until it settles for life, or good behavior, in his apartment,
and felt a dull pang at heart that he would not confess. Many another
fellow, as shrewd and more reckless, has flung out passionately at
what he construed into an insult, and made it the ostensible excuse
for resorting to places where the motto that "anything will do for the
boys," is unknown in practice.

An English woman once commented to me upon the difference between our
manner of lodging and treating our sons and that which obtains in her
native land. "We behave to our boys as if they were princes of the
blood," she said, in her soft, sweet voice. "American girls are young
princesses at home and in society, and grace the position rarely well.
But--excuse me for speaking frankly--their brothers are sometimes
lodged like grooms."

She was so far from wrong that I could not be displeased at the blunt
criticism. The just mean between the stations thus specified is
equality, and the firm maintenance of the same by the parents. Manners
and environment are apt to harmonize. To teach a boy not to be
slovenly and destructive in his own domain, give him a domain in
which he can feel the pride of proprietorship. He would like to invite
his comrades into his "den," as his sisters entertain intimate friends
in their boudoir. He may not put into words the reasons why, instead
of saying openly--"Come in and up!" to his evening visitor, he
whispers at the outer door, "Let us go out!" which too often means,
also, "down." Perhaps he is so imbued with the popular ideas
respecting the furnishment of his lodging-place as hardly to interpret
to himself his unwillingness to let outsiders see how well his "den"
deserves the name.

Nevertheless, fond mother, give him the trial of something better.
Send the "incurables" to the auction room, and fit him out anew with
what should be the visible expression of your love and your desire for
his welfare. Why expect him to take these on trust any more than you
expect the daughters to do this? Yet their apartments are poems of
good-will and maternal devotion.

In all sincerity, let me notify you that the son will not keep his
premises in such seemly array as the girls keep theirs. It is not in
the genuine boy. I question if a three-year-and-a-half-old
granddaughter would have chosen as a safe place of deposit for the
white beans and red-freckled apples the handsomest chair I have. You
will find your laddie's soiled collars in his