868 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



are not his mother's, but never mind our son has not reached the senti- 

 mental age yet, he will be more interested in that long hill you used to 

 slide down and the fields where you did such big boy's work, or the shop 

 where you worked such long hours, for you worked hard when you were 

 a boy. Yes, let him go back if your record as an avearge boy will 

 survive it. What good tim-es you and he will have when you talk it over. 

 Yes let him bathe in your old swimming hole where you and Jack used 

 to run away from school and go swimming. It is only two years now 

 since you whipped your boy for doing the same thing, but he has forgiven 

 you long ago and so we must. 



Maybe our boy will buy a book on the train. We hope he has mon^y 

 enough to. It is just a cheap book, hardly fit to read but it looks manly to 

 come home and take out a book and say: "Just a book I bought on the 

 train." I hope before he left home, he has read some, just a few good books, 

 and of course you take a good magazine, all well regulated families do, 

 and then he will tell you the different books he read when he was 

 gone, for some of the families he visited read a great deal and in one 

 place all the boys had a magazine of their own. So he proposes that 

 he and average boy No. 2 both take a magazine or paper next fall. He 

 tells his mother that cousin John's boys all use tobacco, but that cousin 

 Henry's don't and that he has made up his mind that he shan't, for 

 their home is so nice, so much like our home. I had a good time but x. 

 am glad to get back, and he will tell his mother all about a girl he 

 saw back there, and how nice he thought her, but one Sunday he saw 

 her chewing gum in church and then he thought of his mother and how 

 she would look at a girl chewing gum. He never tells pa this. Mother 

 smiles but it is a sad one, as her average boy is getting older. Whittier 

 heaped blessings on the barefoot boy let us raise our hats to the average 

 boy; he is yours and mine. What do we not wish him, what would we 

 give him if we could? Health! Yes, best of all God's blessings a good 

 strong, active body. Wealth? Yes, a moderate allowance, but with it a 

 mind capable of using it to the best advantage for himself and others. 

 Reputation? Yes, for we all wish our boy to be of good repute in the 

 community. Education? Yes, in the line he has chosen for his life's 

 work. Well, what else? Is that all? No. 



The foundation of all this must be character. There must be a seed 

 time of character and a growing time, yet it will grow almost unconsci- 

 ously. Character is really fruited from 12 to 20 but it is a slow growth. 

 Holmes is credited with saying, "If you want to form a good character 

 begin with his grand mother." So much depends on the home in influ-- 

 encing the character of the boy, and that we are told depends on toe 

 motherT" But for certain years his father is his ideal of manhood and 

 that is especially the case if the father has attained that success so 

 dear to American hearts. How can we train our boys is no new ques- 

 tion. It has long been in the minds of the people, but every year it 

 seems to mean more. Character building means all that there is in life. 

 We have always wished that they be educated in virtues, that they 

 should be brave and just, truthful, honorable, but mothers have not 



