Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/86

 high as their necks. The father of neither one of them is rich, but they are developing habits of laziness and extravagance, are often unhappy or bored because they can find no new pleasure or excitement, and though they are bright and clever, they are totally lacking in independence and initiative. They are the true types of the middle class youngest son and they will not be in college long until they will reveal the fact by indifference and discontent and dissipation, possibly, and a shirking of unpleasant and difficult duties.

Such a child at home soon comes to know how much the family exchequer will stand and what privileges he can count upon, and a few years of indulgence will teach him to get all he can. I was talking to a father this spring. His only son, a freshman in college, had grown tired of his course; it necessitated work, and he did not enjoy work. To relieve himself of this hardship he had run away, but finding life as a nomad more difficult than he had supposed it would be he had telegraphed his mother for money and had come back for a time, but now he was leaving college. He was not getting what he wanted, he said. I was urging his father to make him stay and finish what he had begun; he needed the discipline, and if he left now it was unlikely that he would ever come back.

"Charles will come back to college, I am sure," the father said, "any boy who has as good a place waiting for him after he graduates as he has will not be so foolish as to waste his chances by not getting an education."

"Doesn't he know that you'll give him the money