Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 221, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1911 — The Boy Puzzle [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Boy Puzzle

By DR. J. S. KIRTLEY

the Boy wonder

A boy wonder may still be found, here and there, but I am not bringing a charge to that effect against any boy of my acquaintance. There have been such in the past, there will be in the future, and we have heard of a few, now living, though it is not likely that the charge could be sustained, tn every instance. We can never forget Watt, whose genius shewed itself, when he watched the eteam lift the lid of his mother’s tea kettle; nor John Stuart Mill, who was thinking through philosophical problems, and in technical language, long before he reached his teens. Pope said: **t lisped in numbers, for the numbers came,” even though some now think he never did anything but lisp, except limp. The tete John Fisk was a good Greek and Latin and philosophical scholar, before the average boy of that age had learned his grammar. Students of music can never forget how the boy, Handel, stol* into the chape l in the dark and placed the organ till they were attracted from all over the estate of the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels and all thought it must be an angel and the duke pronounced him a genius; nor forget how- Wolfgang Mozart ‘was playing tunes at four, and did not have an equal on the harpsichord at twelve. Josef Hoffman was the wonderful boy pianist a few years ago. and now has made good as-a man. In the line of music, early geniiu has been brilliant, but almost as much so, in literature. Pope wrote his “Od< to Silence” at 11, and “Ode to Soli tude” at 12. At 12 Macaulay won fame, ( by his first volume. Cowley wrote “Pyrlmas and Thlsbe” at 12. At 16 Tasso wrote “Rinaldo,” Huge printed a volume of poems and so did Chatterton. Shelley wrote "Queen Mab” and Disraeli “Vivian Gray” at 18. Dickens was made famous by his "Sketches” and Byron by his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” at 21. And there have been “Boy Orators” and "Boy Preachers” and “Boy Busi-, ness Men." No one denies that there have been and still will be boy geniuses. Little William James Sidis has dazzled the wise men of the east with his conversations and writings and addresses on philosophical and mathematical subjects, and he will soon know all that Harvard can teach him, while Nicholas Wiener is treating Cornell to the same sort of a sensation. Alexander Hamilton comes tn that class. In a few months after arriving in New York from his native West Indies, to attend King’s college, he had studied out the question of the right of our country to Independence, and, in a patriotic meeting, in the open field, came forward and electri-

fled the audience with a great speech, and he was only 17. The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was such a wonder as a grown man that we forget his remarkable boyhood. Not every boy, considered a genius by his admiring relatives, is one. He may be precocious, good and proper, but not a genius. But suppose there Is a real boy genius at large in your community, what then? It brings up the old question: “Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” His spirit or that of his kindred? Who knows ; but it may be only a case of infantile j or puerile genius which will disappear as the years go? Neither he nor his . friends should ever forget that, try as he may, he may be distanced by some whose powers v do not develop as fast as his. There are men-wonders whose boyhood was not unusual. Wagner and Bach and Goldsmith’ and Cow- ■ per and Franklin and Darwin and Defoe and De Morgan belong to the latter class. j And there are some alarming possl- ; billties before him. Genius is not insanity, as some of the wranglers have claimed; nor is it abnormal, save that it is unusual, nor what is called a “sport” may be what we. often call a “universal Genius,” like Goethe, or Michael Angelo, or Gladstone, or i Shakespeare. And yet he is apt to be one sided and have some serious defects, which will prove his undoing, as a defect in will or judgment or sympathy or in power of concentration, and the latter was the defect of Col- : eridge. He may be repressed and neglected. He may be led to think that he does not need training nor discipline, for genius is never independent of such things and it takes bard work to mature and bring it to the fulfillment of its bright promise. The delicate nerve tissues may be burnt out before he reaches the more serious work of his life and he be left * in the condition of the man whose legs ; wers set akimbo and he explained his misfortune: “L rode up in a balloon one time and walked back.” | If, on careful examination, the boy is proven to be a genius, keep it to yourself and never allow him to suspect it. If he should find it out, tell him of the fall of the genius - and linger over Us harrowing details till he is almost scared opt of his wits; then put him at havd work as if his life depended on it. Make him play with the other >oys, so that they can keep the conceit out of him. Be his master and his adviser and keep heavy responsibilities from him till he gets beyond the most dangerous point You may save him, after all.