JOTTINGS BY "SNYDER."

Evening Star, Issue 3227, 24 June 1873, Page 3

JOTTINGS BY "SNYDER."

ON OUB BOYS IN PARTICULAR—ALSO OUR GIRLS IN PARTICULAR- -LIKEWI EON PIANOS—AN U ON BOYS AND GIRLS GENERALLY. I have long noticed that when an editor gets used up for matter for a leader, he always falls back to the old stock subjects and asks “ What shall we do with our boys?” When he has washed this to rags, so that it won’t hold together any longer, he finds himself good for another column in discussing “ What shall we do with our girls ?” Now, lam going to ask, with all proper civility, what it matters to any editor what we are going to do with our boys ? That’s our business. If editors have got boys they don’t know what to do with, what’s that to me or any one else ? I suppose we shall do the same with our boys as our father did with their boys—do the best we can with ’em, and take the consequences. I remember the time when my father called me—not into his library, or his study, or his drawing-room, for he didn’t deal in these luxuries, but he called me into the back kitchen, and seating himself on the edge of a deal table, he said thus: “James Snyder, junior, I regret exceedingly to acquaint you that your appetite is getting beyond my income, and you are coming to be too mighty particular about the quality of your clothes. There’s a map of the world upstairs in your sister’s bedroom. Go you and gaze upon it, and having gazed upon it, go forth and be useful. Increase and multiply, and help to make the earth fruitful. ” And I took the old gentleman’s advice, and I went forth, and I have been going forth ever since. I have increased and multiplied, and here I am —that is, what is left of me, and there’s quite enough yet to bring out a tidy shadow. Of course I know, because I’ve read it in many a place, that a rolling stone don’t gather moss; but then, you see, I’m not a rolling stone, and so don’t want to gather moss, and I don’t know what stones want to gather moss for ; but as that’s a question of statistics or some other science

which I don’t understand, I don’t pretend to trouble myself about it. I know that I want three square meals a-day, and a fair proportion of good beer, and I know that I mean to have them, unless the laws against felony are ma le very much more stringent than they are just now. And I know that I don’t want more than this, and that if I had % billion pounds sterling coming in a-year upon compound interest, that more than three meals a day I wouldn’t want, unless I intended by malice aforethought to do violent damage to my liver. Therefore, Messieurs the editors of the Colonial Press, don’t you bother your brains about what we are going to do for our boys. They’ll come out all right, there’s nothing to be feared about that. Give them a fair schooling, instil into them a liberal allowance of morality, teach them how not to be imposed on by humbugs, prohibit them from becoming volunteers, learn them to ride a horse without stirrups, and to thrash any blackguard that calls them out of their name or insults a girl, and the time will come when these Colonial cornstalks will grow into men with a good deal of first-class material in them, and are likely to take precious little nonsense from anyone. The question they will very soon be asking is “ What shall we do wi hj our old mammies, and dads, and other elderly cripples ?” To be sure how they will laugh years hence when some old newspaper’s leading articles are shown to them commencing with, “ What shall we do with our boys?” Then, as to “What shall we do with our girls ?” it is even a greater piece of editorial impertinence. I know what I shall do with mine. I shall, as every other man will, with less than half a ton or so of common sense in him, try and drop mine, one at a time, with a wedding-ring on her finger, into some decent man’s sittingroom, where she won’t be very long before she will find her way into his kitchen, to look critically into the capacity and durability of the washing tubs; after which she will work her way into the back-yard, and asking her husband to help fasten up the clotheslines, she will

set to work like a young Colonial Briton, and won’t bother him any more for some months to come. She’ll never bo a trouble, and he will always find himself with clean shiits, and a well-shaken mattress, and his buttons all there, just where they are wanted. If he’s ill she will tend on his little selfish wants. If he’s well and cross she’ll kissallhis growlings into thin air, orblowhimup, according to her temperament, either of which is grand, in woman’s human nature. If she’s ill herself, she’ll say little or nothing, but just be less lively than usual. Her baby will be able to know what warm water and soap means, and when it grows to boy’s or girl’s estate, it will comprehend the weight of her hand to an ounce if it’s been and stole anything or tells lies. That’s the picture of a well-reared girl, and we have got hundreds and hundreds of such in this Province. Let an inquiring editor who wants to know what we will do with our girls, jump on the back of a horse, and scour round some of the country districts early q’ mornings, when he will see for himself lots of blooming girls with milk buckets, going »-milking, or in the daily churning of butter, or at harvest time in the field, gathering up the sheaves, and putting them into stocks, or riding on horse-back, with never a side-saddle, rounding up cattle, or bringing home the cows from grass, or getting breakfast ready, and singing like a heaven-bred skylark all the time. Just let him say one improper word to one of these girls, or offer an impertinence, and then, if he don’t get a slap over his eyes that will make him see millions of stars and lights and other optical illusions which will make him wonder why he was born, she is not what 1 take her for. The editor, who is always asking about our girls, and wanting to know what they are going to be at, never moves out of Queen street to get a clear sight of ’em. He looks at a lot of live dolls, giggling as they go, or peering into drapers’ windows, with long horsetails hanging down their backs, and the simpleton thinks these are a fair sample of our Colonial or Provincial womanhood. Of course these hays their uses ip nature, jjutu s t a» everything else has. Providence intended them, I suppose, as a match for spoons who hang over bar counters, and whose ambition.it is to draw salaries for mooning over ruled .account-books, or filling up blank forms in a Government office. Making puddings and playing at pianos don’t mix well somehow. A girl strums away for the matter of four or five years; then she gets married, and the result, in due course, is a “blessed babby.” Where’s the piano after tfiis? Lift the cover and youfil find ifi stuffed with needlework, and fourteen of the keys without a string to them. I know something of our boys and girls, or ought to at least, having reared between twenty-six and thirty of them myself; and this I will say, that, taking them in the lump, and leaving out the spoons of men and horsetails of girls, that our young men and women in this Province won’t be found to have their superiors going, and scarcely their equals. And so, editors who will be asking about our boys and girls, may shut up and go to bed, or write about the Ministry.—“ Snyder,” in the Weekly Herald.