an awkward age,--a necessary crisis or stage of uncouthness, through which
all human beings must pass,--Nature was incapable of such a conception;
law has no place for it; development does not know it; instinct revolts
from it; and man is the only animal who has been silly and wrong-headed
enough to stumble into it. The explanation and the remedy are so simple,
so close at hand, that we have not seen them. The whole thing lies in a
nutshell. Where does this abnormal, uncomfortable period come in? Between
childhood, we say, and maturity; it is the transition from one to the
other. When human beings, then, are neither boys nor men, girls nor women,
they must be for a few years anomalous creatures, must they? We might,
perhaps, find a name for the individual in this condition as well as for
the condition. We must look to Du Chaillu for it, if we do; but it is too
serious a distress to make light of, even for a moment. We have all felt
it, and we know how it feels; we all see it every day, and we know how it
looks.

What is it which the child has and the adult loses, from the loss of which
comes this total change of behavior? Or is it something which the adult
has and the child had not? It is both; and until the loss and the gain,
the new and the old, are permanently separated and balanced, the awkward
age lasts. The child was overlooked, contradicted, thwarted, snubbed,
insulted, whipped; not constantly, not often,--in many cases, thank God,
very seldom. But the liability was there, and he knew it; he never forgot
it, if you did. One burn is enough to make fire dreaded. The adult, once
fairly recognized as adult, is not overlooked, contradicted, thwarted,
snubbed, insulted, whipped; at least, not with impunity. To this
gratifying freedom, these comfortable exemptions, when they are once
established in our belief, we adjust ourselves, and grow contentedly
good-mannered. To the other _régime_, while we were yet children, we also
somewhat adjusted ourselves, were tolerably well behaved, and made the