The objective of hero-worship is always an older male--never a female. No instance of normal heroine-worship has ever been noted. The wealth of love which he may manifest toward his mother, female friend or teacher is entirely disassociated from hero-worship. It lacks the sex-element necessary to inspire emulation. He wants to be a man--not a woman. For this reason, it is desirable that he should have opportunity for association, during adolescence, with men of strong character and personality. The differences between the psychologic processes of the male and the female adult are too well known to require discussion here. Widows who keenly appreciate the absence of the father’s guiding hand frequently attempt to be both father and mother to their sons, and in so doing the apron strings are knotted doubly hard and fast. Then ensues a conflict between the feminine and maternal policy and the adolescent longing and reaching out for ultimate masculinity. The mother is the last person to recognize adolescence in her son; she wants him to remain the infant she has always regarded him. His beginnings to emulate masculinity clash with her desire to keep him a child. I have in mind a mother who is rearing the most lady-like boy in my acquaintance. Her inherent delicacy and refinement of nature prompt her to develop these same qualities in her son as the ultimate end to be attained. With no qualifications for boy-training except mother-love, feminine ideals, and an ambition to rear her son to beautiful manhood, she refuses him participation in rough and tumble sports and games because they are “rude and ungentlemanly” and besides, they would soil his clothes. Many mothers of the neighborhood hold him up to their own unregenerate offspring as a model of neatness and a paragon of propriety, but the boys call him “Sissy.” The author has witnessed many examples of apron-string policy whose unpsychological and repressive tendencies cannot fail to be detrimental to the ideal development of adolescence. Gratitude is a virtue displayed by few boys prior to the reflective period, because they fail to appreciate the motives which inspire the act which should call forth expressions of gratitude, especially if the act or service is of an altruistic nature. Of course, he will thank you for a gift of candy or a toy; but never for the time and thought expended in giving him instruction or moral training, or taking him in the woods for a day, or pointing out to him the constellations at night. He is not ungrateful. He merely accepts these things as a matter of course until he reaches the age which recognizes and appreciates the sacrifices incurred by the giver of altruistic service.