A HINT TO BOYS.
If I were a boy again, and knew what I know now, I would not be quite so positive in my own opinions as I used to be. Boys generally think that they are very certain about many things. A boy of fifteen is a great deal more sure of what he thinks he knows than is a man of fifty. You ask the boy a question, and he will answer you right off, up and down. 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 about eight years old, I travelled from Central Massachusetts to Western New York, crossing the river at Albany, and going by canal to Syracuse. 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 into my head that it was the Connecticut River I do not know, for I knew my geography very well then; but in some unmistakable way I fixed it 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. 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, a short time after I reached home, I happened to be 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 were not really so. It is hard for a boy to learn that he may be mistaken; but, unless he is a dunce, he learns it after a while. The sooner he finds it out the better for him.
W. G.