In the year 1907, throughout the registration area which contains nearly one-half the population of the United States, there were 10,513 deaths of children from ten to fourteen, against 15,287 from five to nine, 18,359 from fifteen to nineteen, 27,876 from twenty to twenty-four and 29,415 from twenty-five to thirty. There were over one hundred and eighty thousand deaths of children under five; and in each of the remaining five-year periods up to eighty there were more than thirty thousand.*

2. Independence and self-assertion are, to fond mothers especially, the most obvious characteristics of the period. "The child develops a life of its own outside the home circle, and its natural interests are never so independent of adult influence."† And now certainly, if at no other time, the boy's interests reflect the activities of a more primitive generation. Fighting, hunting, fishing, exploring, collecting, go to make up his life. He is more likely to play truant or to run away than at any other period. He is full of daring and adventure, of dash and go. He cares no longer for imaginative play or for fairy stories. He is frank and practical, and has, he feels, put away childish things.

3. But there is another side. With all its independence and selfassertion, its primitive instincts and love of adventure, later childhood is amenable to law. Its "gang spirit" and its "hero-worship" mark a distinct advance in moral development.

The child's social instincts begin to ripen in this period; and obedience to law becomes to him a matter of social well-being resting upon his own initiative, rather than of mere habit or imitation or authority.

(1) The sexes now draw apart. Boys and girls no longer share the same interests, or enjoy the same games. Boys get a wholesome contempt for the gentler sex; and girls can see nothing nice in such rude and messy creatures as boys have gotten to be. In the latter half of this period, and in the first few years of adolescence, girls are more mature than boys of the same age. They develop more quickly, not only in body, but in mind. A high school principal expressed the difference in a striking, though somewhat extreme way, by saying that the average boy in the senior class of a high school is little more mature than the average girl in the freshman class of the same school. (2) Social motives predominate in the games of the period, which are almost wholly competitive. Some are games in which individual competes with individual, each striving for his own success and glory. * United States Census, Mortality Statistics for 1907, p. 282. Hall: "Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene," p. L.

But more and more the boy becomes interested in games that call for team-play rather than for individual prowess. He begins to like baseball, basketball, hockey and the like, and even tries football. In these, the best player is he who can fit best into a system of play, and work most unselfishly for the success of the team as a whole, instead of seeking to shine individually.

(3) Team games call for organization; yet even aside from them, the "gang instinct," as it has been called, is at work. Boys and girls of this age naturally and spontaneously organize themselves into informal groups-the boys into "gangs" and the girls into "crowds"and into more or less formal clubs.

Dr. Sheldon's study of such spontaneously organized clubs gives some very definite information concerning boyhood and girlhood. Of over a thousand boys from ten to sixteen who answered his inquiries, 851 belonged to organizations of this sort. Of the remainder, many were in clubs formed for them by adults, and some were thrown with other boys so little that they had no chance. Eight hundred and sixty-two societies were reported, and 623 fully described. Of these, 11⁄2 per cent were philanthropic, 31⁄2 per cent secret, 4% per cent social (for "good times"), 44 per cent devoted to literature, music or art, 8 per cent industrial, 17 per cent predatory (for exploring, building, hunting, fighting, preying), and 61 per cent athletic. It will be noted that physical activity is the keynote of by far the larger number-861⁄2 per cent if we add the industrial to the predatory and athletic clubs.

The figures for the ages at which these clubs are formed are as follows: at eight, 28 ; at nine, 44; at ten, 118; at eleven, 155; at twelve, 164; at thirteen, 188; at fourteen, 90; at fifteen, 80; at sixteen, 34 ; at seventeen, II. We note that the ages at which the most societies are formed are eleven, twelve and thirteen. Over 87 per cent are formed between ten and fifteen, less than eight per cent before ten, and only I per cent at seventeen. The interests, too, change with age. Predatory societies are at their height at eleven, and then gradually disappear. Athletic societies multiply rapidly until thirteen, then diminish in number. The interest in literary societies grows steadily, though never very great.

Girls and boys naturally organize in separation from one another. Girls form five times as many social societies as boys, twice as many philanthropic, and three times as many secret, industrial and literary. On the other hand, boys form four times as many predatory and seven times as many athletic societies as the girls-these two classes forming but 10 per cent of the girls' societies as opposed to 78 per cent of the

boys. "Girls are more nearly governed by adult motives than boys. They organize to promote sociability, to advance their interests, to improve themselves and others. Boys are nearly primitive man: they associate to hunt, fish, roam, fight and to contest physical superiority with each other." *

(4) With this awakening of the social instincts, and their expression in spontaneous organizations, there comes into the child's life a new moral force-that of the opinion of his peers. He has entered into a social order of his own, and its laws become his standards of right and wrong. He no longer imitates parents and teachers, but his own companions, or the one whom the gang holds a hero. He cares little for the opinion of older people, but a great deal for what the "bunch" thinks.

"It is probably from the gang that most boys learn first to codify their conduct, and while this code of honor is imperfect, it is apt to be pretty sound. This list of 'things a feller won't do' soon becomes a mighty judgment of the individual conscience. . . . Parents may have slaved a life long; they may have made the inculcation of morals a daily care; these new companions have been known only six days, but they are Public Opinion." †

This applies also to girls. In this period boys and girls alike begin, through association with their own comrades, to achieve moral inde pendence.

(5) A strong sense of honor is characteristic. A boy's fundamental virtue is loyalty. He will stick by the rest of the fellows through thick and thin. And from this loyalty springs a fine sense of what is honorable and true and just. His boyish conceptions of these things are often enough distorted; but they are virtues none the less, and virtues really his own. If you respect his loyalty and rely upon his honor, God gives you quick entrance to the soul of a boy. But there is no greater sin than to trample upon his ideals and outrage his sense of justice. And there is no better proof of the worth of a man than to have a boy think him “square.” Judge Lindsey has been saving hundreds of the street boys of Denver from crime, and turning them toward worthy lives, simply because he is willing to take "a kid's word."

* Sheldon: "The Institutional Activities of American Children," American Journal of Psychology, Vol. IX., 425-448. This chapter uses Forbush's summary of his figures, in "The Boy Problem."

+ Forbush : The Boy Problem," pp. 20, 21.

It is hard to pick out crucial points in the education of a child, for everything is important, and moments may be decisive that we least expect. Yet here, certainly, we cannot be too careful. To the end of one's days his loyalties make his life. Ask what they are, and you know what the man is. Is he loyal at all? If not, he is no man. Is he loyal only to a group-to his own family merely, to a political party, or to a particular denomination? Or is he loyal to humanity and to God, and to the great eternal principles of right and truth which lie beyond all narrowness and party strife? These questions have been settled for many a man by the attitude of elders to his boyish loyalties.

All this applies particularly, of course, to boys. You cannot, even in speaking of them, mix the sexes at this age. Yet it is as true of girls, with the difference of perspective that is cast by the different social life into which they now begin to enter. Every mother knows well that a daughter now begins to have "ideas of her own," which it is idle to seek to repress or to expel by force. The wise mother is she who respects the daughter's personality, invites her confidence and seeks to share her point of view, and so by companionship, rather than by domination, leads her into clear-sighted, self-reliant womanhood.

4. This is the period of life's first idealism. Boys and girls now begin to form ideals for themselves.

These first ideals are concrete. They are found always in some person. Later childhood has well been called the age of heroworship. Middle childhood imitates persons, but not as ideals; adolescence conceives ideals, but not in personal terms. Now, ideal and person are inseparable. The boy worships his hero because he sees in him the embodiment of an inward longing of his own; and he loves strength and courage, manliness and truth, not in and for themselves, but for what they actually accomplish in the person of one about whom achievement casts its glamor. You cannot help a boy or girl of this age by talking of ideals in general and in the abstract. You must set before them a hero.

But that is not easy. Heroes are not made to order, or worshiped according to precept. Boys especially seem apt enough to idealize wrong characters, and perversely fail to be attracted by the heroes we would press upon them. Earlier in life, the child had imitated those whom he knew best-father, mother or teacher. Then their word was law, and to be like them his dearest wish. But that time is passing. Life is reaching beyond home and school. Its heroes come

from the new worlds just opening to the vision of boyhood and girlhood. They must be in some degree removed from the ordinary round of humdrum and familiar things. They must have something of that mystery which always surrounds an object of worship. Boys are more apt to get their heroes from the world about them, girls from their reading, from history or fiction. Boys always idealize men, while girls may choose either men or women.

It is achievement that makes a hero. Men who can do things well, men who can get results, men who can in anything, are the boy's heroes just as they are ours. Because his instincts and interests are primitive, he is most ready to idealize physical strength or skill or daring. He will worship the leader of the gang, the football captain or the star pitcher, the town's best hunter or fisherman. But it is only because he is not yet able to realize achievements of a different sort. As fast as he becomes able to comprehend the work of Edison, of Lincoln, of Luther, he is ready to pay tribute to strength of intellect and heart and will.

The counsel is simple but hard to live up to. If you would be a hero to the boys of your class—and you must be if you are really to influence them as you should-you need only succeed in what you do before them. It may be that you are able to approach them from the physical side, and are fortunate enough to win them because of your athletic prowess. But that is not always essential, and that alone is never enough. The one thing needful is that you be absolute master of yourself and your work. Teach well, live strongly, do things, get results, and you will have the influence you wish. Heroism, like the kingdom of God, "cometh not with observation." He soonest becomes a hero who thinks least of it, but most of the things he is set to do.

The principle tells us, too, how to present Jesus to our pupils. It must be as a hero, in the sheer strength of His manhood and His achievements. Talk of what He did, not of what He was. At this age, children will not love Him for His goodness, but they will learn to love goodness because they honor Him and His deeds. Do not talk much, however, about His being a hero; and certainly do not ask your pupils to call Him one. There are some things in life that cannot stand much talking about-heroism and loyalty are among them. Simply present His life and its deeds so vividly and concretely that the strength and power of His personality cannot help but shine through.

5. At no time of life is there a greater hunger for books and