But shoes are made for romping in, for climbing and for fun,
For kicking bricks and empty cans, and I am not the one
To make him walk sedately in the way that grown-ups do—
There's time enough for that, I say, when all his boyhood's through.
So let him wreck them, heels and toes, and scuff their soles away,
I'll not begrudge the bill for shoes that I'm compelled to pay,
For I rejoice that it's my lot, when mother breaks the news,
To have a healthy, roguish boy who's always needing shoes.
Football
I'd rather fancied it would come, a healthy boy who's ten years old
Forecasts the things he'll want to do without his secrets being told;
And so last night when I got home and found his mother strangely still,
I guessed somehow that mother love had battled with a youngster's will.
"You'll have to settle it," said she; "there's nothing more that I can say,
The game of football's calling him and he insists he wants to play."
We've talked it over many a time; we've hoped he wouldn't choose the game,
And I suppose there's not a boy whose parents do not feel the same.
They dread, as we, the rugged sport; they wonder, too, just what they'll say
When son of theirs comes home, as ours, and begs to be allowed to play.
And now the question's up to me, a question that I can't evade,
But football is a manly game and I am glad he's not afraid.
He wants to play, he says to me; he knows the game is rough and grim,
But worse than hurt and broken bones is what his friends will think of him;
"They'd call me yellow," he explained, "if I stay out." Of all things here
There's nothing quite so hard to bear as is the heartless gibe or jeer,
And though I cannot spare him pain or hurt when tackles knock him flat,
Being his father, I've said "yes," because I choose to spare him that.
She Never Gave Me a Chance
It happened that I came along as school was letting out
And laughing boys and smiling girls raced everywhere about;
But two there were who walked along the road in front of me
And one young head was bowed to earth, a troubled lad was he;
And as I stepped around the pair to hasten on my way:
"She never gave a chance to me!" I heard the youngster say.