SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 867 



one now, that it would be better for his body, for his whole being not to 

 use tobacco. You can coax, you can bribe, but in the end it is his own 

 pride and self respect that will conquer if conquered he is. 



And now he needs spending money. I am taking it for granted, 

 you see, our boy lives in his own home and is in school and maybe he 

 works in vacation. Years ago he should have been taught economy and 

 that, one hundred cents make a dollar, yet until now he has not had 

 much chance to practice it. Father has bought his clothes, his books and 

 given him a little spending money according to the nature of Pa, and 

 mother has given him a little more when she though pa was a little too 

 close. So on the whole our boy has had a fairly good fourth of July 

 and at a picnec and so on. He begins now to wonder if he hadn't better 

 work out summers. If he lives on a farm he thinks maybe neighbor 

 Jones needs him. If in town he looks with envious eyes on the delivery 

 boys. And now, if ever in a boy's life, we are confronted with an enigma. 

 No one has yet in theory or practi- e ever solved it. In a large family 

 the older boys must leave school at least part of the year. In our cities 

 with factories and shops the question is solved, the boy when past school 

 age goes into some trade. But in our small western towns as on our 

 farms the question still remains. Do I advocate a college training for all 

 farms the question still remains. 



Do I advocate a college training for all boys? No. But I 

 do advocate more than what is generall y called com- 

 mon school education. I believe in the old fashioned lyceum for our 

 boy now, where orators were made and lawyers born, where good order 

 prevailed and boys were taught to debate, to speak, to think quickly. I 

 believe the old fashioned lyceum did for the boy who did not go to school 

 after he was sixteen or seventeen, what no other training could do. 

 I wish I could impress on every mother and teacher the importance 

 of being able to read readily and understandingly. Then our boy would 

 have pleasure in reading and in our days of traveling libraries the 

 country boy is almost on a par with a common town. 



If your boy is to be a farmer give him the advantage of Ames. If of 

 a mechanical turn of mind, the Ames workshop. If you wish him to 

 enter the world as a merchant send him to a good commercial school. 

 Don't handicap the boy with the idea that all places are full. Never did 

 the world call more earnestly than now for men skilled in some one 

 thing, and every year the call is stronger and it is for your average 

 boy to answer. 



Has your avei-age boy ever been away from home? I don't mean to 

 visit his grandma or his uncles or his aunts. I mean really been away. 

 Did he ever take his grip, buy his own ticket and go off for a short trip. 

 Did he ever go to the state fair, ever see Ames college or Minneapolis. 

 rf not, why not let him go. He will come back so bright and newsy, he 

 will tell you so much that he has seen and heard, that you will wonder 

 why you didn't let him go before. Did you let him go back to your old 

 home where you lived before you came west to this wonderful state of . 

 Iowa. See the old school house with initials and, well, perhaps they 



