His physical condition explains his marked moods: his sudden changes of front, his ascent of rare heights of impulsive idealism, and his equally sudden descent into the bogs of materialism; his unsurpassed though temporary altruism and his intermittent abandon to gross selfishness. He has range. He is a little more than himself in every direction. The wine of life is in his blood and brain. It is no wonder that somewhere about the middle of the adolescent period both conversions and misdemeanors are at their maximum. To make matters worse these vivid and unorganized experiences, simply because they lie along the shore of the infinite and have no single clue, no governing philosophy of life, are overswept by the dense and chilling fogs of unreality that roll in from the great deep. Life is swallowed up in awful mystery. External facts are less real than dreams. One stamps the very ground beneath his feet to know if it exists. The ego which must gauge itself by external bearings is temporarily adrift and lost. Suicidal thoughts are easily evoked; and at such times the luxury of being odd and hopelessly misunderstood constitutes a chameleon-like morbidity that, with a slight change of light and color, becomes an obsession of conceit. The odd one, the mystery to self and others, is he not the great one that shall occupy the center of the stage in some stupendous drama? A man now prominent in educational circles testifies how that on a drizzly night on the streets of old London the lad, then but sixteen years of age, came to a full stop, set his foot down with dramatic pose, and exclaimed with soul-wracking seriousness: The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! So is it ever with the adolescent soul unless society curses the desire for significance and makes it criminal. These bare cliffs of primal personality have not yet undergone the abrasion of the glacial drift nor of the frost and the heat, the wind and the rain of long years. They are angular, bold, defiant, and unsuited to the pastoral and agricultural scenes of middle life. The grind of life with its slow accomplishment and failure has not as yet imparted caution and discretion. Shrewd calculation and niggardliness too are normally absent. Generous estimates prevail. Idealism is passionate and turns its eye to summits that a life-time of devotion cannot scale. Honor is held in high regard and select friendships may have the intensity of religion. Judgments are without qualification. Valor, laughter and fun, excess and the love of victory mingle in hot profusion. Except in the case of the precocious boy of the street, the cold vices of cynicism, misanthropy, and avarice--the reptilians of society--are found almost exclusively among adults. The _younger_ brother is the prodigal. Experience has not taught him how to value property and the main chance.