal prayer-meetings. 31 THE BOY PROBLEM The apparent self-sufficiency of the boy at this period causes the parent to discontinue many means of amusement and tokens of affection which were retained until now. The twelve-month-old infant is submerged in toys, but the twelve-year-old boy has nothing at homo to play with. The infant is caressed till he is pulplike and breathless, but the lad, who is hungry for love and understanding, is held at arms' length. This Ls the time when most parents are found wanting. And in this broad generalization I do not forget what Madon- nas have learned in the secret of their hearts and from the worship of the Child, nor what wise Josephs who have dreamed with angels have been patient to discover. hove and waiting must now have their perfect work. < lures by the laying on of hands are to be discouraged. The father, whose earlier task was to be a perfect law- giver, must now become hero and apostle. It is a comfort to know that this era will pass swiftly away and that the child will suddenly awake from many of his vagaries and forget his dreams. There is a certain preservative salt of humor, common to boyhood, and demanded of parenthood during this trying era, by means of which children often grow up much better than their parents can bring them up. If Our last glimpse of this conservatory The Will during of y° un £ ,lfe snows us the habits Adolescence fullgrown and the instincts budding suc- cessively into fresh ones. These bud- dings or " nascencies " 1 will refer to again. Here is a heap of knowledge, much of it undigested, and some of it false. Here, too, if he has passed the crisis I spoke of, is the little new plant of faith. There was a faith 32 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT he had before which he had borrowed from his mother, but a man cannot live his whole life long on a borrowed faith. It is new, it is little, but it is his own, and it is growing. But here is something strange. Strong, vigorous, fearful at first, and afterward danger- ous looking, here is a plant that has suddenly taken root and grown bigger than all. It is the/Will. That is what all this storm and stress mean. This is what is born in the emergence from the dependent to the in- dependent being. Shall we pull it up and throw it away? What! and leave him a weakling child through life? Shall we bind it down? What! and maim him forever? Let it grow, but let it grow properly. This will is dangerous but needful. You can't have births without some risks. If this boy is ever to be a man, it will all depend on what is done with his will. The principal thing a boy has to do before twelve is to grow a conscience. The principal thing after that is to get power to use his will. Social pedagogy in dealing with a being who is now coming to have a social nature pays its first and chief ait cut ion to will-training. For there is no more im- portant, more neglected subject. It is an art, as one tersely says, "which has no text-book, and of which it is impossible to write one." The public school fails in will-training because it gives the will no exercise. " Our schools," says William I.Crane, "permit us to think what is good but not to do what is good." The home, especially the city home, fails for the same reason. The child's at- tention lias been shared by a thousand sights, nothing holds him long, and he cannot find ways to UBe hie in- T II E It O Y P U () I? L E M Btincts :u lively. The Church fails because it has tried the wrong thing; it lias taught the children to examine their spiritual interiors and to sing, " Draw me nearer till my will is lost in thine," and not to hallow their wills, as Phillips Brooks wisely said, " by filling them with more and more life, by making them so wise that they shall spend their strength in goodness." General Francis A. Walker was the first to show just what the country did for the boy. He used the simple illustration of the squirrel seen on the way from school, the trap designed and built for his capture, and the successful result. There was a single keen interest, a natural instinct awakened, that instinct exercised by a voluntary muscular effort carrying an originative task to completion: result, not merely a captured squirrel, but strengthened will power. Says Home: " Catch the instincl in the act and direct it toward a legitimate object. To do so skilfully is actually to fashion the g I will." With this hint social pedagogy goes to work. " You can only get a purchase on another's will," James says, " by touching his actual or potential self." Hall says, " Will is only a form of interest." We trained the boy's conscience, his passive self, by filling his mind with rule-, but we can train his will, his active self, only by interesting and making active his instincts. Lancaster says, " The pedagogy of adolescence may be summed up in one sentence, Inspire enthusiastic ac- tivity." I spoke of the " nascencies " of instinct. ry little while an instinct pops up in a boy's mind and feebly feels for utterance. If it is not noticed it sinks buck again to rest, or it becomes perverted. All 34 SOCIAL DEVELOP MENT boys have the constructing instinct. If it is neglected it either fades away or becomes the destructive instinct. Some wise man sets the boy to whittling or modeling, and the instinct becomes an ardent interest. Such happy alertness, thinks Mosso, was the encouragement that made a Raphael and a Da Vinci. It will satisfy us if it gives our boys the good instead of the evil will. It is also a curious fact that a multiplicity of inter- ests just at this time multiplies rather than diminishes the power of acquisition. Thus social pedagogy may use many instrumentalities to encourage the interested and self-directed activities of boys in maturing their wills into principle and character. In speaking of will in its relation to esponsi y mora ] character, the important thing to say seems to be that every boy by the time he has begun to be a man needs more than anythir^g else in some way to have gotten the habit of having a first- hand relation to righteousness. " The moral man," as John W. Carr says, " obeys himself." I have been saying that boys arc it t_ must " B divided into two grades, the " you- must " boys and the " I-niust " boys. The former grade is of those to whom these two words " you must " need to be instantly reiterated by others — parents, teachers, employers, older counselors. The " [-must" boy is the one whose; own conscience has seized the scepter of authority; who no longer needs to be governed by outside consciences or to be held up by props. Jesus used this very phrase when, after a typical boyish experience, he spoke this resolve id the temple: "I mud be about my Father's business." THE B o V PROBLEM 1 appreciate the value of parental training, I realize how importanl a part of his moral education is the molding of a boy by his peers, I know how the emo- tional quickening of a " conversion " is sometimes the gentle shock thai seems the one thing needed to launch the young soul on the ways. But this 1 know, that, as the old Yankee once expressed it, "This is a world that has got to be now and then////" and, after all, nobody can fight a boy's battles but the boy himself, With < rod as his helper. The great problem of bringing up a boy is not to make him a good boy only while he is a boy and when he is at home, but BO to nurture him that when he is a man, and wherever he may be, he will be a man of self- determining goodness. I do not know how we can be sure of such a tremendous result. We are not always sure we have attained it ourselves. But I am per- suaded that it is to be accomplished by keeping the boy's religion from ingrowing, by bringing him gently and constantly and firmly into opportunities for real gi k KJnesa as fast as he is capable of them, by awakening him, as soon as he can answer, in the realm of idealism, and most of all by teaching him that old-fashioned thing, which has almost become a cant word, — piety, — which is simply the filial relation to Cod. In the shaping of a boy's ideals nothing is more en- couraging than the extraordinary degree to which we usually have the boy on our side. _ _ , There is nothing he wants to be any The Boy's . . Good Will more than the very thing we want him to be, namely, a man. The curious way in which children reach up to an age beyond their 36 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT own is very noticeable. It is equally characteristic in their play, when they usually imitate " grown-ups." Children have always been thus since the days when Jesus described the children of his time playing at marrying and funerals. I am very fond of this story: A boy walking along the shore of Massasoit Pond in Springfield one morning was met by a man who was instantly impressed by his bright, open face, and who stopped and engaged him in conversation. He asked him where he lived, who his father was, where he went to school, what he was going to be when he became a man, and then, becoming better pleased, finally asked him how old he was. He was surprised to find that the boy for the first time hung his head down and hesitated to give an answer. He repeated the question and the boy finally raised his head and blurted out, " Well, I ain't but twelve, but my pants are marked sixteen." There you have it, right in a nutshell. You are to measure a boy not by the number of his years, but by the girth of his trousers, by the circumference of his ambitions. Much of the lurid language, cigarette smoking, and general bravado and braggadocio of a boy is to be in- terpreted as simply a crude reaching up toward manli- . and all the time underneath there is the pure and tender heart of a little child. The energies of a boy are friendly ener\\n outgrown childhood, but also from those he knows and loves. My friend, Mr. Charles E. Mc- kinley, has made the happy suggestion that it is a rehearsal of the parable of The Prodigal Son, through which even the best of men, including Jesus, must pass, and that " the far country " is the inevitable and not always miserable condition through which all youth must walk bo a real heritage in the Father's House. During this time the lad meets his first disillusionment about men or things, and closes behind himself the implacable gates of Eden; he enlarges and alters the code of honor which he learned in Egyptian servitude to his gang; he relates himself in some degree to the world and his mission in it, and finds out what belongs to him, and he makes the final transition from a de- pendent to an independent soul life, from the Old I estament to the New Testament of his being. In these years there are single events and days that are magical. Happy is the parent who may be the ministrant by whose aid the person or circumstance comes to his child which awakens his .soul or his am- bition, which opens the gates of vision, or which gives the Aladdin's lamp which makes happiness forever after a possibility! The intellectual side of the religious nature is the last awakened. The doubt-period comes very late in boy- hood. Its seriousness depends upon the character of early instruction. If the teaching of the Bible in the home has communicated nothing that must be un- learned, and has left little opportunity for intellectual strains, the man will make his mature theologies with- out mental anguish. 38 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT All this, the deepest and most thorough evolution of life, takes time. If religion in the child be, as Dr. Stanley Hall has said, " a growth, not a conquest," it must come on very slowly, and our nervous, well- meant eagerness for " results," with the accompanying temptation to the child to regard himself and his ex- periences as interesting, is misplaced and mischievous. We cannot be too anxious to give our children early Christian nurture, and we cannot make up for neglect to do that by frantic special efforts at the close of the plastic period. The results of this chapter suggest that the last nascencies of the instincts, the completion of the habits, the psychical crisis and the infancy of the will, all coincident with the birth of the social nature, together form a period of danger and possibility in boy life. For helping this age the cooperative wisdom and aid of all fiiendo of buys and girls is earnestly to be desired. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY '>>ik<;k A. Education in Religion and Morals. New York: Revell. 1904. Guuck, LuthbbH. The Religion of Hoys. Association Boys, New York, KID2-03. Hall, G. Stanlky. Hoy Life in a Massachusetts Town Thirty 1 ears Vgo. Proceedings American Antii[uarmn Society, Worcester, 1890; also I'tda gogical Seminary, Worcester, 1899. Adoli J vols.). New York: Appleton. 1905. Lancabtbb, E. G. The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence. Peda gogical Seminary, Worcester, July, 1897. Oi-i-lviikim, NvniAN. The Development of the Child. New York: Mao- millan. 1899. Pedagogical Seminary. Quarterly, Clarii University, Worcester. 1891. Staium < k. I . 1). I he Psychology of Religion (the chapters on convi . New York: Seribners. 1899. Unwick, E. J. (Ed.) Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities. London. 190 1 T II E 15 O Y P It O B L E M II BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE StaRBTTCK, Bpeaking of religious training, says, "One can scarcely think of a single pedagogical maxim which, if followed in all cases, might not violate the deepest needs of the person whom it is our purpose to help." This is true of all training. The parent, teacher or social worker who should t/y to bring up a boy or a group of boys by means of the digest of information in the last chapter would find that in real life, as in Latin grammar, there are more exceptions than rules. Some children will very closely follow tSe diagram of growth which 1 have suggested; most children will accommodate themselves to it in a general way, vary- ing dates, order and distinctness of detail; while a few will seem to defy all laws in their development. I feel it necessary to interrupt the logic by which (having shown the nature and needs of adolescence) I proceed fco suggest the ways by which those needs are being and should be supplied, in order to relate some of the by-laws to the constitution of boy life and im- - the necessity of knowing the lads who are to be helped in their individualities. Physicians have systems of filling out and filing the life-history, diagnosis and history of the case of each of their patients. I think it would help every worker with boys to devise a system of blanks for securing the 40 BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE facts suggested in this chapter about each of Ms boys. In every Sunday-school class, in every boy's club, in every home there is a boy who has some peculiarity the knowledge of which is essential to wisdom in caring for him. In every group of boys we notice in- p . stances of Delay or Precocity in develop- ment. This may be hereditary, tem- peramental, or accidental. This boy comes of a slow, stolid, substantial stock and matures slowly. Here is one of a tropical temperament who is precocious. Sickness, lack of nutrition or care, an accident, a sorrow, may have kept that one back. One needs to know these home conditions and the life-history in order to know the boy. One may entirely lose power with a boy by being too quick or too slow for him. There is a well-known " clumsy age " between fourteen and sixteen, when the skill of the hand becomes sta- tionary or retrogrades while the power of appreciation of the fine and true grows on. This is caused by the fact that the bones are growing faster than the muscles in that short period of stupendous physical increment. A similar period of deterioration in the pleasure in, and the quality of, the drawings of children, beginning with the tenth or twelfth year, is noted by Chamberlain, which he explains by the fact that the child awakes to the true appreciation of his work as " nothing more than a poor, weak imitation of nature, and the charm of creative art vanishes with the disappearance of the former naive faith in it." This coming down out of the realm of childish imagination unto the level of Beeing things, aa they are, coupled with new desires alter the T 11 E BOY PROBLEM ideal, which are limited in execution by manual clumsi- ness, helps to explain some of the moodiness and gloom of the period. The influence of Temperament on the Temperament , e , . , . , phenomena of development is not to be neglected. Although Lotze has made an ingenious and often observable parallel between the sanguine tem- perament and childhood and the sentimental and adol- escence, the diversities of temperamental nature which are to be permanent are by middle adolescence pretty well established. The readiness but triviality of the sanguine, the cheerful conceit of the sentimental, the prompt, intense response of the choleric and the rumina- tive nature of the phlegmatic temperaments are each noticeable in individual boys. The "child types" which have been classified are only differences and combinations of temperaments. Lesshaft recognizes six among children entering school: the hypocritical, the ambitious, the quiet, the effeminate-stupid, the bad-stupid, the depressed. Siegert names fifteen: melancholy, angel-or-devil, star-gazer, scatterbrain, apathetic, misanthropic, doubter and seeker, honorable, critical, eccentric, stupid, buffoonly-naifle, with feeble memory, studious, and blast. These characteristics, with their special relations to the sensibilities, intellect and will, are to be noted and used as diagnoses for individual treatment. . Racial Differences are quite marked Differences m re g' ons where there are many boys of foreign birth, and they largely de- termine the special methods of social work with them. 1 am indebted to Mr. Thomas Chew, who has nearly 42 BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE two thousand boys under continual observation in the Fall River Boys' Club, for his impressions of two classes of foreigners, — the French Canadians and the Hebrews. " The French Canadians are behind our American-born boys. I am pretty sure that they comprise almost every illiterate boy in Fall River. They are behind the other boys in playing games. They need educating in play and in trustworthiness. They lack the honor sense. I don't see how I could put them upon their honor as we do other boys — they would hardly know what I meant. They do well under the care of an Americanized boy. Probably they will become better citizens in another generation or two. . . . The older Jewish boys are clannish. They like to meet, exercise, bathe, etc., with their own race. Their religious scruples as to food should be respected. The Jews read more than other boys. The Irish Btick together in the election of officers for the various societies. They do not seem capable of rising out of their inborn prejudice of the English. The Jew is the only one of the lot who will thank you for a good turn." Mr. George W. Morgan of the Hebrew Educational Alliance of New York has contrasted the Irish with the Eebrew boy, and made some acute observations of the latter: " One of the most striking traits of the Jewish char- acter is its intensity. Look at the intellectual side, and you immediately say thai the .lew is developed men- tally at the expense of the complementary sides <>f his nature. It is said of the Irishman that if he cannot easily pick a quarrel, he begh '''i 1 on his neigh- bor's toe- a he pits on his own hands and prepares for 43 T B E 15 () Y P It () B L E M a clinch. With perhaps more truth might it be said of a Jewish boy that if he cannot agree with his companion on some subject, be begins a volley of pointed querying stablish by whal claim of reasoning his companion can possibly agree with him. He is a most accomplished mental gymnast. Fix your attention on his emotional nature, and if you know him you will decide that the strength of his passions is his distinguishing trait. His nerves are tuned to a high pitch and readily re- sponsive to the sympathetic touch. Strike a dis- cordant note, and his frame vibrates with suppressed antithetic emotions. The gamut is run with surprising alacrity. With his will you deal with the inflexible. His plans once formed, he will plod the years as days, cope with difficulties if surmountable, and if otherwise bide his time until conditions change. He may all along l>e chafing with impatience, but the callous cnines, and on he goes. There is, however, a limit to this intensity. The friction from such velocity wears upon the machine. The Jew is physically the inferior of his Gentile brother. He travels faster, but often falls before the race seems run. We see, therefore, that the Jew is an extremist." Ethical Dualism, a trait of semi- Dualism development and one with which we are familiar among American negroes, is characteristic of immaturity. It is the trait of the on who has not yet accepted the responsibility for ; own life. None of us entirely shake it off. Not only is the Sunday boy different from the Monday boy, the boy praying different from the boy playing, the boy alone or with his parents or his adult friend different 44 BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE from the boy with his comrades, but, as in savagery, the ethics of the boy with his " gang " is different from that with other boys. It is the old clan ethics. This idea that loyalty is due only to one's own tribe, and that other people are enemies, and other people's prop- erty is legitimate prey, is just the spirit which makes the " gang " dangerous, and which suggests the need of teaching a universal sociality, and of transforming the clan allegiance into a chivalry toward all. The clan is a step higher than individualism; I would recog- nize it, but I would lead its members to be knights rather than banditti. " The age which the boy has reached," says Joseph Lee, " is that where Sir Launce- lot, the knight-errant, the hero of single combat, is developing into Arthur, the loyal king." Another trait of adolescence is the T Survival of Immaturities. These are Immaturities not immediately cut off. Illness, nerve fatigue, unknown causes, may bring them back. The emotional era is often babyish. A later survival is the craze for the lodge in early manhood, which seems to result from the fact that the adolescent love of chivalry and parade has not previously been satisfied. Adolescence not only gives " rever- op ecies Derations" of the past; it prophesies its future. This comparatively unnoticed fact must modify many of our conclusions and much of our practise. It is easy to overemphasize the fad that the child is a savage. He is also a seer. As in Joel, our " young men see visions " and " upon the hand- maidens is poured out the Spirit." Chamberlain calls the child " the general genius," and bows that if we THE BOY PROBLEM knrw better the art of developing the individual we should not during the process of maturing destroy the promise of youth. This is to be done, in general, by keeping in advance of the child and giving him some- thing to reach up to without making him unchildlike. Be knows by prophetic instinct much that he has not experienced, and he reads as well as feels. We can give him some information which shall seem like empty moms, but he will soon hasten on and, if the informa- tion bo vital truth, populate these vacant formularies and make that which was first habit volitional. This explains why some religious instruction which was not based on child-study has produced pretty good results, while some other with good enough theories has failed. The hitter was not nourishing enough. As an illustra- tion of what 1 mean, let me instance the place of art in a child's life. The psychologist who remembers only the fad that children reverberate may say: Give the child only large outlines and crude colors. But he who remembers that the child is also a prophet says: Do this if you will, but give the boy also the Sistine Ma- donna and her Child. It may correct the grotesqueness of his imperfect imagination now, and either a certain Messianic prophecy in his soul will reveal its beauty, or else, having been habituated to it in childhood, it will hang cherished forever on the walls of memory when he can fully understand. Appeal to your own memory of home pictures and tell me if this is not wise. _ „ Another curious fact about maturing Lulls ,._.,. . _ hie is that it comes on in waves. Be- tween these are Lulls. These lulls were called to my attention by some heads of reformatories before I read 4G BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE about them. Those who have seen Starbuck's charts of the period of conversion are familiar with the triple rise and fall of that age. But there are other charts upon which this rhythmic development is manifest. This boy grows nine inches in stature this year and next year he increases not at all. That boy led his class last year; this year he is leading the other end of it. Yonder lad came to "the necktie stage" a few months ago; now he has forsworn society. Another was hopefully converted recently, but now has back- slidden and fears he has sinned the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit. What is the explanation? If you chart out all these rhythms, physical, mental, social, and moral, you will find that they closely corre- spond. Their explanation is largely physical. When physical growth and energy are near their flood-tide the other friendly energies respond likewise, but during these reaction times which the good God gives so that the child's body may gather power to grow again, all the other energies hibernate. This law of rhythms probably acts to a lesser degree all through life. It is not confined to adolescence. Middle-aged people have testified to having regular fluctuations of religious in- terest once in two years; others, during successive winters. Some of these cases are explainable, some are obscure. The tendency of nervous energy to expend and then recuperate itself; the fact of a yearly rhythm in growth, greatest in the autumn and least from April fcoJuly, pointed out by Malling-Hansen; the influence of winter quiet and leisure upon religious feeling, — these are suggestive. In boyhood h is probable that the first lull is a reaction from the shock of the pubertal change, 47 THE BOY PROBLEM the second a reaction from the year of greatest physical growth, and 1 lie third a reaction from the year of doubt and re-creation. The boy, then, who suddenly loses his interest in religion or work or ideals is not to be thought in a desperate condition, and somebody ought to tell hi in that he is not. There is nothing to do but wait for this condition, which is natural and helpful to over- wrought energies, to pass, as it surely will. Something has been said about the Instincts . . . . ,. „ . importance ot recognizing and following the leadings of the natural interests or the Instincts of boys, in trying to help them. This must always be done, but it must not be overdone. When social inter- course begins, natural instincts begin to be perverted. It is the best and not the. worst manifestation of his means of guidance which is to be followed. One must distinguish between instincts and whims. Fickleness is so noticeable a trait of boys that no parent or friend of boys can ever afford to decide a new proposal from a boy till he has given him time to make a still newer one. The time and place of assembly, the rules and restric- tions of membership and the development of the plans of an organization for boys, if left to the boys them- selves, soon become entirely unsatisfactory to all concerned. All that I have said shows the care that must be taken not to misinterpret boyhood. Things do not always mean what they seem to or even what the psychologists suggest. I spoke of the curious articles found in a boy's pocket as evidences of a sort of fetich- ism. They may be nothing of the sort; they may be .-imply the evidences of an elementary esthetic taste. 48 BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE It takes time and many revisings of one's opinion to arrive at the point where one discovers that what a boy says is seldom all he means, and that what he does is but a slight indication of what he is. The by-laws of life which I have named are largely those which accompany childhood in which there is a real progression. We must now mention those excep- tions, common enough to necessitate knowledge of them, where the life becomes stationary or makes retrogression. These are the stages of atavism, delin- quency and defectiveness, degeneracy and idiocy. Atavism is not clearly distinguished from heredity. Indeed, Virchow de- fined it as " discontinuous heredity." It is not in itself a step toward degeneracy. Probably we are all atavistic when asleep or fatigued or part of a crowd. The inheritance may be from a good rather than an evil ancestor, of sturdiness of body, genius of mind or purity of soul. Whatever it be, it is very apt to show itself during adolescence. Then it is that the child who has always been like its mother suddenly grows like its father in looks or character, or, becoming an entirely strange being, it is remembered or discovered that an ancestor two or three generations back had these qual- ities. A happy advantage may be taken of a favor- able atavism. If the atavism be in the direction of degeneration, now is the time for warning and guiding the child in his formative years. Adopting the biological theory of E. Ray Lankester a- to fche three conditions which may result from natural selection, Balance, Elaboration and Degenera- tion, Dr. George E. Dawson has made some suggestive 40 T II E 15 o V P R O it L E M Btudies of psychic arrests. Each of these arrests, which constitute the retrogressive stages of defective- ness or degeneracy, he explains as the persistence of lower appetites and instincts. Vagrancy and pauper- ism represent the persistence of the unproductive food- appetites of animals, children and savages; theft is the persistence of the predatory instinct; gluttony and drunkenness represent theindiscriminate food-appetites; unchastity is a defectiveness in sex-evolution; assault is a persistence of the preying instinct. These arrests, if temporary, are like the temporary stages of physical growth, and are transformed if surrounding conditions are healthful. If there is a total arrest of the elimina- tive process we have the results in the crimes and offenses of the delinquent classes. If these lower qualities are not only persistent, but become diseases, we have moral monsters. Regarding the last class he makes some most vigorous suggestions. But we are here concerned only with his advice as to the treatment of the second. He urges a recognition that the cause of a large proportion of immoral tendencies is an in- complete elimination of the sub-human traits. " Edu- cation as a moral agency," he says, " must be chiefly serviceable during the periods of life that recapitulate the great groups of genetic instincts and habits. Such are the periods of childhood and adolescence." The practical advice which he gives is most helpful t<> those who, in trying to help a number of boys or girls in social groups in community or church, are puz- zled or disheartened at the presence of one or more partly delinquent or immoral children. He counsels that we remember that these survivals cannot be ex- 60 BY-LAWS OF BOY LIFE tirpated in a moment. He urges the greatest caution as to tempting these children toward the evils to which they have tendencies, because if the functioning of these immoral survivals can be kept from occurring, the reduction of their power must inevitably follow. If, especially during adolescence, appeal is made to the emotions and the reason, the functions which had ret- rograded may be transformed and brought up to the level of those around them. Let bullying be changed into chivalry toward the weak, destructiveness into constructiveness, general obstreperousness into enthu- siastic activity. Johnson found that the use of play and crafts had an especially favorable enlightening and awakening effect upon defective youth. These are the lines of effort which have already been pressed as the proper means of training the wills of normal children. We thus learn that they are to be doubly emphasized in strengthening defective wills and stimulating arrested lives to new growth. The by-laws of boy life that have so far been men- tioned are variations in the boy's own evolution. It remains to mention some that are the result of the surrounding conditions of his life. We have to-day a new kind of homo. The pioneer home was the abiding-place of the whole family and a microcosm of the world. Father and mother were always present and always in active discharge of their varied functions. They • priests, teachers, industrial instructors, judges and executives of justice. To-day the father in the city, and to a considerable degree in the country, is absent all day from the homo. Woman ha i beea emancipated, THE BOY PROBLEM and one of the things the mother is emancipated from is i he house. The teaching, the industrial training, the discipline of faults and the moral and religious educa- tion of children have been turned over to the school, the state and the church. Clubs, lodges, flat-life, moving, the lack of neighbors and dooryards, divorce, — these are some of the disintegrating influences that are at work upon the home. The child has little loyalty to a place or to people, no opportunity to do any useful work, few social ties to his parents and little real attention from them. Rich or poor, he is really, as Professor Peabody has pointed out, too often the victim, in private hoarding-school and orphanage alike, of a " placing-out system." Another condition that affects the child is the city. One third of our children to-day live in cities. Now the country is a panorama; the city is a kinetoscope. It is possible to exaggerate the moral advantages of life in a country town, but it is not possible to exaggerate the contrast in the effect on the physical and nervous life of a child between the real country and the real city. A third condition that affects children, especially in cities, is the influence of immigration. I am not affirm- ing or denying here that the immigrant child has virtues that the American child may well emulate. I am say- ing simply that the different ideals and practises of the foreign child are a potent influence on the character of the American child wherever the two come in contact. An altogether different modification of child growth is the presence of a very strong Personality wither near the child. Sometimes 62 BY-LAWS OF B O Y LIFE it is a playmate who blesses or blasts for a time the lives of a group of boys. It is a matter of observation that every new boy introduced into a boys' club alters the effectiveness of methods which have hitherto applied and sometimes makes a previously successful plan a failure. " The King of Boyville " is no fiction in many a community. Occasionally this personality is a woman. It may be a playmate of the same or often of greater age, who calls forth that first love whose sweetness is its unearthly and chivalric purity. It may be that rare monster, a female libertine. It is oftener a genial matron who is great-aunt and fairy godmother to a whole group. Sometimes this personality is that of a man who seems to exercise, voluntarily or invol- untarily, an almost hypnotic influence upon children. Happy the leader of boys who has that power and who can wisely use it! Warm-hearted and trustful, the lad is always easily seduced. His future depends more upon the first great friendship of his adolescence than upon any other one influence. Three other influences can be only Influences mentioned and grouped together. They are the increase of lawlessness among rich and poor, the falling of the church behind the public school in its educational work, and the fact that, while the home has abdicated the moral instinct ion of children, the school has not in any orderly, serious or consecutive way taken it up. On the other hand, as some sort of balance to these last three portentous and alarming statements, we may gather what heart we may from three other condition- ing facts of recent origin, — the rise of child-study, the 53 THE BOY PROBLEM triumph of " the new education," with its emphasis upon the child rather than upon the subject of study, and tlir recent national revival of righteousness. The impression which this chapter will leave is not one of encouragement to those who are about to enter f butterflies or fishes, and 83 THE BOY PROBLEM for the incidental study of birds, or frogs, or snakes, or whatever came to their notice while hunting. The older boys devoted themselves mainly to the butter- flies, the younger to the fishes. Nearly every species of butterfly to be found in Andover during the season was captured, many kinds of caterpillars were taken and developed into chrysalids in the cages, and nearly all the different kinds of fishes to be found in the streams and ponds of Andover were caught and studied. The work consisted largely of outdoor tramps, but there was also laboratory work, the description and drawing of the worm, chrysalis and butterfly. Honey-bees in an observation hive, and ants in nests made of school slates covered with glass were watched. Some of the ants' nests were successfully kept and watched for months, one boy keeping a colony all winter. The microscope was frequently used in the laboratory work. Note-books on fishes were also kept. The interest of the boys was deepest in the gathering and general ob- servation and naming of specimens, the watching and feeding of the fishes, and less in the minuter observa- tion, drawing and naming the parts. The zeal in the hunting of specimens was often intense. "Allied to the nature work was the gardening. A part of the school-yard was plowed and a definite por- tion allotted to each boy who chose gardening. Vege- tables of various kinds were planted. Flower plants were also a part of the care and possession of the boys, and were taken home and transplanted by the boys at the close of the school. The following spring, many of these boys were reported to me as having started gardens of their own at home. i SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS " In the winter session, stamp and picture collections were substituted for the nature collections, the stamp- collecting craze spreading like wild-fire among the school children last winter, some of the candy and cigarette counters suffering thereby, to my certain knowledge. " The second period of the day, one hour in length, was spent in outdoor play. In one section of the play- ground might have been seen a group of boys engaged in a match at archery. In another section, the older boys, perhaps, divided into opposing sides by some natural grouping which lent zest to emulation, were hard at a spirited game of ball. Elsewhere some of the younger or less athletic boys were playing at tenpins on the smooth driveway, or at bean bags. There were also, at times, football, basket-ball, ring-toss, tag games, boxing, wrestling, racing, jumping, vaulting, gymnastic tricks, kite-flying, boat-racing at Rabbit i's Pond, swimming races at Pomp's or in the Shawsheen. Three times a week there was a division in swimming. The swimming lessons often served as a good opportu- nity for collecting specimens or plants for the aquaria. On rainy days there were indoor games, which partook more of the nature of social or parlor games and which woe intellectual rather than physical. " The musically inclined boys were always eager for an orchestra. This look the form of a kindersym- phonie. The talents and attainments of the boys made the music necessarily crude, but it was much enjoyed by them. The violinists were children who came for the orchestra alone, the play-school boys being confined mainly to time-beating inslnmu 86 THE BOY PROBLEM There was a class also in piano-playing which met twice a week. " The printing department appealed to some as real play. The press served in printing the names of the boys in the several departments, the baseball teams, headings for school exercise papers, cards, some bill- heads, and, best of all, a four-paged paper issued at the close of the last school, containing compositions of the boys on the work of the various departments, names of prize-takers, cuts of drawings made in the nature work, list of specimens captured and the like. " Besides the drawing in the nature work, there was a division in drawing for those who preferred it to any other occupation they might have during that period. The work took the form, mainly, of large free drawings from objects. This was the nearest allied to regular school work of any department, unless we except the library from which the boys eagerly drew books of stories, history or nature, for home reading." The essential things about this remarkable lilliputian community seem to have been the intelligent contact with nature, the devising and making by the boys of their instruments of play and work — but nothing like formal sloyd or classroom drill — and the natural and friendly social relations with the boys of the adult workers, some of whom were paid and some volunteer. Mr. Johnson's summer work was planned as a part of a continuous play-school curriculum to run from boyhood to manhood, and, especially in winter even- ings, to reach the working boys as well as to the school boys of the village. In the small town of Norway, Maine, two gentlemen 86 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS went to work some time ago, independently of each other, to lead the boys of their acquaintance into accu- rate study and observation of nature in the hill region about them. They found that the boys responded to the most painstaking work and that the results in character were as encouraging as in natural history. Now, as some one has said, " flowers are not ethics," but fellowship is, and comradeship on the fair levels of nature study is character-forming. The Rev. Herbert A. Jump in studying the country problem dismisses the Y. P. S. C. E. and Y. M. C. A. as being unable to contribute very much help, and feels that few individual country churches have pastors, members or equipment adequate to the need. " Why, then," he asks, " should not the school building be appropriated as a boys' rendezvous? " About the school in each village let a system of self-governing clubs be organized with athletic, chivalric, patriotic, parliamentary or social interests, adapted to various ages. Each club will be under the supervision of an adult. These club leaders will naturally meet from time to time for conference with a general superintend- ent, who will be an interested citizen, a teacher, or, at least desirably, a minister. Thus the school would be- come a center for every wholesome boyish occupation or diversion, — a play center out of hours as well as a study center in hours, and all the while a growth center. Out in Rockford County, Illinois, Su- mentciubf" perintendenl O. J. Kern'e " Boys' Ex- periment Clubs " (and " (Jirls' Home Culture Clubs"), with their school gardens and corn- planting contests and annual ion* to the State 87 T HE HOY PROBLEM Agricultural College, have done much to exalt the dignity of farm work as a calling and to enrich the lives of the boys intellectually and socially. Other counties and states are imitating this example. Mr. Kern's book is mentioned in the Bibliography. Principal William A. Baldwin of the T . . Hyannis Normal School has worked out in another little book, " Industrial So- cial Education," his experiments in introducing indus- trial and even commercial features into school work, as they have been called out by the development and the needs of the children. This work becomes a return to many of the features of the industrial training given in the old pioneer home, with a more enlightened educa- tional guidance. Here, too, we get some light on the way the school may cooperate with the home, fill wholesomely the leisure of the boy and help him plan his future. By beginning in a small and natural way, with a leader who has mastered the idea and who is a person of efficiency, and a few volunteer workers who know some- thing about tools, insects, piants or sports, and a group of boys, and a very little apparatus, this sort of work inside or outside a school ought in any place to grow to something very serviceable and fruitful, without any of the barrenness, extravagance and public indifference which usually seem to be connected with an institution. The vacation school movement and Vacation ^ ne pi av ground movement in our large Schools and ... . . , , , ■ ■o. , cities are wise-minded endeavors to re- Playgrounds store to city children somewhat of their country birthright, together with some engagement of 88 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS their long, dangerous, summer leisure in happy handi- craft and supervised play. They deserve much more space than can be given them here, and the interested reader must again be referred to the lists at the end of this book of manuals of these subjects. The summer playgrounds, beginning as private phil- anthropies, are becoming municipal institutions, ex- tensions of the public school system, just as fast as they are recognized as creators of health and morality. Summer philanthropies are supplementing the vacation schools and summer playgrounds by giving each year a larger number of city children the air and tonic, the freedom and nurture and healing of the country. Let us now turn to some of the agencies, found in both city and country, in which the religious element is central. I shall give an entire chapter to a con- structive study of aims and methods. What I shall do here is simply to describe some of the methods now in existence. A popular way of helping boys and J unior girls in the church is in the Junior En- E , deavor Society and kindred organiza- tions. "The Endeavor movement soon found a practical difficulty in the fact thai its young people, some of whom were quite young when they entered, remained in the society year after year, and that just as soon as their average age began to increase it became almost impossible to gather in younger members. Tomeetthis aeed,in 1884, junior societies, and a few years later intermediate societies, began to be established, formed in complete imitation of Hie societies of older young people. Thus naturally, and THE BOY PROBLEM yet we may say somewhat thoughtlessly, an institution was introduced into our churches with the same name and methods as one already existing, but with no query as to whether means that were adaptable to persons from sixteen to sixty would be perfectly natural to boys and girls from ten to sixteen. It cannot be denied that the Christian Endeavor movement is passing through a period of reaction and readjustment. As to the needs of the movement as it applies to adults it would be aside from the main ques- tion to enter into discussion here. But the general dis- satisfaction with the Endeavor scheme as it applies to juniors, and the increasing growth of societies that are substitutes or are supplementary to it, especially for boys, makes the question pertinent, whether the En- deavor idea is applicable to boys. An interesting test as to whether these junior societies do actually suit young children may be taken from the results of Dr. Sheldon's study, already referred to, of the societies, clubs and gangs which children sponta- neously organize. If interest is the key to influence, what boys like to do is a criterion as to the sort of things which it is wise to do with them. Three things were definitely discovered regarding these societies: Physical activity, in the forms of play, construction, wandering and athletics, was the supreme interest, 85^ per cent of the societies having this as its characteristic; leagues for religious expression were almost entirely absent; boys and girls almost never organized together. We see at once that these junior societies ignore these three facts, for they are mostly organizations for sitting still, they aim directly at verbal religious ex- 90 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS pression, and the} 7 include boys and girls together. If we combine with verbal religious expression the pres- ence of the other sex, we make a demand which is a sore tax upon simplicity and sincerity. Religion in a child may be real, but it is only a promise. It is not yet time to talk about it or display it in any vocal way. " Oh, that I might do something for God! " not, " Oh, to say something! " is his cry. With boys especially this is a time of reserves; the distance between apprehension and expression is never so long as now; it is more important to brood than to utter, and public prayer or testimony or opinion is, in this imitative age, sure to be parrot-like and unnatural. It is a period when a boy tries to be honest with him- self. The insistence upon an indenturing for life by the ironclad pledge and the easy tolerance of its fre- quent infraction does this quality of his nature a serious wrong. " Nothing tends more to give to chil- dren a sense of unreality," says Sir Joshua Fitch, " than the habit of exacting from them professions of faith which do not honestly correspond to their present stage of religious experience." When a boy wants to talk in meeting at this age there is generally something the matter with him. I have often observed that it is not the best or most thoughtful boys who do the praying and talking in these meetings. It is rather those of quick but shallow natures who ought to be repressed rather than encouraged, and who are learning a light and easy manner of religious expression which may later easily become weakly fluent and untie or less consciously hypocritical. On the other hand, an im- mature boy of a deeper nature will often be led into 01 T II E BOY P It O B L E M giving expressions of himself, honest at the time, which he later recognizes as crude and overwrought, the re- sult of which may be to silence his lips forever or to persuade him that he has lost, in losing its temporary fervor, the reality of his religious life. This may help explain why it is that the Endeavor movement, origi- nated largely to feed and fructify the church prayer- meeting, has been such a disappointment in this regard. He must be blind who does not see that in New England at least the mid-week meeting is ceasing to be a place for the offering of prayer and the giving of personal religious experience. Another fact which I have already mentioned is that life to adolescents comes on in waves, between which are rhythms or lulls. Those who have much to do with boys intimately, and many men from their memory of childhood, have testified that conversion is quite apt to come in three successive waves of increasing power about two or three years apart. Between these waves there is a period of depression, caused perhaps by pubertal or other physical changes. This is " the pin- feather age," the blunder period. In these lulls the child is apt to think he has lost his faith or sinned away his day of grace. The junior methods are very apt to intensify the morbidness and introspection of these curious intermediary periods. It seems to me that Dr. Coe has in his study of tem- peraments cut the ground away forever from under that hoary heresy that " the prayer-meeting is the thermometer of the church." The exact truth is that it is the thermometer of the people of sanguine or mel- ancholic temperaments in the church. Sainthood, as 02 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS he points out, has in all ages, especially the medieval, been granted to those of devout feeling and devout expression, and it has only been seldom that men have " perceived that merely filling one's station in life in the fear of God is a spiritual exercise." The saints of the Endeavor movement — and they are real saints — are men of the devotional type. They publish or push the writings of Meyer, Murray, Morgan, Moody and McGregor, who are also saints and of the same type; they encourage a comradeship of the Quiet Hour, which appeals to saints of the same type; and they believe that the prayer-meeting is the thermometer of the Christian. But there are other good people who think the writings of those saints who begin with M tire- some, who if they had a quiet hour would say their prayers all through and then have fifty-seven minutes in which to start up and do something, and to whom either a prayer-meeting is irksome or personal partici- pation in it painful and unprofitable. They were made that way. They are of the choleric type. It is no reflection upon the manliness of the former class when Professor Coe points out that women are overwhelmingly of sanguine or melancholic tempera- ment, and that it is something more than mere coin- cidence that women should be in the majority in the churches where " the forms of religious life natural to the choleric temperament are habitually discounted in favor of those natural to the sanguine and melancholic temperaments." Whether this tendency has begun to show its results in the Endeavor movement there is time, but perhaps there are nut sufficient data, to make evident. It is a THE BOY PROBLEM fact that in the states and the denomination in those states in which the movement started the societies have lately fallen off very largely in membership. It is also everywhere noticeable that the movement is becoming predominantly feminine, and that it is increasingly difficult to hold young men of the active type in its membership. And the reason we lose men is that the movement is not well adapted to the boys. With all this that has just been said about the dangers of verbal religious expression, it is also fair to say that there are many of my friends, especially in the Y. M. C. A., who believe that for boys when they are together by themselves, with a judicious leader, at camp or in some other natural relationship, to inter- change their religious sentiments or even to pray is a perfectly natural and wholesome exercise. But even these men do not advocate that such performances be encouraged in the presence of the other sex. There are in the Endeavor forces and organization possibilities that point to successful social and re- ligious work, under wiser methods. These societies usually command the services of some of the best and wisest leaders in the churches. They meet, as the boys outgrow their boys' clubs, that temptation, to which so many workers with boys yield, of holding boys by selfish attractions rather than by service for others, by a demand for unselfishness. Such religious bands as these are splendid untram- melled opportunities for children to serve God and perform religious duty. They give instant definiteness to consecration. The word " Endeavor " was an in- 94 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS spiration. It expresses the ideals of youth. To tiy, to persist, to attain, — these are the things a boy wants to do. The junior idea has in it the three things which are fundamental to work that shall help boys: some- thing to love, something to know and something to do. There is the hearty devotion to the personal Christ, the disposition to seek wiser ways of instructing the chil- dren and the splendidly planned activities of the vari- ous committees. Notice how the boy who wriggles like an eel during the prayer-meeting and pops up to give a " testimony " and then pops down to stick a pin into his neighbor — with equal enthusiasm — shines in do- ing the chores of a social or in works of mercy for which one would suppose he would have no heart. He wants to be doing something. If I were going to have a caste called " the active membership " at all, I would have it consist of those who are active with their hands rather than with their tongues, an inner guild of those who will agree to take definite tasks and do them. The wiser Endeavor leaders are gathering up to them- selves the activities of the various straggling minor societies of the church and some of them are adding drills, athletics, camps, etc. The Endeavor hosts, " the army of the daybreak," have the enthusiasm, the confidence, the consecration and the opportunity to take hold of the boys, and do for them what no one else can do. Let the directors of the movement gradu- ally retire methods that are merely imitative of adults and that insist on iron conformities, and affiliate with themselves some of the other forms of work named in this chapter, and then the movement will furnish the leadership and the goal to u multitude of buys who THE BOY PROBLEM need only the right touch to ripen them into Christian manhood. I give no special space here to the Epworth League and the other societies, imitative of Christian En- deavor, since what I have said of one applies largely to all. Now to the Brotherhoods of St. An- The Brotherhoods drew ' and of AndreW and PhiH P- The strength of these brotherhoods is loy- alty. The gregarious spirit of boys has in it a great capacity for affection, as is seen in the strength of college secret societies among youths not out of the adolescent period. That spirit is beautiful and en- nobling. The church is an institution as worthy of passionate devotions and of " team-work " as the college. The brotherhoods seize this romantic affection and fasten it. Mr. Hubert Carleton, the secretary of the Brother- hood of St. Andrew, believes that the very highest ap- peal ought to be made to a boy. He has recently said: " Can the boy be won? Yes. The boy can be won, but not in the usual way in which the church is working at the problem to-day. The boy can be won by em- ploying his interests, his energies, his possibilities and his inspiration in behalf of God and God's cause. The way to win the boy for the church is to teach him to work for the church. And by church work I do not mean what is commonly meant by church work. I do not mean to give the boy some petty tinkering around the church and allow him to call that church work or work for God. If you send your boy running messages for the rector, delivering notices, collecting books and 96 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS the like, and teach him to do nothing else, you have dwarfed the boy at the very beginning; and if you dwarf the boy you will never develop the man. The church is in this world to make people Christians who are not to-day Christians, and the boy must be taught by the church to take up his share in this work. In plain English, then, let me say that no boy can be a real Christian unless he is trying to make it easier for other boys who are not Christians to become Christians, or those who are Christians already to become better Christians. " The church is teaching the boy to-day a maimed religion, an imperfect religion, a religion with the heart left out of it. She is teaching him that it is his duty to live straight, but she is not teaching him that it is his equally necessary duty to help the other fellow to live straight. She is not teaching him that the first duty of every church boy is to make it easier for those who are not church boys to become church boys, and he is not therefore doing it. You cannot blame him be- muse he does not know, no one has ever told him, and the church is losing not only his own allegiance, because no boy will stay where his energies are not employed, but she is also losing all the boys who should be being won by him. John Wanamaker once said that when you convert a man you convert one person, but when you convert a boy you convert a multiplication table, and Wanainaker's arithmetic is usually correct. " The Brotherhood of St. Andrew ie the only society which i- to-day successful in this kind of work among 3. it puta aside altogether the amusement fea- tures, and everything which is supposed to attract boys. 97 THE BOY PROBLEM It believes that the boy should be used, not amused, and it accordingly sets the boy at the hardest,' highest and holiest work in all the world, that of living for other boys. All amusement features are debarred. The boy joins the junior department of the Brother- hood of St. Andrew, not for what he can get, but for what he can give, and there are, in this society to-day, thousands of the older boys of our church, boys of edu- cation, boys of influence, boys of leadership and boys of position who are being taught how impossible it is for them to be real Christians unless they are getting other boys to be Christians and are being shown how to put this into practical operation by being directed towards their friends and companions whom they can influence." The evangelizing of boys by other boys is the idea of the order, and the word " Brotherhood " expresses what every boy covets. I value the Brotherhoods very highly as opportunities afforded boys to develop their early Christian characters in each other's fellow- ship under mature, manly leaders. Almost every men's league in a church needs a boy branch to prevent it from becoming selfish. This adopting of the boys by the men in a church, in a godfatherly sense, is a magnificent mission. The most interesting church work The Captains , , , T , . . . of Ten know ot anywhere among boys is that exhibited in an organization known as the Captains of Ten, originated and con- ducted by Miss A. B. Mackintire, of Dr. Alexander McKenzie's church in Cambridge. We have here a successful boys' club conducted by a woman. Here 98 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS is a woman who, without fad or publicity, has worked out for fifteen years a plan which fits the best theories. The basis is hand-work. The Captains of Ten are boys from eight to fourteen, who are captains of their ten fingers. Cardboard work, weaving, whittling, sloyd, carving and other activities are followed by graded groups. Miss Mackintire is a trained sloyd worker and has a remarkable ingenuity and patience in originating elaborate and dignified annual entertainments by the boys, each of which is a surprise and wonder. The interest is missions, which are taught graphically, chiefly at the monthly business meeting. The boys learn to like to make generous gifts from the proceeds of their festivals and sales of handiwork for the benevo- lent causes which they know about and care for. At the entertainments the dramatic instinct is fully recognized and the constructive faculties are utilized in designing costumes and scenery. Loyalty and self- government are taught incidentally. The older boys become volunteer workers to help beginners, and are graduated into the Order of the Knights of King Arthur. A personality that has been devoted to boys with such earnestness and fidelity becomes a masterful influence on character. To walk down the room, on the walls of which are placed the photographs of the grouped Captains for successive years, — there have been over two hundred boys in all, — and see the growl h in maturity thus visibly portrayed is an impressive vision. These boys seem to ripen into Christian life naturally, although they represent two quite different levels of society, and usually conic into the church. There is no Junior Endeavor Society or other re- 90 THE BOY PROBLEM ligious society for children here. This illustration suggests the power of broader methods wielded by- sense and consecration to assist in the actual religious development of boyhood. Another plan which arouses much ThC T°d- d " enthusiasm among boys from ten to fourteen is that of the Woodcraft In- dians, devised by Ernest Thompson Seton, the natu- ralist. It is an orderly endeavor to systematize and direct that fever for " playing Indian " which has always been the delight of boys who have any access to the forest. It is the nobler side of the aboriginal nature that is imitated, the degrading vices being dis- couraged by such laws as "no smoking " and " no fire-water in camp," and by offering recognitions, called " coups," for clear sight, powers of observation, agility and marksmanship and deeds of heroism. The games are ingeniously arranged to afford a reasonable amount of hardship and to encourage the higher sports- manship, the contestants striving against time and space rather than against their fellows, the rewards be- ing so varied as to suit every boyish talent and being justly proportioned to real endeavor. The plan is elastic and may be turned to the loftiest uses. If the Woodcraft Indians is a method Th ^ Kni | ht f^ that corresponds to the savage period of boyhood, then the Order of the Knights of King Arthur, devised by the author, may well apply to the chivalric period that follows. It is based upon the romantic, hero-loving, play, construc- tive and imaginative instincts which ripen at about fourteen, but it has been found possible and desirable 100 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS to prepare the boys for the special features of the order by preliminary organization, as Captains of Ten or Woodcraft Indians, at about twelve. Its purpose is to bring back to the world, and especially to its youth, the spirit of chivalry, courtesy, deference to woman- hood, recognition of the noblesse oblige, and Christian daring, and ideal of that kingdom of knightliness which King Arthur promised he would bring back when he returns from Avalon. In this order he ap- pears again. Unlike many means of helping boys, this one does not claim to be complete in itself. It is only a skeleton organization, attracting instant pleas- ure, affording wholesome recreation and instruction and serving as the framework upon which to build in- strumentalities that may particularly fit local needs. It is formed upon the model of a college Greek-letter fraternity rather than upon that of a secret lodge, al- though it is believed that the satisfaction of the love of ritual, mystery and parade in this way in adolescence will often prevent the lodge-room craze which mighl later become extravagant and destructive of domestic felicity. It is not secret. The boys when they gather for a " conclave " march into their hall and seat them- selves in a circle in imitation of the round table, with a King at the head, the Merlin or adult leader at his side, and the various functionaries of their " Castle in their places. In order to avoid jealousy there is constant rotation in office. Each boy bears the name of a hero, either an ancient knight or a modern man of noble life, and is known by thai name in the castle and is supposed to be familiar with the history of the one for whom he is named and to emulate his virtl 101 THE BOY PROBLEM The ritual is short but impressive. Its preparation and the arranging of the initiations, which embody the grades of page, esquire and knight, and which teach lessons important to boyhood, give room for the con- structive instinct in the making of regalia, banners, swords and spears, throne, etc. These initiations exer- cise the play-instinct without giving opportunity for physical violence. Hero-worship is developed by a roll of noble deeds, a castle album of portraits of heroes, the reading together of heroic books and the offering of ranks in " the peerage " and the sacred honor of " the Siege Perilous " for athletic, scholarly or self- sacrificing attainments. These honors are arranged to harmonize with those offered in the Woodcraft Indians, so that the two organizations dovetail. Those which involve mere physical effort are rewards for whole- some emulation, while the recognition of actual heroism is conferred, not to the boaster, but by the spontaneous tribute of his fellows. The ranks of esquire and knight in the castle are planned to be occupied by those who shall voluntarily, after a term of probation, accept a simple, self-originated covenant of purity, temperance and reverence or enter the manliness of actual Christian confession by church membership. For definite ac- tivity and in satisfying the instinct for roaming and adventure, " quests " are suggested in the way of walks to historic sites and cooperative deeds of kindness. The local Merlin is urged to develop the resources of the boys in his own way, as upon the manner in which he does this the life of the castle will ultimately depend. Almost everything can be clad in imagination with the knightly character. The summer camp will become 102 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS the literal castle and its environs the country of the paynims, who are to be protected, not ravaged. The ball team will be the castle armed band and its vic- tories the occasion of mild " wassail." The boys will often elaborate further rituals of their own, and patri- otism and missions can be taught under this disguise. Often the members show a touching tenderness toward a group of younger boys who are under instruction preparatory to being admitted, and refer in later days to their memories of the order with something of the same feeling that the graduate does to his college days. There is in some such approach to the best in the boy the possibility of great good. In a successful castle, loyalty, chivalry and service — the three watchwords of the order — are actually developed in very pleasing ways. The plan is thoroughly Christian and is more often found in churches than elsewhere, although adapted to a union group in the community. Its elasticity makes it popular to use with other formal agencies. Even reduced to its simplicity — the adop- tion of knightly names and ideals — it proves a power- ful force for uplifting a group of boys by a way that quietly and constantly appeals to their idealism and group spirit without trespassing upon their reserve or making them unduly introspective. It seems to have the unique quality that while in it religion is BO un- obtrusive that it does not offend, it is so integral a part that it cannot be ignored. In Mr. Carleton's description of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew we ! ic ideal the boy membership of a church segregated into a brotherhood to win other boys who are outsiders. In the Knights of King Arthur the Christian boy i lf».; THE BOY PROBLEM in the rest of life, a part of a community of boys, in which there is no caste but character. The author may speak freely of certain minor ad- vantages of the plan, which are noted by President G. Stanley Hall, who regards it as " the best form of group-honor " for boys, because these advantages came about incidentally and not from his own planning. " The esoteric is a real basis for comradeship." " It permits the abandon of freedom in its yeasty stage, innocent rioting." " The grades of initiation become symbolic of old ethnic initiations of pubescents or of putting off the old isolated self by regeneration into a larger social existence." " In cultivating friendship intensely for a small circle, as gentlemen practising noblesse oblige, many youth would owe more to this circle than to curriculum and faculty." The author has found in his own experience that under all, the idea of the Quest, as a partnership in the search for character, when conducted frankly and in mutual help by both adult leader and the boys, be- comes the permanent and valuable element of the fraternity. In no other way has he found that he could so naturally live the religious life with boys. The Boys' Brigade has had consider- The Boys' able vogue on bot ^ gic | es Q f t h e wa ter. It usually, when first tried, brings together a large company of boys, and it offers the advantages of exercises that not only inculcate erectness and vigor but that assist humility, obedience and attention. The summer military camp is often a valuable feature and there is during the winter some opportunity for Bible drill, though there are difficulties in yoking it to the 104 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS other more strenuous exercises. Where it is possible to get a drill-master who is something more, and who will learn to see his boys as individuals, it has done good. The plan is not very elastic and, so rapidly do boys outgrow any one form of organization, that many feel that the large expense of it is not always justified. There is an improvement of this last- Lf B d named plan called the Boys' Life Bri- gade, in which the drills are on a peace basis and are in the line of learning to save rather than to destroy life. Ambulance drill, first aid, rescuing from fire and drowning, are attractive features. The Sunday-school is the greatest e un ay- educational institute of the church. De- bcnool spite the abundant criticisms with which it has been favored, the character of its leaders and membership, the authorization and labor which it has received, the large reach it has upon the childhood of every community and its genuine value and unique opportunity will cause it to continue to be the place where the church does the most of its teaching and puts forth its best work. The Sunday-school has three functions. First and chiefly, it is the agency, supplemental to the home, where children and young people are taughl the Christian religion of love and service. Second, it is a place where older poisons may Btudy the higher problems of religious thought and duty. Third, it is the place where people are trained t<> teach re- ligion to others. These three functions suggest :«s the divisions of the Sunday-school, the primary and adolescent grades, the adult classes, the normal de- THE BOY PROBLEM parturient. I shall speak almost entirely of the first division. Ideally, the Sunday-school for children is not a school at all. In an Edenic condition it is an extension of the home. It is a place where a wise and good man or woman gathers a group of young people to whom he is in the truest sense a god-parent in order to help and supplement the home in teaching the way of life and encouraging children to walk in it. There are, of course, pedagogic laws to be applied in Sunday-school instruction, but the aim should not be to imitate the public school. The model of the Sunday-school should be rather the social settlement classes and clubs, where the teacher and scholars are simply friends who meet because of interest in the same subject. The Sunday- school class is the proper unit for all the organized work of the church among young people. I look forward to the day when, instead of having a Sunday-school where a great many children come for only an hour on Sun- day, and several forlorn Endeavor societies, mission bands and clubs of boys and girls which struggle to hold the interest of but a small fraction on week-days, each class or group of classes shall have its week-day session which shall be an authorized and fully attended meeting of the school. Here the secular mass-club idea of esprit de corps and the group-club intensive and personal work would both be exemplified. The first essential for an improved school is a trained superintendent. Behind even the homely group-class idea must be the man of ideal and knowledge. In the larger churches such men are being set apart to this as a life-work. There is a great demand in the smaller 10G SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS churches for ministers who are teachers as well as pastors. Then we must have good teachers. We naturally turn to our public schools. But President Hyde tells our public school teachers to treat one who would have them teach Sundays " as a murderer who seeks your life." Still, many of them do teach, and they are a blessing to our schools. The mid-week meeting of the church is to give more and more an opportunity for the pastor-teacher to confer with the laymen-teachers as to the principles and methods of Bible teaching. Fathers and mothers and other people who have re- tained their childhood may thus become competent and efficient teachers. Officers of the Y. M. C. A. express great confidence in the results of their experiments in Bible classes in which the teacher is eliminated. The pupil-teachers are boys of the same age as their classes, or a little older, who have been carefully drilled by an adult in a normal class. Their belief is that the absence of ser- monizing and the freedom from the dominance of an adult personality make for a healthy and expressive class life. The qualities of opinionativeness and fervor in a man which might weaken him as ;i teacher of unconverted boys might make him an excellenl leader of a normal class of Christian boys, his force of character being their needed stimulus to consecrated endeavor. The success of this plan evidently depends on the excellence of this preparatory work. In regard to the system of instruction much progress may be expected, for much ha& already been secured. The ideal toward which < adily moving is a 107 T H E 1? () Y P R O B L E M graded set of classes and a permanent graded selection of material. One of the best complete graded school systems of which I know is that worked out in the Tabernacle school connected with Chicago Commons. In outline it is as follows: " The Graded Bible School. There are twelve grades in the Graded Bible School, corresponding to the grades in the public schools and covering the period from six to eighteen years in the scholar's life. The school is divided into Primary, Junior and Senior de- partments, each including four grades. The Primary and Junior equal the period of grammar school and the Senior that of high school in our public school system. In arranging the curriculum the aim has been to adapt the work to the needs of the children and young people in the different periods of their develop- ment in accordance with the results of the best modern child-study, and also to cover the Bible material in a complete and orderly way. While the chief subject of study is the Bible, attention is paid to church history, missions, present-day problems in ethics. The course naturally falls into six divisions. The first two cover the receptive period in the child's life, the work being confined to Bible truths and Bible stories, nature les- sons, object-lessons and the memorizing of Scripture passages. The next two divisions include the decision period in the child's life. The work is in the New Testament, including a careful study of the Life of Christ, the Early Church and simple Christian teaching. In the fifth division the Old Testament is studied, and in the sixth division, when the young person is in the reconstruction period of life, the aim is to inculcate 108 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS Christian duties and meet the questionings and diffi- culties which arise in the mind of a young person at this time." By the time a youth has reached eighteen years of age he ought, in a model curriculum, to have secured intellectually a consecutive historical knowledge of the religious history of that people whose genius was re- ligion, of the events of the life of Jesus with their sur- roundings, and of the origins of the Christian Church, with the developments of Christian history and Chris- tian missions that ensued. He ought also to know something of the order and purposes and meanings of the books of the Bible, so that he can read it with understanding, discrimination and delight. Ethically, he should have faced in turn the groat moral situations as they were presented to the great characters of Scripture in turn, and should have formulated for him- self a scheme of life from the law, the prophets and the gospel. Spiritually, he should have been brought face to face with the Christ and have given allegiance to him and his kingdom. Socially, the pessimistic moods of youth should have been corrected b\ some study of social need and modern social progress. The next important thing is the way of instruction. Two vicious methods are now in vogue: the Lancastrian, or catechetical, and the homiletic. The first is obsolete in all other education. I :cond, confined to re- ligious instruction and old-fashioned school "gram- mar " work, ifi based on the idea thai the Spiril of God and of common is so absent from the child thai he will never sec the good nor do it unless a moral is tagged to every verse in the lesson, This method, that THE BOY PROBLEM of the sermonette, may do in the adult Bible class, but it is useless in the junior classes. It is unfortunately perpetuated by most of the popular " helps " pub- lished for teachers. It is the picturesque and vivid in biography that attracts attention from a boy. To him, life is moving, adventurous, highly colored. The reflective and the passive moods are not his. His mind is so alert and keenly sensitive to moral issues that he reaches them more quickly than his teacher does, and then awaits with surly suspicion and agonizing self-consciousness the clumsy and blunt way by which his preceptor " makes the application." Religion to him is doing,- not talking. He does not want to talk about it. He will not be talked to about it. The school of the future will give the little children story-talks on the heavenly Father in nature and provi- dence, and the child's relation to him as illustrated by the childhood of Jesus and of other characters and by familiar objects and events. The mythologic, the sensuous, the dramatic and the egoistic will be recog- nized in the stories that follow, taken from the heroes, myths and miracles of the Bible and other literatures. In general, the Old Testament ideals and narratives will precede the New, but not invariably. The physical activities and some of the apparatus of the kindergarten will yield in their turn to the drill- work, the picture-and-composition methods and the variety familiar in the elementary school. Adolescence needs the life of Jesus and of other heroes studied as vitally as possible. One of the most real difficulties in the Sunday-school is the fact that to the boy the Bible no SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS is trite. It is hard to find a boy who does not know as much about the Bible as he wants to. In almost every other subject in education the element of surprise is one of the teacher's chief aids. The Bible does have some surprises even for a cock-sure American boy, but they are not contained in the ordinary Sunday-school quarterly. Every available graphic and manual method of illus- tration and attraction will be pressed during those years when the laboratory method is central in their public school work and when children are so ready to leave the Sunday-school. At this time cooperative study and all the bonds of the gang spirit will be em- phasized to help the live, restless, fickle youths. My own experience with a class of twenty-six boys may be pertinent here. The work was first in the life of Christ, then in the Old Testament. The class approached the life of Jesus by a method as near as possible to that by which the German schools study the national heroes of Germany: the method of travel-study. By means of stereographs they made a journey to Palestine, following the events of Jesus' life by journeys from place to place in which those events occurred. They made the easy transition from tin- work of the public school by means of their geogra- phies, atlases and the announcements of the tourist compao At the beginning of an average lesson they were care- fully transferred from the scene and events of the last m to that of the present. They wen- shown by a Specially keyed map where they were t<> stand, in the definite spot where the Blaster wrought at the time in THE BOY PROBLEM under study, and the exact territory over which they were to look. Then, as they visited this spot by means of the stereograph, they were shown just where the Master entered the scene, what he did there and whence he departed. They completed and connected their knowledge of these places and deeds by drawing sketch maps, by using a stereograph of the relief map of the Palestine Exploration Society, and by molding certain contours of territory with clay or paper-pulp. This connected knowledge they carried farther by records in small individual note-books and by novel reviews. Such instruction not only solves the problems of order, attention, interest and individual instruction, but it even encourages home work, which in Sunday-school has been pretty nearly unknown among boys for some time. The self-expression with the hands mentioned above is, much of it, prepared at home; topics for special report and short debates are worked up there, and even some optional work will be thus done by individuals. Instead of the study of short sections of Scripture in the class, long, consecutive sections are given out for home reading, which might be cut out and pasted in a note-book, making an illustrated gospel of a harmony. The fellowship instinct was utilized in making addi- tional reviews by having a " class life of Christ," to which each member contributed a chapter in turn, and by having a " class log," in which each in turn de- scribed the places where he had been. There need be no fear that such study is not " spirit- ual." Inattention and irreverence are surely un- 112 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS spiritual. Such methods fit the boys, interest them, hold them, instruct them. The geographical and picturesque, as a matter of fact, become the vehicle of the spiritual. My own experience was that the stereo- scope itself was, unexpectedly, a powerful instrument for teaching the individual. Isolated behind his hood, looking as if from a dark room through a window into a strange world, his ears as alert as his eyes, each of my twenty-six boys received impressions that were deep, lasting, personal. I was teaching, not a class, but twenty-six separate hearts. A method of study in which the picturesque has less attention, while the analysis of character has more, has been carefully worked out by the Rev. John L. Keedy (see Bibliography). Here "the pupils pass judgment upon each action, they approve or disapprove of each person. Admiration runs out into choice." The note- book is constantly used and serious attention is de- manded to something which the boys recognize as worth while. While boys do come to Sunday-school usually with a blase manner, their curiosity will respond if real and fresh information is actually presented. By and by the graphic methods yield to frank con- it ion. The restlessness and doubts and moral cravings of the period require also a first-hand dealing with pressing ethical problems. Here, too, comes the sure for spiritual decision. In later yean I lie facts of Biblical criticism and the literature of the Bible become appropriate topics. I am inclined to prophesy an end to the lesson quarterlies, al leasi to the almanac style. The young children will carry home pictures and occasional illus- THE BOY PROBLEM trative material, and will do some little handicraft or " laboratory " work. Those a little older will have lap-boards and pencils and paper and do some water- color or paper-pulp or whittling work, some of it out- side the class. The stereoscope and photographs will be used to make the land and its customs real, and sacred art will bring its own spiritual lessons. The young men and women will use note-books. If the quarterly departs, then the teacher's manual will be magnified. Its " helps " will not be expository or homiletic, but they will consist in instruction to broaden and enlighten the mind of the teacher, which, is the only way to get better teaching. As to the boys who at the age of greatest approach- ability are being lost to the school in greatest numbers, I think the courses should be shorter — say, three complete courses, each on a great life or topic, in a year. They should be undated, so that a lesson may be postponed if something more important — such as a matter of personal ethics or service — takes the hour. There should be for such classes a separate room, or at least a measure of seclusion. Variety and ingenuity of presenting the lesson and the desirability of allowing some orderly changes of position suggest this. This room should resemble a laboratory or a workshop in its equipment. The constant endeavor with boys must be to keep the point of contact in real life, in school, playground, current events, within reach. The novel methods sug- gested would be thought by some to make the getting of teachers harder, but it ought not to be so. Why should not people prepare each year for a twelve 114 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS weeks' course, as a professor does for his laboratory course, who cannot teach all the year? The methods I propose make the question of order so simple that it often removes the terror of teaching boys. Very few classes of older boys can be held unless their " gang-spirit " is recognized by a week-day or- ganization. That organization may well be carried directly into the class, the president calling each session to order, the secretary reading brief minutes, the treasurer handling the offering and the marshal keeping order. This simplifies the routine and intro- duces the teacher in his proper relation to the class. I think teachers of such boys should plan, not for a yearly feed, but for a regular if only occasional group- club of their classes, separately or together. These will constitute the Boys' Endeavor Society of the church. A teacher of genuine character, a teaching that neither skulks nor dodges and a generous class- life — these make the successful boys' class. The school of week-day scope, for which I plead, must be a school of practise as well as instruction. The -("ions themselves give room for some ethical applications. More than this, the school must stand for actual religious activity. It may be even demoral- izing continually to impress moral principles and arouse noble emotions and offer no chance to exercise them. Thifl is the chief reason why I urge that the week-flay BOCieties of the church he affiliated with the Sunday-school. It is not enough to give a missionary offering to a can <• which no scholar may know much of anything about, and to which many have contributed nothing. The children must learn to do for other , 115 THE BOY PROBLEM doing that really costs time and effort and skill. A school that furnishes manly teachers, frank, honest instruction, wholesome social fellowship and loving service for others will hold a boy even through his years of restlessness and doubt. The catechetical revival is attaining Christian considerable recent prominence and is Nurture ... Classes assuming some dignity on account of its antiquity. If the movement be one for doctrinal instruction, as it presumably is, in the Pres- byterian, Protestant Episcopal, Lutheran, Reformed and Methodist churches, which have catechisms pre- scribed by church law, we have, on the one hand, the opposition of the psychologists, as Prof. C. R. Hender- son of the University of Chicago, who says, " I know no catechism which seems to me suitable for any person, young or old, to commit to memory"; President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, who says, " The teacher should shun all catechetical methods, most of all those that require yes or no for an answer, and next those that insist upon a form of words, which always tend to become a substitute for thought. Although catechisms may have their place, they are not for children"; Prof. H. C. King of Oberlin, who declares that " Christ's own method, in bringing his disciples to the confession of his Messiahship, was one of punc- tilious avoidance of all dogmatic statements upon the matter"; Prof. George A. Coe, who, in his " Spiritual Life " quotes a young teacher as saying, " Oh, why, why did my parents try to equip me with a doctrinal system in childhood? . . . When I began to doubt some points, I felt obliged to throw all overboard," and 116 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS who adds himself: " It is simply impossible to supply a child with real solutions of the problems of life. . . . We should include a great deal of religious activity, but very little religious theory. . . . What he wants most, after all, is room"; Sir Joshua Fitch, who says of them: " I attach small value to catechisms. We never employ them in teaching any other subject than religion. And the reasons are obvious. They are stereotyped questions and stereotyped answers. They leave no room for the play of intelligence upon and around the subject. They stand between the giver and receiver of knowledge, and do not help either of them much. ... I appeal to your own ex- perience. Do you find that the fragmentary answers which you learned in the catechism help you much in your religious life? When I look back on the work of my religious instructors, do I find that I learned most from their formal lessons, or from the influence of their character and sympathy? " On the other hand, the theologians are not very encouraging, as witness Prof. W. N. Clarke, who approves the cate- chism theoretically, but succinctly suggests that " at present there exists the deepest interest in Christian doctrine, but it takes the form of question rather than of answer." Prof. A. W. Anthony remarks: "Alas! it hi i only in religion that men have thought it needful to inquire into devotion by means of the catechism. . . . The personality of the Christ is far above all mere; formula: of religion and creed state- ments. It is to a person that Christianity has ever invited its followers." Even the experiment of giving answers in Scripture 117 THE BOY PROBLEM language does not solve this difficulty, since there is no more supple and subtle form of theological bias than a proof text, while the plan of throwing upon the chil- dren the burden of framing answers upon which the theologians have failed to agree is still less satisfactory. Many of the new manuals omit answers and some omit questions, many drop the word catechism, and close inquiry shows that to the pastor-teacher the manual is simply the solution book, like what the school-teacher surreptitiously used when teaching Wentworth's "Geometry," while personality and free fellowship between teacher and pupils are really every- thing. There are at least four dangers which might beset a person who was a mere imitator and used the manual of another. One danger is that we forget that while early adolescence, say the age of twelve, is the right time to be looking after the child, his age for formulating systems does not come for five or six years later. Parents are nearer the right age for a catechism than are their children. It would do some of them good. Another danger is that we should expect to be able to teach life out of a booklet as we teach the exact sciences and the dead languages. The lab- oratory method and not the recitation method, learn- ing by doing, is needed. A third danger is that in emphasizing memory, which we may properly do since the school neglects that faculty, we teach proof texts, the dried figs of theology, instead of the great inspiring passages of truth and faith. A ready-made answer paralyzes, not stimulates, the mind. The last danger is to find thus the point of contact. Here is a bound- ing, bursting boy, with his heroisms and enthusiasms, 118 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS and a new sexual, social and moral nature that almost overpowers him, full of moods, doubts and obstinacies. Does the quiet, logical, sweetly reasonable catechetical method really come to where that boy lives and find him at home? In the Episcopal Church, where the method is not a recent experiment or a thing by itself, most of these objections are met because of its place in a larger system. It is but one wheel of an ecclesiastical ma- chine. The baptized child is accepted as a member of the ecclesiastical family, potentially regenerate; the catechism is not a matter of special class instruction, but it is taught in the Sunday-school; it is the tradition, and so the expectation that the child will come for- ward in adolescence to prove his knowledge of the catechism in the confirmation class; instead of waiting for a cataclysmal conversion and a Christian experience before admitting the child into full communion, the child is admitted upon attaining a fitting age and reasonable knowledge of the catechism, and it is be- lieved that in the solemn interim between confirmation and the first communion, in the activities thai follow or in the fold of the church with maturing character, spiritual life will actually appear. As far as the in- fluence of this plan can be I brown about children, \\ hat could be more admirably planned to secure a quiet, normal Christian development and a minimum of loss of children in their growth from one period to another of life? In the non-liturgical churches there musl be some theory and scheme of the relation of children to (In- church which shall make it aatural and expected thai 119 THE BOY PROBLEM children should enter full communion. At present the theory, if there be one, sometimes seems to be that it is not natural but is rather surprising if this takes place. In some such churches children who have been bap- tized or christened in infancy are enrolled as infant members, brought at a certain age for instruction and then asked practically, not, " Will you come into the church? " but, " Must you go out of the church? " In many churches, principally I think where the children are largely those of church-members, tactful pastors form annually these classes which they in- struct in the Christian way, the use of the Bible, prayer and service, solving doubts and encouraging good ideals and practical living, and as the result they bring almost the entire company each season into membership. The church has other means of help- M , . ing boys which are not everywhere rec- ognized. The church service itself, the boy choir, the liturgy where it is used, the sacraments, are employed with wonderful power in the Roman and Episcopal churches as an appeal to the imaginative and dramatic instincts. They may rightly be so used in other communions. Preaching to children, espe- cially to adolescents, is the most beautiful art and the most rewarding task of the Christian minister. The spectacle of a church full of adults, who have passed the era of a crisis and most of whom have been con- verted, engaging the efforts of a preacher is one of the most unsatisfying sights on earth. It is a mistake to think one has to " preach down to " adolescents. The most virile, noble and splendid truth is the best food 120 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS for them. The emphasis upon Sunday-school attend- ance as a substitute for children is most unfortunate, since so many children leave the Sunday-school at the age of greatest danger, and, having never formed the habit of church attendance, pass from all church in- fluence. My own experience is that if we give the children something to come for, and encourage their presence by simple rewards and attentions, we can secure and sustain the habit. In my own church, one year, forty-nine received such rewards, of whom twenty-two were boys. In response to many inquiries as to the method, 1 will say that the annual recognition which I gave to all the children who cared to try for it was only a simple diploma with a five-cent Perry picture on the back. To encourage such attendance among children just beginning to form the habit I required attendance only for a quarter at a time. They were given cards dated for each Sunday with a space for the text, which were punched as they entered the church. Those who reached a certain standard be- came the pastor's guests for an evening at the close of the quarter. The revival appeals especially 1" The Revival adolescence. It satisfies the emotional nature. It is a simple appeal to the heart, 'lake away the late hours, the long services, the untrained and fanatic exhorters — features which arc incidental — and reduce it to a " children's crusade," in which the social and emotional clement is retained, where the ideal of the heroic and loving Chrial and hi- grand and strenuous service are held up by the pastor or a v. ecialifll with children, and we have as instrument of 121 THE BOY PROBLEM historic dignity and perpetual value. The danger is the forcing of the nature before it has come to its day of choice and the neglect to follow up the decision by careful training. A plan which is being very strongly Decision ay p resse( j m Sunday-school circles is that of Decision Day, a set day for securing or registering decisions of the adolescent children to follow Christ. A desire for " results," natural and often proper, seeks definite harvests after a long season of toil. The ap- pointing of a State Decision Day and tabulating the totals from the day smacks, however, of loving chil- dren statistically. A person wonders if year-books did not exist if the plan would ever have been thought of. The ease with which great numbers are secured starts the natural inquiry whether this is not another " short cut " which will prove disappointing in the end. Does this new method, which works so uniformly that it ought almost to be patented, produce other than mechanical " results "? I tried the plan very carefully for three consecutive years and have sought earnestly to learn in my own and other fields what is the real outcome. The method used at its best seems to me to be this: The aim is not to get great accessions to the church, but to give to those who are passing through the psychical crisis the gentle shock that shall discover the child-soul to itself and help it into the Kingdom. The time to try the plan is just when this shock seems needed, and not in order to " swing into line " nor to be simultaneous with anybody else. It may be done yearly or once in three years or twice a year, according to the spiritual at- 122 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS mosphere. The plan should not be announced to the scholars much beforehand, but should be carefully prepared for with the teachers and parents. The present purpose is to secure the quiet committal of a group of scholars to Christ with the immediate enrol- ment of them in a pastor's class. In some schools the call is so framed as to secure a statement of the re- ligious attitude of every member of the school, thus making a complete religious census. Usually, however, the plan involves a card to be signed, stating a purpose; for example, " to live the Christian life of love and service." I used a card to be signed in duplicate and witnessed by the parent, one half being retained by the child and half by the pastor. I also required, to avoid thoughtless action, that the signing be done at home and in ink. The best way to secure wise signing is to make the teachers evangelists in their own little par- ishes. The wholesale signing or refusing to sign by a class is a symptom so common that it was what first led me to discount the method. The way the plan works is this : A startlingly large number always sign, invariably nearly a third. Children like to sign papers. It is a disease nowadays. Many adults have it. The first occasion is always im- pressive. The minister probably sends word I Ik; fol- lowing Monday to his denominational weekly thai he has seventy-five "converts." He has no such thing. What he really has is hard to stale. Sometimes a good many join the pastor's class; oftener, 1 think, but few. The church roll is not materially affected unless these are very carelessly rushed into the church. In one warmly evan- gelistic church, two years ago, one hundred and liftccn 123 THE BOY PROBLEM cards were signed. Of these, twenty have since joined the church. In another, out of one hundred and thirty- one there are thirty-six. These " results " convince me that the numbers should never be announced. It would be a mistake to suppose, on the other hand, that nothing has been accomplished. The majority mean what they say. The Endeavor Society shows the impulse at once. Some clear cases of new moral motive are seen. This advantage is seen at once: A large number, among them some hitherto unsuspected of religious feeling, make a committal which opens the way for personal conversation. Some other facts are noteworthy. Parents are apt to be incredulous of the plan. They think their child " is not quite ready yet." This may betoken ignorance or an instinctive protection of a sensitive, immature soul from rough hands. The second and third trials are not as impressive or fruitful as the first. The important ones to regard are really not those who sign but those who refrain. What of them? There are certain temperaments who refuse to express themselves. They may be obstinate or timid. This is true: Boys and girls will sign freely up to a certain year — about fourteen — and then they will abruptly drop off. After eighteen or so the signing is resumed. Those seem to be the years of reserve. Then there is the leakage, the waste, the possible alienation. When one hundred and fifteen signed, over three hundred refused to sign. Is it not possible that these three hundred believe that they have thus disowned Christ? It seemed a daring act, but the heavens did not fall nor the lightning strike; next year it becomes easier 124 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS to refrain. Is it wholesome thus to lead young souls up to the great alternative and let the will fail, and do it year after year? One pastor avoids this by providing no cards and making the call only a great welcome. Others carefully explain that it is hoped and believed that all desire to belong to Christ and that the day is simply the opportunity for those who are ready to make the gift (the Easter gift, if it is that season) of themselves to God. I trust that this discussion will lead to thoughtful study as to whether the plan is applicable in each one's own place, for that is the real criterion. Let the values be balanced, the conditions studied, the way life really grows be traced, the plan used with care, if at all, and the returns made simply a guidance to loving personal work. As the years go by I confess a growing distaste for the noise, the rush and the tremor of great machinery, and a deeper desire in any natural way possible to know my boys and girls so well that I may help keep them safe until the time when that finest of all spiritual fruitages comes, as the One Hundred and Tenth Psalm so beautifully describes it: " On holy mountains out of the lap of the dawn The dew of Thy youug soldiery offers it.s' ;i: VI'IIY Aoabbiz AflflOCTATtov PUBLICATIONS. II. II. Ballard, Plttafiald, Mass. A n 1 1 Cioarette So'ii iv I'u iii.icatio.nh. Mis.4 I.ury Page GaetOn, 1 ll« Temple, Chicago, III. Aoijubon Society Pobucatiovs. kHm Mary Drummond, Wlnviton, III. Band or Qora 1'ujn.rc.ATioNB. National TemperuM Society, r >s K«*uo ,-m ri-< i . N. ■:: York City. Band of Meim y 1'uhlicationb. 10 Milk Street, Bom THE BOY PROBLEM Boys' Brigade Publications. 804 Columbian Bank Building, Pittsburg. Boys' Life Brigade Publications. 50 Old Bailey, London, E. C, Eng- land. Brotherhood op St. Andrew Publications. Hubert Carleton, Broad Exchange Building, Boston. Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip Publications. Rev. William H. Pheley, 1308 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Captains of Ten Publications. See files of church paper of First Con- gregational Church, Cambridge. Catechetics: Mills, Charles S. Manuals of Christian Nurture Classes: A Brief Bibliography. St. Louis: Published by the author. Chautauqua Junior Naturalist Publications. Boys and Girls, Ithaca, N. Y. Christian Endeavor Society Publications. Tremont Temple, Boston. Church Messenger Service Publications. 120 Boylston Street, Boston. City History Club Publications. 23 W. 44th Street, New York City. Crvic Cooperation Clubs. Write E. G. Routzahn, 5711 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago. Country Boys Baldwin, W. A. Industrial Social Education. Springfield: Bradley. 1903. Jump, Herbert A. The Country Boy. Proceedings of the National Edu- cation Association. 1905. Kern, O. J. Among Country Schools. New York: Ginn. 1900. See also Play Schools. English Boys' Clubs Write the National League of Workers with Boys, Toynbee Hall, London, E. C, England. Farm Schools Reports of the Boston Farm School; the Good Will Homes, Hinckley, Me.; the Allendale Farm School, III.; " Boyville," Cleveland, etc. Group Boys' Clubs Bibliography of Settlements (including lists of settlements), 5548 Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago. Buck, Winifred. Boys' Self-Governing Clubs. New York: Macmillan. 1904. Clark, William A. The Lincoln House Play-Work System; Boys' Clubs; Dramatics for Clubs and Settlements. Boston: John D. Adams, Lincoln House. Home Library System Publications. Children's Aid Society, Boston, and Carnegie Library, Pittsburg. Junior Republics Reports of George Junior Republic, Freeville, N. Y.; William T. Carter Junior Republic, Redington, Pa.; the State of Columbia, Columbia Park Boys' Club, San Francisco; the Alleudale Farm School, 111., etc. 126 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS I Junior Societies Robinson, Emma A. Making Men and Women: A Manual for Junior Workers. New York: Eaton & Mains. 1906. See also Christian Endeavor. Juvenile Court Publications. Write the International Juvenile Court Society, Hon. B. B. Lindsey, Denver. Knights of King Arthur Publications. Rev. Frank Lincoln Masseck, Potsdam, N. Y. Knights of St. Paul Publications. Rev. F. D. Leete, Detroit. Loyal Temperance Legion Publications. The W. C. T. U. Head- quarters, The Temple, Chicago. Mass Boys' Clubs: See Street Boys' Clubs. Missionary Instruction Forbush, William Byron. Missionary Education of the Young. Mis- sionary Review of the World, January to July, 1906. See also the Sunday-School. Organizations of Workers with Boys The General Alliance of Workers with Boys, Frank Lincoln Masseck, Secretary, Potsdam, N. Y. The Federated Boys' Clubs, 35 Congress Street, Boston. The International Y. M. C. A. Committee on Boys' Work, E. M. Robinson, Secretary, 3 W. 29th Street, New York City. See also English Boys' Clubs. Periodicals Devoted to Social Work with Boys Work with Boys. Thomas Chew, Fall River. Association Boys. 3 W. 29th Street, New York City. I'm Alpha Pi (a religious fraternity) Publications. H. W. Gibson, Stato Y. M. C. A. Headquarters Boston. Play School: Johnson, George E. An I ducational Experiment. Peda- gogical Seminary, 1899. Playgrounds I JOUPH. Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy. New York, 1902 (pp. 109-201 |. Outline of Work and Occupations in the Vacation Schools of tin- City of New York. New York City Board of Education. See al-o the Bibliography of Vacation Sohoola and Playgrounds, publ by Cluirities, New York, and write Cwitli stamp) the Playground Aauo- ciatiou of America, care of Henry S. Cur dngton< D. C. School City PttbUCATIOIU The Cill System of Moral and Civic Training. New Paltz, N. Y.: Pitrioii | igue. 1901. YS1 THE BOY PROBLEM Write the National School City League, 64 Greenwood Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Mass. Settlement Boys' Clubs: See Group Boys' Clubs. Stamp Saving Society Publications. 5 Park Square, Boston. Street Boys' Clubs Brown, Lincoln E. The Ideal Boys' Club. Scranton, Pa.: The Authors. 1902. Directory of Street Boys' Clubs. Work ivith Boys (frequently revised and reprinted). See also files of this periodical for the history and methods of such clubs. Gunckel, John E. Boyville: A History of Fifteen Years' Work among Newsboys. Toledo: Toledo Newsboys' Association. 1905. Stelze, Charles. Boys of the Street: How to Win Them. New York: Revell. 1904. Write also to the Federated Boys' Clubs, 35 Congress Street, Boston, the center of this movement. Sunday-School Brumbaugh, Martin G. The Making of a Teacher. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times. 1905. Burton and Mathews. Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School. Chicago: University. 1903. Constructive Studies in the Bible: A Graded Series of Text-books. Chicago: University. Dawson, George E. Children's Interest in the Bible. Pedagogical Semi- nary, 1900; also the author, Hartford. Forbush, William Byron. Travel Lessons on the Life of Jesus and on the Old Testament. New York: Underwood. 1904. 1905. Boys' Life of Christ. New York: Funk. 1906. An Old Testament Workshop. Boston: Pilgrim Press. 1904. Haslett, S. B. The Pedagogical Bible School. New York: Revell. 1903. H1X8ON, Martha B. Missions in the Sunday School. New York: Young People's Missionary Movement. 1906. Hodge, Richard M. Manual Methods of Sunday-School Teaching. New York: The Author. 1905. Kekdy, John L. Teachers' Book of the Heroic Christ and of Old Testa- ment Heroes. Boston: Graded Bible Study Publishing Company. 1905, 1906. Maltby, Albert E. Map Modeling. New York: Kellogg. Mead, George W. Modern Methods in Sunday-School Work. New York: Dodd. 1905. Pease, George W. An Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. Chicago: University. 1905. The Boys' Teacher. A magazine. Chicago: Cook. Trull, George H. Missionary Studies for the Sunday-School. New York: Pres. Board Foreign Missions. 1905, 1906. 128 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS See also Bibliography of Books and Lessons for the Sunday-School, by George W. Mead in the Proceedings of the Religious Education Associa- tion for 1905, and Bibliography of Religious Education, by William Walter Smith in Religious Education for 1907. Swedish Bots' Clubs Write Cecelia Milow, 34 Handvergatan, Stockholm. Vacation Schools Leland, Arthur. The Organization of a System of Public Playgrounds, and Bibliography. The Author, Louisville. See also the Bibliography of Vacation Schools and Playgrounds, published by Charities, New York. Woodcraft Indians Seton, Ernest Thompson. The Birch Bark Book of the Woodcraft In- dians. New York: International Y. M. C. A. Committee. 1905. Y. M. C. A. Boys' Department Publications. International Committee of the Y. M. C. A., 3 W. 29th Street, New York City. n THE BOY PROBLEM SOME SUGGESTIONS AS TO HOW TO HELP BOYS Summary The purpose of this chapter is to of Preceding describe some of the tools of influence Chapters which individuals and institutions may use in helping boys socially. The preceding chapters may be summarized in the following statement of principles for work with boys: 1. Importance of the Period. The last nascencies of the instincts, the completion of the habits, the psychical crisis, the infancy of the will, the birth of the social nature, the disparity between the passions and appe- tites and the judgment and self-control, and the fact that, for normal and abnormal boys alike, this is the close of the plastic age, make this the most critical period of life, and one which should converge upon itself the wisest and strongest social and moral influ- ences. 2. Necessity of Study of Adolescence. The change- ableness, secretiveness and infinite variety of boys at this period make necessary not only a study of the generalizations of psychology, but an intimate knowl- edge of the antecedents, surroundings and influences of each boy who is under care and guidance. 3. What Boys Like. Social companionship of neigh- borhood groups of boys of their own age, chiefly for physical activities. SOME SUGGESTIONS 4. What Boys Need. Nutrition, exercise, whole- some environment, guarded organization, arousement of self-activity, teaching by interest, will-training by self-originative muscular activity and handiwork, some- thing to love, something to know, something to do constantly, " religion of a physical nature if that is possible." As to organization, the esprit de corps of numbers, but the personal dealing with smaller groups, where possible. As to teaching, keeping a little in advance of the boy, without becoming unnatural. The chief requirements of the leader: powers of obser- vation, collation and reasoning, persistence, firmness, justice, self-mastery and self-adjust men t, large-minded- ness and large-heartedness and, above all, childlikeness. These statements lead to an inquiry as to the in- strumentalities at our service. The greatest means of helping the boy is the Home. I have not emphasized this because we have been talking of other things. But the one thing that discourages the social worker for boys is the recognition that the divinely appointed institution, which has the most of the boy's time, interest and loyalty and every needed inspiration and appliance for his nurture, is untrue t<> its duty, and that nothing else can possibly take its place. I< is Hit; personality of the mother thai originates in the child the earliest and the mosl permanent ideas of God. When a boy arrives a1 adolescence he (urns from his mother to his father. That law-giving deity of the early years is now a peer, s companion and a sympa- thizer. The boyhood of the father is the hero of the son. It is almost impossible, as it seems ungracious, THE BOY PROBLEM to provide substitutes for the ethical teaching and practise of the home. " In Sparta when a boy com- mitted a crime his father was punished." The in- fluences that disrupt the home and prevent its members from ever being together are most dangerous, not in their influence upon the parents, but upon the child. It is the evening lamp that is home's lighthouse. A home without a good eventime is a home without hope, and the way a boy's day ends at home is a prophecy of the way his life will end. The hour after sunset is the Sabbath of the day. It seems, too, as if the very years of crisis were those most neglected. Many parents to-day are like cuckoos, willing to leave their young in anybody else's nest. Prof. F. G. Peabody has pointed out that the modern boarding-school and summer-camp system for well-to-do boys is really a " placing-out system," analogous to that applied to poor orphan and neglected children. Especially do parents seem willing to trust their religious nurture to those who may be willing to take up the task of saving other people's children. While it is doubtful whether any home can fully express all of a boy's vitality and interests beyond a certain age, many boys could be carried through the age of unrest without resort to outside agencies. When the "gang" spirit appears, the parent can cooperate with it, rather than obstruct it. Jacob Riis tells how his wife met such a case of apparently dangerous conniving: " My wife discovered the conspiracy, and, with woman's wit, defeated it by joining the gang. She ' gave in wood ' to the election bonfires, and pulled the 132 SOME SUGGESTIONS safety-valve upon all the other plots by entering into the true spirit of them, — which was adventure rather than mischief, — and so keeping them within safe lines. She was elected an honorary member, and be- came the counsellor of the gang in all their little scrapes. I can yet see her dear brow wrinkled in the study of some knotty gang problem which we discussed when the 'boys had been long asleep. They did not dream of it, and the village never knew what small tragedies it escaped, nor who it was that so skilfully averted them." The happiest memory of my own boyhood — in a place where the neighborhood spirit was yet warm — was of the weekly evening gatherings in the various homes in turn, with the elders conversing at one end of the room and we youngsters playing games and act- ing plays and charades at the other. I do not remem- ber that any of us ever cared to be anywhere else at night. No doubt the boys' club that meets in a home attic or kitchen is the best type in the world. The curfew ordinance has at least the advantage of making it necessary for the parent to keep the child in the home evenings. Next to the evenings, Sundays are n constructiveness, wood-work, sewing, making U doll-di on the caring instinct, dolls, pets." Ml THE BOY PROBLEM The purpose of choosing games should be, he says: " 1. To stimulate a healthy play interest and edu- cate it. " 2. To play games adapted to exercise certain faculties of the mind and body. " 3. To teach games which may be played at home." On page 150 I describe Professor Burr's plan for coordinating stories with play. De Garmo would also urge as of equal importance the subordinating for the high school boys of the college type of play, which admits of but small teams of picked players, and adopting or adapting those English types that give every boy a chance. While it is a matter of experience that games teach- ing observation, memory, attention and furnishing physical activity are quite numerous, active indoor social games which can engage a large social group are also very few. He would be a benefactor to childhood who would present even one good one. This is espe- cially true of games enjoyable by older boys and girls. The gymnasium is instantly attract- Gymnasiums . , TT ... , lve to a boy. He sees in the ropes and bars and chest weights the vision of himself as an athlete and a victor. I do not think the gymnasium as mere physical exercise appeals to many boys. It gives them nothing to anticipate or to remember. I think it is to the combative and emulative nature that it appeals. This is seen in the way basket-ball is dominating our Y. M. C. A. gymnasiums. For these reasons the gymnasium should be controlled by the play-interest. And as it is this interest that dominates, those boy leaders who have no gymnasium can get 142 SOME SUGGESTIONS along without it if the play-interest in physical direc- tions can get some exercise. This is the reason why hand-training is commended. It gives the boy more than the gymnasium; it appeals to more instincts. The trained hand opens the door of shop and laboratory. It not only is the chief means of will-training, but it leads to the dis- covery of adaptabilities of life, it opens the way to specific usefulness, it solves the question of the life tendencies, it develops the expressing man, and the interest it excites leaves no room for crime, self-indulgence or mischief. Wood-work would naturally suggest itself as the easiest and least expensive form of handiwork, as well as the most varied in result. Elaborate equipment or salaried teachers are not indispensable. It is very easy to let the hobby of utilitarianism and the desire to make pretty things to photograph for the annual report run away with the handiwork method. The purpose should be, I take it, not to make artisans but manhood, not hand-agility but will-power. For this purpose I know nothing better than to plan some cooperative task, such as the beautiful achievement of Miss Mack- intire's " Captains " in making an " Inasmuch " mo! to for the Labrador hospital, or an entertainment, like " Hiawatha," for which weapons and costumes shall be contrived by the boys themselves. Wha1 is done should be worth doing and be well done. This faculty for mechanical and individual efficiency has been almost lost to-day in the differentiation of labor. "A bono in a boy's mind," says Collections (]( , (>1 .^ M,. r ( - li( li, "for him to gnaw and worry corrects the vagrancie and promotes the i 13 THE BOY PROBLEM healthy activities, whether there be marrow in it or not." Dr. G. Stanley Hall found, some years ago, that of two hundred and twenty-nine Boston schoolboys only nineteen had no collections. A recent study of children's collecting shows that the fever begins at about six, rages from eight to eleven, is at its height at ten, and, among boys, lessens after fourteen. Of things collected the following general classes exist: Cigar pictures, and stamps, 34 per cent. Objects from nature, 32 per cent. Playthings, 11 per cent. Miscellaneous, mostly trivial, 8 per cent. Pictures, G per cent. Historical, 3 per cent. Literary, 2 per cent. The rage for stamps is from nine to eleven, and for cigar and cigarette pictures from eleven to twelve. Among the prominent single objects gathered, besides those already mentioned, are picture post cards, marbles, advertising cards, books, rocks, shells, war relics, buttons, badges. While local opportunities vary, these facts would furnish suggestion as to the directions of probable in- terest. It will add much to the value of the process if the apparatus used, such as aquaria, cages, flower- presses, scrap-books, be made by the boys themselves. Great as are the advantages to health Camps, Tours an( j reC uperation of giving city boys and Vacation t air the chief advantage seems Philanthropies , i , to be that the country is a boy s own home-land. Here only are the instincts of his life 144 SOME SUGGESTIONS satisfied, and here only can he rightly develop the more elementary part of his nature. Mr. E. M. Robinson in his excellent study of boys' camps says: " The rowing, the swimming, the games and athletics, the plain food and fresh air, the freedom of dress and action, the enduring of trifling inconvenience, and the running of trifling risks, the touch with nature in storm and calm, the looking out for one's self, the exercise of one's judgment, the following of the leading spirits of the camp, and the leading of the following spirits and a hundred and one other things, all tend to make the camp a place where the boy will develop those savage virtues which are the admiration of boyhood. . . . Every tendency of the camp is to develop the manly side of his nature, and to make him despise and rise above all that is weak and effeminate." The enjoy- ment of uncomfortableness, the desire to be on the water and in the water and close to a body of water, to be in the sand, to stay out all night, to sleep on the ground, to bury one's self in the sand, to watch the camp-fire, to brood over the waves and the stars, the devotion to the camp leader, the passionate friendships to camp comrades, the peculiar tenderness to manly religious impression at nighl when the fire bums low — these Beem to be reversions to a more primitive state and opportunities for the mosl intimate and enduring and uplifting influence upon the livea of boys. And nothing will do more to give a man confidence in the goodness thai underlies a boy than to live outdoors with him for a while It is a stern test of the quality of his own manhood, and, if he meet it, the suresl bond for a lifelong friendship. The boys' cam]) i rapidly 11 , THE BOY PROBLEM developing into an institution in America. The school camps provide a wholesome summer for wealthy boys, the Y. M. C. A. camps reach many of the middle class, and some street boys' clubs help the poorer boys in this way. There is still the largest room for private camps, to which an adult leader may bring a few boys of his church or club. If more workers with boys knew how simple an affair a camp is, they would try it, for a week with boys under a tent is worth more than a whole winter in Sunday-school or a club room. I have repeatedly taken groups of boys to a camping place near the city for a week or more when the total cost was only two dollars for each boy. Practically the only danger, as it is also the chief delight, is the water, and if the rowboats be carefully examined and no bath- ing is allowed except when all go in, this is reduced to a minimum. In this connection it seems necessary only to commend highly the plan of the Stamp Savings Society and the pass-book system of the boys' clubs. Believing in the power of music to soothe the savage breast, several clubs have organized choruses. Churches organize boy- choirs as much to refine the boys as to help the church music. Some clubs print the better popular ballads of the day, mingled with patriotic songs, on sheets for singing in unison. Contrast the sunset hour in a college town, with hundreds of boys singing on the campus, with the same unmusical or uproarious hour in a large village or small city, and you will see something of what music will do. 146 SOME SUGGESTIONS I have already spoken sufficiently of collections, of vacation schools, of sum- mer camps and of winter groups for nature study. I commend the Agassiz Association and the Chautauqua Junior Naturalists. _, This instinct is much neglected. It Drama .... . is as legitimate as any, and craves ex- pression. Mr. William A. Clark speaks of " the boy's mind, cursed with melodrama." He is referring to the street boy and his interest in sensational news, prize fights and the plays of the South End playhouse. Some substitute for these evils must exist. The cha- rade, the dialogue, the missionary and Sunday-school concert and the desire of boys and girls to " get up an entertainment," are manifestations of the same instinct in our church life. In this age, when open church opposition to the theater is becoming silent, our chil- dren will be kept from the real temptations of the mod- ern theater by giving them their own opportunities for expressing this instinct for personifying character and action. In adolescence dramal Lea are helpful in enforc- ing unconsciousness of self, accuracy in memory and action and some degree of grace of demeanor. Some spontaneous activities of children seem to indicate that, where their taste Le unspoiled, they incline toward the portrayal of familiar characters, the dramatizing of stories they have heard and to a hearty enjoyment of humor. A pantomime of Hiawatha, the acting ou1 of some boy's Indian story or an Indian legend, animal plays, "The Husking," "The District School," drills of various sorl and dialogues introducing foreign cus- toms and costumes would all seem to be most appro- 117 THE BOY PROBLEM priate and wholesome. The missionary societies have an unrealized opportunity in this direction. It is desirable, when children are maturing, that they should be brought together under adult auspices for mutual acquaintance and development. The socials should be small. The children should come in sections, if there are too many to come at once. There should be one head, who should have a definite plan for the entertainment to be pro- vided, and a sufficient body of adult assistants. The pleasure should be spontaneous and much of it pro- vided by the children themselves, but it should be refining, of continuous interest, inclusive of all, and governed as to its date by the school work and in its length by the bedtimes of the children. Not only is the story the chief way of teaching in both the secular and the Sunday-school until the child is well along in adoles- cence, but it is a method of universal interest. It was the primitive form of history and the first means of perpetuating crude scientific discovery and religious t radition. It is the material of the Old Testament and the charm of the New. It is a perpetual interpretation of life. Fairy stories not only appeal to but are the actual translation of child-life, which is fairy life, in its wonder, credulity and ignorance of boundaries and limitations. Stories of courage and adventure also re- flect that era of hero-worship and out-of-doors in which the adolescent lives. They enlarge the knowledge of life and are for a time the only method of making a child enter into sympathy with other races than his own. They teach expression by voice and pen and 148 SOME SUGGESTIONS dramatic action. They lead the child to share. They speak the truth naturally, because they show actual moral situations without arguing or moralizing. They develop both feelings and will, for they make the child wish he could and they suggest to him that he may. Miss Vostrovsky in an examination of children's own stories found that they told stories about children rather than older persons in the proportion of 40 to 1; true rather than imaginary stories, as 49 to 7; and of unusual rather than ordinary subjects, as 45 to 11. She also gives a chart of the elements of boys' interest in stories, which 1 reduce to per cents, as follows: action, 36; name, 24; appearance, 10; possession, 7; speech, 5; place, 5; time, 3; feeling, 2; dress, 2; esthetic details, H; sentiment, 1; moral qualities, 1; mis- cellaneous, 2\. The sources of good stories for parent or teacher are myths and fairy stories of the past, legends, historical stories, Bible stories, stories from the daily press, stories from his own experience and fancy. Story-telling is not so hard as to sonic it seems. If one will remember that every good story has but four elements and these always in the same order, namely, the hero, action, suspense, solution, and thai t<> tell a story well you should tell it as if you were standing at a window seeing its events transpire and as if your auditors could know it only from your report, you can tell a good and even a greal story. Continued stories and the re-telling of favorites are happy reliefs to those whose imaginations arc becoming exhausted. Believing thai the boy reproduces successively the ideals of the race, and that impression even by stories 149 THE BOY PROBLEM tends to and should issue in expression by action, Professor Burr has applied to the boys in the federated clubs conducted by students of the Y. M. C. A. Training School at Springfield a graded course in stories, as follows: 1. Race stories, especially Teutonic myths, legends and folklore. Stories appealing to the imagination and illustrating the attempts of the child race to explain the wonders of the world in which he lives. 2. Stories of nature; animal and plant stories. 3. Stories of individual prowess; hero tales, — Sam- son, Hercules, etc. Stories of early inventions. 4. Stories of great leaders and patriots. Social heroes from Moses to Washington. 5. Stories of love; altruism; love of woman; love of country and home; love of beauty, truth and God. He suggests also the possibility of associating with these stories, as appropriate means of expression, activities as follows: With nature stories, myths and legends would be associated tramps in the woods and every variety of nature study; care of animals, plants, etc. With stories of individual prowess would be asso- ciated the individualistic games, athletic and gymnastic work for the development of individual strength and ability; also, constructive work of the more elementary type, — work with clay, knife work, basket-weaving, etc. With the stories of great leaders and patriots would be associated games which involve team play, fellow- ship, obedience to leader and subordination of self to the group. 150 SOME SUGGESTIONS With the altruistic stories would be associated altru- istic activities adapted to boy nature, — the doing of something for other boj^s less fortunate. The story, not the homily, is with children the su- preme teaching agency for moral impression. The moral, by the way, is better not at the end of the story, but in sly touches in the middle and as produced by the narrative itself. He who can look into a circle of chil- dren's shining eyes and tell a good tale knows one of earth's finest luxuries. Oh, for more shamans, minne- singers, troubadours, bards, jongleurs or Pied Pipers! Miss Garoline M. Hewins has made the following careful study of the pro- gressive tastes of children's literary appetite, which I condense from The Congregationalist of November 22, 1902: " The likings of children may thus be summed tip: — " First. Pictures and rhymes in broad and simple outlines, as primitive and elemental as the stories and drawings of the cave men. " Second. Poems and ballads, rhythmical and full of action. " Third. Wonder tales and also stories of every -day child life. " Fourth. Stories of heroes, mythological and historical. " Fifth. Stories of adventure, (rial and suffering that end well. " Every child who reads at all first enjoys picture-books, and his taste leads him to prefer pictures in flat color, with as few lines as possible, and no elaborate shading or confusing multi- plicity of detail. The brighl reds, blues and yellows in Sunday papers appeal to him. Every year 1 ksarepul oul a coarsely executed, as loiv in ideals, as the froul pages of the yellow jour- Dai . I >n the oilier hand, Borne beautiful artistic work has been done for children in line and Sal color. "The SeCOli'l step in the chilli's enjoyment of hooks is when he enters into the compreherj ion ol tory-poemt longer than im THE BOY PROBLEM Molher Goose rhymes. A good standard for poetry is one of the older collections, like ' Our Children's Songs,' published by the Harpers more than twenty years ago. Children like the rhythm and swing of verse if it is not reflective or subjective, and sometimes feel the charm of melody in a poem which they do not understand, like Cray's ' Elegy/ Macaulay's ' Battle of Ivry,' or Rossetti's ' White Ship.' " The next step is prose stories. Every child delights in the old-fashioned fairy talcs if they are told in the old-fashioned way. " At the time when children enjoy fairy tales they like stories of boy and ^irl life, if these stories are told in a straightforward manner, with a great deal of detail. " Wonder tales lead to hero tales, and a child begins to learn something of the history of the world and of the lives of great men. He likes to hear about Romulus and Remus, King Alfred and George Washington. He loves to read of the perils and privations of the early settlers of this country, of Indians and the Revolution. He has heard in school of knightly ideals and perhaps belongs to a Round Table. " A child's liking for biography is usually an acquired taste, growing slowly out of the stories of great men and women which are told in school as a means of awakening an interest in history. A few biographies which are interesting to children have been written in response to a demand, and are published by educa- tional firms, but are little used except for help in school work. Biographies as well illustrated as Boutet de Monvel's ' Joan of Arc,' which first attracts a reader by its pictures, woidd be sure to delight children. A test of a good biography is its clearness, simplicity in statement of facts and lack of theories. " When a child can pick up an unfamiliar book and read it easily, he is ready for the next kind of literary food. Be begins to ask for longer stories, tales of adventure, accounts of battles am! hair-breadth escapes. This is a dangerous time, when, unless a boy has the best tales, he grows to care for nothing but poorly written stories of lads who leap from poverty to wealth, or skip all the ranks from private to major-general; and a girl gravitates to sentimental tales of children who take care of the 152 SOME SUGGESTIONS whole family's finances and love affairs, or are misunderstood by cruel mothers and aunts. " Wholesomeness in modern stories and adventures that are too far removed from a child's ordinary experience to make him think of emulating them are the characteristics that should be sought for in choosing books for boys and girls from the years that they can read independently up to the time when naturally and unconsciously they set sail on the great sea of grown-up books. There is a stage when they like boarding-school stories, and the world is full of overdrawn tales of school life. A good touchstone for them is a series like Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' 'Gypsy' or Susan Coolidge's Katy Books, which girls have enjoyed for thirty years, or Harriet Martineau's ' Crofton Boys.' In adventure ' Robin Hood ' is a good standard, and so is the ' Swiss Family Robinson,' with its always fresh contrivances and makeshifts tending towards simplicity of living. " The demand for out-of-door books indicates the growth of a healthy taste. There is no danger that such books will lie made too easy for children. A child of five soon gets the habil of going to a bird-book or an insect-book or a flower-book to identify something that he has seen, and learns to read about it if he is not expected to read long at a time. Since the publica- tion of ' Wild Animals I Have Known,' there has been a steady demand for stories of animals. Some of them are overdrawn, some too tragic for children, but the tendency of most is in favor of kindness and compassion towards our four-footed brothers. " Boys and girls like books that give them the rules of out- door sports, Buggesl games and charades for indoor evenings, teach them riddles and show them how to use their hands. The increase of interest in athletics, (lie teaching of basketry and carpentry in schools and the many usee which may lie made of a course in manual braining have opened (lie way for new books of occupations, games and sports." Mr. Alan Abbott, writing of the requirements for college entrance, says: " Let ii now turn lo the hook., that arou e B hoy's cnthu- I .. : THE BOY PROBLEM siasm: Scott, Cooper, Shakespeare, Coleridge head the list, — romanticists all, — men who stood for the enlargement of the imagination, men of passion, of feeling. The characteristic quality of those men is that they are idealists rather than realists; instead of exciting curiosity for the familiar, they lead us far into the post, into the mind world, into the realms of the fancy. " The essential conditions as shown in these pages I may sum up as follows : — To be interesting to a schoolboy a book must not begin with copious references and allusions, presup- posing wide acquaintance with literature or history. It must not be critical, destructive and massive, but constructive or stimulating. It must be first hand; not a translation in the terms of an age out of sympathy with the original, for a boy cannot disentangle the works of two minds upon each other. It must be interesting not primarily for its form, for a boy will 1 lexer admire the form for its own sake. And I suppose it should be romantic, suggestive of ideals and achievements, for the normal boy in the high-school age is passing through his own romantic period, and it is natural to set before him ideals that are really worthy." The fact that what a boy is required to read in school is the smallest part of what he actually does read stirs Dr. E. A. Fitzpatrick to the following strong state- ment: " The large amount of reading done by children outside of school, especially from twelve to fifteen years of age, the in- equality of reading done by pupils in the same classes, the differ- ence between the reading of boys and girls, the difference in kind of reading found interesting at different ages, the extraor- dinary influence of school association and school work upon the reading of pupils and the effect that extensive reading has upon the work of the school, all emphasize in the strongest degree the importance of teachers and superintendents giving a large amount of attention to this question. No question of courses of study in school or methods has half the significance in the 154 SOME SUGGESTIONS mental and moral development of children that the question of children's reading outside of school has." It may be the current saying that to-day " only women read books; men read newspapers," moved Mr. D. C. Heath to make this appeal for " literary wholes ": " The boy should early begin to read books in their entirety, ' books,' as Professor Burton says, ' with their heads on and standing on both feet.' The constant reading of extracts, of scraps, of snippets, the magazine and newspaper habit, destroy the power of concentration and weaken the mental grasp, and should be discouraged from the very outset. Therefore let us see that our boys have complete books put before them." A mother, writing in The Outlook from her own ex- perience, speaks of the reading mania which many boys have between twelve and fourteen and then gives her advice in the premises: " Harriet Martineau, with her wise counsel, is balm to my soul when she tells us we must not be annoyed with the excess of the propensity for much and rapid reading, nor proud of the child who has it. It is no sign yet of a superiority in so young a child, much less in that wisdom which in adults is commonly supposed to arise from large book-knowledge, ll is simply an appetite for that expression of ideas and images which show at this season, but are laid in for the exerci e of the higher faculties which have yet to come into use. The parent's main question during this process is to look to the quality of the books read; I mean, merely see thai the child has the freesl aca to those of the beat quality. The child's own mind is a truer judge in thi case than thi parent's suppositions. Lei l>u(. noble books be on the shelves and the child will get nothing but good." Mr. Julian Hawthorne writes a rather iconoclastic article regarding tho ordinary "juvenile" or child's magazine, but closes with this sensible advice: 155 T II E ROY P It O B L E 1ST " Give it anything except what is morbid, sentimental, doc- trinal, controversial — in a word, false or transient. Let it learn by heart all the great poetry up to Tennyson. And always remember that what it does not understand, or misunderstands, is likely to be of more final value to it than anything that it does understand, for reasons which you may understand if you will take the trouble to think; meanwhile you may take it for granted. Give your child at home a healthy, wholesome, natural life and keep away from it corrupt companions of its own age; no others and nothing else ran injure it, save in so far as the seeds of injury are already innate in it. It will not be an angel on earth; but it will be itself." These studies show how directly though blindly the boy feels his way, as he develops, past all that is intro- spective, and, regardless of mere form and style, to the literature of romance, feeling, life. He grows from the merely imaginative unto the heroic as his own nature emerges from the fairyland of infancy to the days of achievement. And what he reads begins to develop him not only individually but socially as, with but little of the perspective of history, historical fiction makes him, nevertheless, something of a world citizen. It must be remembered that adults and boys read for different reasons. The adult reads for the study of character and of life. The boy reads for the sake of a thrilling sensation and for the purpose of identifying himself in imagination with his hero. Books, there- fore, have one mission for children and another for adult years. To childhood they furnish excitement, ideals, encouragement, outlooks, materials. They give to the adult refreshment, food for rumination and the corroboration of personal thought and experience. Books that perform their mission to boys must be like 156 SOME SUGGESTIONS the men whom boys admire. They need not have grace or style, but they must be strong, direct, heroic, sincere, simple and tender-hearted. The practical question which the parent and teacher face is how to protect the boy from unworthy reading matter. " Shall I tell you how to prevent a boy read- ing dime novels? " said a science teacher to me one day. " Teach dime novels the way you do college entrance English." There was much truth in the sarcasm. Much of the analysis of the English classics done in school creates only a permanent distaste for them. More positive methods must be used. Put only the best within your boy's reach. Introduce it to him by telling him stories from it, by reading it to him. Do not hold up too high a level. If he won't read Scott, give him Stevenson. If he doesn't like Steven- son, give him Alger. I am not so sure that I would al '.solutely prohibit all nickel novels. Certain series are clean, patriotic and to a mild degree informing. Their fault is that they are highly colored, but they appeal to a highly colored age. If while the boy is buying these out of his own money you are steadily present- ing him with choicer books, he will soon get over this literary measles. Introduce as many boys as possible to the public library, for many of our libraries by story hours, attractive bulletins and attentive custodians are woo- ing the young into ways of pleasantness that arc also pal hs of peace. I hardly need add that my opinion <>f the Sunday- school library may be summed up in a bright Baying of and Iht, that " one . hould never do on Sunday any- THE BOY PROBLEM thing that is too stupid to do on Monday nor do on Monday anything that is too wicked to do on Sunday." I need not speak of the many uses Pictures of the perry pictureS) the Elson p r i n ts, etc., in creating an interest in art, history, collecting, etc. To require a group to invent a story to fit a picture is good drill for the imagination. I have found three pictures of Holman Hunt's especially helpful in the religious instruction of adolescents. There is something in their opulence of detail and mystic beauty which makes them singularly effective. They may be used for impressing the solemn lesson of the importance of adolescence as the time of choice and opportunity. First, I use " The Child in the Temple." I point out the many details: the inscription on the door, the doves, the rejected stone in the court, the blind beggar, the lamplighter, the babe brought to circumcision. Then the characters appear: the doctors with their scrolls and phylacteries,— one is blind,— Mary with her look of amazement and love, Joseph with his protecting hand and the boys in the picture, — the musicians, the slave and the boy Jesus. It is his hour of awakening to life's meaning, God's will and his hour of choice. I use the " Light of the World " to lead to the thought of the life-door at which the Christ knocks, which can be opened only from within. And " The Shadow of the Cross " suggests the manliness of the young Christ and his choice of the cross rather than the jewels over which his mother lingers. I have spoken in the last chapter of the use of stereo- graphs to give reality to the Bible. 158 SOME SUGGESTIONS The true leader will be often Socratic. He will not furnish categorical cate- chetical answers, but, finding that the one thing human- ity and especially child-humanity is unwilling to do is to think, he will constantly in private and in public suggest haunting and leading questions of ideal and practical ethics which must and will be answered. I believe that sex-perversions are the Sex- In truct'on most common, subtle and dangerous foes that threaten our American life. Intemperance is frightful, but it is a perpetual object of attacks, some of which are successful. The appetite which excites it is unnatural and has to be acquired. The sex-appetite is universal, it partakes of the ex- treme selfishness of a most selfish period and its sins are so hidden, so general and reach such personal and intimate relations that it is difficult to crusade against them. These perversions usually have their root and acquire their dominion in adolescence, when passion is most active, ignorance most great and self-control most weak. The topic has been handled with so much senti- mentality, unwholesomeness, quackery and downright deviltry that I will make a strenuous effort to treat it with sober oommoD sense. The three sex-tempt at ions to which boys are subject are, I take it, impure thoughts ainl conversation, self-abuse and fornication. The first temptation is the result of knowledge of sex matters gained from impure ami imperfed sources and is stim- ulated by ;> desire to complete this knowledge, by the impression that such knowledge IS esoteric and is to be regarded as u sort of stolen sweets. An analysis of the 169 THE K O Y PROBLEM secret reading of the young indicated that 64 per cent of it was an endeavor to secure information on this subject. This temptation is to be met in the home by stripping the subject of a mystery which it does not possess, by revealing frankly and simply, as curiosity arises, the facts of sex as a part of general physiology, and by such an emphasis upon the holiness of the func- tion, the sacrifices of maternity and the necessity of a sound body as the antecedent of future parenthood as shall give the moral cleanness and the ideals to lift the child above brooding, unenlightened, morbid thoughts and passion-feeding conversation. Some educational experiments that have been made indicate that it is possible to approach the sex-structure of man precisely as the student does the rest of human physiology, in a most wholesome way through nature study and biology. The effect, even in mixed classes, has been to uplift and purify the minds of the children. The matter of self-abuse is to be dealt with physio- logically also, a fair statement of its effect upon the nerves, endurance and energy of the growing boy ex- plained, and contempt expressed for it as a nasty habit rather than the implication that it is physically or spiritually damning. I think we may as well face the fact that the practise is, for at least a short period in life, well-nigh universal. To teach physical horrors which may not follow is not to deter those to whom they do not follow and is to put others under the con- trol of the quack practitioner, while to preach that this vice is the unpardonable sin is to dishearten those who struggle against it in vain, but who may, if they are dealt with indirectly, outgrow it or be weaned away 100 SOME SUGGESTIONS from it. This habit is much a matter of nutrition, clothing, hygiene, association and physical exercise. Fornication when it occurs with boys may be the re- sult of an abnormal sexual nature, but it is more apt to be the result of information gained surreptitiously and curiosity unduly aroused and of evil companion- ship or unusual temptation. It is important to con- tradict the impression given by much of our literature that this sin is romantic and semi-heroic, and to show its essential cruelty, selfishness and beastliness. The method of treatment for all these evils is, in general, to delay and temper sexuality by plain food, early rising, thorough bathing, a watchful care of read- ing, companionship and causes of excitement, plenty of exercise and the full occupation of time. The close and mysterious connection between the rise of the religious and the sexual instincts makes it seem pos- sible to make one govern the other. It is upon these two matters, which come so near to the soul, that one can draw closest to a boy's life. Ideals arp, I believe, the final and supreme safeguard of purity) I agree with Prof. H. M. Burr that " the possession of high ideals of bodily strength, of the essential elements of strong manhood and a high ideal of woman" are the things that hold when all else fails. The place for doing this work is the home. It is strange thai parents should be willing thai stable-boys, quacks and villains should become tin; instructors ami guides iii those matters which have so much to do with persona] purity, the morality <>f the commonweall li and the future of the r.icc Where the parent are np1 doing their duty it must THE BOY PROBLEM be done by others. But when others take this up the best way to use first is to try to persuade fathers to perform their tasks. " Purity talks " should be given to fathers rather than to boys. Books may be sug- gested to fathers for wise information. A few are com- mended in the Bibliography. As I have intimated, it may be that the schools will soon do something. I have a wholesome distrust of all reformers who make this subject a specialty. There seems to be something corrupting to the imagination of every one who makes it, even with the best intention, a hobby. They soon become morbid or unwholesome in thought. The family physician, who does not make it a specialty, is, on the whole, the best man to ask to take it up in individual cases. If boys must be instructed by anybody outside their home they should be dealt with individually and by conversation. No book has been written which is quite suitable to put in a boy's hand. If it tells too little it will arouse his curiosity. If it tells too much it will inflame his imagination. The effort is to be not to make him think about this subject, but to satisfy his legitimate curiosity and get him to thinking about other things. Why does not some physician write three short pamphlets on special physiology for this purpose, one for the young boy, one for the adolescent and one for the young man contemplating marriage? He could put all the facts that need to be known and all that needs to be said in each one on eight pages the size of this one. This is why I object to " purity talks " to boys. The 162 SOME SUGGESTIONS subject is for them not social but individual. They are not to go out and exchange words about it and brood over it. The strongest force for purity in the boys' club is that it is a time-filler and energy-expender for boys and a means of transforming an abnormal appetite into healthful physical exercise. The thing which we want to get our boys to do is to realize that it is a noble and knightly thing, as well as a necessity to many, as Prof. Burt G. Wilder has said, " to go into training " for a manly struggle with the sensual side of his nature. An encouraging illustration of the way this wiser treatment works is seen in its results at the Good Will Home for Boys in Maine. As each boy enters the school he is during some informal conversation in- formed by the principal regarding the wise regulation of his body with especial reference to the dangers of puberty. No further reference is ever made to the matter, unless the boy makes it himself, as he often docs, when he comes across some alarming bit of mis- information, but among all the teachers and in all the life of the school it is insisted that the sexual organs are simply a commonplace and not a shameful or mys- terious portion of the human body. Before the close of his course each boy receives in the same way from the principal such information as will help him meet further temptation and prepare him for married life. The result, is this: young men who have associated with these boys most intimately for a considerable period during the summer find that the conversation of all is free IK. in obscenity, and that the moral life of the school is pure. 10^ THE BOY PROBLEM I am glad to note that the boys' departments of our Christian Associations and many religious workers with boys are taking this up, but I wish they would first take lessons from Mr. Hinckley in the art of how to do it. There are many other things which can be used to help boys. The use of humor, a trait which is uni- versal in boyhood, will not be forgotten. What we call noisiness, teasing, hoodlumism, practical joking and even irreverence is what some one styles " joint humor." Remembering that this is so, the best way to attack those nuisances is by the expression of humor in better ways. Conundrums, puzzles, " sells," " yarns " and newspaper jokes are good bait for boys, who are usually as well provided as their leader with material and quite as quick to take advantage of their oppor- tunity. The illustrating of the personal habits of clean- liness, temperance, reverence, good taste, by example, is a constant privilege. Anything of the other sort in a leader is a complete disqualification. T^> en- courage a boy to have a pet of some kind is far better than to get him to join a society for rescuing stray cats and then bragging about it. Indeed, doing for others is the strongest ethical force which the boy can feel. We are told truly that " girls are trained to give up, boys to demand." Often the boys' club exaggerates this tendency. Talks on practical ques- tions by men whom the boys may justly admire are also an ethical influence of great importance. The introduction of recognitions and special privileges will have a stimulating effect, if they are made acces- sible to a fair grade of effort rather than exclusive to a 164 • SOME SUGGESTIONS first and second. The last method which I name is the most important. The three curses of humanitarian work are utilitarianism, uniformity and numbers. And the greatest of these is numbers. It takes perpetual vigilance to do church or social work without becoming a slave to the addition table. All work for men that amounts to anything is in the end the influence of personality on personality. So in boys' work we have two things of importance to consider: the personality of the leader and that of the boy. Mr. Mason suggests as the easier qualifications for such a leader that " he must necessarily have the magnetism of Moses, the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solo- mon." It would be unfortunate to place the standard so high that everybody would shrink from the work. The boy is influenced by his leader in two ways: through his imitativeness and through his affections. He idealizes his leader and tries to become like him. " Teaching is really a matter of contagion rather than of instruction." His leader must therefore be a person of character and self-control. He loves his leader and wants to do for him. His leader must be a person of ideals, who can offer him good and true things to do. The personality of the boy must never be forgotten. We must forget our addition table and stop seeing our boys as flocks. The most important thing any one can do for a boy is to love him. We must know each one in his school, his home, his playing and gathering places as well as at the club or our own home. There are so many different kinds of boy under one hat, LOO THE BOY PROBLEM and boys differ so much in their individual interests, and the interests of one boy change so often, that every leader ought to keep an individual " case book " and revise it every night before he goes to bed. There is one unpleasant and unwholesome trait in boys that is likely to be fostered in almost any organ- ized work with them in which self-government is a feature. That trait is self-complacency. In giving boys encouragement to believe that they can be men it is not easy to avoid letting them get conceited. Here comes the deeper danger of extern alism. Boys and adults are willing to legislate about themselves and others in all sorts of ingenious ways so long as the legislation does not touch their own wishes and con- duct. It is quite easy for a boy to become very promi- nent and popular in a boy democracy and remain quite untouched inside, rotten at heart. Here, I believe, is the moral weakness of all " junior republics." Per- sonal power is the only antidote. The personal power of the leader must be constantly and vigilantly exerted to persuade each boy that " self-government " means what it says, not legislation about one's self or others, but the government of self. The boy's personality must be reached in the recesses where it hides and exposed, if need be, until he becomes willing to take up the task of being clean within. In every group of boys there is at least one third who cannot be reached by any group method. They may be unsocial, they do not like what other boys care for, they have not the leisure or the permission to join a club. They are worth just as much as the rest. These must be won solely by personal approach. 166 SOME SUGGESTIONS The way to help boys by the methods we have mentioned, as Lancaster says, is to " inspire enthusiastic activity." " You can do anything with boys. You can do nothing for boys." " Oh," says one, " you give the boys something easy all the time." The things that inspire enthusiastic activity in a boy are not easy things. Is baseball easy? Is football easy? Is swimming a mile easy? Are wood- work or parallel bars or punching-bags easy? Interest is not ease, but it makes things easy. In that marvelous study in the New Testament, of Jesus and the Rich Young Man, we have a study of Jesus and adolescence, and the appeal that the Master made which aroused that slothful idler almost out of a lifetime of languor, was an appeal to the difficult, with this in- spiration, his own passionately declared love for him. We should use as many methods as we can thor- oughly, letting each get its effect and coordinating also, so as to feed the boy with as many interests as possible. We cannot tell which one may determine his life-work or mold his character. It is inspiring to remember that the little group club of boys is often a lad's first entrance to the social institutions of his race and that in the self-originating exercises of the boys' club one may what the school does not accomplish, — help the boy to decide what he shall be. " Education," says Mr. Lee, " is not a matter of teaching this or that, but of kindling the spiritual life." That kindled, no matter how or whore, you have fos- tered the flame of a dynamic thai .shall impel all the later activitu We should give each boy something to know, somc- 167 THE BOY r R O B L E M thing to love and something to do. That is, we must train his mind, his heart and his hand, and while doing these three we train his will. It is a curious fact that the boys most in need of suc- cor are of two classes, the children of the rich and the children of the very poor. Here, as elsewhere, the life and activities of the common people are the sound core of the nation's strength. The boys of the rich are debauched by luxury and the free use of money. They suffer most of all for lack of opportunities for general and wholesome social fellowships. The boys of the very poor are degenerated by the opposite causes, lack of nutrition, instruction and good example. Another fact which shapes the whole problem is that most boys are living to-day in what is for them an artificial en- vironment. They live in cities. No one who has dealt with boys successively in rural regions, large towns and the city could have failed to notice how much less potent in grasp, attention and efficiency are city boys, living between walls and pavements and among a thousand distractions and allurements, than country boys, with their freedom, contact with nature and wild life and opportunity for origination in work and play in woodland, pasture and carpenter shop in the barn. The problem is by no means, then, a missionary one, in the sense that it consists in providing clubs for slum boys alone. The extravagances, immorality, intem- perance and general good-for-nothingness of wealthy boys are often an alarming factor in our suburban life. The difficulty of restoring natural conditions among unnatural surroundings is tremendous. It means the artificial creation of a country atmosphere. The in- 168 SOME SUGGESTIONS stitutions and instrumentalities which are striving to do this by their shops and playrooms and their vaca- tion philanthropies are, though informally, among the great benevolences and educational institutes of the city, and need and demand a fuller recognition and a heartier support by consecration of money and life. The needs and possibilities of work with adolescents can scarcely be exaggerated. One third of life, " the submerged third," as Dr. Stanley Hall calls it, is in the adolescent period. One third of the people in America are adolescents. Three millions of the human beings in America are boys between twelve and sixteen years of age. The so-called heathen peoples are, whatever their age, all in the adolescent period of life. We send missionaries to inculcate among these distant peoples morals and religion which we seem to think our own little folks can possess by some innate providential instinct. Work among men has been emphasized as of prime importance but as compared with work among boys it is as salvage to salvation. The attention of the Church during the last twenty years has so turned toward the young that it takes no prophet to foretell that this is to be the central work of the Church in the new century. Jesus, who ap- peared before the world at the beginning of his adoles- cence and lefl it at its close, set the child in the midst and said, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The psychologist and the Christian are both listening to this word of the Master. " Save the world in adolescence " will be the new war-cry of evangelism. In the development of the boy.-/ department of the Y. M. ('. A., and in the growth of the big city boys' L6fl THE BOY PROBLEM clubs, in the founding of institutions of religious peda- gogy and the multiplication of classes in child-study and teaching methods, in the opening of a new pro- fession, that of the teaching ministry, in lay work in the Church, we have abundant intimations that the field of work for boys is soon to offer many oppor- tunities for many men's life-work. In the smaller groups of those engaged in social service, in the Sunday-school and the other forms of church nurture, the harvest is already white for splendid consecrations of volunteer helpers. This volunteer movement will be as truly one for the devotion of young people as the famous student movement which was born at Northfield in 1886, and it will be both for home and foreign work. Foreign missionary work, already conducted with a breadth and scope which is a lesson to home church work, will be enriched and made fruitful by the application of pedagogical methods to the adolescent races. In the home churches here is the beckoning opportunity for the younger ministry, fresh from its own adolescent days. But it is not a priestly service alone, though the calling is a sacred one. Many college students, like that one at Harvard who told Professor Peabody that " he wanted to make Harvard something more than a winter watering-place," have done work for boys during and after college days, and have sometimes found the religion in service, which they had lost in study. Joseph Lee suggests that as the young page was placed in charge of an esquire but a few years older to learn knightly habits and then sent to the young knight's castle to learn knightly ideals, so the boys of to-day 17U SOME SUGGESTIONS need the contact of chivalrous young men to make them courtly and noble men. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY The Home See the Bibliography at the end of Chapter VII. The School Adler, Felix. The Moral Instruction of Children. New York: Appleton. 1895. De Garmo, Charles. Ethical Training in the Public Schools. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1892. Harris, William T. The Relation of School Discipline to Moral Educa- tion. Chicago, 1897. New York, 1900. Smith, H. Bompas. Boys and Their Management in School. New York: Longmans. 1905. Symposium in the Proceedings of the Religious Education Association, 1903, 1904, on " Moral Education in the School." Games and Play Chf.bley, A. M. Manual of Gymnasium Games. New York. 1901. Croswell T. R. Amusements of Worcester School Children. Pedagogical Seminary, 1899. .Johnson, George E. Education by Plays and Games. Pedagogical Seminary, 1896. Games and Play. Boston: Lincoln House. 1898. New Games and Amusements. New York: Doubleday. 1906. i. l, William W. Games and Songs of American Children. New York: Harper. 1903. One Hundred and Fifty Gymnastic Games. Boston: Normal School of Gymnastics. 1900. Stoneroad, Rebecca. Gymnastic Stories and Plays. Boston. 1898. Handicraft Amateur Work (a magazine). Boston. B lsd, W. II. American Boys' Handy Book. Now York: Soribncr. Bower. How to Hake Common Things. Now York: Young. Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician (a magazine). New York: Spoil & Chamberlain. Reports of Lincoln House, Boston. Sanford.F.G. The Art Crafta for Beginners. New York: Century. 1904. St. John. How Two Boys Made their Own I leetrioal Apparatus. Now York: The Author. Walki j, Ii'\-.m- . Discu ions in Education. (Articles on In. in i Training, pp. 128 206", written 1884 -7.) New York. 1899. WnEiiLER. Wood Working for Beginners. New York: Putnam. 171 T II K BOY PROBLEM Collections Burk, Caroline F. The Collecting Instinct. Pedagogical Seminary, 1900. Hall, G. Stanley. Children's Collections. Pedagogical Seminary, 1891. Gymnastics See the catalogue of the American Sports Publishing Company, New York. Hastings, Wm. W. A Manual for Physical Measurements. Springfield: The Author. 1902. Files of Physical Education Review. Camps Burt, E. W. Camp Fires in the Wilderness. Boston : National Sportsman. 1905. Eighty Good Times Outdoors. Bost oi : Heath. Hanks, Charles S. Camp Kits and Camp Life. Chicago: Sports Afield. 1905. Harvey, A. K. P. In the Glow of the Campfire. Boston : National Sports- man. Kephart, Horace. Book of Camping and Woodcraft. New York: Field and Stream. 1906. Robinson, E. M. " Boys as Savages," in Association Outlook, July, 1899; see also " Boys' Camps," Association Boys, 1902, and succeeding " Camp Numbers " of the same periodical. Symposium on " The Camp Conference," in Work with Roys, July, 1903. Write also the Columbia Park Boys' Club, San Francisco, to learn about walking camp tours. Nature Study Birds and Nature (a magazine). Chicago. Boys and Girls (a magazine). Ithaca. Butterfield, W. A. Baby Bird Finder. Boston: 50 Bromfield Street. Hemenway, H. D. Hints and Helps for Young Gardeners. Northampton: The Author. Hodge, Clifton F. Nature Study and Life. Boston: Ginn. 1902. The "A " Nature Study Series. Boston, 169 Tremont Street. Dramatics Clark, William A. Dramatics for Clubs and Settlements. Boston: John D. Adams, Lincoln House. Publishers of plays and entertainments for boys are: Dick & Fitzgerald, New York; Penn Publishing Company, Philadelphia; Walter H. Baker, Boston; Edgar S. Werner & Co., New York; A. Flanagan & Co., Chicago; The Hints Publishing Company, New York. Write also S. S. Peixotto, Columbia Park Boys' Club, San Francisco. Socials Linscott, Mrs. Herbert B. Bright Ideas. Siegal & Co. Smiley, Annie E. Fifty Social Evenings. New York. 1894, 1896. 172 SOME SUGGESTIONS Wells, Amos R. Eighty Pleasant Evenings. Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor. Social to Save. Social Evenings. Stories Baldwin, James. Fifty Famous Stories Retold. Thirty Famous Stories Retold. New York: American Book Company. 1896, 1904. BA^-ant, Sarah Cone. How to Tell Stories to Children. Boston: Hough- ton. Houghton, Louise Seymour. Telling Bible Stories. New York. Vostrovsky, Clara. A Study of Children's Own Stories. Studies in Education, Vol. I. 1896-97. Wiltse, Sara E. The Place of the Story in Education. Boston. 1897. Reading Class Room Libraries for Public Schools. Buffalo Public Library. 1902. Graded and Annotated Catalogue of Books for the Use of Public Schools. Pittsburg Public Library. 1900. Symposium in Work with Boys on " Books for Boys." April, 1903. Pictures Bailey, Henry Turner. The Blackboard in Sunday School. Darnell, Florence G. The Blackboard Class. Hervey, Walter L. Picture Work. New York: Revell. Smith, Wm. Walter. A Complete Handbook of Religious Pictures. New York Sunday School Commission. 1905. Sex Information Lyttleton, E. The Instruction of the Young in Sex-Knowledge. Inter- national Journal of Ethics. Meyer, F. B. A Holy Temple. Philadelphia. 1901. Mohley, M. W. A Song of Life. Chicago. 1896. Morley, Margaret W. Life and Love. Chicago. 1895. Putnam, Helen C. Biologists in Public Schools an Aid to Morality; Studies of the Recent Teaching of Hygiene through Nature Study. 52 N. Fourth Street, Easton, Pa. Wilder. I'.ip-i G. What Young People Should Know. Boston. 1N7",. Will.hu-;, EtOBBBI N. The American IJoy and the Social Evil. Philadel- phia: Win-ton. 1905. Write also to the Society of Social and Moral Prophylaxis, 06 W. 40th Street, New York City. Schools to Train Workers with Boys Clark University, Worcester, (rains specialists in Child Study. The lniirnfiti.in.il v. M. c. a. Training School, Springfield, and the Secre- d In titute, Chicago, train secretarie of buys' departments of tho Y. If. ('. A., physical instructors and heads of boys' clubs. The Hartford .School of Religious Pedagogy trains for the touching ministry. 17:j THE BOY PROBLEM The New York School of Philanthropy, the Boston School of Philanthropy, the Social Institute of the University of Chicago, train social workers. Personality op the Leader Hodges, George. The Sunday -School Teacher. Boston: Church Mili- tant. 1904. Tucker, William Jewett. The Making and Unmaking of the Preacher. Boston: Houghton. 1898. Books op Talks to Boys Dole, Charles F. The Young Citizen. Boston: Heath. 1899. Everett, C. C. Ethics for Young People. Boston: Ginn. 1891. Fowler, Nath'l C, Jr. Starting in Life. Boston: Little, Brown. 1906. Gunsaulus, Frank W. Young Men in History. New York: Revell. Jordan, David Starr. The Call of the Twentieth Century. Marden, Orison Swett. Pushing to the Front. New York: Success (and others of the same sort and series). Munger, T. T. On the Threshold. Boston: Houghton. Not in the Curriculum. New York: Revell. 1904. Stimson, Henry A. The Right Life and How to Live It. New York: Barnes. 1904. 174 IN THE CHURCH VI THE BOY PROBLEM IN THE CHURCH The boy problem in the church is not different from that in the home, the school and the community. It is the same boy everywhere. He may step a little more quietly, wear a different suit of clothes and have a whiter looking face and hands than elsewhere, but he is the same after all : physically alert and restless, emotionally eager, socially friendly though shy, men- tally absorptive and curious, volitionally independent and stubborn, and with a spiritual nature which is secretly but honestly feeling for foundations and development. Here, as elsewhere, it will be impossible to separate one portion of this complex being from another and train it by itself, just as it would be impossible to act toward the boy in school as if he were all intellect and no body, or in the gymnasium as if he were all body and no intellect. To the church as elsewhere the whole boy comes, and in it as elsewhere he must be symmet i i- cally trained. The methods of training boys in the church, then, will not essentially differ from those used elsewhere. The church desires as much as does the gymnasium that the boy should have a sound body, and .-is much as the school that he should have a Bound mind, and as much as cither that he should have a sound heart 175 THE BOY PROBLEM to govern both. In short, with other philanthropies that work for boys, the church stands for character, developed in mind, body and spirit. It may be true that the church seeks more than any other institution does. In seeking Christian character it seeks character moved by the Christ-motive as a motive higher than any others possible. But as ele- ments of that character it must recognize, with others, the interdependence of mind and body and the essen- tials of will training and moral training by self-activity, which have already been emphasized. When we come to ask what the church has found out about the training of the religious nature, we are at once impressed that both the oldest and the newest study have been little more than statistical analysis. You can catalogue a date or an event, but it is hard to catalogue a boy. Whether it be in the annals of some ancient revival or in the charts of Starbuck we have learned little more than this: that at certain ages conversion is most to be expected; that it is brought about by a certain number of immediate motives which are scheduled and by a much larger number of distant motives, equally efficient, which are forgotten and are not scheduled, and that in addition to those youths gained by certain methods testimony is completely silent as to how many are actually alienated by the same methods. Without claiming to have gone deeper than others into these depths of the soul life let me state the things which I believe the church is trying to do and show what seem to be the probable means of success in these directions; — 17G IN THE CHURCH First, the church is trying to hold Holding Boys ^^ Recognizing that its methods in the past have failed to keep their grasp upon boys at their age of greatest need and danger, it is trying to learn how to retain the boys through the adolescent period. In thus seek- ing to fit its methods to the growth of the boy the church is doing one of the best things for future Christian development, since habits of church-going and loyalty grow stronger and more influential upon character with each year they are continued. I have already indicated that, in trying to hold boys, the churches must use freer, more varied and more un- conventional means than in the past. If some pious heart tremulously inquires of a given plan, " Is there enough of Christ in it? " my straightforward rejoinder shall be, " Is there enough boy in it? " But this itself is not enough. Boys must be won to church membership. I have commended the plan of the Episcopal Church, by which the boy is never allowed to think of himself as anything bul a prospec- tive communicant. The plan alone might seem me- chanical were it not supplemented in so many churches of that denom'nation by graded boys' clubs, which make a traditional loyalty actual. My own endeavor has been so to make the activities of the boys' club work toward loyalty to pastor and church, and bo to create the realization among boys fourteen years of age and over of the naturalness of confessing Christ, that it shall become a currenl anticipation. We must so adapt our help to their consciou needs and SO develop that" team-work " and fraternity spirit, which 177 THE BOY PROBLEM mean so much in sports and in college, in and for the church, that the distressing loss of adolescent life shall be checked. " The church must somehow," says Coe, " become the religious gang to the early adolescent." Second, the church is trying to Teaching teach boyg Every boys' club, every church soci- ety for boys, is in reality a school. Formal school methods need not be used, better not be used, but sound pedagogical axioms must be applied and there must be pedagogic aim. As to the subjects of teaching, there are the great landmarks of religion taught in the Bible and which I outlined when I spoke of the Sunday-school curricu- lum. Hardly less important are the applications in conduct, the emphasis of the fact that character, as President Hyde tells us, " is chiefly to do one's work well," and intelligence of and interest in the ac- tivities of the church and the world-wide social and missionary work of the kingdom of God. To boys in the city and those who have few advantages, there are many things supplementary to school life which may well be taught, especially those constructive crafts and plays which arouse the energies, focus the atten- tion, train the will, make the child creative, keep him from morbid introspection and direct to his life mission. Third, the church is trying to win Winning Boys ^ tQ ^ rcligious life . I have analyzed carefully the different organizations which are trying to help boys in our churches. I had better, as a sort of summary, speak of several dangers and difficulties in dealing with boys which are inherent 178 IN THE ^CHURCH to all these methods and are besetments in any other. One of these is tradition. The fad of to-day becomes to-morrow the traditional way of doing things, and before we know it we have no other. Another difficulty is uniformity. Tradition is the mortmain of yesterday, but uniformity is the iron grasp of to-day. Wherever it is it throttles conviction and strangles individualism, progress and soul freedom. There is also the temptation of numbers. As long as people love to roll on their tongues the fact that there are fifteen millions of people in America's Sunday- schools and read with awe the quarterly accounts of the growth in figures of the Endeavor movement, they will cease to try to find out that things need to be meas- ured and weighed as well as counted, and that the other millions, whom our thoughtless and careless methods alienate, cry up to God continually in the face of our complacency. But in dealing with boys there is often quite an oppo- site tendency. It is the danger of coddling. Sup- posing the leader has few boys instead of many, and is using many thoughtful methods; he may awake some day to find that he has done so much for them that they have become paupers upon his charge for recreation, incentive and material for character. To avoid the danger of coddling I would sec ttiat the boy had something to do for the church as well as the church something for him. The " church messen ger service of boys " is a recent attractive device to this end. In the boy choir, the giving <>f entertain- ments, the sharing of good times with others ami in missionary instruction and activity this can be THE BOY PROBLEM accomplished. If you are seeking spiritual aims think the essential thing is to find and group togetb the Christian boys and make them the personal, acti\ force for evangelizing the others. They are wort more than all sermons, methods and other efforts pu together. I have spoken of work for boys as useless of work with boys as rewarding, but I am inclined t( say that work by boys is to be the key-note of future evangelism. But the greatest danger is unnatural- rVd.tUr3ln.6SS ness. It is safe to say that when one talks with a boy in the Sunday-school class upon religious matters, the teacher and the boy are almost never their real selves. One of the axioms of social effort is never to create a condition among those whom you try to help which you cannot make a permanent one. This is the immorality of an ordinary revival. It creates in the hot night atmosphere of a church, in the presence of a crowd and with the accompaniment of fervid eloquence and exciting music, a social and sense condition which cannot be carried out into the daylight and the home and business. So the Sunday- school teacher must be natural. It is a cowardly thing to say personal things and ask searching questions of a boy in the midst of his fellows which you would not dare to ask that boy privately in ordinary conversation. It is to protect these reserves thus rudely assaulted that a boy puts on with his Sunday suit a disguise which he carries to the hand-to-hand encounters of the Sunday- school and Junior society. The teaching which merely touches that artificial boyhood will be easily slipped off when the disguise is removed Sunday evening 180 i IN THE CHURCH id the boy goes forth to the sport and freedom of /onday. We are unnatural in method often because we expect mnatural results. I have already spoken of the danger if making prigs. Dr. William J. Mutch sensibly points put that results which are purely religious when pro- educed in young children are always to be regarded with .suspicion. The boy is living on the ethical rather than the spiritual level until he is well along in adolescence. He needs homely virtues more than spiritual graces. We are to try not to make little men, manikins, but to produce the promise of manliness. " Even a child is known " — not by his praying, testifying, ecstasies, but — " by his doing." President G. Stanley Hall has said: " There are the best of psycho-physiological reasons for holding con- version, or change of heart, before pubescence to be a dwarfing precocity. The age at which the child Jesus entered the temple is as early as any child ought to go about his heavenly Father's business, if not too early with our climate, temperament and life. To prescribe a set of strong feelings at this age may introvert atten- tion on physical states, increase passional activities and e in a sort of self-flirt at ion or abnormal self- consciousness." The Rev. ParrisT. Farwell, who makes this quotation, add.-: " The observation of many of us will approve these words of warning. It is not evi- dence of the wisdom of a course of treatment of chil- dren thai it brings many of them into the church. The real question i-. What kind of Christians do. make? I' is comparatively easy to lead children to lit, at a very early age, to our ideas. It is possible 181 THE BOY PROBLEM to lead their imaginative minds to a conception of their own sinfulness, such as they ought not to have at their age. It is even possible to lead them to an imaginative affection for Christ which is good so far as it goes, and should be cultivated, but which needs to be supple- mented before it can be the power to hold and mold and save which characterizes the loyalty of real disciple- ship." The ultimate aim of our effort is to have not only boy- hood but also manhood in the church. By winning and holding boys and nurturing them in a natural and growing faith is the shortest road to this happy goal. In general, methods should apply to nearly all the boys as fast as they come to the age for approach. Since the Sunday-school is the instrumentality through which pass nearly all the children of the community, it is this agency which I would exalt and improve and enlarge rather than those which have followed it. It is of the greatest importance that whatever work for boys is undertaken in a local church should have an authorization that shall make it continuous. Too often when a pastor leaves a church all the social organizations which he has built fall like card houses behind him, and his successor either disregards his work or, with little apparent reason, builds up another entirely different set of amateur and puny organizations. The need for continuity and permanence, by the way, is an argument for long pastorates. In the kind of work I am advocating, where personality is of so much more importance than method, time is needed for influence to be extended and do its perfect work. 182 IN THE CHURCH Methods should be natural in order and application, elastic and rich in variety and adapted to interest and enthuse those whom we reach. More and more I think we may be careless whether our own plan is named after or affili- ated with any larger movement, since there are so many to draw help from and such variety of means is necessary and since the purpose of us who have the work to do is not to glorify any society or movement, but to make manhood out of its stuff, boys. The deepest thing I have heard said lately was by the Rev. Charles E. McKinley: " Every method or agency used in Christian work must give account to God not only for the souls whom it wins and saves, but also for all whom it alienates and destroys." We are not to be satisfied with our success among little chil- dren, big girls and old women, if in trying to reach live boys by the same methods we find that we cannot touch their nature or needs. My own experience and study in a variety of ex- periments with boys in the church for a period of over nine years lead me to condense my advice Into the following suggestions: I. The church musl place " the child in the midst." H must organize around the child. Its architecture and fittings, its services and activities must make the adolescent the first thought and not an afterthought. II. Then; must bo in the church, cither pastor or another, a1 leasl one person who is equipped for work with boys and girls. In the larger churches W6 must. differentiate once more the two functions of the minis- THE HOY PROBLEM try and have again " the pastor " and " the teacher." In smaller churches and in family churches I think the second service will yield to a Sunday evening with the young people. III. The first thing to do is to develop in the primary and principal human institution, the home, intelligent and active care of growing boys and girls. The chief object of pastoral calling is to confer about the welfare of the children. The chief normal work to be do* is to train teachers for boys and girls. The imper themes for the midweek meeting of the chr such as relate to childhood, its training, temptations and local environment. One of the most important practical activities of the church is to fight home- destroying institutions. Each sermon should have a bearing upon the home. IV. It is desirable to visit, study and coordinate with the church all the other local means of education, such as the home, the school, playgrounds, vacations, li- braries, museums, social settlements, local historical sites, etc., before denning the special boys' work in a single church, in order that the work done may be sup- plementary and may take such advantage as is possible from these others. V. The following church instrumentalities are to be relied upon, in the order of their importance, in work with boys: The Sunday-morning service and sermon. The Sunday-school. A week-day institute for boys affiliated with the Sunday-school. Home visitation and consultation. 184 IN THE CHURCH VI. The following is a practicable A Scheme for scneme for the c hurch education of Church Work , ... . . , . with Bovs °oys, which requires only the instru- mentalities and workers possessed by an average church. 1. Religious training: The sermon. Sunday-school instruction. The pastor's class. Seeking opportunities for service for children: choir, errands, entertainments, individual activity, systematic giving, helping at home, keeping the Ten Commandments and living the old-fashioned virtues. The evangelizing of boys by boys. Personal and individual care. 2. Will-training: Such as by wood-work, cooperative construc- tion, making of games, designing of Bible book-covers, games and play. Recognitions for church attendance. 3. Heart-training: Such as by liturgy, music, stories and pictures, drama, pets, the Knights of King Arthur, Bible and hymn-learning, personality of leaders. 4. Mind-training: By collections, printing, saving, missionary and general information, talks and tours, super- intended roadie 188 THE BOY PROBLEM 5. Physical training: Marches and drills, tramps and camps, wood- work. 6. Social training: Socials, entertaining others, social service, missionary giving. I have been led more and more to Services exalt the Sunday-morning church serv- ice as the chief religious influence upon boys. I have received encouraging results from the offering of simple recognitions for attendance and from a boy choir. I have also been impressed that by " the foolishness of preaching " much can be done. Mr. McKinley, whom 1 have quoted before, exalts this as the divinely appointed agency for the redemption of boys. He calls attention to it as the opportunity " where, all unquestioned and all unobserved, he may lift up his heart to God, where, without being hastened or pressed, he may think out his long thoughts until they settle his character for life." A rich, expressive service, thoughtful and generous prayer and fervid, luminous preaching — surely these are bread of life to the age of wonder and awakening. I used to spend considerable labor in that difficult task of preparing five-minute " serrnonettes." They require as much work as a sermon. Somehow they interrupt the continuity of the service. Recently I give the entire time at one morning service a month to a sermon to children and young people. I am con- sciously addressing children from ten to fourteen. The theme, the language and the treatment are solely for them. I find that no sermons are more popular. There 186 IN THE CHURCH are many younger children who understand most of what is said and there are a great many adults of adolescent minds and hearts who are overshot by con- ventional, abstruse and scholastic discourses, who are refreshed. Two or three points are impressed Present Needs upon me as those upon which present- day emphasis is needed. The occasion for the need is in every case a neglect in the practise of the home or in the common ideals of the church. One of these emphases should be upon the Bible. The traditional- ism of our older thinking made the Bible a remote and unnatural book, while the newer treatment has not be- come the possession of the layman sufficiently to be used in the teaching of children. For reasons aside from these the Bible is neglected. I do not find that boys often think of it as an attractive book or an every-day book. Sometimes they seem to think it is rather to be ashamed of if one is found carrying it or reading it. Without diminishing its sacredness we ought to show that it is truly interesting reading and continually practical. To adorn its pages and to own a respectable copy of it will make a boy feel differently about it. He should see it as a varied literature, as sixty-six books rather than as one, as story-book and daily hand-book. lie should know it in the modern language of " the Twentieth Century New Testament." He should be taught to tost it by modern biography and daily practise in ethics. It should become more vital that Jesus may be more vital to him. No more crying need e in the church than that of missionary instruction for children. I consider that 187 THE BOY PROBLEM the whole future of its home and foreign departments depends upon its relation to childhood. The whole problem of missions consists in training up future givers. We are worrying about the consolidation of our too-many societies, our " twentieth century funds " and our " forward movements," and especially about our depleted treasuries, the occasion of all the rest, when the real lack is the fundamental one of interest. We have by each mail some new form of literature intended to increase interest, but its statements and appeals are not calculated to arouse interest where it did not always exist, and it goes to the same place where the literature of similar appearance and illus- tration, the patent medicine circular, goes — the waste- basket. We have missionary secretaries, who may either bore us with their annals and figures or melt us to sentimental tears with their touching tales, " touch- ing " to the pocket-book, prudentially emptied before- hand of all but lesser coin, but so little touching the intelligence that we often forget to what cause we have been giving. Now this arousing of interest should be all done before adolescence closes, for at that time close our keenest memory for facts, the most permanent im- pression made upon the emotions and the formation of the ideals. It is a dreary country through which one travels who seeks to find a missionary literature that children will read, manuals of instruction that are practicable and other methods of exciting attention that are interesting. We need in our Sunday-schools and in our lesson system so to incorporate missionary teaching that it shall take the dignity and importance of the revealed Word itself. When I speak of " mis- 188 IN THE CHURCH sionary teaching " I plead for something really deeper. What we want is not money for " causes," but loyalty to loves. " It is not what you do for him, but what he does for you and for the crowd," says Joseph Lee, " that makes the boy loyal." Having won loyalty through service you w r ant to ally the boy with all social progress. It is a narrow, jealous church that gives information only of its own little denominational " boards " when all modern social movements and even current history are equally portions of the kingdom of God. We want in our week-day organizations dra- matic and pictorial methods that shall enthuse and in- spire the early love and generosity of boys and girls for the great world causes. Our greatest need here, of course, is that the home should originate this enthu- siasm. Perhaps if we begin with the children now — not in mournful little missionary societies presided over by forlorn and lonely workers, but in the central educational institute of the church and with an ade- quate literature to take the place of the literature wasted upon adults — perhaps we shall have fathers and mothers some day who will do more of this them- selves. We need, too, to emphasize that religion is service To gather children when they OUghl to be helping their mothers or studying their lessons is unchristian. To foster a desire to be good without being good for something is mischievous. To create a < unit tec for the purpose of watching it chairman do its work is an American fault not confined to children'.-, societies. It is also paralyzing t-» a child to be set to do work that he knuws very well is not. worth doing. It is the THE BOY PROBLEM supreme duty and privilege of the helper of boys to give him the very highest inspirations possible to the soul and then to do the difficult thing of making them applicable to that hodden gray, homespun stuff called Duty. It is my own habit, as a pastor, to The Author's „ J , , ' . ,5 . . ' . Experience enroll my Sunday-school in divisions in the order of maturity, and to endeavor that none shall pass into or through adolescence with- out my personal attention. The number in that period at once may not be very large, but it embraces in a very few years all the children in the church at their most susceptible age. I visit the homes and schools of these children for conference and information as often as possible. As soon as cold weather approaches I gather them in informal groups, after school or Satur- days, for activities, not previously announced, varying each year, in short courses and conducted as much as possible out-of-doors and at home. I have been doing the only strictly religious work, outside of the preaching and securing for them the best teachers in the Sunday- school, just before Easter in the form of free Sunday afternoon conferences. I rely almost entirely upon real friendships thus created, a mutual enjoyment of the society of each other, coordination with the home, carefully cherished loyalty to the church and salvation by displacement. I believe it to be important to gain this friendship early in adolescence and to regain it by earnest tact in that trying period of independence and change which precedes reconstruction, at sixteen to eighteen. It is at this latter time that the pastor needs to give most personal care to his young people's societies, 190 IN THE CHURCH which, conducted by others and by methods possibly not adaptable to boys of that age, sadly lose those who most need to be held. At twelve and at sixteen are the points for personal work — the former for acquaint- ance and association, the latter for meeting restlessness and doubt; the former for counteracting evil influences, the latter the Golden Age for good influences. This latter is the " emigration period " of life, corresponding perhaps in the race-life to the fruitful years of the dis- coverers and pioneers. In general, I try to enrich the lives of the boys as much as possible, to be of real service to them and to know and love them. I become so much interested in studying them and in learning from them, the only true friends that one in maturity is ever sure of, that I scarcely ever think of myself as their teacher, except in the pulpit, where I always find before me many eager, boyish faces. As for results, I find that a considerable group of young people always offer themselves to the church as fast as they mature, coming spontaneously and to- gether. I have had mothers come to me and tell me with emotion that their boys were changed in their conduct at home, and this was testimony of Hie must. satisfying character. I have seen some of these changes with my own eyes and have watched young men go out into life feeling that my touch had been in their molding. It is intensive work. Sometimes it _ ■ mi to I"- imall in its reach and grasp. Opportunity One holds bu1 a few among so many. Yet another Teacher was contenl to have twelve dis- ciples. And in every group, in Sunday-school, V. M. 191 THE BOY PROBLEM C. A. or boys' club, there are always a few key-boys. If you master them you have influenced all. It takes but a few years of this kind of work to make a man unwilling to do any other. To become an artist in spirit-building is to write poems and paint pictures not for dusty libraries or quiet galleries, but for millen- niums of benediction. My message is really this: We must rely less upon scheming and method and cease to look for the prophet of a miracle movement that shall solve our problem. In home and community and church we shall save our boys as Jesus did the world, by the sharing of life with them. For them we must go down into the Galilee of simple-heartedness and the Samaria of commonplace and dwell at the Nazareth of childish toil and struggle and kneel in the Gethsemane of intercession, yea, and climb the sacrificial mound of Calvary, as did the fathers and mothers and saints of old, to bring them to God and to form in them the eternal life of a new creation. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Clark, Francis E. The Children and the Church. Boston. The Pilgrim Press. 1882. Gladden, Washington. The Christian Pastor and the Working Church. New York: Scribner. Hodges, George, and Reichert, John. The Administration of an Insti- tutional Church (pp. 166-194, on "Work with Boys"). New York: Harper. 1906. McKinley, Charles E. Educational Evangelism. Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 1905. Rishell, C. W. The Child as God's Child. New York: Eaton. 1905. 192 IN THE H O M E VII THE BOY IN THE HOME One who writes with boldness on the social education of boys in general may well hesitate to speak on their moral education in particular. A man may in social endeavors lay the responsibility for imperfect results upon his coworkers, the parents of those with whom he works and the boys themselves, but in his own home there is no one but himself to bear that responsibility, except his wife, who is probably doing her own share nobly and a part of his own besides. He who humbly feels the need of setting his own house in order has little time to give counsel to others. Still, if a man has learned anything, even in humble- ness of spirit, he ought to share it. It is some time before the true awfulness of parent- hood dawns upon a father. He rejoices with exceeding great joy and ignorance when his first man-child is born. But he has as yet no idea of what is expected of him. _ . It is not what the community expects Parenthood as . , . Incarnation a '^her that is so alarming; if is what his own child expects of him tli.it frightens him. It is the unexpected way in which young children deify their fathers which startles mosl men into their i □ es. Wher a man heart his babe say his prayen to himself, or notes his implicit confidence that he himself is quite omnipotent, it makes him uneasy. No one ever told him th.it he wac to become 103 THE BOY PROBLEM God to another soul, some day. He recalls that God has no bad habits and no blue Mondays. This gives him much food for thought. To realize that this young creature implicitly expects of his father unvarying truth and universal evenness of spirit is disheartening to one's sense of ease. The secret of a great fatherhood is the habit of incarnation. There is practically nothing else we have to do, but this is a thing that may well tax all our strength — always to put ourselves in our child's place. And this is something, after all, that nobody else can teach you, though many will try. What you learn you learn in the laboratory, from the objects of experiment themselves. The only infallible teachers of fathers are their own children; and what most of us keep busy in doing is to try to prevent them from finding it out. Many people are willing to give everything to boys — their own or other people's — except the priceless gift, themselves. They offer their personality to others much as that curious South American lizard, which, when pursued, shakes its tail off and leaves it in the path as a bait, while it flees on to shelter. It is not easy to do. Some one remarks that it is a great man who can put himself in a small place and not feel cramped; and Plato said : " Many are the wand bearers, but few are the true bacchanals." Yet the weakness of most fatherhood is its externalism. In the first chapter i laid considerable stress upon the imminence of the boy's physical nature and his avidness of life. His response to every impulse is more intense than that of girls. This extremity of the boy's 194 IN THE HOME feeling often leads to irregular acts. Certain years of the boy's life have been called the semi-criminal years. It has been discovered that the very year which is the acme of the criminal period is also the height of the conversion period. You can expect anything of a boy at that period, and when he is most susceptible to evil he is also intensely susceptible to good. But as we study this curious inconsistency we notice this one satisfying fact — that every one of these instincts and passions connects with something also that is good, and there, I think, you have the key to the situation. The Master spoke of it in one of his parables when he told of the man who had a house in which was an evil spirit, and he drove out the spirit and swept the house, but instantly seven other spirits, each worse than the first, came in. The good drives out the evil or the evil drives out the good. Salval ion by displacement is the great principle for the moral development of boyhood. All these qualities, if they can only be focused on the right things, will drive out the evil. We must offer him interpretations of these enthusiasms and ideals. We must interpret them to ourselves not as indications of total depravity, but simply of abundance «»f life. Now in order to meet this abundant life in my boy in the right spirit several things are required of me. For my boy's sake one thing I need is *J ealth health. X<.t for the purposes of corporal ell j i i • 1 1 1 punishment, but bo thai lie will nut he named of me. He wants me to be his hero always, but, when the greal heroic years come on and lie believi with his old Greek contemporaries, that the laurel is THE BOY PROBLEM better than the bay, he will think I am all very well, but that I don't amount to much in the real world unless I am strong and swift on my feet, hold my breastbone high and am able to see my toes as I look down across my waistcoat. I see that as the boys wander through the medieval realms which they must traverse before they become my contemporaries, I must be much out-of-doors, away from the crowd and hard by hills, waters and flying clouds. I know that I shall have to camp out, try to learn to like what no one who has outgrown boy- hood can newly learn to like — to fish, to hunt, to swim. I must learn to tell a toadstool from a mushroom and a birch from a balm of Gilead. It makes me old to think of it, and I lament the boyhood I never had, be- cause I was such a good child that they let me read books when I should have been roaming God's wonder- land, and made me learn to swim in the bathtub. Think for a moment of the things children like in the country. What are the elements of a boy's heaven? Pets, things to eat, quiet nooks, homemade toys, sportsmanship and a chum. Now these are just the simple sort of things we need for ourselves. They take us away from hotels, parlors, best clothes and sedentary employments, and constitute that change which is itself rest. I know it requires a deliberate act of the will sometimes to alter one's winter habits suddenly. I my- self find it hard when the cry rings through the upper hall in my country house at 5.30 in the morning, " The last man out of bed is a nigger," to get myself up quick enough to avoid being the colored gentleman for that day. But it is good to do. 190 IN THE HOME Most parents do not have enough fun with their children; some because they think parenthood is a profession and take it too seriously, and most be- cause they get all tired out with them in the winter. Vacation is a great opportunity to regard the young through joyous eyes, undarkened even by child-study. Let a father count that day lost whose low de- scending sun has not seen him laugh with his children. One thing every one of us needs to N crave constantly is the sense of humor. The boys are getting into the awkward age, when their nerves and their muscles do not keep pace in growth. Now humor among boys is a form of awkwardness, an intellectual ungainliness. No boy is really irreverent; he is only humorous. A group of boys are not consciously noisy or a nuisance. Their actions are expressive of joint humor. It takes humor to see humor and to bear with it. George Eliot never said a truer thing than when she once remarked that " there is no greater strain of friendship than a different taste in jokes." We always need a gift in prayer, but during the trying days of adolescence I pray that I may have a gift of humor. There is no situation which seems serious that does not have something funny in it. To be able to see that will save the situation. Sarcasm is wit, not humor, and it has almost no place in a parental vocabulary. The sense of humor in a parent is (lie only thing thai can help a boy live through his moods and despairs and thai can enable us meanwhile <<• be able to live with him. Humor at its highest and be t ifl I he sunc as insight. 1»7 THE BOY PROBLEM The key-note to all this is reality. A Necessary ^oy is ttie most real crcature alive. He sees things straight through and he al- ways tells the truth when he is not scared into lying. He has a horror of moralizing, " personal work " and good advice. He does not like to be wept over by a woman or caressed or prayed over by a man. His ideals, because of his splendid physical vigor and rapid growth, are largely physical ideals. " Nipper Brown is the best scholar in my class," confesses the author of " The Real Diary of a Real Boy," but adds, with simple pride, " I can lick him with one hand." Life to a boy is, as it is not to us, real all the time. Unto such a person it is no use to come with finger on lip or frown on face or even with a rosy apple hitched to a prayer-meeting — if you would find him at home. We must bring to these boys a religion that is as real as themselves and that will live among their boyish instincts. They must be allowed to be boy Christians in a boy's, not in a man's, way. Reality is the only thing worth working with or for in trying to help boys. A boy may be able, as a recent writer expressed it, " to disgorge Bible verses like buck- shot out of a bag," or willing to turn his soul inside out in a prayer-meeting like a turkey's gizzard, but if he is not honest and clean in his living he has simply become a young whitewashed sepulcher. Methods, too, must have real ends in view and appeal to real instincts. The supreme opportunity of parents with boys is that they may make a constant and unadulterated appeal to enthusiasm. As this is something every normal boy is ready to furnish in quantities, you have only to 198 IN THE HOME engage it wholesomely to get hold of the whole boy. The anthropologist explains most of the moral aber- rations of boyhood as the emergence or persistence of savage instincts. If these can be prevented from functioning, they wither and disappear. They are so prevented by filling the life full of the opposite tend- encies. It is the filled and not the empty life thai is morally safe. The boy who has learned the cost of making things is not so likely to destroy other people's property. The boy who can be made enthusiastic in doing something is never going to have time or desire to be obstreperous. The boy who has been stirred to live for some large purpose is not so subject to the temptations of intemperance or pleasure. We are then, in short, to keep busy appealing to a boy's real instincts and in trying to get him to enjoy his virtues more than he does his vices. My experience is that it doesn't make much difference what method is used. The essential thing is to have hold of one boy by as many handles as possible. A little girl once moved from the The Advantage country into Chicago. When the first u n ry night came and she knelt down among Home ° the boxes in the closet thai was to be her chamber, she put up this petition: " O Lord, have mercy upon us. Thou hast taken us out of the bright and beautiful country to this dark and dirty city, where we can sec thy dear face no more." Of course i< is the l.i-t phrase thai is pathetic. Life with the Divine Companion is difficult to children who live in our great cities. en THE BOY PROBLEM While I was hanging to a strap in a car the other day I got to thinking about Abraham. A verse in the olden story came to me with a sensation of restfulness and quiet: "And Jehovah appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day." The contrast between the patriarch in his tent door and the American jammed into a flat seemed to me very refreshing. Abraham had plenty of leisure. He kept office hours with his own heart. He not only got a living, but he got time to live. He had so few things that he used them all every day. He lived clown through everything he had. When he came to a green pasture he did not race around it to take bird photographs. He lay down in it beside the still waters and restored his soul. He had selected a lot of things not to know. Mrs. Whitney once said that the test of a man's life is the things that get crowded out. Abraham knew nothing about " the latest," whether scandal, horror, fad, book or evening edition. In his day even yeast and fire were hard to get. To-day the things worth while need to be put on top shelves so that men will have to care to climb for them. There isn't much to see in a tent, therefore tent- dwellers are always looking out of the door. They have a childish aliveness, joyousness, welcome to all that approaches. Now how many men do we know who are so interested that they displace books, and how many books that displace themselves by the enthusi- astic activities they impel? How many people find their virtues as interesting as their vices? Who has made the simple life so divine that he wonders not to find that God is his guest? 200 IN THE HOME But Abraham did all this by running away from the city. The reason he had miracle-children who star the sky with their glorious names is because they were born and brought up in the country. We who cannot live in the country must struggle strenuously to provide such substitutes as we may for what country life means. President Bryan, of Franklin College, Getting wag £ or a COU pj e f y ears a t the head of 3. Few - „ the Department of Education in the £iXposurcS Philippine Islands. I was talking with him one day at a teachers' convention when a typical country hoosier pedagogue came up to us and drawled out, " Say, perfesser, that was quite a jant you took aout among the Philippians. Did yer see much? " " Well, I got a few exposures." Getting a few exposures is one of the privileges we ought to try to give our children. They need them. I had entered a boy in the Boston Latin School. One day I received a peremptory summons to the Bchool. So I went and asked the principal what was the matter. He asked me to sit down and wait and see. After I had sat an hour I wanted to take the boy out and see that he received proper treatment. He acted as if he were patronizing the school. He had got what we call " the college air." The boy of twelve already />/W. He had no reverence toward the knowledge or even the Bplendid traditions of the school. But he was not 1 he only hoy in the room afflicted with thai di - [fthissorl of thing keeps on, il is going to be serious. The primal thing in educ.,1 ion is reverence. Plato THE BOY PROBLEM so; Jesus said so; Ruskin said so. It is essential that the boy should have a chance to find out that there are greater and grander things in the world than his own self. He must see that the stars do not revolve around his own person. One of my favorite pictures is a painting called " The Lion's Cubs." A group of English schoolboys standing in Saint Paul's are looking eagerly at the memorial tablet to Lord Nelson. Each face is trans- figured with hero-worship. A boy is the only creature who can admire anything without thinking how he looks when he is doing it. And not many boys nowa- days can do it. Boys must be exposed to nature, to work, to good books. And then I would have children exposed to folks. I don't mean mobs, but just folks. There are some folks whose touch upon children's heads is a chrism. To entertain such angels is the chief thing for which hospitality was invented. I know of homes whose furniture is modest but good — much of it on the walls in the forms of books and pictures, and little of it in the form of things to trip over and that have to be dusted — where some of the greatest names and some of the best men are being constantly wel- comed. Into one such home in Connecticut the other day came Saint Charles Wagner, he of the Simple Life. The eldest daughter served the table at breakfast, the baby asking the blessing at table, at family prayers the children were prayed for by the father-priest by name. The good saint acknowledged then and there that he had once had a vision of the Simple Life, but now he had really seen it. And the children, not being told or 202 IN THE H O M E knowing how great were the men who sat at the board, to which a father's shrewd love had invited them for his children's sake, only felt that every guest became a blessing. And now I want to approach briefly The Way of but reverentlv what Horace Bush- a Child ne ^ wnen ne wr ote his own biography beautifully called, " The Way of God with a Soul." The spiritual life of a little child is like a little cup, brimming over with the water of life and easily spilled. But it is very little. The penitence of children for their misdeeds seems usually so slight and temporary. Their little sins are as much a surprise to them as they are a grief to us. They are mostly the product of childish ailments or the result of a web of circumstances in which a child finds himself quite innocently entangled. The phrase with which Boss Tweed in the Tombs apologized for his striped career exactly represents their feelings: " I tried to be good, but I had hard luck." This being the case, efforts for maturer qualities ought evidently to be avoided. To expeel or strive for a religious " experience " from a young child is as fool- ish and pathetic as to seek to secure an apple crop from sapplings. A good-hearted little one will, if broughl up in a minister's family, for example, t ry to be as pious as his parents, jusl ass two-year-old apple tree of mine bore itself to death one summer in producing some ociously fine pound s\ We may as well realize, ae Paul did, thai it is firel thai which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual; that a child m 203 THE BOY PROBLEM become manly before he can become godly. A normal child will say his little incantations which we call prayers, invoke his tooth when it aches or his pocket fetich when he is in a tight place, and look for miracles of deliverance when he is in trouble. We need not question or rudely disturb such imaginative and savage- like faith. It is faith — the only faith that is genuine in a child. In the meantime, we, of course, may habit- uate him to right conduct and religious observances, rejoice in the dear, uncovenanted graces of his heart, furnish him vacant formularies which he will first grotesquely and then maturely populate, and give him thus the materials and the skill for building life. Probably if children really do in any way " rehearse the race life " they do it more in their religion than in any other way. With them, as with savages, it is prob- ably fear which first teaches them really to pray. Thus they learn to depend, and for a child to depend, or a man to cease to make excuses, is to pray. The principal thing that a child has to do morally before he is twelve is to grow a conscience. The principal thing after that is to get power to use his will. I would be very glad, if I were sure it were a good one, to be able to button my own moral code around my child, knowing that it would probably protect him until he was big enough to outgrow it, but I would much rather be sure that he had learned to speak the truth in his heart. If a boy can always do that, it is about all one ought to expect of him before he is twelve. If he obeys me, that is discipline, but if he learns to obey himself, that is character. 204 IN THE HOME „ . , Among all the experiences of early Punishments , , , ., . . , , J boyhood it is in punishments that a father learns most how hard it is to be God to a child. Anybody can lick a boy in anger with a good relish, but after it is over he knows with shame that he has been a coward and a brute to do it. The child may not realize all this. The zest with which my father used to castigate me gives me now a belated but keen satis- faction. Still it is required of a man that in giving a licking to the glory of God he should do so after fasting and prayer. Those are the modern miracles by the laying on of hands, but the father who can perform them realizes what it meant for old Abraham to lead young Isaac up Mount Moriah. It may seem quixotic to say, but I am convinced that after a boy is old enough to tussle with his father he should only be whipped with his own consent. I have known a boy to wait a whole day before he was ready to see things in this light, but when he did there were the same kind of tears in his father's eyes as in his own, and when they went downstairs together their arms were across each other's shoulders. But after so saying I pause and lay my hand on my mouth and am still. If I must not punish when I am angry, shall I, on the other hand, wait and seize upon my boy a number of hours later when he comes running up to me with a smile, and wallop him with calm, passionless conscientiousness? Or if 1 will not perform any corporal punishment, how shall 1 differentiate "moral suasion" from ordinary "jawing"? Or if "self-government" be my fad, what shall I do when the child refuses to obey himself'.'' Shall 1 make him aofi THE BOY PROBLEM obey me or shall I let him try the expensive and cir- cuitous way of his own mistakes? With your kind permission, let us now change the subject. Nothing is more beautiful about a child than his for- givingness. As the dog brings his wound to the master who has caused it, so, in sweet unconsciousness that he is magnanimous, the child clings to the parent who has spoken thoughtlessly or cruelly. Oh, for this, my child, forgive me, that I have so often deserved your for- giveness! And yet I need not pray so, for the child has forgiven without being asked and without reluctance. But the time is coming when that forgiveness is vvith- holden. Not that the boy would not like to pardon, but when he becomes a genuine personality the lad with the self-respect which personality implies, and a new sense of justice, as yet more sentimental than judicial, cannot forgive the wound to himself without consenting to his own soul-murder. Here is where the test of parent- hood comes. Here is where the insight of a parent is best shown, when he knows how to see that the issue is not obedience to the parent by the child any more, but the lad's obedience to himself. In a sense it is true that after fourteen or so the child cannot obey another if he is ever to be more than a child. To break a will now is to break a life. The exercise of authority now for its own sake means the death of all kindly relations between parent and child forevermore. Here is where are played the saddest tragedies in some of the most Christian homes. During adolescence it seems to be a chief task of the parent, and especially of the father, to cling to the boy 206 IN THE HOME with a steady and friendly companionship, minimizing as far as possible nagging, faultfinding and volunteer advice, preparing for every occasion when guidance or rebuke is really necessary by the most careful review of the lad's purposes and conduct from his own stand- point, honoring the boy's sense of justice and his half- blown resolves and endeavors, and always keeping cheerful but not sarcastic, humorous but not witty and both impartial and generous in attitude. Occasionally there will be gleams of encouragement, as when the parent making a suggestion instead of a command has found that it was immensely more effective. For per- haps his son says timidly, " Father, I wish you would tell me I can't do this, instead of saying that you'd rather I'd not. If you'd command me, I'd have the .satisfaction of disobeying, but when I know what you want, I want to please you." Happy the parent who has grace <<> L t, J 3 wait while his child walks through the to Suffer far country of disillusionment and until he returns home, no more a boy, but a man. Happy he who can outlast " the equinoctial gales of youth " and then meet him with joy and welcome, and sit down with him as he clothes his old toys with new knowledge, and enjoy with him the dear-bought salvage of manhood. But, after all, there is one supreme grace <>f incarna- tion thai we need, — the grace to suffer. A! my best I -hall misunderstand and I Bhall be misundersi I. The boy- mint make mistakes, they have a righl to, ]n\i, it. is father and mother who will suffer becau e of them. They may go very far away from home, and the 207 THE BOY PROBLEM lengthening bond that binds them back will be the tortured strands of their parents'" love. And even if they succeed, they will forget, and they will never know what it cost to bring them up, until they try it with our grandchildren. But the cost and the reward shall be that we are learning the Fatherhood and the Motherhood of God. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. New York: Scribner's. Clark, Kate Upson. Bringing Up Boys. New York: Cro well. 1899. Dubois, Patterson. Fireside Child Study. New York. 1903. The Natural Way in Moral Training. New York: Dodd. 1900. Beckonings from Little Hands. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times. 1895. Farrar, F. W., et al. The Bible and the Child. New York: Macmillan. 1896. Forbush, William Byron. The Broadening Path (pp. 1417-1536). In- dianapolis: Bo wen. 1907. Gilson, Roy Rolfe. In the Morning Glow. New York: Harper. 1902. Graiiame, Kenneth. Dream Days. New York: Lane. 1898. Griggs, Edward Howard. Moral Education. New York: Huebsch. 1904. Grinnell, Elizabeth. How John and I Brought up the Child. Phila- delphia: American Sunday School Union. 1894. Henderson, C. Hanford. Education and the Larger Life. Boston: Houghton. 1902. Hillis, Newell D. The School in the Home. New York: Revell. 1902. Jones, Rufds M. A Boy's Religion from Memory. Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach. 1902. King, Henry Churchill. Christian Training vs. the Revival as Means of Converting Men. Chicago: Secretarial Institute. Layard, Ernest B. Religion in Boyhood. New York: Dutton. 1896. Peabody, Francis G. " The Kind of Home that Makes the Right Kind of a Boy " in Work with Boys, January, 1902. Richmond, Ennis. Through Boyhood to Manhood. New York: Long- mans. 1898. Boyhood. 1898. Scott, Charles B. Nature Study and the Child. Boston: Heath. 1900. Symposium in the Proceedings of the Religious Education Association for 1904 on " Religious Education in the Home." Write also to Mrs. Andrew McLeish, Glencoe, 111., the Department of the Home of the Religious Education Association and the Home-Culture Clubs, Northampton, Mass. 208 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The special bibliographies at the end of each chapter are pretty rigorously selected from the great mass of material available and are chosen with the needs of the lay reader ami worker solely in mind. A few of the articles in special maga- zines are not easily accessible and would not be mentioned but for their great value, but nearly everything else is of recent publication. All the books mentioned in any of these bibliog- raphies may be ordered of the publishers of this volume. In addition to the selected lists of books at the end of each chapter referring to the subject of that chapter, it seems wise to give both the sources for a deeper study and also a hint or two for those who cannot hope to read so much. A Bibliography of Child Study, with annual supplements, cataloguing everything that is issued, by Louis N. Wilson, is published at Clark University, Worcester. An Annual Bibliography of Books on Education, annotated, is published by The Educational Review, New York City. A Classified Bibliography of Boy Life and Organized Work with Boys, by J. T. Bowne, the most valuable list on thi e special subjects, was published in Association Boys, August, 19( 16. A Bibliography of Children's Inten t i printed in the " Psychology of Child Development," by Irving King. Chit The University. 1903. A Bibliography of Religious Education, by William Walter Smith, is published by the Religious Education Association, Chicago. A Bibliography of Moral Education, with excellent annota- tions, is found in "Moral Education," by Edward Howard Griggs. New York. 1904. A Selected Bibliography of Childhood and Adolescence, anno- tated, and containing many English till iblished In Saint Georgr, quarterly, Birmingham, England, in H»0f> 07. A Bibliography of the Bible School Is publi bed In "The 200 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Pedagogical Bible School," by S. B. Haslett. New York: Revell. 1903. A Bibliography of Manual Training was published in the Report of the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1904. Bibliographies of Social Settlements, Vacation Schools and Playgrounds, Christian Nurture Classes and Books for Boys are found at the end of the chapters in this book in which those subjects are mentioned. In answer to the frequent question that has come to the author as to short reading courses in the Boy Problem, he would suggest as follows: Adolescence, byG. Stanley Hall. $7.50. Education in Religion and Morals, by George A. Coe. $1.50. Educational Evangelism, by Charles E. McKinley. $1.00. Boys' Self-Governing Clubs, by Winifred Buck. $1.00. Articles on Boys' Clubs by Sidney S. Peixotto, in Charities, 1907. $2.00 a year. The current issues of Work with Boys. $1.00 a year. The current volume of the Proceedings of the Religious Edu- cation Association. $2.00. One book, from the Selected Bibliography, upon the reader's special interest. President Hall's great work is a mine of information. Some of it is hard reading, some of it fascinating. Many chapters may be omitted entirely. Those that are read ought to be studied carefully. Dr. Coe and Mr. McKinley are sane and earnest upon the principles that underlie good work. Miss Buck's is a sensible and useful book on method. The periodicals referred to will keep the reader up to date in information. 210 INDEX PAGE Abbott, Alan 153 Abraham 200, 205 " Active " membership 95 Addams, Jane 21 Adolescence IS, 32, 169, 210 Adventure-period l!>, 2 A Agassiz Association 125, 117 Ambitions of boys 27, 37 Andover Play School 82 Anthony, A. W 117 Anti-Cigarette Society 125 Anti-domestic period 23, 3s, I ..". Art for boys L58 Art Clubs (pictures) 58, 158, 1 7:5 Atavism 49 Athletic Clubs 58, 59 Audubon Society 125 Avidness of Life 10 Baldwin, William A 88 Balliet, Thomas M 12 Band of Hope 125 Band of Mercy 125 Bible, The 109, 110, 111, L36, ls7 Bibliographies 89, 54, 65, L25, 192, 208, 209 Boy Life 7, W, 169, 210 Boys' Brigade 104, 125 Boys' Experiment Clubs 87 Boys' Life Brigade 105, Brinton, D. G 1 1 1 Brotherhood of St. Andrew, Junior 96, 126 Brotherhood of Andrew und Philip 90, 128 211 INDEX PAGE Brooks, Phillips 34 Bryan, E. B 54, 201 Buck, Winifred 210 Bunker Hill Boys' Club 71, 72, 73 Burr, Henry M 27, 150, 161 Bushnell, Horace 203, 208 By-Laws of Boy Life 40, 150 Camps 77, 144, 172 Candy stores as social centers 56 Captains of Ten 98, 126 Carleton, Hubert 96, 103 Carr, John W 35 Catechetics 116, 126 Chamberlain, A. F 41, 45 Chesterton, G. K 19 Chew, Thomas 42, 69, 70 Chicago Commons 108 Childhood 8 Christian Endeavor Society, Junior and Intermediate, 87, 89, 126, 127 Christian Nurture Classes 116 Christopher, W. S 18 Church attendance by boys 121 Church, The 67, 81, 97, 119, 169, 175 Cigarettes 125 City History Club 126 City's influence on boys 52, 168 Clan-ethics of " the gang " 22, 64 Clark, Francis E 192 Clark, William A 67, 126, 147, 172 Clarke, William Newton 117 Classes, Communion 116 " Clumsy " age 41 Coddling 72, 166, 179 Coe, George A 16, 17, 28, 39, 92, 116, 178, 210 Collections 85, 143, 172 Colozza 62 212 INDEX PAGB Community Clubs 67 Conscience 204 Continuity 182 Conversion 27, 29, 92, 176, 203 Country boys 82, 87, 126, 134, 196, 199 Crackel, M. D 20 Crane, William 1 33 Crime among boys 31 Crisis 27 Dawson, George E 49, 55 Decision Day 122 De Garmo, Charles 141, 142, 171 Degenerate children 49, 50, 54 Delay in development 41 Delinquents 50 Dime novels 1 57 Directory of Street Boys' Clubs 1 2S Drama 1 17, L72 Drawing 41, 86 Eliot, George 197 Emotional age IS Endeavor Society 87, 89, 126, 127 English Boys' Clubs L26 Episcopal Church, The 1 19, 120, 177 Epworth League, Junior !>(>, 127 Ethical Dualism II Ethical teaching in public schools 138 Evangelism among boys '.»7 Fall River Boys' Club Farm Schools 128 Farwell, Parris T 184, 181 Fathers 131, 198 Fetichism 16,48 Fitch, Sir Joshua 1 ] 7 Fitzpatrick, E. A 1 •'• I 213 INDEX PAGE Forbush, William Byron Ill, 127, 128, 177, 186, 190, 203 Forgivingness of children 206 French Canadian boys 43 Fun 197 Games 140, 171 " Gangs " 20, 56, 61, 115 Gardens 84 George Junior Republic 126 GUI School City 127 Girls' Societies 59, 60 Good will of boys 36 Good Will Home 163 Graded work 108, 110 Groos, K 140 Groton School 64 Group Clubs 68, 126 Gulick, Luther H 19, 65, 79 Gymnasiums 142, 172 Habits 13, 15 Hall, G. Stanley, 11, 27, 28, 31, 34, 39, 63, 104, 116, 138, 144, 169, 181 Handicraft 83, 86, 88, 143, 171 Hawthorne, Julian 155 Health 195 Heath, D. C 155 Hebrew boys 43 Henderson, C. H 208 Henderson, C. R 116 Hero- Worship 23 Hervcy, Walter L 137, 173 I lewins, Caroline M 151 Hinckley, Geo. W 164 Home, The 25, 51, 73, 131-136, 193 Home culture 73 Home library system 74, 126, 136 Honor, 104 214 INDEX PAGE Home, H. H 34 Hughlings-Jackson theory 27 Humor 164, 197 Hunt, Holman 15S Hyde, William De W 107, 178 Ideals of boys 27, 36 Immigrant children 42 Industrial training 88 Infancy 7 Instincts 8, 1 2, 48 International Lesson System 107, 108 Irish boys 43 James, William 34 Jesus 35, 169, 195, 202 Johnson, George E 51, 82,111, 171 Jump, Herbert A 87, 126 Junior Republic 126 Junior Societies 87, 89, 1 27 Juvenile Court Publications 127 Katabolism 47 Keedy, John L 113, 128 Kern, O. J 87, 126 Key-boys 23, 192 King, H. C HO. 208 Knights of King Arthur 1W > 127 Knights of St. Paul ' - 7 Lancaster, E. G 27 > ;; •• " Lankester, E. Ray Law, Age of Lawlessness Lee, Gerald Stanley Lee, Joseph 9,46,127,167,170,180 I ■ ahaft, E Lincoln House iH5 INDEX PAGE Literary Clubs 58 Lombroso, Paolo 15 Love 14 Loyal Temperance Legion 127 Lulls 46, 89 Mabie, Hamilton W 140 Mackintire, A. B 98 Maclaren, Ian 11 Malling-Hansen 47 Manual training 83, 143 Mason, Frank S 73, 165 Mass Clubs 67, 127, 128 McKinley, Charles E 29, 38, 183, 186, 192, 210 Memory, Verbal 13 Men's Leagues 96 Mercy, Band of 125 Meredith, George 143 Messenger Service 126, 179 Mischief, Meaning of 12 Missionary instruction 128, 187 Mob-spirit 22 Moral training 16, 36 Morgan, George W 43 Mosso, A 35 Music 85, 146 Mutch, William J 181 Nascencies 34 Nature study 81,83, 126, 147, 172 Needs of boys 131 "New Education, The" 54, 82 ff. Norway, Maine, Boys' Work 86 Old Testament 16 Older boys 72 Organizations, Boys' own 56 216 INDEX PAGE " Pairing " 65 Parenthood 193 Pastor's (Nurture) Classes 116 Paton, J. Lewis 20 Peabody, Francis G 52, 132, 170, 208 Personality 52, 165, 174 Pets 1S5, 196 Philanthropic Clubs 58 Physical instincts 8, 194 Pictures 158, 173 Pierce, John M 140 Plastic Period 31 Plato 194, 201 Play 01, 85, 1 10, 171 Play centers in schools 82, 87 Playgrounds 88, 127 Play instinct 8 Play School (Johnson's) 82, 127 Play-Work Guild (Clark's) 147 Pledges 91 Poor boys 168 Prayer-meetings 92 Preaching 120, 171, 186 Precocity 11 Predatory Clubs 58 Printing 86 Punishments 205 Questions ' 59 Hare Life, Reproducing the 15, '-'"I Racial difference! '- Reading 161, 178 Reality 198 Religion in childhood 16 Religious training 16, •'(•» Rl 7, 183 Vostrovsky, Clara 149, 173 Walker, Francis A •"• I Wanamaker, John 97 Whitney, Mrs. A. D. T 200 Wflder, BurtG 163, 173 Will, The 31,32 Women as leaders of boys ( ' ' Woodcraft Indians 100, L29 Woodwork 83, 143 Workers with Boys, Alliance of 127 Y. M. C. 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