we have dealt thus far more particularly with the anti-social and predatory impulses of the gang, with the stealing and teasing and fighting, which, while we cannot call them wholly evil, are nevertheless to be rather checked than encouraged. with all their incidental elements of good, they must be essentially transitory. the boy may be allowed to steal and tease and fight; the man may not. the problem is to suppress the undesirable activity with as little damage as possible.
now we pass to gang impulses which are inherently good. they may need guidance and occasional pruning; but even if left alone, they are likely, on the whole, to contribute both to the efficiency and the happiness of life. such evils as they bring are incidental; they largely disappear when home life and110 gang life are perfectly adjusted to one another.
for there must be a pretty accurate balance between the life of the home and the life of the gang, if the boy is to get the best training out of both. if the boy stays at home too much, he is likely to become sissy. if he spends too much time with his gang, the wild and savage impulses of boyhood receive too much exercise, and he becomes wolfish. the boy must, for the most part, make his social adjustments for himself, and the safest time for doing it is while he is still in the home. boys who have been kept too close, up to the time when they go away to make life for themselves, too often afford most striking lessons in how not to do it. in college and in business, under their unaccustomed liberty, they go all to pieces for lack of the education which they should have had as boys in the gang.
the problem of controlling the instinctive gang activities, therefore, resolves itself into a question of not too much. the home will best influence the gang by aiding its111 more wholesome interests, while to a considerable extent it shuts its eyes to the rest. each man does, in his social development, pass through various stages of savagery, and instead of trying to crush out even the most objectionable of the tribal instincts of the growing boy, we ought rather to seek to satisfy them in such wise that he may pass through the lower stages into the higher as safely and as quickly as possible. as froebel has well said, “the vigorous and complete development of each successive stage depends upon the vigorous and characteristic development of all preceding stages of life.”
the way, then, to deal with the gang instincts is to gratify them. we have already seen that approximately three quarters of our gangs are wont to indulge in hunting, fishing, boating, building camps, going into the woods or to ponds, playing indians, and the like. this is especially remarkable, as nearly all the gangs of our study come from the cities. in country gangs, these forms of activity are always present. with both city and country boys, they might be made112 of far greater service than they commonly are.
all persons who have camped with boys know that their interest in the outdoor world does not have to be kindled, but rather restrained and guided. there is never any difficulty about filling in the idle time of the gang with these tribal activities, while there is no doubt that the rugged experiences of tramping, mountain climbing, and camp life, of hunting, fishing, and boating, with the almost infinite forms of manual training involved, wherever the boys do their own cooking and camp work, and care for their own rods, guns, and kits, afford one of the best, as it is one of the most natural, forms of manual education. there is, besides, for the city boy, a training in resourcefulness and gumption which he can hardly get elsewhere. moreover, under the proper sort of men leaders, this rough outdoor life furnishes the very best conditions for instruction in physical and moral hygiene.
somewhat paradoxically, therefore, much of this gang play trains a boy to work. play113 is work that one likes. but it is work, and it cultivates the same concentration and persistence as work, and often the same constructive imagination. boys, moreover, often work hard getting ready to play; and by a little tactful guidance from their elders, they can be led through these play activities to the enjoyment of work, and into sound developmental occupations. notice how in the tennis club, the boys, under the inspiration of mr. m., the father of one of them, went camping on a lake, and for the sake of going fishing, built themselves their own boat. what better education in skill of hand than that boat-building could be found for a crowd of boys on a summer vacation; what better introduction to the joy of labor!
the life of the woods has, moreover, yet another important function in the development of a boy’s inner life. i have often, in taking cross country walks with boys, attempted to switch out from among the trees into open meadow or pasture land to save distance. over and over again, however, have the boys protested. “no, don’t. let’s114 stay in the woods,” they have entreated. i am inclined to believe that the religious life in boys has its natural birthplace in the forests, in the temple not made with hands, where their fathers have been worshiping these ten thousand years. if this be true, the sunday school teacher might well, at times, exchange the benches of an uninteresting room for the spots where our race, from the beginnings of its existence, has been learning its lessons of piety and reverence.
sunday is, in fact, the great day of the week, for or against the home. it is, as appears from the boys’ reports of their activities, characteristically nature day; and there is a well-marked practice among boys, no matter what they may do through the week, to go off in groups into the country on sunday. parents who wish to keep control of their boys should recognize this natural impulse, and be their companions on their sunday excursions. family migrations, on the one day of the week when the father is free to go with his boys, would115 be an efficient means of keeping the home influence around the boy. surely there can in this be nothing irreligious.
such a practice would, moreover, powerfully aid the parent in controlling one of the most troublesome of gang instincts, the wanderlust. the roving impulse takes a sudden rise at the dawn of adolescence, and then gradually subsides. most red-blooded young men hear the call of the red gods in the spring; not a few remain vagabonds all their lives.
certain it is that this strange wanderlust of man has been a tremendous force in history. it drove the angles and saxons into britain, the english into north america, and the new englanders into the great west. the traditional westerner is planning to sell out and move farther on. the mere sight of the horizon is a challenge; and the boy longs to repeat the ancestral experience.
in the normal boy, the migratory instinct is at times the most imperious of his impulses. many boys are driven by it to run116 away from home; few, indeed, are there of us who have not made our plans to go—and then changed our minds. it commonly takes the combined influence of good parents, good teachers and good playmates to cool us down; and where the neighborhood spirit is lost, as it often is in city life to-day, or the home is broken by death or desertion, or made inefficient by drunkenness, ignorance, or poverty, there is little to check the boy’s response to the old fret. off, therefore, the boy goes, first by day, then by night. how far this running-away instinct contributes to delinquency, it is difficult to estimate, but certainly it is one of the greatest factors. about one boy out of every five in most of our large cities is arrested before the age of twenty-one; and in a considerable proportion of cases the beginnings of wrongdoing can be traced to early wanderings.
on the other hand, running away from home does not always result in permanent moral harm; while even at the worst, the boy gains a self-reliance which nothing else can teach. often, too, the impulse, instead117 of growing with what it feeds on, tends to disappear with its gratification. there is something to be said also for giving the boy his fill of one sort of adventure before he is old enough for another.
as the migratory impulse is far too deep-seated and powerful to be altogether restrained, the only method is to indulge it under supervision and educatively. the boy should be taken on any sort of interesting trip. if the expedition involves some bodily hardship, so much the better. the son of a good home is usually made too comfortable, and unconsciously he feels the need of some more invigorating substitute for warm room and soft bed. when, therefore, nothing better offers itself, it often does a boy good to sleep out in his own back yard, with a dismantled revolver in his belt, and a lasso hung beside him on the clothes pole. he will probably not get much sleep, and he may catch cold; but the experience will be a powerful stimulus to his imagination, and at the same time will help, at small risk, to gratify a wholesome instinct.
118 the wise parent will take every opportunity to go on trips with his sons to city or country; the gymnastic instructor will arrange cross-country runs for his boys in spring and fall; and the school-teacher will plan nature-study walks, trips to historic spots, or visits to industrial plants, where, under a well-informed guide, the class will learn about manufacturing processes from the raw material to the finished product. all these persons are killing two birds with one stone. they are satisfying the runaway instinct, while at the same time they furnish the best sort of education.
in all sections of our land there are sacred historic spots, buildings, graveyards, battle-grounds, which help to keep alive the memory of noble men and women. there is a period in boy life when these have an intense interest; when the boy, eager for any form of experience or adventure, has his imagination powerfully stirred by whatever he associates with the adventures and experience of other human beings. i have often visited historic concord with groups of school-boys,119 and though they were of all nationalities, i have yet to find one who could not be deeply impressed at the sight of concord bridge and the statue of the minute man. teachers who were present, and told their pupils the story of what had happened on that ground, reported after their return the extraordinary interest of the boys’ essays on their pilgrimage. the boys had seen with their eyes and the past had become real. could there be any more effective method of teaching history, quite aside from the incidental satisfaction of a deep instinctive need?
if, in addition to such informative trips, the parent or teacher can go camping or tramping with his boys, then the climax is reached. some pond should be selected with good boating, fishing, and swimming, and there ought to be a mountain near by which the boys can climb, camp on its sides overnight, and go to the top for sunrise. such an experience will never be forgotten. not only will it tend to kindle a lifelong interest in hills and mountains; in addition and more120 important still, the companionship in adventure gives the man a hold over his boys that nothing else can bestow. in the woods, on the mountain top and around the camp fire at night, come feelings of mystery, of awe, and of friendliness, to which the boy is at other times a stranger. here is the opportunity for genuine moral and religious instruction. better one straight talk under these conditions, than a whole year of lessons forced upon boys. genuine morality and genuine religion are such deep and sacred and natural things that a little real inspiration lasts forever.
probably, however, the most obvious and the most annoying aspect of the wanderlust is truancy. it takes a shrewd teacher who knows boys, backed by a good home, to hold a boy in the schoolroom in the warm days of spring when the baseball fever is at its height. most boys become thoroughly tired of the inactivity, restraint and monotony of the schoolroom; while the matter is by no means simplified by the fact that the teacher herself commonly belongs to the sex to which121 certain aspects of boy nature must be forever a closed book. granted that truancy is not to be tolerated, we must never, in dealing with any actual truant, lose sight of the fact that truancy is not a sin. it arises from two co?perating forces,—the lack of adaptation of the schools to the needs of growing boys, and the determination of the boys to be true to their own nature. for one of these factors we elders are responsible; the boy is responsible for neither.
this is the day of athletics. the adult world has learned thoroughly the lesson that there can be no perfect physical development without the training which comes from the competitive and group games. hardly less important, of late years, has been the emphasis of those who know boys best on the social and moral aspects of athletic training. the best boys’ schools to-day provide for outdoor and indoor sports as carefully as for any other branch of education.
this lesson, i say, we have at last pretty well learned. we have not yet discovered, however, that the native impulses which lead122 a boy to baseball and hockey are only part of his equipment of gang instincts. the desire for athletic exercise which, at least for the favored few, is now being gratified at so great an expense, is no older and no more deep-seated than the desire for these activities which we have called, for lack of a better name, tribal and migratory. the boy needs diamond and gymnasium and running track. but quite as much he needs mountain and lake and river and forests. he takes a step toward manhood when he stands by his fellows through a hard-fought match. he also takes a step toward manhood when he sleeps alone under the stars.
in one respect, moreover, the boy who plays ball is at no small disadvantage in after life as compared with the boy who plays indian. the athlete will play his favorite game while he is at school. he will get a thorough and wholesome physical training, and possibly some not especially wholesome notoriety. if his parents can afford to keep him four years in college, he plays there. afterwards, unless he is especially fortunate,123 he does not play at all; and all his carefully acquired skill goes for nothing.
but the boy who has indulged wisely his tribal and migratory instincts has for the rest of his life a never-failing source of happiness. he has learned to love nature, and to delight in his own handiwork. to walk in the woods, to climb mountains, to own the little camp which succeeds to the place in his affections once occupied by the rude, gang-built hut, to travel,—these are among the permanent satisfactions of life. if we except the group of instincts which lead the young man to found a family of his own, and to which, at the gang age, the boy should be a complete stranger, the tribal instincts of boyhood, wisely gratified and trained, are probably the greatest single factor in a happy life.
