THE BARBAROUS BOY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16431, 6 January 1917, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE BARBAROUS BOY.

I'm) child of suspicious temperament is different from 'othe? children. He is not given to sociable and boisterout play, but prefers to sit or ramble by h.mself, indulging in reveries and castle-building. He lives in an imaginary world of romance, in which he is, o? course, the central and heroic figure. He is studious, and usually has a fair share of ability, so that he takes a good place in his class, and is well thought of by his masters, but he is not popular with his schoolmates. He keeps aloof from them, and they reciprocate by sending him to Coventry > not formally and designedly, but practically. Schoolboys are, as a rule, cruel little brutes. The schoolboy who refuses to conform' to schoolboy usages, but strike* out an independent hnej of his own, is not popular with other schoolbys, and is made to feel his unpopularity not only in being sent to Coventry. He glories in feeling that ho is under-estimated, misunderstood, unappreciated, and misjudged. He hugs his misery, indulges in orgies of self-pity, retires more and more into himself. hen lie leaves school and goes out into the world, the suspicious child is already a morbid being. More and moro he becomes' Eec/i liar, and we find at the bottom of his peculiarity a colossal conceit. He is in his own opinion the cleverest, the ablest, the best, the handsomest, the most deserving of men. And yet ho cannot disguise from himself that his succcsses and achievements are by no means proportionat» to his merits. For this no has an easy and manifest explanation. He is still under-valued, misjudged, under-estimated. Hit ill-success is duo to no deficiency of his own, but to the ignorance, jealousy, favouritism, and malice of other people. The defect is malice of others, which cannot recognise, or refuses to admit his superiority. He does not complain loudly, but he adds this new grievance to the reckoning, and scores another injustice against mankind. It is probable, and it soon becomes certain, that he was changed at birth. He is not the son of a city clerk. He is really of ducal, nay, of royal birth. He may go further than this and arrogate to himself the attributes of the Deity. There is no limit to his arrogance or to his assumptions. Such is the culmination of the suspicious temperament if it? vagaries are allowed to proceed unchecked ; and it is very difficult to put any curb them.