habit, but not of the abstention-habit, or the moderation-habit, or the courage-habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices.” Habit is character. Ex-President Eliot recently said: "I have seen for thirty years a steady stream of youth coming to the University, eighteen or nineteen years of age. In almost every instance the character of the youth is determined before he goes to college. He has determined the way he faces before he is eighteen years old.” "A character," says J. S. Mill, “is a completely fashioned will." The Bible recognizes the importance of the habit of right thinking. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." "Think on these things." "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Thought determines character. "Sow a thought and reap a deed, Gladstone said: "What is really wanted is to light up the spirit that is within a boy. In some sense and in some effectual degree there is in every boy the material of good work in the world; in every boy, not only in those who are 9 James, "Talks to Teachers," p. 64. brilliant, not only in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those who are dull." As the boy reaches the seventeenth and eighteenth years, his receptive powers quicken, and there comes that period when the ego is at its height, the time of self-assertion, self-sufficiency, self-feeling, and braggadocio. Up until this period he accepted things because he was told, but now he begins to think for himself. It is the period when doubts and questionings arise. But remember that doubt is not the same as unbelief; doubt is can't believe, unbelief is won't believe. Doubt often implies intellectual strength. He wants to go it alone. Here is where parental authority and self-control, or rather freedom from the control of parents, clash. If we understand the individual dispositions of boys, we may have a more correct idea of their motives. Disposition involves temperament, and both are factors in the will. While many of the motives of early boyhood are still present, yet those which dominate now are those of vigorous impulse and self-sufficiency, love of activity, love of power, love of fame, self-importance, and the like. A wise parent or leader will seek the good in each emotion and utilize it as a motive force. Discipline is necessary in the formation of character, but it is only an aid, and requires other forces to assist it. When penalties are inflicted, their guiding principle should be their influence on character. Physical compulsion is not moral discipline. Love and confidence are the great restraining factors. "Love means patience when the boy slips backward, appreciation when he steps forward . . . and forgiveness for his stubbornness, indifference, and ingratitude. Love substitutes commendation for condemnation, prevention for punishment, and cooperation for coercion."10 It means the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians in action. Consciously or unconsciously we have been placing too much stress upon material things rather than upon ideals, until the boy has a confusion of ideas regarding life, instead of inspiring ideals. There is such a thing as a boy growing into his ideal. Music, books, pictures, help to create his ideals. Observation, imagination, discrimination, and judgment are all involved in the cultivation of ideals. The receptive are far ahead of the creative and expressive powers in boys of the teen age. As time goes on, the desire for expression will grow and should be encouraged, but with wisdom and tact. It is at this point that memory comes to his aid. Memory is not a special faculty, but a general 10 Raffety, "Brothering the Boy," p. 6. condition of the mind. Without memory and attention mental operations would be impossible. "When the mind acts in such a way that it records, retains, and restores the ideas gained by its own activity, it is said to perform an act of memory." Memorizing passages in literature, formulæ in mathematics, definitions of important terms in science is not only the acquisition of knowledge, but as Ruskin says, is adding to the storehouse which the boy is filling for future use. What a wonderful language is music! It has been called the "universal language of mankind.” "There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music that does not make a man work or play better." To hundreds of boys, however, music is an unknown language. The boy's sensitive ears, capable of recognizing from forty to thirty-eight thousand sound vibrations per second, will just as easily make a brain record of the best as it will of the trash, and should be trained early in life to distinguish the difference between the kind of music which exists but for a day and that which abides in the soul forever. The short life of a popular song or tune is in itself an evidence of its worthlessness. Compare with this the virility of the great oratorios, symphonies, and hymns of the church. Take for instance "The Messiah," written by Handel in 1742, increasing in beauty each time it is sung, and enjoyed by thousands at the Christmas festival season, or those old melodious airs like "Home, Sweet Home," "Swanee River," and scores of others that are not only melodious but full of meaning, the words finding a response in heart and soul, as the strains of melody and the words come through the wide open doorway of the ear. Joseph Cook says: "Attention is the mother of memory, and interest the mother of attention. To secure memory, secure both her mother and her grandmother." How many audiences to-day can sing through two verses of "My Country! 'Tis of Thee" without getting the lines mixed, or sing more than one verse of the "Star Spangled Banner," without hesitation or uncertainty? It is because we do not think out the thing to be remembered. Better thinking means always a better memory. Getting a thing by heart as well as by head will make a boy remember forever, for he always remembers the thing his heart is in. Hubbell says: "Too little emphasis is placed on memory as a treasure house. The wear and tear of daily life tends to rob one of so much of the joy and beauty and freshness of youth, that if in age he may lay under tribute the treasures stored in a well-spent youth, he is not only rich for all his life, but finds these |