voice,
and his awkwardness, and laughed the more because it seemed to touch
him. He had gotten so that he never would do anything for us girls,
and we called him an old bear. Since I heard you I concluded that we
had done wrong and I would make a change, so that evening I said
kindly, 'Charlie, don't you want me to tie your cravat? I'd like to,
ever so much.' I shall never forget the surprised look he gave me. It
seemed as if he could not believe that I, his sister, wanted to do
something to please him, but as soon as he saw I really meant it he
accepted my offer with thanks, and since then it seems as if he could
not do enough for me. Really I have almost cried to think that so
little a thing would make him so grateful. I have invited him to go
out with me several times, and he seems so glad to go. Then I've begun
to make things for his room--little fancy things that I never thought
a boy would care for--and he has appreciated them so much. Why, he
even stays in his room sometimes, now, instead of going off with the
boys. And the other day, when one of the boys came to see him, I heard
him say, 'Come up and see my room,' and the other boy said, 'Well, I
wish some one would fix up _my_ room in such a jolly fashion.'
Really," said the girl, "if you have done nothing on your trip but
what you have done for me, in showing me how to be good to my brother,
it has paid for you to come."

I often think of this little incident when I see boys at this critical
age who are snubbed and teased just because they are leaving the land
of boyhood to begin the difficult climb up the slopes of early manhood
towards the grander height of maturity; and I wish all parents,
sisters and older brothers would manifest a sympathy with the boy who,
swayed by inner forces and influenced by outward temptation, is in a
place of great danger.

The girl at this period is also passing through a crisis, but this
fact is better understood by her friends than is the crisis of the
boy's life. Her parents are anxious that she shall pass the crisis
safely, and they have more patience with her eccentricities. She, too,
often shows nervousness, irritability, petulance, or willfulness. She
has headaches and backaches, she manifests lassitude and weariness,
and is, perhaps, quite changed from her former self. She weeps easily
or over nothing at all. She is dissatisfied with herself and the whole
world. She feels certain vague, romantic longings that she could