CHAPTER I

THE JUKES


Education is something more than going to school for a few weeks each
year, is more than knowing how to read and write. It has to do with
character, with industry, and with patriotism. Education tends to do
away with vulgarity, pauperism, and crime, tends to prevent disease and
disgrace, and helps to manliness, success and loyalty.

Ignorance leads to all those things that education tries to do away
with, and it tends to do away with all the things that education tries
to cultivate. It is easy to say these things, and every one knows they
are true, but few realize how much such statements mean. It is not easy
to take a view of such matters over a long range of time and experience.

A boy that leaves school and shifts for himself by blacking boots,
selling papers, and "swiping" fruit often appears much smarter than a
boy of the same age who is going to school all the time and does not see
so much of the world. A boy of twelve who has lived by his wits is often
keener than a boy of the same age who has been well brought up at home
and at school, but such a boy knows about as much and is about as much
of a man at twelve as he will ever be, while the boy that gets an
education becomes more and more of a man as long as he lives.

But this might be said a thousand times to every truant, and it would
have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception.
He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize