Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1885 — The Victim of Breeches. [ARTICLE]

The Victim of Breeches.

AH kinds of philanthropic Societies have been instituted for doing this and undoing that, from preventing the vigorous chastisement of the obstreperous mule to elevating the pie-makers of our ' land to be law-makers of the same, but there is still much need of more missionary work of similar character; and other societies not yet dreamed of will have to be organized before the world can buckle right down and do its level best in spinning toward the grand perfection for which it is destined. We have societies for sending teaspoons to people who wear them run through slits in their ears and noses when they get them, for lack of knowing what else to do with them, and we have societies for guessing at this and contradicting that, but we have no organization devoted to formulating a code of ethics from the condition of a boy’s legs; and, as previously intimated, the world will never whoop itself aright, or make headway as she should, until somebody takes this abstruse problem by the neck and drags it out into the sunlight of science, and figures it down to a mathematical certainty that a boy’s character begins with his legs, and develops according to pantaloons and other circumstances. Hitherto the head has been regarded as the solum bolum of a boy’s capabilities, but the time has come when the breeches must be taken into consideration also, if we would have our sons go forward in life’s rugged race with power to hoof it with ease and gladness. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that a boy with pantaloons that make him feel like a fallen angel with a broken wing will inevitably make him a scape-goat or a hopeless, gloomy child of toil, too much soured to enjoy the smell of trees in bloom. A boy with breeches that pitch him over backward or stand him on his head whenever he tries to run, is liable to grow up with no higher ambition than running a saw-mill or going to Congress, and the chances are that he will* get reckless and blow foam from the beer mug before his wisdom teeth are cut. There is clamorous need for a society that will make it a penal offense to so bandage a boy’s legs that he will crop out into a villain sooner or later, in spite of all the angelic blood in him. Sunday-schools and parental example are well enough in their way; but so long as a boy has no more liberty of movement, between the knees and shoulder-blades,, than a chicken in the shell, the depressing influence of the stove-pipe arrangements on his legs will react upon his character in spite of all that can be done, and we need an organization that will see about this thing before it is everlastingly too late. From the time a boy’s legs are long enough to break he ceases to be a free moral agent, and becomes the victim of breeches. His status in after life may all depend upon the fit of his first pants, and a fearful responsibility therefore belongs to the architect of that important garment. If he grows up to be wise and good, it is because he has not been reared in pantaloons so diabolically ill-shaken that he couldn’t step anywhere but in the broad road leading to evil. If he goes to the bad, it is more than probable that his starting impulse was a pair of breeches constructed by his mother in the blind zeal of imperative economy, and who, having nothing else handy, used one end of a sawbuck for a pattern. Bear a boy in baggy trousers, and the chances are that he will develop into a slouch and become a henpecked husband or a hardshell Baptist preacher. Bring him up in tight ones, and he will become deceitful and churlish, dropping into politics as naturally as young ducks •take to water. Have them too short, and he will become round-shouldered and timid, and most likely become an editor with hunger for his , bed-fellow and hard times for a playmate. If they are too long, with legs tucked into boot tops, nothing but a very attentive guardian angel and lack of opportunity can prevent his blossoming into a full-blown rowdy, with red hair on his lip and bad words in his mouth. Many a poor boy with infinite possibilities for good somewhere about him has been sent to the chaingang, we make no doubt, by a misguided mother who blighted his life with her needle. In her goodness of heart she thought she was doing something grand and saving a dollar at the same time, when the boiled-down truth about the matter is, that breeches of her construction would have made the prophet Jeremiah steal eggs. We are glad to know that the tailoring business, and the consequent power for evil, is being taken out of the hands of the boy’s mother, and that the custom of putting,store-made garments on the hope of Israel is constantly growing and waxing more so. It is an indication that the next generation will be wiser and better, and every man with -a heart not made of leather will throw up his hat and bless his eyebrows that his own boy will not have to suffer what he went through in the “little breeches” period of life. — Chicago Ledger.