make any
difference whether they put the sign up or not!" No one can watch
carefully any average household where there are boys, and not see that
there are a thousand little ways in which the boys' comfort, freedom,
preference will be disregarded, when the girls' will be considered. This
is partly intentional, partly unconscious. Something is to be said
undoubtedly on the advantage of making the boy realize early and keenly
that manhood is to bear and to work, and womanhood is to be helped and
sheltered. But this should be inculcated, not inflicted; asked, not
seized; shown and explained, not commanded. Nothing can be surer than the
growth in a boy of tender, chivalrous regard for his sisters and for all
women, if the seeds of it be rightly sown and gently nurtured. But the
common method is quite other than this. It begins too harshly and at once
with assertion or assumption.

"Mother never thinks I am of any consequence," said a dear boy to me, the
other day. "She's all for the girls."

This was not true; but there was truth in it. And I am very sure that the
selfishness, the lack of real courtesy, which we see so plainly and
pitiably in the behavior of the average young man to-day is the slow,
certain result of years of just such feelings as this child expressed. The
boy has to scramble for his rights. Naturally he is too busy to think much
about the rights of others. The man keeps up the habit, and is negatively
selfish without knowing it.

Take, for instance, the one point of the minor courtesies (if we can dare
to call any courtesies minor) of daily intercourse. How many people are
there who habitually speak to a boy of ten, twelve, or fourteen with the
same civility as to his sister, a little younger or older?

"I like Miss----," said this same dear boy to me, one day; "for she
always bids me good-morning."

Ah! never is one such word thrown away on a loving, open-hearted boy. Men
know that safe through all the wear and tear of life they keep far greener
the memory of some woman or some man who was kind to them in their boyhood
than of the friend who helped or cheered them yesterday.

Dear, blessed, noisy, rollicking, tormenting, comforting Boy! What should
we do without him? How much we like, without suspecting it, his breezy
presence in the house! Except for him, how would errands be done, chairs
brought, nails driven, cows stoned out of our way, letters carried, twine
and knives kept ready, lost things fo