the last high school dance, and when I ask him sympathetically about Clara, I know that I have opened up a topic that can not be anything like adequately discussed at one sitting. The incidental things connected with his high school life seem to him the most interesting and the most vital. He gives considerable time and thought to the "other things" but, outside of class at least, none to his studies.
I am convinced that he is not unique in this respect. Although I have no boys of my own, I have frequently had them in my household. I have for some time, also, acted as guardian to two young fellows who are in a western academy of standing, and from them I receive weekly letters, usually written with the ostensible purpose of giving me information with regard to the intellectual, and physical progress of the writers, but actually to offer an opportunity to ask that their regular allowances be increased or at least not delayed in transit. In these letters I get no discussion of studies, and seldom any reference to them. Were it not for the friendly communications of the principal, and the regular bills for school supplies which I receive, I should have no knowledge, even, of what subjects, the boys are pursuing. Their letters are made up chiefly of optimistic predictions as to their athletic successes, of accounts of escapades (harmless of course, and quite within the regulations of the school), of dramatics, and of anticipated pleasures at social functions with the Ferry Hall girls. Even the attaining of a high
