The Easley Messenger

Bill Arp's Letter in Atlanta Constitution.

Mr. Shakespeare says that a man has seven ages, but to my opinion a boy has about ten of his own. He begins with his first pair of breeches and a stick horse and climbs up by degrees to toy guns and fire crackers and sling shot and breaking calves and billy goats and to sure enough guns and a pointer dog, and the looking glass age when he admires himself and greases his hair and feels of his downy beard and then he joins a brass band and toots a horn and then he reads novels and falls in love and rides a prancing horse and writes perfumed notes to his girl. When his first love kicks him and begins to run with another fellow he drops into the age of despair and wants to go to Texas or some other remote region and sadly sings:

"This world is all a fleeting show."

Boys are mighty smart now-a-days. They know as much at ten years as we used to know at twenty and it is right hard for us to keep ahead of 'em. Parents used to rule their children but children rule their parents now. There is no whipping at home and if a boy gets a little at school it raises a row and a presentation to the grand jury. When my teacher whipped me I never mentioned it at home for fear of getting another. I got three whippings in one day when I was a lad, I had a fight with another boy and he whipped me and the school teacher whipped me for fighting and my father whipped me because the teacher did. That was awful, wasn't it. But it was right and it did me good. One of these modern philanthropists was telling my kinsman the other day how to raise his boy. "Never whip him" said he, "Raise him on love and kindness and reason," and then he appealed to me for endorsement. "And when that boy is about twelve years old" said I, "do you go and talk to him and if possible persuade him not to whip his daddy. Tell him that it is wrong and unfilial and will injure his reputation in the community." The modern boy is entirely too big-getty. I was at church in Rome last Sunday and saw two boys there aged about ten and twelve years and after service they lit their cigarettes and went off smoking. An old fashioned man looked at them and remarked, I would give a quarter to paddle those boys two minutes. "I'll bet their fathers are afraid of em right now." The old-fashioned man never was afraid of his. He worked 'em hard, but he gave em all reasonable indulgence. He kept 'em at home of nights and he made good men of them. They have prospered in business and acquired wealth and are raising their children the same way. and they love and honor the old gentleman for giving them habits of industry and economy. He was a merchant and didn't allow his boys to sweep out a string or a scrap of paper as big as your hat. Habits are the thing, good habits, habits of industry and economy, when acquired in youth they stick all through life. And the girls need some watching too. They are most too fast now-a-days. Too fond of fashion, and they read too much trash. The old fashion retiring modesty of character is at a discount. They don't wait for the boys to come now. they go after em. they marry in haste and repent at leisure, they run round in their new fashioned night gowns and call it a Mother Hubbard party. The news papers have got up a sensation about the arm clutch, well I dont see any difference between that clutch and any other clutch. The waist clutch in these round dances is just as bad or worse. They are all immodest and there is not a good mother in the land that approves of them. A girl who goes to a promiscuous ball and waltzes around with promiscuous fellows puts herself in a promiscuous fix to be talked about by the dudes and rakes and fast young men who have encircled her waist. A girl should never waltz with a young man whom she would not be willing to marry. Slander is very common now, slander of young ladies and there are not many who escape it, the trouble is that it is not all slander, some of it is truth. In the olden time when folks got married they stayed married but now the courts are full of divorces and the land is spotted with grass widows and in many a household there is a hidden grief over a daughter's shame. It is a good thing for the girls to work at something that is useful. There is plenty of home work to do in most every household, If there is not then they can try drawing and sketching and painting or music, something that will entertain them. There are as many female dudes as males, and they ought to marry I reckon and go to raising fools for market.