emptingly say, 'Here's a place for the boys!'
Ah, what if they should! What if your boy or mine
Should cross o'er the threshold which marks out the line
'Twixt virtue and vice, 'twixt pureness and sin,
And leave all his innocent boyhood within?
Ah, what if they should, because you and I,
While the days and the months and the years hurry by,
Are too busy with cares and with life's fleeting toys
To make round our hearthstone a place for the boys."

There is a sense of pressure and nervous excitement throughout the whole
life, for the "invoice of energy" is not exhausted. Athletics afford
physical relief, and slang, which is at its height from about thirteen
to fifteen, offers somewhat of an emotional safety-valve. Experiences
are never commonplace during this period, nor any individual ordinary.
The strongest superlatives and most extravagant metaphors will scarcely
do a situation adequate justice, but nurture can afford to be patient,
for "this, too, will pass," and of itself, as life grows calmer.

The feverish excitement is not at all to the distaste of the adolescent
but, on the contrary, he courts it. The "reading craze" is at its height
in this period, and books which give "thrills" are sought by both boys
and girls. There is increasing necessity of wise oversight in the choice
of reading when the mind is so inflammable and easily led, and the fact
that a book is on the shelf of the Sunday School library is unhappily
not always a guarantee against the need of further parental inspection.

The abounding energy of this period, when brought into conjunction with
the enlarged vision of life, often gives rise to a restlessness and
desire, to leave school and go to work. This is augmented by the new
money sense, which is strong about the age of fourteen, and leads to an
effort to secure money to save as well as to spend. This desire ought to
be met by a regular allowance or an opportunity for earning a stipulated
sum. Its neglect is often the explanation for the breaking open of
Sunday School banks or theft from household funds.

But even the satisfying of this desire will not allay restlessness, and
many a school-room seat becomes vacant in the early teens. If, instead
of the harsh measures so often used, the boy could know he had not only
the loving sympathy but also the pride of his parents in this harbinger
of approaching manhood; if, in place of force, he were given choice,
after a