Here's a great note about two very interesting things—golf and monkeys. According to an English paper, lately received, while pets are mostly kept for the purpose of merely being petted, now and then they are taught to make themselves useful. The latest instance of the useful pet, the journal states, is in the case of certain apes which have been trained to act as caddies in the now fashionable game of golf. The caddie is indispensable to a golf player, and a Miss Dent, whose brother, Lieutenant Dent, of the United States Navy, has recently returned to America from the China station, has two Formosa apes which he brought here, and which they have trained to the business of caddies. They wear liveries of white duck, and each has a Turkish fez.
[THE BOY SOLDIER IN CAMP.]
BY RICHARD BARRY.
In every boy's heart—I am sure in every American boy's heart—there lies a love for martial things. The sound of a fife and drum, the sight of a soldier's uniform, stir him and set his blood a-tingling. Does there exist anywhere a boy or a man who has not "played soldier" at some time in his life? No; I judge not in this country.
Everyone who witnessed the Columbian parades in New York remembers the march of the city school-boys. With shoulders and heads erect they kept their well-formed lines; their young officers knew what they were about, and gave their orders sharp and clear.
These boys had been drilled every week on the playground, the street, or in one of the regimental armories, and they had caught the spirit of the thing.
Some people have been foolish enough to decry military training in our public schools. Have they ever thought that these boys will soon be large enough to carry real muskets if it should be necessary? The big majority of our soldiers in the last great war were under the age of twenty-four. But there are other things to be considered.
The writer has for some years past been interested in one of the largest boys' clubs in the city of New York. It has grown from a rather unruly mob of youngsters, gathered from the streets and tenements of the great East Side, to an orderly, well-governed body of over three hundred boys, who can be trusted to preserve their own decorum in the club-rooms, and who do not need a policeman to make them toe the proper mark. A military formation has accomplished this. A large drum-and-fife corps keeps up the interest, and the officers and most of the governors of the club are chosen from among the boys themselves. A military training promotes a respect for proper authority, which is the foundation of all thoroughly good citizenship.