[I]
FROM BABY TO BOY
Your son, madam, while passing a vacant house, paused, poised his arm and deliberately sent a small stone crashing through one of the windows. Then, turning on his heel, he ran nimbly up the street and disappeared around the corner.
You know it occurred, because some one living next to the house saw him do it and told the owner, and the owner came to you for reparation and you charged the boy with it and he admitted it to be true.
You are heartbroken because you find yourself confronted with what appears to be irrefutable evidence that your son is a bad boy.
You ask him why he did it. He doesn’t know. You suggest that it might have been an accident. Being a truthful boy, he replies tearfully that it was not. You enquire if he had any grievance against the man who owns the house. He answers that he hadn’t even heard of the owner and didn’t know who he was. Then—you ask again—why did he do it? You get the same answer:
“I don’t know.”
It certainly looks dubious for your boy, madam, doesn’t it? If at the tender age of ten years a lad will deliberately “chuck” a stone through a neighbouring window, with no reason or provocation for it whatsoever, what may he not be capable of at twenty? The thought is appalling, isn’t it?