If I were a boy, I would not think that I and the boys of my time were an exception to the general rule—a new kind of boys, unlike all who have lived before, having different feelings and different ways. To be honest, I must own that I used to think so myself. I was quite inclined to reject the counsel of my elders by saying to myself, "That may have been well enough for boys thirty or fifty years ago, but it isn't the thing for me and my set of boys." But that was nonsense. The boys of one generation are not different from the boys of another generation.
If we say that boyhood lasts fifteen or sixteen years, I have known three generations of boys, some of them city boys and some of them country boys, and they are all very much alike—so nearly alike that the old rules of industry and patience and perseverance and self-control are as applicable to one generation as to another. The fact is, that what your fathers and teachers have found by experience to be good for boys, will be good for you; and what their experience has taught them will be bad for boys, will be bad for you. You are just boys, nothing more nor less.
DEFINITIONS:— Assurance, certainty. Route, road. Generation, people living at the same time. Applicable, can be applied.
EXERCISE—Find on the map, Albany, the Hudson River, and the
Connecticut River.
THE TEMPEST.
BY JAMES T. FIELDS.
We were crowded in the cabin;
Not a soul would dare to sleep
It was midnight on the waters,
And a storm was on the deep.
'Tis a fearful thing in winter
To be shattered by the blast,
And to hear the rattling trumpet
Thunder, "Cut away the mast!"
So we shuddered there in silence,
For the stoutest held his breath,
While the hungry sea was roaring,
And the breakers threatened death.
And as thus we sat in darkness,
Each one busy in his prayers,
"We are lost!" the captain shouted,
As he staggered down the stairs.