MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESSES. 
247 
the brain. Certain aromatic oils, or sweet scented odors, rise like 
incense from the flowing locks that crown the caput; or, in default 
of these, the extracted oil from a tallow candle leaves them in 
smooth and plastic beauty. The face, white and soft as the cheek 
of a child, is now covered with a rank growth of persistent fuzz, 
dividing it between the pubescent appearance of the Eider duck 
and the contemplative mood of the solemn goose. 
If the physical changes are marked and startling, the intellect¬ 
ual symptoms are no less so. The mother, who has rocked her 
darling and caressed him up to manhood, finds herself suddenly 
brought up with a round turn; and she is very decisively informed 
that her grannyfied airs are no longer to be brooked by a young 
man of spirit and high ambition. The younger children, when 
the Jupiter of the household walks among them, learn to flee like 
chickens at the approach of the hawk; and the father, who has 
been loved and revered throughout an honorable life time, now 
finds himself suddenly challenged as the biggest fool in all the 
neighborhood. 
The extent and ravages of the disease are measured some¬ 
what by the circumstance and condition of the patient. Much 
depends upon the treatment. If met too summarily, it may strike 
in and become fixed for life; then the result is horrible. Usually, 
it flows off in poetry to the columns of the local press, or wastes 
itself on the wide sea of matrimony. 
I mention this only that parents may be prepared for its ap¬ 
proach. ' There is really but one danger connected with it, and 
that is, that those whose business it is to bear with it and control 
it as best they can, are sometimes liable to yield to the hallucina¬ 
tion themselves, and mistake that for a manifestation of genius, 
which is only one of the morbid symptoms of the transition from 
youth to manhood. When this mistake occurs—when a doting 
father or a too fond mother yields up the calm experience of a 
life time to the wild impulses of a hair-brained boy—then how 
surely is the victim rushed onward to ruin. But let us not there¬ 
fore commit the opposite mistake. 
I have seen the stern-faced, Christian father chide the rising im¬ 
pulses of his child of genius. I have seen the boy with slight 
muscle, but finely strung nerves, quivering under the fatigue of 
