stage in some stupendous drama? A man now prominent in educational
circles testifies how that on a drizzly night on the streets of old
London the lad, then but sixteen years of age, came to a full stop, set
his foot down with dramatic pose, and exclaimed with soul-wracking
seriousness:

The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

So is it ever with the adolescent soul unless society curses the desire
for significance and makes it criminal.

These bare cliffs of primal personality have not yet undergone the
abrasion of the glacial drift nor of the frost and the heat, the wind
and the rain of long years. They are angular, bold, defiant, and
unsuited to the pastoral and agricultural scenes of middle life. The
grind of life with its slow accomplishment and failure has not as yet
imparted caution and discretion. Shrewd calculation and niggardliness
too are normally absent. Generous estimates prevail. Idealism is
passionate and turns its eye to summits that a life-time of devotion
cannot scale. Honor is held in high regard and select friendships may
have the intensity of religion. Judgments are without qualification.
Valor, laughter and fun, excess and the love of victory mingle in hot
profusion. Except in the case of the precocious boy of the street, the
cold vices of cynicism, misanthropy, and avarice--the reptilians of
society--are found almost exclusively among adults. The _younger_
brother is the prodigal. Experience has not taught him how to value
property and the main chance.

The failure of self-knowledge and self-control to keep pace with the