sheltered. But this should be inculcated, not inflicted; asked, not
seized; shown and explained, not commanded. Nothing can be surer than the
growth in a boy of tender, chivalrous regard for his sisters and for all
women, if the seeds of it be rightly sown and gently nurtured. But the
common method is quite other than this. It begins too harshly and at once
with assertion or assumption.

"Mother never thinks I am of any consequence," said a dear boy to me, the
other day. "She's all for the girls."

This was not true; but there was truth in it. And I am very sure that the
selfishness, the lack of real courtesy, which we see so plainly and
pitiably in the behavior of the average young man to-day is the slow,
certain result of years of just such feelings as this child expressed. The
boy has to scramble for his rights. Naturally he is too busy to think much
about the rights of others. The man keeps up the habit, and is negatively
selfish without knowing it.

Take, for instance, the one point of the minor courtesies (if we can dare
to call any courtesies minor) of daily intercourse. How many people are
there who habitually speak to a boy of ten, twelve, or fourteen with the
same civility as to his sister, a little younger or older?

"I like Miss----," said this same dear boy to me, one day; "for she
always bids me good-morning."

Ah! never is one such word thrown away on a loving, open-hearted boy. Men
know that safe through all the wear and tear of life they keep far greener
the memory of some woman or some man who was kind to them in their boyhood
than of the friend who helped or cheered them yesterday.