THE MOTHER OF A GROWING BOY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 15, 16 April 1908, Page 37

THE MOTHER OF A GROWING BOY

A boy s life goes forward by leaps and bounds af- . ter he passes the nursery stage (says a writer in 'Woman's Home Companion '). At least it seems to be so * to his mother. There is the day when his father remonstrates about those babyish curls that are so beautiful and that the mother twines round her fingers with , sucih) care and pride. The boy has begun, to hate them and he goes joyously to the barber's to have them .cut off. .. As the shears separate each soft ringlet, the mother feels as if something precious was severed from her very heart. She gathers them up and lays them away, • and as her little lad walks beside her with sturdier steps than before, she realises that the coming dawn of his manhood is quickening onithe horizon. There is the day when she sees her boy, a gallanft little figure, with his hands \n his pockets, looking an inch taller than yesterday because he- 4s dressed less 1 like a girl and more like The boy across the street whom he has secretly avoided. Those pockets mark

a:i era in boyish development. Are they not distinctively a- bad&e of sex ? Surely, considering that a man nas at least ten pockets and a woman none at all, n the day when the boy first' realises that he has pockets, and that they are to hold whatever he pleases, is a great day for -him. The boy has his own happy.-day, too, wnen he first puts on a real pair of stout shoes ia which he may run and jump and kick a ball.