I know a fine boy of twelve, the son of a store-keeper in a small Georgia town, who is raising hens. He has forty flourishing Wyandottes, a couple of dozen Leghorns and as many Buff Cochins. He has built a substantial hen house, and fenced in a part of the yard. Friends and relatives became interested in his enterprise and gave him suggestions, the benefit of their experience, until now he is a thriving chicken farmer. Last summer, he sold on an average of five dozen eggs a day. We were among his customers, and we paid him thirty cents a dozen, his regular price, which means that the twelve-year-old made $1.50 a day, or $10.50 a week. Besides earning a little money he was having a lot of fun. He had enough on his mind to keep him out of trouble, and enough on his hands to work off the physical force that otherwise might have gone to waste, making him an undesirable citizen. ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE BOY If your boy is mischievous, can you not make a merchant or a farmer or a gardener out of him? It need not be his vocation. Let it be his avocation, his hobby. Don’t shut him in, don’t keep him down; encourage him to come out along life’s highway and show the world the sort of stuff he’s made of. A very noble-minded woman of my acquaintance is suffering from the effects of having been constantly restrained when she was a child. She is in consequence, diffident, lacking in self-confidence, liable to become the victim of a strong-willed person’s whim. She says that, as a girl, all her natural instincts were put to scorn. Full of abounding life, she loved to leap down the stairs, throw herself into her mother’s arms, shout with laughter, sing at the top of her voice as she went about her tasks. This was looked upon with horror by her sedate and cautious parent. “Don’t run down the stairs,” her mother would say. “Don’t laugh so loud!” “Don’t shout like that!” Don’t, don’t, don’t, until the poor girl did not really know what she might do with impunity. She was constantly being humiliated before visitors, and the joy in life that might have been cultivated and utilized, nay, even glorified, was driven quite out of her soul. Yet her mother was an excellent woman, who meant to do just the right thing by that little girl of hers. She had her own idea of what a young girl should be. This gay, hilarious creature was not just what the mother desired. She had hopes of bringing up a dignified, gentle, lady-like, delicate, feminine daughter rather than a hoyden. What might not that mother have done had she but understood the glorious material God had lent her to work with a little while! If she had only realized that the quality she was stamping out was a radiant, winged, rare, inspired and inspiring touch of nature springing out of a fullness of life, a superabundance of health, she might have made her child a queen among women, a leader, a creature admired and adored. THE SOUL NEEDS SPACE TO DEVELOP