Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/107

 which they were unfamiliar; they have not used their leisure time to advantage; and yet these are the things which any intelligent boy could learn, and the knowledge of which would be a great asset to him both in pleasure and in usefulness.

There is the opportunity, also, which every boy has during his leisure time for the cultivation of friendships, for the understanding of other boys, for the development of relationships which will continue throughout his whole life. I do not undervalue the good effects which come from a boy's association with girls; in another place I shall speak of these somewhat more at length. I believe, however, that the value of a boy's healthy association with other boys is much greater to him during his high school days than any other association he may have. Time spent in acquiring friends and in learning to know and to understand them is usually well spent. As I go back now over a period of forty years I find no greater satisfaction than in the recollection that I came to know a few boys well, that our friendships deepened as time went on, and if I could choose today whom of all of my friends from whom I am now separated by time and distance I should most like to see, and with whom I should soonest drop into the old time relationship, it would be a boy whom I knew first in district school, with whom I later prepared for college, and who was for two years in college my closest friend. I see him now only at rare intervals, for we are separated by a thousand miles or more, but I am sure that