BOYS AND GIRLS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1759, 18 June 1886, Page 5

BOYS AND GIRLS.

It is not unusu^ to hear an old buffer say, with something of irritation, that " there are no boys now-a-days; they ape the manners of men before they are in their teens." Old maids sometimes make similar remarks about " mere chits of girls." But, on the otber hand, a recent writer has called attention to the fact that very early marriages are far less frequent than tbey were in our grandfathers' days. Girls go to school now until they are eighteen, and rarely go into society before that time. The consequence is, they have far greater freshness and vitality at twenty- five than if they had turned out at sixteen. They enjoy both their girlhood and their young-maidenhood a great deal more on this account. It is true that even our little girls do not wear as our grandmothers did the dreadful livery of juvenility — those Wretched paddies and pinafores, the long tails of plaited hair, and other badges of youthful inferiority that belong to the sombre period when " children" were held to be phases of humanity to be "seen not heard," and when " little pitchers had big ears." There never was anything gained by treating children thus as a lower order of beings. So also with boys. It is true tbat they wsar at an earlier t age than their fatherß did the costumes ot men, but they are none the lesß boys on that account. They are fond of boyish games, 'fishing, hunting, swimming, as have always been. Nay, they carry on some games — such as rounders, rowing, football, and cricket — far into early manhood. Indeed, it seems at times as though the saying was inverted, and that men are aping the manners of boys. But, if so, so much the better for both, ' Nothing is more charming in a man than boyish freshness ; nothing more cbarmiDg in a boy than manliness. The only people who have cause to complain are the middleaged, who find themselves pushed aside by the young, but this is the inevitable law of nature. There is no need to growl about it.

The man who is waiting for something to turn up generally finds it when he steps upon a barrel-hoop,