Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1884 — Boys Who Want to Go Away. [ARTICLE]

Boys Who Want to Go Away.

Was there ever a boy who didn’t imagine at some time that he wasn’t used well at home, and gloomily revolved plans in his mind for going “way off” and never coming back any more? Happily, it is “in his mind” that he makes the flight, as a general thing, though there have been exceptions. To go way off meant, in our youthful days, to become a sailor and bound across the billows to foreign lands in search of strange adventures, such as we had read about in “Tales of. the Ocean” and similar books. But we learned from a small boy, with whom we conversed the other day, that the locality of “way off” had changed a good deal since we used to contemplate stealing away from the parental roof to go in search of it. There isn’t so much romance about the sea now that iron steamships have been generally introduced ; they don’t appear to catch the youthful imagination. The boy who chafes under parental authority nowadays and meditates running away, turns his thoughts to the boundless West. He is undecided in his mind wheter he will be a gold-digger or a stage-robber, but at any rate he determines to start well provided with the necessary implements for killing Indians, whose reeking scalps he intends to express to his parents as trophies of his prowess and bitter reminders that their harshness and bitter cruelty forced him into this bloody occupation. This lad with whom we talked had no idea of foreign lands at all. His sonl didn’t hanker after sailor yams told in the fo’castle, nor did he yearn to be rocked to sleep on the * masthead, soothed by the sea’s wild lullaby. He thought, though, that if he could borrow a pistol and run away from home he could induce conductors to let him ride free on the railroads, and perhaps make himself solid, as he expressed it, with a Pullman porter, who would give him a bunk in the sleeper at night, until he could reach a section in the West where Indian shooting was most abundant, when of course he could take care of himself, as what boy couldn’t, who was any boy at all? Tiring of feat—for he supposed the novelty of killing and scalping red men would wear off after a time—he might write a play, of which he was the hero, gather up a company of Indians to help to play it, and come East to star it as “Antelope Jake,” or something like that. It all sounded very queer, but we realized that fashions in running away from home change like everything else. Happy youth, that can live and revel in the land of “way off,” whether it be reached o’er stormy seas or by the perils of modern railroading. Dream of it while you can, with the dried tears on your cheeks, wrung by home wrongs,* real or imaginary; for the time will come when you will realize that there is no retreat in this world that will' shield you from life’s actual troubles.— Cincinnati Saturday Night.