one of us he'll turn around to that long row of heads, and he'll "Blessed animals in the fields of paradise, is this a man "And if the animals-they that were placed in his hands on earth to prove the heart that was in him-if the immortal animals say aught against that man, never will the good saint let Next morning John G. walked out of his stall as fresh and as fit as if he had come from pasture. And to this very day, in the stable of A Troop, John G., handsome, happy, and able. does his friends honor. Next week will be published the second of this series of three stories. Its title is "Hot Weather" TO A SCHOOLMATE_KILLED IN ACTION BY HAROLD TROWBRIDGE PULSIFER Gordan Rand, we saw you last On a baseball field at play :- "Gordan died in France to-day !" Gordan Rand, the boy we knew Vanished when that message came : We shall always think of you Ere our first few hundreds fell Gordan Rand, the men who die As the pledge of hosts to come And an ever-sounding drum. We who still must wait and pray B THE WISHING SQUAD BY ARTHUR D. CHANDLER ARNUM and Bailey's circus had just come to town. I Garden. As I came nearer, that peculiar circus smell reminded me of those early days when the coming of the circus was the great event of my life, when it caused thrills to radiate from my solar plexus all through my body. What a delightful tingling in my toes and finger-tips! How I clutched that quarter of a dollar in my pocket for fear it might somehow get away! It was earned, if I remember rightly, by selling a snared partridge (or was it a muskrat's skin?). Have you forgotten that time when you were a boy yourself, when every day was filled with wishing and every night with dreams? You were all alive then. Every fiber of your being, like the taut strings of a violin, was seeking expression. If you have forgotten those days, I beg of you don't read on, for you won't understand. I am writing this for the gray-haired men who love to play with children and with whom the children love to play; whose souls have never withered up, and never will; who can understand a boy because their hearts are still young, though their legs may be reluctant to jump a three-rail fence. My friends, then, who understand, you will recall that fringe of kids which is always around the entrance to a circus, hands fresh y day and a left with me a bag of gold; more than that-a fortune, if we Maybe I was born with lots of faith in "misfit" boys. We had one in our town when I was young. Perhaps that is why the term "original good" has always seemed to me to be a fair working hypothesis. In fact, I sometimes think it works out even better in practice than the other more orthodox term, "original sin." Yes, I have faith-lots of it-in "bad" boys; the same kind of faith I have in seed corn, potatoes, wheat, rye, and in the soil. The potential is in the seed and in the soil and in every boy, but the Eternal Wisdom seems to require some one with common sense and common humanity to raise crops or to make worthy men out of "misfit" boys. You will recall that in some parts of the Far West large areas of seemingly desert lands were formerly given up to sage-brush, cactus, and rattlesnakes. Then some men with a vision and with an understanding came along; they tapped the life-giving lakes among the mountains and they brought the water to the "wishing" soil. Homes were built and children played where formerly lurked the rattlesnakes. The sage-brush and the cactus gave way to the green grass, the fruit, and the flowers. The soil of the desert was not really "totally depraved " only judged so from its fruits. When neglect gave way to understanding and the proper means were used to bring out the dormant energy of the soil, abundant harvests were the result. All normal boys, whether we call them "good" good" boys or "bad" boys, are just bundles of energy seeking expressionour "wishing squad." If the wishes of these boys are wisely directed and satisfied by intelligent parents and teachers, we will get the expression of this energy through their spiritual and moral growth which we want for the making of men. But if neglected or misdirected this energy will find for itself ways of expression in anti-social acts which lead to the making of crooks-a harvest of enemies of society instead of noble men and good citizens. Every State has its "human dump heap" for delinquent boys who have committed some anti-social act, such as truancy, vagrancy, incorrigibility, larceny, or "breaking and entering (I have been a trustee of one of these human dump heaps for several years)—an institution to which boys are committed by the Juvenile Court to serve time for delinquency. When one glances up from the formidable-looking commitment paper into the frank, open face of the boy, one naturally asks: "What got you into trouble, son ?" The answer is almost invariably the same: "Playing hooky." "Why didn't you go to school?" "The teacher was down on me," or "I didn't like the teacher," or "I didn't like school." "What did you do when you weren't in school?" "Went wid de gang." "What did the gang do?" "Crooked copper, brass, an' things like that." "Where did you sell it?" To de junkman." "What did you do with the money?" "Went to the movies or bought eats and candy." Probably ninety per cent of "delinquent" boys will answer these questions in almost exactly the same language. Most of these boys have had very unfavorable home conditions, caused by poverty, drunkenness, or the death of a parent. The public schools are inadequately equipped to interest the wild boy who has not been properly domesticated. He does not fit into the nice round hole prepared for him in the school system. There is not time, and there is little inclination, to trim the hole to fit the boy, so the teacher "trims" the boy, and the truant officer, when he can catch him, is kept busy dragging the reluctant urchin back to school. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does a boy, whether it is in his stomach or in his pocket. When a bunch of boys "on the hook" get together, each one having an empty stomach and empty pockets, nature finds cause for immediate action, to the great pleasure and profit of the nearest junk dealer. 66 Why do you steal junk?" I have asked many boys. “Be cause it's easier to get money that way.' "Does the junkman know you stole it?" "Sure. How else could we get it?" The "Fagin" who teaches boys to pick pockets is no greater menace to society than the junkman who encourages boys to become thieves by receiving from them stolen goods. So serious has this menace become that the New Jersey Legislature has recently passed a law making it a State's prison offense to buy junk from a boy under sixteen years of age. Legal evidence sufficient to convict them seems difficult to get, and the junkmen continue to smile and make their illegitimate profit. With honest labor in great demand and juvenile delinquency on the increase, why should not the Government conscript the junkmen and put them at some honest job that does not help to make criminals out of the boys of the street? Mr. Edison has said: "Let me have the pay the truant officers get each year, and I'll make all the boys scoot to school." Adapt the fascination of the movies to the needs of the classroom, and a very potent cause for truancy will be made to pull in the right direction. The potential for the making of a noble man is in the soul of every normal boy. A wonderful harvest of men awaits those who have a vision of the larger motherhood and the larger fatherhood; who understand what it means to a boy to feel, perhaps for the first time in his life, that "somebody cares" and is willing to give him a square deal; who have grown by experience to realize that the largest compensation in life does not come to us in terms of cash, but in terms of satisfaction. It was said to me by a philosophical friend, "Men understand dogs and horses better than they do boys. Whether men utterly forget their own boyhood or simply misremember it, it is true that they misunderstand boys as completely as if boys belonged to another species of creature." For whatever reason, life is not arranged with much thought to the natural needs of boys or with much sign of insight into the boy heart. Education, restraint, rebuke, all are arranged with too little imagination for boy impulses that not only cannot be eradicated but that should not be eradicated. They do not sufficiently recognize the boy as a person. We read of boy hardships in biography with immense sympathy and resentment, and too often forget that the next wishing youngster we meet, par ticularly if he is breaking some rule in the making of which he has had no voice, is potentially living the first chapter of a biography. I want to see the world made safe for boys. I want to see boys taken into the game, and not shoved aside as common enemies whose rights, wishes, needs, and potentialities are to be considered only in biographical retrospect. If the boyhood of Lincoln was important, not only to Lincoln but to the world, so every boy's boyhood is important; for though he may never be a Lincoln, he is, and will be, a factor one way or another in the welfare of the group in which he grows up. To thwart, badger, or belittle him is to lose sight, not only of something that belongs to him, but of possibilities for good or evil which it is our business to consider for the sake of the humanity on which his qualities will react. The Hindus say, "My neighbor is myself in another body." It is every man's duty to say, "This boy is myself in a younger body-perhaps a body badly housed, badly fed, badly taught. badly governed, and, by the will of God, badly tempted. I shall do for him what I should like to have done for me in these con ditions. I shall not too quickly and smugly say, 'My lickings did me good," or "My hardships were the making of me,' but try to remember how many boys were ruined by lickings blindly administered in the wrong way at the wrong time, and how frequently needless and preventable tortures of hardships have scattered human wrecks along the pathway of life. I shall try to remember that it is not what I needed (if by a miracle 1 remember that), but what this individual boy wishes and needs, that is to determine my conduct toward him-my conduct personally and as a member of human society." When this has become the common vision, there will no longer be a "boy problem.' WEEKLY OUTLINE STUDY OF CURRENT HISTORY BY J. MADISON GATHANY, A.M. HOPE STREET HIGH SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I. Based on The Outlook of March 13, 1918 Each week an Outline Study of Current History bisel on the preceding number of The Outlook will be printed for the benefit of current events classes, debating clubs, teachers of history and of English, and the like, and for use in the home and by such individual readers as may desire suggestions in the serious study of current history.-THE EDITORS. [Those who are using the weekly outline should not attempt to cover the whole of an outline in any one lesson or study. Assign for one lesson selected questions, one or two propositions for discussion, and only such words as are found in the material assigned. Or distribute selected questions among different members of the class or group and have them report their findings to all when assembled. Then have all discuss the questions together.] I-INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS A. Topic: The American Army in France. Questions: 1. What record are the American forces in France making? 2. What does this item show the spirit of Germany toward American soldiers to be? How explain this attitude? 3. Do you think it would be wise for our Government to give out fuller accounts of our soldiers' activities? 4. What kind of experiences are ahead of our boys "over there"? Are we and they prepared for these? 5. Read: "Under Fire," by H. Barbusse; "A Crusader of France," by Captain Belmont; "To Arms," by M. Tinayre-all published by E. P. Dutton; "Trench Fighting," by Captain Elliott (Houghton Mifflin); and "Cavalry of the Clouds," by Captain Bott (Doubleday Page). B. Topic: Dare We Dicker for Peace? Questions: 1. What are the convictions and the determinations of the American people as set forth by Dr. Odell? How does he know? Does he speak your convictions? 2. Show wherein Dr. Odell has or has not proved his propositions. 3. Which of the quotations from President Wilson's speeches do you like best? Explain why. 4. State your opinion of Germany in eight or ten sentences. 5. Give as many reasons as you can why America should or should not dicker for peace. 6. The Outlook says (page 402) that "this is the time not to talk or even think peace" (italics mine). Has it shown convincingly why? Is this statement by The Outlook too strong? Discuss. 7. What is Germany's most dangerous weapon according to The Outlook? Is there sufficient evidence to justify this position? 8. Are you willing to stand for a "peace negotiated with the present masters of Germany"? Give your reasons. 9. If you are willing to stand for such a peace, read "German Atrocities," by N. D. Hillis (Revell). Read it, anyway, and get your friends to read it. Read also "The Diplomatic Background of the War," by Professor Seymour (Yale University Press). II-NATIONAL AFFAIRS A. Topic: What Is to Become of Our Reference: Editorial, pages 402-404. who is not thus concerned? Be sure you Light vs. Night; Mr. Bryan Reaps; Note-Make this topic the basis of a IUI-PROPOSITIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Germany is worse now than in August, IV-VOCABULARY BUILDING (All of the following words and expressions are found in The Outlook for March 13, 1918. Both before and after looking them up in the dictionary or elsewhere, give their meaning in your own words. The figures in parentheses refer to pages on which the words may be found.) Loathe, sophistries, inarticulate, pact (409); immunity, franchises of liberty, treason to humanity, quaver (410); oil, gasoline, petroleum, impunity, culpably, prodigal (402); patented lands (403). 1. The Outlook says that "everybody, directly or indirectly, is concerned with the supply and the price of gasoline." Can you not name some one, perhaps a friend of yours, A booklet suggesting methods of using the Weekly Outline of Current History will be sent on application The thoughtful soldier presents his wife with a An Iver Johnson revolver is safe-for the one who owns it. You Go to an Iver Johnson dealer today-feel the cool, courageous Three Iver Johnson Booklets Sent Free They will tell how to make dollars go 20 March THE NEW BOOKS This department will include descriptive notes, with or without brief comments, about books received by The Outlook. Many of the important books will have more extended and critical treatment later FICTION Key of the Fields (The), and Boldero. By Henry Milner Rideout. Duffield & Co., New York. $1.35. In an odd way, these two stories recall the manner and style of Mr. Locke's delightful "The Beloved Vagabond," who certainly had "the key of the fields." In short, both stories have the delight of adventure and wandering and the unexpected. As romances of action and surprise they are capital. Orkney Maid (An). By Amelia E. Barr. Illus trated. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $1.50. Mrs. Barr returns in this tale to a subject in which she is greatly at home-the islands in which lived the sturdy Scotch race from which she herself descends. In a way the story is a companion piece to Mrs. Barr's "Christine: A Fife Fishergirl." It is at least thirty-five years ago since stories and sketches by Mrs. Barr began to appear in this periodical. Sunshine Beggars: A Novel. By Sidney McCall. Illustrated. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $1.50, POETRY Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (The). The Italian Text with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary. By Courtney Langdon. Vol. I-Inferno. The Harvard University Press, Cambridge. $2.50. This latest translation of the immortal Comedy "differs from the well-known Longfellow and Norton translations in being in blank verse. It is an excellent translation, and the accompanying notes are very valuable. Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses. By Thomas Hardy. The Macmillan A welcome addition to the collected works of one of the greatest of English novelists, of whom it may also be said that his merit and power as a poet have been rather unfairly overshadowed by his work in fiction. ESSAYS AND CRITICISM Hearts of Controversy. By Alice Meynell. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.75. Miss Meynell's talk about books and reading, and more especially about the personal side of the temperament and methods of authors, is always readable and stimulating to thought. In this little volume she talks in this way about Dickens, Thackeray, Swinburne, the Brontës, and others. The volume is just the thing to take time to time for half an hour's pleasant reading. up from Per Amica Silentia Lunae. By William Butler Yeats. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50. In this tastefully printed volume Mr Yeats gives us, both in prose and verse, impressions of life-and also of death, as in "Anima Mundi." Always there are freshness of idea and strikingly original form of expression. WAR BOOKS To Arms (La Veillée des Armes). By Mar celle Tinayre. Translated by Lucy H. Humphrey. Preface by John H. Finley. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $1.50. This volume presents, in the form of fiction or semi-fiction, a moving and animated picture of France at the time immediately preceding the outbreak of the war. It is a fine record of patriotism and willingness to sacrifice everything to save France and the world's liberty. |