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Many Long Farewells

Many Long Farewells image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
June
Year
1889
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

mWlÈi IRTHDaYS come "round WMgWL every year with a regularity MÖKT w-hich, as ono growa oldcr, Hifii ecomes painful. Tlio rae'W fiM) tllolit"11 tnileposts in the KgsiJSl' journey of life seem to slip '? ' by faster and faster. We have Christmas and New Year's and all the other festivals of the year. Wo have centennial and semi-centennial celebrations, but commencement day comes but once in a lifetime; the happy days spent in school are left behind. But hold on there, my young friend. What ia tliat I hear you say? You've had a pretty good time. Plenty of fun, but raighty glad to get over ifc all. Mighty glad you can see the world, eh? Sick of books? Rather sit at a desk and write for dear life all day, would you? Rather run around and be errand boy, perhaps? Rather get down to solid business, and work from 8 until 6, than to be able to sneak off any afterooon and play ball? Think you would prefer a dusty, moldy office ten hours a day to a bright sunny school room with perhaps a lot of pretty girls eitting around you? Is that the idea? Seems strange, don't it? Not a bit of it, my boy. You've got that same feeling of independence which is common to us all. But whafs that I hear my friend down in the crowd say? Wish you were back at your books, do you? Regret all the time you wasted in school, eh? Would like to try it over again, would you? Happiest time of your life, did you say? You think so, that's all. You couldn't be hired to go back. My friend, you would rather get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and toddie around the front yard after a lawn mower, while last night's due percolates through your uppers, than be able to sleep until 8 o'clock and have your own gentle mother come upstairs and teil you three or four times in rapid euccession tl)at if you don't get up right away you will be late for school. Yes, you would. I know you. You would rather vibrato from ono end of the room to the other with a shrieking child in one arm and a bottle of soothing sirup in the other, four hours a night, than be kicked out of bed by your older brother because you tried to steal tüo bed clothes away from him. Oh, tlioso were happy days, were they? When you romped in the fields with never a care, with no thought for tho morrow; when you could sneak into the pantry at any hour of the day and abstract therefrom a goodly hunk of bread and butter; when you used to go in swiruming incognito and get licked because yoiir shirt was wrong side out. But bless you, niy friend, thoso cares that you didn't have then, all the troubles, the little thing3 which mako you walk the floor and teur your hair, and which drive you to think that your lot is so niuch harder than the lot of any one clse, including Job's, those things are what you are living for. Don-t you regret the time wasted over your books, eithcr. If you could get back into the school room you would study all the time, would you? You would improveevery shining minute, eh? How old did you say you were? Forty? and haven't learned any better than that? Well, well, unwind from your brain some of tlioso bandages that you have been wrapping it up ia so tenderly for the last twenty years. Sit down and think it over. And you will conclude in íive minutes that you wouldn't do anything of the sort. You"ll see right away, if you failed on that particular example in arithmetic, it'was because you were having a rousing old time playing ball, and that perhaps the ball was a great deal better for you than figures; that is, better physically, and therefore mentally in the end. But I haven't said a word about the girls. You have all heard this talk about the sweet girl gradúate, the delicate bud of girlhood blossoniing out into the full blown rose of a riper womanhood. Well, thia is a good thought for Commencement day. All these bright young girls in their white dresses, their pretty faces glowing with the excitement of the hour and with expectatioa of the life which 3 to come. All very pretty, isn't it? Now I'm no iconoclast. But is this the right sort of veneer to paint a sound healtliy young woman wich? Wo üken them all to sonie delicate flower, and we build hot houses for them to livo in, and every once in a while some fair Joan of Are broaks the glass and steps out, and we reatize that woman ís not so weak s we ffert pictured her. What do the girls think about it? Go around among the hundred guis in the class and take a ballot. Ask each one if she likes to bo thought of as a delicate flower fit to live only in a hot house. How many of them will answer ves to that? Tender, did you say? Delicate, and all that? Look here, my friend, perhaps you've never lived in a big city and gone slumming down in the tenement district and seen pale, delicate looking women living for years in an atmosphere and working under a strain that would prostrate a Sullivan in six months. But there's one thing you have noticed. You have seen the lines creeping up and down your own gentle mother's face day after day, you have watched that same dear face grow a littlo paler, a little sadder- you have Been her growing more patiënt as the weeks and montha rolled on, but bless you, mv friend, you never stopped to think of that then. Here is a romping, rollicking boy, bound to have fun, tearing his clothes at the slightest provocation, going half a mile out of his way to wade through a puddle of dirty water, gpending hours devising some instrument of torture to let loose on tlie delicate harp strings of a woman's nervous temperament, anything to make trouble for his mother. But we mustn't blame tho boy. He can't help it, and we have all done the same thingourselves. But how about the mother? How long do you think a great strong, burly man would stand this sort of thing? You como home at night and your wife Bays to you: "Bobby has been misbehaving again today, but, dear, I guess after all you'd better let him off tliis once," and what do you suppose the young cal has done? Oh, nothing very much. He has ouly taken the fi ve young kittena that appeared a few days ago and buried them alive in the back yard. Now, how long, ray friend, could you stand this sort of thing? And yet your wife, palé, delicate creature that she is, would have a fit if Bobby were out of her sight for moro than twelve hours. Let us stop a moment and think of what is going to becomeof all these pretty girls who have had their heads stuffed full of grammar and mathematics and Latía verbs- what are they going to be? Wives? Yes, and mothers, some of them; but teil me, my friends, can you bring this future that stretches out for a woman from commencement day to the end- can you bring it down to the narrow limits of a wedding ring? How about theold maids, then? Now, let mo whisper a word in your ear. As a matter of fact, marriage isn't the only thing a woman thinks about. How many old maids are there who are old maids f rom choice? Nine out of every ten. '-How do you know?" some one in the crowd sliouts out; "you're not an old niaid yourself." That is so, but, my young fnend, you haven "t a inaiden aunt, hare you? Come, own up now, like a man. Well, you don't know anything about it. My son, a maiden aunt follows right closo after a mother and grandmothcr in a boy's heart, and the boy generally knows how many times she has said "No" to the most important question in a woman's life. Let us take one farewell look at these smiling faces before the curtain falls forever on tho last scène of school life. They havo got through the proface of the book of the world. To-morrow they will begin on the first chapter, and as tho bell rings and they fade away f rom our sight, let us send forth a wish that the book may have a peaceful and happy enjing.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Register