Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1892 — Conceit in Youngsters. [ARTICLE]

Conceit in Youngsters.

It is a good thing for a' young man to be “knocked about in the world,” though his soft-hearted parents may not think so. All youths, or, if not all, certainly nineteen-twentieths of the sum total, enter life with a surplusage of self-conceit. The sooner they are relieved of it the better. If, in measuring themselves with wiser and older men than themselves, they discover that it is unwarranted, and get rid of it gracefully, of their ywn accord, well and good; if not, it is desirable, for their own sakes, that it be knocked out of them. A boy who is sent to a large school soon llndß his level. The world is a great public school, and it soon teaches a new pupil his proper place, says the New York Ledger. If he has the attributes that belong to a leader, he will be installed in the position of a leader; if* not, whatever his own opinion of his abilities may be, he will he compelled to fall in with the rank and flle. If not destined to greatness, the next best thing to which he can aspire is respectability, but no man can either be truly great or truly respectable who is vain, pompous and overbearing. By the time the novice has found his legitimate social status, he the same high or low, the probability is that the disagreeable traits of his character will be softened down or worn away. Most likely the process of abrasion will be rough, perhaps very rough, hut when it is all over, and he begins to see himself as others Bee him, and not as reflected in the mirror of self-conceit, *he will be thankful that he has run the gauntlet and arrived, though by a rough road, at self-knowledge. Upon the whole, whatever loving mothers may think to the contrary, it is a good thing for youths to be knocked about in the world; it makes men of them.