Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1911 — His Long Apprenticeship. [ARTICLE]

His Long Apprenticeship.

From the cradle to his career is a good long time, about 25 years, and there is seldom found a boy who relishes that long wait. It is not that he is jealous of the other animals for getting through growing and down to business so much sooner than he does, .. when he and they start out together—kids, colts, cats, calves and puppies—and he sees several generations of the same animal family make their entrances and exits, while he is merely fighting his way to the stage. The lion and the tiger are mature at six, the horse earlier, the cow earlier still, the sheep at, from one to two years; the amoeba and other Insects in a few days and some of them are born, mature, finish their lives and die, all in one day. This lightning change in., them does not always stimulate his patience. He sees the vast opportunities before him and is sure they will all be gone by the time he gets a chance at them, and, anyhow, it looks to him just the thing to be a grown man. - . But if a boy proceeds more leisurely than the other animals, it is not time wasted, for when they are through he :is starting In on a career that will outlast the stars, a career of which the three score years of the life here are only the overture; and, because they are only the overture, and there* tore to strike the theme of the whole eternal symphony, he has to have plenty of time to tune up, get his part and do some rehearsing. The elephant may outlive him, but be is closer akin to the angels than to the elephant; the mud turtle may outlast him, but he is more like a sky lark to wing his way into the Infinite. It takes a long time to get ready for a long career. The greatest man the world has even known took 80 years to prepare for only throe years of work, but all the ages to come were Ito be affected by those three years. The very greatest man In all the centuries before that matchless One did life work in 40 years, becoming a nation's leader and the world's law giver, but he could not have done It if he bad not had 80 years to prepare for U. Goethe wrote the latter part of his Faust In old age,.but it was the ripe flower of his many years of culture. The longer infancy Is the chief explanation of the longer age of man. for it secures to him both the bodily and the psychological requisites of the longer life, while it Is just the chance he needs to get himself ready to make It an efficient life. The development of a child Is one pt the greatest social processes WO

know anything about, and from that standpoint, John Fisk has given the long human Infancy Its scientific interpretation. All that time he is doing things, through the things that are done for him; and what he does, in that way, is perhaps the very best thing he ever does. It seems that he is the one for whom things are done, but he is doing for others a work that will tell on them and society for all time to come. Perhaps he is achieving his very greatest task in fulfilling that long and, often tedious, apprenan individual, but we come to see that the most striking thing about him is his social significance. ■ His most marked contribution is to the family sociality, but that does not limit his influence. He promotes parental unity. The planning and working and loving bestowed on a common object, so fascinating as he is, produces a unity with an element that nothing else can supply. And if there should be in them tendencies toward divisions, this may divert their minds and prevent permanent cleavage; and, by th* time they have taken him through, from infancy to manhood, caring and planning for him and giving him an education and a start th life, the habits of cooperation will have become fixed enough to carry them along without his further aid. By that time he will have trained them in self-discipline, for many a father is kept from a less worthy life by the thought of his boy or his little. girl. There is a sociality as between the parents on the one side and the children on the other; also between the children themselves, and nature has given him time to make good in both tasks. Other children and other homes are the beneficiaries of his fine opportunity for a long service, in a social way. But his long childhood Is just the thing for his own education, not only in a general way, but in some of the powers, especially needed in the future. One is altruism; and a long period of service, for which there is no scale of rewards, is the best way for him to learn it He grows in the power of choice, as, at the right moment, be takes himself over, so that by the time he passes from under their direction he has himself in control, with far-reach-ing relationships established. He has his moral habits formed and fixed by the time he must face moral issues and decide them alone. Let the boy bo happy, rather than grieved, because of his long apprenticeship.