The American Boy 



fit to take part in work or strife for their native 

 land. When a man so far confuses ends and means 

 as to think that fox-hunting, or polo, or foot-ball, 

 or whatever else the sport may be, is to be itself 

 taken as the end, instead of as the mere means of 

 preparation to do work that counts when the time 

 arises, when the occasion calls why, that man had 

 better abandon sport altogether. 



No boy can afford to neglect his work, and with 

 a boy work, as a rule, means study. Of course 

 there are occasionally brilliant successes in life where 

 the man has been worthless as a student when a 

 boy. To take these exceptions as examples would 

 be as unsafe as it would be to advocate blindness 

 because some blind men have won undying honor 

 by triumphing over their physical infirmity and ac 

 complishing great results in the world. I am no 

 advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in 

 studies, but a boy should work, and should work 

 hard, at his lessons in the first place, for the sake 

 of what he will learn, and in the next place, for 

 the sake of the effect upon his own character of 

 resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, 

 slackness, indifference in studying, are almost cer 

 tain to mean inability to get on in other walks of 

 life. Of course, as a boy grows older it is a good 

 thing if he can shape his studies in the direction 

 toward which he has a natural bent; but whether 



