Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/82

 "How many children have you?"

"He is our only child," was the reply, "and we have done everything for him."

"You have answered your own question," I said. "He's your only child, and you've done everything for him." There had been nothing the matter with the boy; it was with the father.

It is true, as I have said, however, that some children escape the handicap of being the youngest or the only child or the child of one parent, and for the sake of harmony at the outset, we will agree that yours is one of these, that he has-not been made conceited by praise nor made selfish by indulgence. It is of the others, you will understand, that I am writing.

A college officer who comes into personal contact with scores of undergraduate young men every day will, as the years go on, have many things suggested to him relative to their home and their home influences, to their parents and to their ideals. Behind these boys he will come to see weak, incapable parents or hard-working, struggling fathers, and thoughtful, wise mothers, and influences that are stronger than words. He will come in time unconsciously to group these boys according to the characteristics they show, to separate, for example, the country boy from the city boy, for even the crude city boy has a vulgar crudeness all his own that is easily distinguishable from the rustic crudeness of the young fellow from the country. He will recognize the boy who has done right and kept clean from principle, and he will pick out the fellow without personal principles who has