If you are an Episcopalian, you will of course find the time of your boy's confirmation simply invaluable as one of those turning-points which will enable you to speak, or possibly write, more unreservedly than is possible on more ordinary occasions. I would earnestly ask you to give him a little White Cross confirmation paper called Purity the Guard of Manhood, a paper which an Eton master pronounced the best thing he had met with of the kind, and which has been widely used. Do not rest content with merely giving the paper in a perfunctory way, but follow it up with a few living, earnest words of your own.
Of course I should do a wrong to your womanly instincts if I were to think it necessary to say that the inculcation of purity must be always in a mother's heart, but only on her lips on some marked occasions, such as the first going to school, the last day of the holidays, or when your boy himself gives the occasion by some question he may ask you, but above all when he reaches a critical age, when a few words from your own lips will be worth all the printed pages in the world. Only ever and always make it an essential element of his idea of manliness to be pure, and do not forget constantly to couple the words "brave and pure," or "manly and pure," or "pure and high character," in his hearing; that he may be endued, not with that pale, emasculate thing that passes muster for purity nowadays, which always seems to me chiefly conscious of its own indecency, full of the old nervous "touch not, taste not, handle not" spirit, bandaged up with this restriction and that lest it fall to pieces, and when it comes to saving another from defilement in body and soul shuffling uneasily into a pair of lavender kid-gloves and muttering something about its being "such a very delicate subject"—nay, not this, but that militant sun-clad power which Milton dreamed of, rushing down like a sword of God to smite everything low, and base and impure; a purity as of mountain water or living fire, whose very nature it is, not only to be pure itself, but to destroy impurity in others.
V
And now let me throw together two or three practical suggestions, which will probably be superfluous to the most experienced mothers, but may be useful to younger and more inexperienced parents.
In the first place, I think there are few of the heads of the medical profession who would not agree with me that our English dietary is too stimulating and too abundant. Sir Andrew Clark certainly held that a large proportion of our diseases spring from over-eating and over-drinking. I don't suppose that for a boy it so much matters, as he is eating for "edification" as well as for sustenance, for the building up of his walls as well as for the nutrition of his existing frame. But "the boy is father to the man," and I would ask you not to accustom your boys to a rich dietary, as the habit once formed will be prolonged into early manhood, and undoubtedly such stimulating diet does greatly increase the temptations with which young men have to contend. It is perfectly unnecessary for the developing of strength and stature, as is shown by the splendid Scotchmen who yearly carry off some of our highest university distinctions and prizes—many of them farmer lads who have scarcely tasted meat in their boyhood, but have been brought up on the simple farinaceous food of the country. There was much force and meaning in the quaint congratulatory telegram sent by a friend to a Cambridge Senior Wrangler hailing from Scotland, "Three cheers for the parritge!" And that curious and most impressive fact which Mr. Bayard, the late American Ambassador, hunted up for our edification from various dictionaries of biography—the fact, namely, that a large proportion of our most eminent men spring from the homes of the poorer clergy, where certainly sumptuous fare and much meat do not obtain, is a proof that abstemious living, while forming a valuable discipline for the soul, does not injure but promotes the health of the body and the strength of the brain. Our having given up the religious uses of fasting I often think is a loss to young men; and it might, therefore, be as well if we were to imitate our "Corybantic" brethren, the Salvationists, and institute a week of self-denial, leaving the children to work out an economical dietary, with due care on our part that it should be fairly nutritious, and allowing them to give what they have saved from the ordinary household expenses to any cause in which they may be interested. It would give them a wholesome lesson in self-denial and cheap living; both lessons much needed in these luxurious days. But whether this suggestion finds favor or not, we have always to bear in mind that "plain living" is the necessary companion of "high thinking"—the lowly earth-born twin who waits upon her heavenly sister.
On the vexed question of the use of alcohol there was but one point on which there was a consensus of opinion in the discussion by our leading medical men, which appeared some years ago in the pages of the Contemporary Review. The point upon which they were all agreed was that alcohol is injurious to children, and if the boy has been accustomed from his early youth to do without it, and, as he grows up, remains a total abstainer, there is no question that his abstinence will prove a great safeguard; though I cannot go as far as some of my abstaining friends, who seem to regard the use of alcohol as the root of what must, in the nature of things, be one of the strongest primal passions of human nature, and therefore liable to abuse, whether men are total abstainers or not. Anyhow, though a lad can be trained to strict moderation, abstinence in both alcohol and tobacco must after a time come of the lad's own free will; the last thing that answers is to multiply and enforce restrictions; the rebound is inevitable and often fatal. But I do say that where there is a great pinching in the home in order to afford the educational advantages of school and university, it does show some radical defect in the training of our boys that they should indulge in such expensive habits, especially the expensive and wholly unnecessary habit of smoking, when the dear mother and young sisters are doing without many a little home comfort in order to meet the expense of the young rascal's education. One rich old grandmother whom I met abroad promised each of her grandsons fifty pounds if they would give up smoking; and it was marvellous how that stern necessity of doing as other young men do disappeared like their own tobacco smoke before the promise of that fifty pounds for their own pockets! They were all able to claim it one after the other. If boys were not trained by their mothers to be systematically selfish, might not the home-claims in the heart be as strong as those fifty pounds in the pocket?
Secondly, with regard to betting and gambling, which may be classed with drinking, as the fruitful parent of bad company, and a descensus ad infernum:—do you not think a boy may be best guarded against a habit of betting, which is so likely to lead on to gambling, by taking the same line as a boy of my acquaintance took with his mother when she was warning him against it: "Well, mother, you see, it always does seem so mean to me to get a fellow's money from him without giving him anything in return; it always does seem so like prigging, and some of our fellows are awfully hard up, and can't afford to lose a penny." Mr. Gladstone was evidently of the same opinion when he once said to his private secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, that he "regarded gambling as nothing short of damnable. What can be the fun of winning other people's money?" This strikes me as a way of putting it which would appeal most forcibly to a boy; and if, in addition, we were to point out to him that, like all shady things, it has a tendency to grow and sharpen the man into a sharper and develop the blood-sucking apparatus of a leech, besides bringing wretchedness and misery on others, he might be led to resist the first beginnings of a betting habit which may lead on to gambling in after years.
And here I would say that the absolute absence of any training given to a boy in the right use and value of money, which has obtained till lately in our English schools, is surely suicidal and must lend itself to every form of abuse. I do not know whether it is the same with you, but many of our boys know money only in the form of pocket-money, when it becomes to him a metal token mostly signifying so much "tuck"; becoming, as he grows older, more and more deleterious "tuck" in the shape of billiards, betting, etc., and ending in a general going "on tick," which is worse still. But in this matter we are improving. I think most sensible parents nowadays place a small sum at their bank to the boy's account, with a check-book, making him responsible at first for small articles of clothing, neckties, shirt-collars, etc, and as soon as he shows himself trustworthy, for all his expenses except school bills. The boy is expected to keep accounts, get nothing without first asking the price, and to bring his receipted bills at the end of the term to his father, and see that they tally with his foils; and, above all, always to pay in ready money—unpaid bills being contemplated in the bald light of shop-lifting. To this I would add, if possible, the habit of giving the Jewish tenth, so as to make giving a steady principle, and not a hap-hazard impulse.
Thirdly, it is a vital point to give your boys interesting pursuits. There is great force in the rough old saying, "Never give the devil an empty chair to sit down upon, and you won't be much troubled with his company." Vice is constantly only idleness which has turned bad,—idleness being emphatically a thing that will not keep, but turns rotten. It is not the great industrial centres of our population that are chiefly ravaged by vice; it is the fashionable watering-places, the fashionable quarters of large towns, where idle men congregate, in which it is a "pestilence that walketh in darkness," and slays its thousands of young girls. "Empty by filling," has always been a favorite motto of mine. How many a young man has been driven to betting, drinking, and the race-course from the want of something of interest to fill his unoccupied hours, because more wholesome tastes have never been developed in him! Of course, tastes must be to a certain degree inborn, but I am quite sure that many a taste perishes, like a frost-bitten bud, full of the promise of blossom and fruit, because it has never been given the opportunity to develop.
Take a boy's innate love of collecting. Could you not develop it by the offer of a little prize for the best collection of dried flowers, of butterflies or insects, of birds' eggs, even, in some cases, of geological specimens, but, in any case, with the scientific and common names attached; so forming a healthy taste for natural history, which may be a source of perpetual interest and profit in after-life? Do not let your dislike of destroying life interfere; reverence for life can be as well, nay, better taught by insisting that only the necessary specimens should be given of each species, only one or two eggs taken from the nest, and the nest itself disturbed as little as possible. Chemistry and electricity also appeal to a boy's love of experimentizing and of making electrical contrivances, easily constructed of the commonest materials. As to hand-work, the lack of which in ill-health has made so many a man a torment both to himself and others, there ought to be no difficulty with regard to that. Carpentering, wood-carving, repoussé-work in metal, bent-iron work, mosaic work, any of these, except possibly the last, may be set on foot with very little expense, besides drawing, modelling, etc. Where there are sufficient means it would be a good thing if boys were taught, as far as may be, how things are made and the amount of toil that goes into the simplest article. I remember giving a small printing-press to a boy of ours—an excellent gift, by the by, for a lad, and it can be had for five or six shillings—and his coming to me soon after with a match-box in his hand, exclaiming with wonderment, "Why, auntie, there are six different kinds of type on this match-box!" If they could learn how to build, how rafters and joists are put in, and construct as much as a miniature summer-house in the garden, how useful this being able to turn their hands to anything might prove to them in their after-life. And with what added respect they would look upon all labor if they had never looked upon it as the part of a "gentleman" to stand aloof from it.