Translation:The Golden Age (Martí)/1

This magazine is for boys, and for girls, of course. Without girls we could not live, just like the earth cannot live without light. Boys must work, walk, study, be strong, and be handsome. Boys can be handsome even if they are ugly – a good, intelligent, and neat boy is always handsome. But a boy is never as handsome as when he brings a flower to a girl in his strong, manly little hands, or when he takes his sister's arm, so that no one offends her. Then boys grow, and appear to be giants: boys are born to be gentlemen, and girls to be mothers. This magazine is published once a month to converse, like good friends, with the gentlemen and mothers of tomorrow, to tell girls nice stories with which they can entertain their guests and play with their dolls, and to tell boys what they must know to be true men. All that they want to know we are going to tell them, and in a way that they will understand it, with clear words and fine pages. We are going to tell them how the world is made: we are going to tell them all that has been done by men until now.

That is why The Golden Age is published: so that American boys know how life was lived before, and is lived today, in America and in other lands, and so they know how things are made, like crystal and iron things, steam engines, hanging bridges, and electric light. And in order that when a boy sees a colored rock, he knows why it has those colors, and what each color means, and so that boys are familiar with famous books where stories of battles and religions of ancient peoples are told. We will talk to them about everything that is done in workshops, where even more strange and interesting things happen than in magic stories, and are real-life magic, better than the other kind. And we will tell them what is known about the heavens, the depths of the sea, and the earth, and we will tell children's stories, for when they have studied a lot, or played a lot, and want to rest. We work for children, because children are those who know how to love, because children are the hope of the world. And we love that they love us, and see us as something from their hearts.

When a boy wants to know something that is not in The Golden Age, write to us as if you have always known us, and we will answer you. It doesn't matter if the letter arrives with spelling mistakes. What matters is that the boy wants to learn. And if the letter is well written, we will publish it in our letter with the signature at the bottom, so that it is known that boys are valuable. Boys know more than it seems, and if you told them to write what they know, they would write very good things. For this reason The Golden Age is going to have a competition every six months, and the boy that sends the best work, something that is assuredly his own, will receive a great prize of books, and ten copies of the issue of The Golden Age in which his composition is published, which will be about things of his age, so that they can write about it well, because writing well about something is a skill one must develop. This is what we want the boys of America to be: men who say what they think, and say it well – eloquent and sincere men.

Girls must know as much as boys, so that they can speak with them as friends as they grow up. It is a shame when a man has to leave the house to look for someone to talk with, because the women of his house do not know enough to tell him about anything other than entertainment and fashion. But there are very delicate and tender things that girls understand better, and for them we write in a manner that pleases them, because The Golden Age has its own in-house wizard, who says that something happens in the souls of girls that is similar to what hummingbirds see when they browse among flowers. We will tell them things in the way that hummingbirds would read it, if they could. And we will tell them how to make a strand of thread, how a violet is born, how a needle is made, and how the little old ladies of Europe sew lace. Girls can also write us letters, and ask us what they want to know, and send us their compositions for the competition every six months. Surely girls are going to win!

What we want is that children be happy, as the little brothers and sisters of our engraving. If at some point an American child finds us in the world and presses his hand to ours, like an old friend, may he say where all the world can hear, "This man from The Golden Age was my friend!"