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Page 16
* * * * *
BOYHOOD.
There can be no reason to doubt that METHUSELAH was blessed with a
tolerably vigorous constitution. The ordeal through which we pass to
maturity, at present, probably did not belong to the Antediluvian Epoch.
Whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever, and croup are comparatively
modern inventions. They and the doctors came in after the flood; and the
gracious law of compensation, in its rigorous inflexibility, sets these
over against the superior civilization of our golden age. At a time when
the court-dress of our ancestors was composed of fig-leaves, or of
imperfectly dressed skins--nothing like the Astrachans of the nineteenth
century--it would certainly have been very inconvenient to coddle ailing
infantry through an attack of diphtheria, for example. So bountiful
Nature, then in the first blush of maidenhood, doubtless brought the
long-lived Patriarch through his nine hundred and sixty-nine years
without once calling in the family medical adviser. It is recorded,
however, that he was born and that he died, and he therefore certainly
passed through that stage of existence called Boyhood. And as he was
nearly two hundred years old at the birth of his first-born, it is
reasonable to suppose that the adolescent period was frightfully
prolonged in his case. Just imagine a youngster of a hundred and ten or
fifteen stealing apples or running to fires! The revelations of
ethnology, which is too youthful a science to reveal a great deal, do
not oppose the theory of all matured humanity, to wit, that the animal
boy is the same in all ages and in all races, an Ishmaelite, and Ara, an
Outlaw, hedged in and restrained by laws and customs, it may be, but
innately antagonistic to society.
The Philosophers who have traced humanity through all stages of its
development, from the Aphis creeping on the rose-leaf to the full-grown
specimen in the person of a Member of Congress, have wisely and
invariably omitted all notice of boyhood in their lists of gradations
and transitions. Any thing like a fair examination of this particular
development scatters their doctrines to the four winds. Because the
salient traits to the next higher development, could not part with their
own identity, or send these distinguishing characteristics, in one fell
swoop, through many stages, only to reappear at last in the upper type,
and only between infancy and manhood, and only in one sex. This argument
is overwhelming, and the present purpose is to elucidate it by more
particular examination.
It is proper, in the first place, to gather a blossom from the negative
side of the discussion. Boys are not girls. While dogs, and foxes,
pigeons and ducks, have each a generic term applicable to both sexes,
there is a tacit understanding in civilized localities that boys compose
a distinct genus. They are, in the eye of the law, considered human,
probably because they eventually pass from boyhood to humanity, There is
an old nursery rhyme which marks the distinguishing characteristics of
juvenile members of society with remarkable accuracy:
"What are little girls made of, made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And every thing nice,
Such are little girls made of.
What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?
Snaps and snails
And puppy-dog tails,
Such are little boys made of!"
There is so apparent an air of probability about this terse statement of
the case, that it has satisfied the insatiable curiosity of infantile
minds for long ages. Little girls never doubt it, and little boys never
contradict it. If Paterfamilias has any thoughts upon the subject, he
probably thinks this expenditure of snaps and snails was a great waste
of raw material. Girls may be romps and hoydens, vixens and scolds, but
the sugar and spice will always be detected, and, with all drawbacks
allowed, the little girl is still entitled to Mr. MANTALINI'S cognomen
of "demnition sweetness." At least, this is the universal verdict of
society. From the time when she dons her first _chignon,_ (which _never_
matches the native hair, by the by,) she is nearly angelic, with some
few exceptions, perhaps, _after_ marriage.
In the way of direct proof, to return to the muttons, it may be
observed that the next link to manhood, in the philosopher's chain, is
that highly attractive animal which M. DU CHAILLU has recently
introduced to the general public. The points of resemblance betwixt the
Gorilla and the Boy are numerous and striking. In most cases, the two
animals have an equally pleasing exterior. They both have the ability to
climb giddy heights, inaccessible to any other wingless biped. Their
language is not dissimilar, the same unintelligible chatter being
characteristic of both. As the argument proceeds, it will be seen that
distinctive traits belonging to lower classes of the animal kingdom are
totally extinct in the Gorilla, while they are emphatically visible in
his successor.
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