during which he was so systematically snubbed that his mother's parlor was
to him worse than the chambers of the Inquisition. He knows that he is now
sure of courteous treatment; that his friends are all proud of him; but
the old cloud will never entirely disappear. Something has been lost which
can never be regained. And the loss is not his alone, it is theirs too;
they are all poorer for life, by reason of the unkind days which are gone.

This, then, is the explanation of the awkward age. I am not afraid of any
dissent from my definition of the source whence its misery springs.
Everybody's consciousness bears witness. Everybody knows, in the bottom of
his heart, that, however much may be said about the change of voice, the
thinness of cheeks, the sharpness of arms, the sudden length in legs and
lack of length in trousers and frocks,--all these had nothing to do with
the real misery. The real misery was simply and solely the horrible
feeling of not belonging anywhere; not knowing what a moment might bring
forth in the way of treatment from others; never being sure which impulse
it would be safer to follow, to retreat or to advance, to speak or to be
silent, and often overwhelmed with unspeakable mortification at the rebuff
of the one or the censure of the other. Oh! how dreadful it all was! How
dreadful it all is, even to remember! It would be malicious even to refer
to it, except to point out the cure.

The cure is plain. It needs no experiment to test it. Merely to mention it
ought to be enough. If human beings are so awkward at this unhappy age,
and so unhappy at this awkward age, simply because they do not know
whether they are to be treated as children or as adults, suppose we make a
rule that children are always to be treated, in point of courtesy, as if
they were adults? Then this awkward age--this period of transition from an
atmosphere of, to say the least, negative rudeness to one of gracious
politeness--disappears. There cannot be a crisis of readjustment of social