Many a shrewd fellow has marked the progress of an ageing or shabby article of furniture, from the guest-chamber, through the family rooms upward, until it settles for life, or good behavior, in his apartment, and felt a dull pang at heart that he would not confess.  Many another fellow, as shrewd and more reckless, has flung out passionately at what he construed into an insult, and made it the ostensible excuse for resorting to places where the motto that “anything will do for the boys,” is unknown in practice.

An English woman once commented to me upon the difference between our manner of lodging and treating our sons and that which obtains in her native land.  “We behave to our boys as if they were princes of the blood,” she said, in her soft, sweet voice.  “American girls are young princesses at home and in society, and grace the position rarely well.  But—­excuse me for speaking frankly—­their brothers are sometimes lodged like grooms.”

She was so far from wrong that I could not be displeased at the blunt criticism.  The just mean between the stations thus specified is equality, and the firm maintenance of the same by the parents.  Manners and environment are apt to harmonize.  To teach a boy not to be slovenly and destructive in his own domain, give him a domain in which he can feel the pride of proprietorship.  He would like to invite his comrades into his “den,” as his sisters entertain intimate friends in their boudoir.  He may not put into words the reasons why, instead of saying openly—­“Come in and up!” to his evening visitor, he whispers at the outer door, “Let us go out!” which too often means, also, “down.”  Perhaps he is so imbued with the popular ideas respecting the furnishment of his lodging-place as hardly to interpret to himself his unwillingness to let outsiders see how well his “den” deserves the name.

Nevertheless, fond mother, give him the trial of something better.  Send the “incurables” to the auction room, and fit him out anew with what should be the visible expression of your love and your desire for his welfare.  Why expect him to take these on trust any more than you expect the daughters to do this?  Yet their apartments are poems of good-will and maternal devotion.

In all sincerity, let me notify you that the son will not keep his premises in such seemly array as the girls keep theirs.  It is not in the genuine boy.  I question if a three-year-and-a-half-old granddaughter would have chosen as a safe place of deposit for the white beans and red-freckled apples the handsomest chair I have.  You will find your laddie’s soiled collars in his waste-paper basket; his slippers will depend from the corner of the picture you had framed for him on his last birthday; his dress-suit will be crumpled upon his wardrobe shelf, and his chiffonier be heaped with a conglomeration of foils, neckties, dead boutonnieres, visiting-cards, base-balls, odd gloves, notebook, handkerchiefs, railway guides, emptied envelopes, caramel papers, button hooks, fugitive verses, blacking brushes, inkstand, hair brushes—­the mother who reads this can complete the inventory, if she has abundant patience, and time is no object with her.