Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1886 — A Heartless Boy. [ARTICLE]

A Heartless Boy.

Boys of a certain age are sometimes singularly lacking in every sentiment of tenderness and feeling. When arrived at this trying age, boys are a source of infinite terror and mortification to their family and friends. They have no secrets; they tell everything they know and more too. A lady tells the following story in illustration of the lack of feeling manifested by a certain hobble-de-hov boy at a time of general sorrow among other members of his family. “The family was poor and ignorant,” says the lady. “I heard one day that an older daughter of the family had died suddenly, and I went over to the house to see if I could be of any assistance. “I found the entire iamily, with the exception of a bov 10 of years,giving way to the most violent grief. There was such a hubbub I could hardly make myself heard when I spoke. “After nearly an hour’s effort I succeeded in quieting the family down, and was about to take my departure when a girl of 15 or 16 suddenly glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the corpse and screamed out; “ * Oh, my poor sister Nanny!’ The boy referred to scowled furiously, clenched his fist, and flying across the room gave the weeping girl a vigorous blow, saving as he did so: “ ‘Now, you\ you want to start maw up again’, hey?’ “His reproof came too late. ‘Maw’ was ‘started up again’,’ and all my efforts to calm her and the rest of the screaming family were unavailing.”— Detroit Free Press.