196 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Not only are the boy's organs growing at an enormous rate, 

 but his bones are growing and his muscles are filling out. We all 

 know that the harder a boy plays the harder his muscles and bones 

 become, and when a boy has hard muscles no mother need be afraid 

 that he is sickly. Sickly boys do not have hard muscles. All this 

 time the boy is growing tall and lanky, and he needs those games 

 and exercises which will stiffen his backbone and make him manly. 

 You have all heard the expression, "that fellow's got a stiff back- 

 bone," and we infer immediately that he has been through several 

 experiences each of which has stiffened it a little more. 



It is very healthful to have a straight and stiff backbone, for a 

 crooked and weak one means that one has spinal curvature, and a 

 bad curvature always affects the internal organs to some extent. 



There is one point that I would like to speak of which is very 

 vital to the health of the boy but which a mother cannot fully realize. 

 After the boy reaches the age when he feels himself becoming a 

 man, when his voice changes and his "kid days" are over, the 

 greatest gift of God to a boy is his power to work off in a physical 

 way the energy that is continually being stored up within him. It 

 is a fight, a real battle with the devil and all his forces, for a boy 

 not to fall into secret sin and waste his strength; and for him to 

 run, swim, box, wrestle, ride and play at all the games is one of 

 the salvation processes for which he can thank nature. We should 

 not discourage him, but rather urge him to use up this energy in 

 a way that turns it into health, strength and power. 



There is another phase of the boy's life which is just as im- 

 portant as health, and that is the moral side, or I would prefer it 

 named the "leadership quality." 



The boy of courage is the one who is admired by other boys. 

 Any boy can help drag the bob up the hill, but there is only one who 

 is picked to steer all the rest down, and in him all have perfect 

 confidence. This leadership quality is brought out only in some 

 kind of physical activity. In choosing a baseball team there must 

 be a captain, and only one captain, the rest are perfectly willing to 

 work with him and follow his lead. So athletics and bodily exercises 

 play a very important part in the development of this moral courage 

 and leadership, for when a boy is playing with other boys he is 

 liable to be natural and will stand up for those things which he 

 thinks he deserves. You don't always find him this way at the 

 table or at Sunday school and day school. In these places he feels 

 just a little as though he had to assume a more careful and un- 

 natural manner. 



