n the end, even if one had to build
sliding-piles, as they do in Russia, or to build skating-rinks, as they
do in Montreal,--it would be cheaper for every city, town, and village
to provide legitimate amusement for boys, under proper superintendence,
than to leave them, as they are now left, to fight their way against
society.

"In the boys' academies of our country, what provision is made for
amusement? There are stringent rules, and any number of them, to prevent
boys making any noise that may disturb the neighbors; and generally the
teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys _still_, and sees that they
get their lessons, his duty is done. But a hundred boys ought not to be
kept still. There ought to be noise and motion among them, in order that
they may healthily survive the great changes which Nature is working
within them. If they become silent, averse to movement, fond of indoor
lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far worse ways than any
amount of outward lawlessness could bring them to.

"Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse than any amount of
hullabaloo; and the quietest boy is often a poor, ignorant victim, whose
life is being drained out of him before it is well begun. If mothers
could only see the _series of books_ that are sold behind counters to
boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for,--if they
could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretending
to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our nature, but trailing
them over with the filth of utter corruption! These horrible works are
the inward and secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the
pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and
out-of-door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to be
encouraged, and even driven.

"It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, and churches
make no provision for boys in the way of amusement, the world, the
flesh, and the Devil are incessantly busy and active in giving it to
them. There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are
billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas! with the occasional company of
girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of
womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There are theatres,
with a bar, and with the society of lost women. The boy comes to one and
all of these places, seeking only what is natural and proper he should
have,--what should be given him u