第25章

IF I WERE A BOY.

If I were a boy again, and knew what I know now, I would not be quite so positive in my opinions as I used to be.Boys generally think that they are very certain about many things.A boy of fifteen is generally a great deal more sure of what he thinks he knows than a man of fifty.

You ask the boy a question and he will probably answer you right off, with great assurance; he knows all about it.Ask a man of large experience and ripe wisdom the same question, and he will say, "Well, there is much to be said about it.I am inclined on the whole to think so and so, but other intelligent men think otherwise."When I was a small boy, I traveled from central Massachusetts to western New York, crossing the river at Albany, and going the rest of the way by canal.On the canal boat a kindly gentleman was talking to me one day, and I mentioned the fact that I had crossed the Connecticut River at Albany.How I got it in my head that it was the Connecticut River, I do not know, for I knew my geography very well then; but in some unaccountable way I had it fixed in my mind that the river at Albany was the Connecticut, and I called it so.

"Why," said the gentleman, "that is the Hudson River.""Oh, no, sir!" I replied, politely but firmly."You're mistaken.That is the Connecticut River."The gentleman smiled and said no more.I was not much in the habit, I think, of contradicting my elders; but in this matter I was perfectly sure that I was right, and so I thought it my duty to correct the gentleman's geography.I felt rather sorry for him that he should be so ignorant.One day, after I reached home, I was looking over my route on the map, and lo! there was Albany standing on the Hudson River, a hundred miles from the Connecticut.

Then I did not feel half so sorry for the gentleman's ignorance as I did for my own.I never told anybody that story until I wrote it down on these pages the other day; but I have thought of it a thousand times, and always with a blush for my boldness.

Nor was it the only time that I was perfectly sure of things that reallywere not so.It is hard for a boy to learn that he may be mistaken; but, unless he is a fool, he learns it after a while.The sooner he finds it out, the better for him.

If I were a boy, I would not think that I and the boys of my time were an exception to the general rule--a new kind of boys, unlike all who have lived before, having different feelings and different ways.To be honest, I must own that I used to think so myself.I was quite inclined to reject the counsel of my elders by saying to myself, "That may have been well enough for boys thirty or fifty years ago, but it isn't the thing for me and my set of boys." But that was nonsense.The boys of one generation are not different from the boys of another generation.

If we say that boyhood lasts fifteen or sixteen years, I have known three generations of boys, some of them city boys and some of them country boys, and they are all very much alike--so nearly alike that the old rules of industry and patience and perseverance and self-control are as applicable to one generation as to another.The fact is, that what your fathers and teachers have found by experience to be good for boys, will be good for you; and what their experience has taught them will be bad for boys, will be bad for you.You are just boys, nothing more nor less.

DEFINITIONS:-- Assurance, certainty.Route, road.Generation, people living at the same time.Applicable, can be applied.

EXERCISE--Find on the map, Albany, the Hudson River, and the Connecticut River.