He is a very lovable being, that boy is, at times.  Oh, you are reverencing him to-day; well, then bear in mind that probably about the same time tomorrow morning you will be gripping for the scruff of his neck, and when you grip him, grip him hard, it is no time for half-way measures.  Never hit a boy at that age with a switch.  If you do you are lost.  Either don’t hit at all or hit hard.

A great deal of the child still remains in him, his instability, for instance.  He might well say of himself, “my name is legion.”  In the remainder of his young life everything that is trifling and worthless all comes to the surface, just as it does in the fermenting liquor, the strong and sweet are all hidden below the froth.  You cannot see it.  You can very easily do him injustice.  You must sympathize with him.  Remember your own foolish youth when you were his age; remember your own blunders and then you will have a great patience with him and great admiration for him, because these blunders are not a great deal worse than they are.  If you can’t do this, then leave him to Nature, for you cannot help him.

We found, during the years of puberty, a physical metamorphosis, when the body was all made over, and now, during those years of adolescence we have a mental metamorphosis that is just as complete as the physical metamorphosis.  All things are becoming new.  They have not become new yet, but they are becoming new; hence it must be a time of instability, of self-education, of the strange mixture of the very new and the very old, the bad and the good, of that which is passing away and which has passed away long ago, and that which has not yet come.  Look a little deeper into him; you will find he has a pretty good primitive system of morality; it is a very primitive one, consisting mainly of loyalty to his friends.  Treat him “square,” as he says, and fairly, and then you may purr and curb him just as you will.

Remember that tides of religious power and influence have been sweeping through him.  The first one came probably at twelve, if we may trust our statistics; the second stronger, at fourteen, and then the third—­perhaps a good many don’t feel the first one or second—­the third perhaps at sixteen.  The one which comes over him at sixteen will affect heart and intellect and will, and everything, and he will stay converted probably.  If you convert him at twelve, he probably will fall from grace before he is fifteen.  It is rather interesting to notice that those periods when his experiences are likely to be very deep and very strong, are the years when his chest girth is expanding the most rapidly.  A very good bit of physiology or psychology or of anything else you choose to call it, to learn is this: 

If you want to convert a man to religion, get plenty of good, fresh air into his body; you never can do it in an ill-ventilated room.