CHAPTER XVII

THE POINT OF VIEW

Just why a boy is averse to washing his neck and ears is one of the
deep problems of social psychology, and yet the psychologists have
veered away from the subject. There must be a reason, and these mind
experts ought to be able and willing to find it, so as to relieve the
anxiety of the rest of us. It is easy for me to say, with a full-arm
gesture, that a boy is of the earth earthy, but that only begs the
question, as full-arm gestures are wont to do. Many a boy has shed
copious tears as he sat on a bench outside the kitchen door removing,
under compulsion, the day's accumulations from his feet as a
prerequisite for retiring. He would much prefer to sleep on the
floor to escape the foot-washing ordeal. Why, pray, should he wash
his feet when he knows full well that tomorrow night will find them
in the same condition? Why all the bother and trouble about a little
thing like that? Why can't folks let a fellow alone, anyhow? And,
besides, he went in swimming this afternoon, and that surely ought to
meet all the exactions of capricious parents. He exhibits his feet
as an evidence of the virtue of going swimming, for he is arranging
the preliminaries for another swimming expedition to-morrow.

I recall very distinctly how strange it seemed that my father could
sit there and calmly talk about being a Democrat, or a Republican, or
a Baptist, or a Methodist, or about some one's discovering the north
pole, or about the President's message when the dog had a rat
cornered under the corn-crib and was barking like mad. But, then,
parents can't see things in their right relations and proportions.
And there sat mother, too, darning stockings, and the dog just stark
crazy about that rat. 'Tis enough to make a boy lose faith in
parents forevermore. A dog, a rat, and a boy--there's a combination
that recks not of the fall of empires or the tottering of thrones.
Even chicken-noodles must take second place in such a scheme of world
activities. And yet a mother would hold a boy back from the
forefront of such an enterprise to wash his neck. Oh, these mothers!

I have read "Adam's Diary," by Mark Twain, in which he tells what
events were forward in Eden on Monday, what on Tuesday, and so on
throughout the week till he came to Sunday, and his only comment on
that day was "Pulled through." In the New England Primer we gather
the solemn information that "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." I