Back home, after we had passed through the autograph-album stage of development, we became interested in another sort of literary composition.  It was a book in which we recorded the names of our favorite book, author, poem, statesman, flower, name, place, musical instrument, and so on throughout an entire page.  That experience was really valuable and caused us to do some thinking.  It would be well, I think, to use such a book as that in the examination of teachers and pupils.  I wish I might come upon one of the books now in which I set down the record of my favorites.  It would afford me some interesting if not valuable information.

If I were called upon to name my favorite flower now I’d scarcely know what to say.  In one mood I’d certainly say lily-of-the-valley, but in another mood I might say the rose.  I do wonder if, in those books back yonder, I ever said sunflower, dandelion, dahlia, fuchsia, or daisy.  If I should find that I said heliotrope, I’d give my adolescence a pretty high grade.  If I were using one of these books in my school, and some boy should name the sunflower as his favorite, I’d find myself facing a big problem to get him converted to the lily-of-the-valley, and I really do not know quite how I should proceed.  It might not help him much for me to ask him:  “Don’t you wish you could?” If I should let him know that my favorite is the lily-of-the-valley, he might name that flower as the line of least resistance to my approval and a high grade, with the mental reservation that the sunflower is the most beautiful plant that grows.  Such a course might gratify me, but it certainly would not make for his progress toward the lily-of-the-valley, nor yet for the salvation of his soul.

I have a boy of my own, but have never had the courage to ask him what kind of father he thinks he has.  He might tell me.  Again I am facing a dilemma.  Dilemmas are quite plentiful hereabouts.  I must determine whether to regard him as an asset or a liability.  But, that is not the worst of my troubles.  I plainly see that sooner or later he is going to decide whether his father is an asset or a liability.  We must go over our books some day so as to find out which of us is in debt to the other.  I know that I owe him his chance, but parents often seem backward about paying their debts to their children, and I’m wondering whether I shall be able to cancel that debt, to his present and ultimate satisfaction.  I’d be decidedly uncomfortable, years hence, to find him but “the runt of something good” because I had failed to pay that debt.  When I was a lad they used to say that I was stubborn, but that may have been my unsophisticated way of trying to collect a debt.  I take some comfort, in these later days, in knowing that the folks at home credit me with the virtue of perseverance, and I wish they had used the milder word when I was a boy.