Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/102

 pastime if it is not sometimes a dangerous one. It is the young boy, usually, who exceeds the speed limit. I can see little real profit or permanent good in most of the vaudeville or moving picture shows. The plays which appear regularly on the screen are frequently full of questionable suggestions if they are not actually vulgar, and at best they are unlikely often to aid in the development of either good taste or good morals; and yet there are many young boys in almost every town who would be unhappy and discontented if they did not attend at least one show a day, and I know many who during the summer time go twice a day. There are far better ways of spending leisure time, and ways which will bring more satisfactory returns both to the young boy and to the man that he will later become.

I was visiting not long ago in a part of the United States with whose trees and birds and flowers I had previously not been familiar. These things were to me both curious and interesting, and I asked a good many direct questions about them. Only one of the six or eight boys with whom I was walking about could give me any satisfactory information as to the names of the trees or the birds or the flowers with which I was not familiar though they were all intelligent in general matters, were graduates of good high schools, and had lived in the community all their lives.

Some of them ventured a guess, but in every case, as I remember, they guessed incorrectly. They were