Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1918 — KEEPING THE BOYS STRAIGHT [ARTICLE]

KEEPING THE BOYS STRAIGHT

Father Recognized Force of Appeal to Manliness, and It Has Worked Well. Several gray-haired business me® were recently chatting over their cigars. x -3 “This talk about mother and the boys is all very well,” said one. “But father comes in strong, too. My father devoted one minute a day to us boys that did more at that age to keep us straight than all the little mother's admonitions. She was ,a sweet unworldly little person and we adored her and reverenced her teachings. However, she never could think of us as anything but her little boys, and as we grew taller and more worldly we acquired the usual boyish sense of exalted Importance and might have been led to secretly patronize her strict goodness as a little old-fashioned, except for father. “Father saw the force of appealing to us as man to man, long before there was much man in us, I guess. Every night at dinner, I can see him yet, after the blessing, with his carv-ing-knife and fork poised over the roast, pause and look us straight In the eyes. “ ‘Well, boys, how goes the world?’ “And you better believe the thought of that moment steadied us often during the day. We had to keep pretty straight to be able to return that clear look and answer: *“O. K., Dad.'”