p. 235Boyhood

How Boys look up to their Father

If fathers only knew the magic power they possess of filling the souls of their boys,—while boyhood’s golden day is still in its morning,—with sweet and holy memories that remain to embalm and sanctify a whole lifetime! Somehow, girls look to their mothers for all that makes the enchantment of their earliest years; but a boy, with the instincts and yearnings of manhood strong within him, will look up to his father as his ideal,—and to imitate him will as surely be his first endeavor, as that of the bird impelled to leave the nest, will be to try its wings in following the flight of its parent. Girls are like sweet and delicate flowers that need far more of shade than of sunshine, shedding their fragrance and displaying their loveliness in the quiet nooks of the garden, or along the shady borders of some lake in the woods. Boys are like the trees in the forest; they will shoot up their slender stems alongside the parent trunk, stretching ever upward to spread their branches in the full light and heat of noonday.

Companionship with their father is the first great ambition of boys to whom God has given a true father, one worthy to be admired and imitated; outside of school-hours, they yearn to spend with him every moment of recreation and repose. From their mother they receive in the morning and evening, as it were, a double bath of life. A boy returns to his mother’s arms and rests in the sweet glow of her affection at evening, when he has had his fill of lusty effort and outdoor exercise, as naturally as the lark, after sunset, descends from the purple clouds where he has been circling and carolling since early dawn, and seeks his nest in the flowering grasses. Her voice, the dear light of her eyes, her smile, and her caresses have on every faculty of a boy’s soul the same effect that the subdued glow of twilight, the stillness, coolness, and dews of night have on growing shrub and tree after the parching day, the wind, and the storm.

The caresses of maternal love, the prayers murmured by her side, the kiss and the blessing with which she consigns her dear ones to sleep and to the keeping of their Guardian Angels,—are, in very truth, the sweetest image of God’s infinite tenderness. The lessons of piety instilled into the willing heart of boyhood in these dear evening and morning hours, sink as naturally into its very substance and penetrate to the inmost sources of spiritual life, as surely as the dew sinks into the thirsty soil and penetrates by every pore of tree and shrub and flower, of the grass on the meadow and the ripening corn, refreshing and invigorating their exhausted life-currents.

A Divine Work Divinely Performed

Such is to boyhood, each morning and evening, the loving office of motherhood, the complement of the father’s companionship throughout the day. Happy, most happy the boys whose father’s gentle and pious care lends itself with devout and grateful eagerness to helping this office of motherly love. What may not be expected from boyhood reared beneath the united influence of this twofold tenderness of a father and a mother whose affection is sanctified by the divine blessing, and whose cooperation in training their dear ones, is—they know and feel it—a divine work divinely performed!

Let parents forgive us. We are treating of sonship, its duties, and its virtues. What we have been just describing lies at the very root of all filial virtue; such nurture as we here hint at disposes the soul to find the performance of all duty sweet, as surely as the loving husbandry of the gardener, aided by the late and the early rain, and all the gentle influences of the heavens, prepares the fruit tree to bear in autumn its most delicious fruit.

The Parents’ Ideal in their Work

One word, then, about that ideal which both parents ought to keep before their eyes in forming the soul and the exterior deportment of every one of their boys. Of course, in Catholic homes we suppose that every father, who has at heart the preserving of his boy’s soul in supernatural grace, will make him familiar with the infancy and boyhood of our divine Lord. No Catholic home ought to be without “The Life of Christ, by St. Bonaventura;” and no father ought to allow a single year to pass by without reading this most beautiful book to all his children. We suppose, moreover, that they are made acquainted with such sweet models of boyish innocence, grace, and heroism as are found in the lives of St. Aloysius, St. Stanislaus Kostka, Blessed John Berchmans, and others that we need not name here.

What, however, it is imperative to set here before the minds of parents and boys alike is some living exemplar of lovely youth in boys brought up in the world and for the world. For in such we see more easily models that young men of the world can imitate, models which will draw the eyes and the hearts of boyhood, and inflame them with a noble emulation.

Here, then, is the picture of a noble Christian youth from the pen of a woman of the late middle age:

“He was a vessel of all goodness, pitifulness, benignity, and sweetness. In his boyhood and early youth he was comely, cheerful, fond of pastime, and inclined to love all that was honorable and could be loved without sin: he was bright and gentle in his manner, having always kind words to say, open-handed, and so affable and gracious in his address that all who saw him were drawn to him, princes, princesses, knights, nobles, and folk of every sort. But when the good duke came to maturer years, all this joyous and innocent youth turned into sense and moderation, good counsel, devotion, and constancy; and though his conduct was ever deserving of all praise, yet he now seemed to advance still higher in the degrees of all virtues. He was a shining model of charity: he used to succor poor gentlemen, to bestow great gifts on poor monks and indigent clergymen; to poor scholars and to the needy of every condition he was a compassionate and bountiful almsgiver. He is also wont to dispense abundant alms in secret; he trusts in God with invincible faith, and turns to Him in all his necessities.”¹1Christine de Pisan, Livre des Fais, tome ii., ch. xiv.

This is the mirror we hold up to parents. For the guidance of mothers, while training their boys to all manliness, we have laid down rules in another work.²2See “The Mirror of True Womanhood.” So now we address ourselves directly to the boy and the young man themselves.

The Two Things recommended to Boys

We have lived all our lifetime among you, O you, who are so dear to us, that we should willingly give time, strength, life, and all to teach you the right road, as we now see it; to fill your minds with noble thoughts, noble ideals, noble memories; to inspire you with noble aims, noble sentiments, and the courage that is equal to every noble enterprise: we would fain fill your hearts, while pursuing all that is most elevating and ennobling, with joy so bright and so overflowing, that your course should resemble the clear, blue, full stream of the Rhone where it issues purified from the Lake of Geneva, and prepares to be the glory and wealth of Southern France.

“We have two qualities in our souls,”—wrote Plato long ages ago,—“which we must preserve with equal solicitude; the one which prompts us to dare, and the other which constrains us to fear:—to be bold for virtue, and to be afraid in respect to vice.”³3De Legibus, i.

We purpose to point out to you here in a few pregnant words, what are the lawful objects on which boyhood and youth may and should exercise that courage, daring, and generosity of spirit,—that true chivalry which is innate in them; and what, on the other hand, are those enemies which they have most to dread while running their race of high-souled generosity.

Generosity of Spirit: its Object, DUTY

Begin with your home-life. Learn early how to ennoble every act of yours by acquiring, before and above all things, to propose as the motive of your entire life, DUTY. Make of the lofty sense of your duty to God the motive of your duty to your parents; and your early home-life having been thus sanctified by perfect conformity to the Divine Will, and to the will of your parents in view of the Divine Majesty, this same elevation of purpose will follow you through life outside of the paternal home, making your whole career most pleasing in the sight of God and most lovely before men.

Let us understand this well, without putting this vital practical truth into a form that may at all savor of the pulpit, the catechism, or the school-room. We know that we hold our being throughout this life and the eternity of the life to come from Him whom we call God and Father. In the early chapters of this book is set forth the incomparable and incomprehensible generosity with which he so disposes all things in this life that we may be secure in serving Him while discharging all the offices of true manhood, and that He prepares our magnificent reward in his own Eternal Home.

He is our God and our Father;—owing everything to Him, our utmost reach of generosity in His service is rigorously due to Him. He alone has the supreme and indisputable right to oblige us, to bind the will of his creature, to dispose of our being, our time, our actions, or to communicate to others any share of that imprescriptible authority over us, that essentially belongs to Him as to the sole Author of all things.

The Glory of Life is the Discharge of Duty

Just as a most generous and high-souled child in a family would deem it due to his best of parents ever to look up to him in order to ascertain his will and pleasure, making of the fulfillment of the paternal will and pleasure, the pride and joy and happiness of his own life;—even so, O children of God, must you deem it your highest honor and make it your highest happiness to look up to that Father, most worthy of all love and praise and service, and to place in the discharge of your DUTY the pride and glory of your life.

He it is who places our parents over us in the home, and our superiors over us in Church and State. Their authority is derived from the Divine Author of our being. The reverence and obedience we pay to them is before all and above all due to Him. The fulfillment, therefore, of all duty in the home and outside of it is only the discharge of a most sacred obligation to Him who has the first right to command, and who knows how to reward with more than royal or imperial generosity the lowest duty as well as highest, the most obscure as well as the most public and glorious,—because he looks to the heart with which we do it.

Precisely because this loving and conscientious discharge of duty is so dear to God and so necessary and meritorious to us, He implanted in the very depths of our nature what philosophers and theologians call the moral sense, the sense of duty. Do not turn away from this page with the notion, that we are entering upon a dull and dry discussion of a thing which is beyond the reach of most men. We shall endeavor to make this important matter both intelligible and interesting to you.

The Sense of Duty,—Man’s Chief Character

God gives to every living thing faculties, senses, instincts most admirably adapted to the kind of life they have to lead. The bee needs no education or training to prepare it to select the flowers from which it gathers its wax and its honey; nor does it study the rules of geometry before setting about the construction of its hive; nor has it to learn the topography of the neighboring country in order to make sure of finding its way to the sweetest flowers or the richest gardens, and then to retrace its path home to the hive. It has received from the All-Wise Creator the instinctive knowledge that enables it to construct its hive in the proper place, to fashion the powder it brings home so as to produce the best wax; and it has a model in its mind of every cell that it builds, so that no architect’s rule and compass are needed to correct its measurements or improve the exquisite regularity of the construction. The young bee as it first issues from its pupa state, is ready for its work, issues forth to gather wax and honey without a guide to lead it to its working grounds;—and, no matter how far it wanders from the hive, it wings its way back with unerring instinct.

The notions of right and wrong, the sense of duty and obligation, are, within the human soul, instincts derived from nature, like the powers of the bee,—derived rather from the divine Author of nature,—with this difference, that whereas the bee is born perfect and able at once to fulfill the end of its existence, man is only born perfectible, capable of attaining by education, training, self-culture and meritorious effort the full moral and intellectual perfection of his being.

How this Sense must be Developed in Boyhood

The sense of duty, with its corresponding inborn conception of obligation, of right and wrong, is like the natural gift of music and the vocal power of song. It has to be directed to its proper object, exercised, developed, and perfected.

Thrice happy the child, when the light of conscious reason first dawns upon his soul, whose parent is at hand to instruct him in the knowledge of his Almighty Creator, sweetly aiding mind and heart to find and grasp the supremely True and Good and Fair,—just as the first tendrils of the vine-plant are trained to grasp the oak on which it will soon hang its rich clusters, just as the acorn is planted where it finds a congenial soil and atmosphere, with sunlight and warmth to unfold all its mighty germs of strength and durability!

The man in whom this sense of duty was not thus early cultivated and developed, remains for ever stunted in his moral growth, incomplete in his manhood, a failure at best, and most frequently a bane to society and a curse to his fellow-men.

Where is the boy not deformed in intellect by a wrong culture, or depraved in heart by vicious association or self-indulgence, who does not yearn to become a perfect man, a true man,—a man great in knowledge, great in moral worth, great in his deeds, great in the eyes of God,—though he may not care to be great in the esteem and judgment of the world? The aspirations of the heart of boyhood and youth, where the Christian faith is the light in which all things are viewed and judged, are not the promptings of pride, but the sense of responsibility, and the desire to be all that God wills each one to be. It is the fully grasped sense of that awful parable where the great King distributes talents to his servants ere he departs on some distant expedition. There are splendid rewards for those who double their gains; for the man who buries his gift, there is nothing but despair and gnashing of teeth.

Daring to be Great and Good for God’s sake

The child of Catholic parents with the deep and abiding sense of duty toward Him who is King, and Father, and Judge, will not be apt to think too highly of his own fidelity to the divine trust: he will rather, in that true humility inseparable from innocence and the presence of divine grace in the soul, feel disposed to see only his own shortcomings.

We would, therefore, where a boy’s soul is noble and fired with a noble ambition, in which there mingles much more of the desire of doing God good service, than of gaining worldly praise, encourage him to aim high and do nobly,—to be a man among men, foremost among the best, like a tree of generous growth aspiring amid its fellows of the forest to rise ever higher toward the sunlight, the free air, and the broad, bright heavens, struggling to overtop them all,—and that, so as to be hindered of none from spreading its uplifted arms to the sun, the dew, and the breeze.

Provided the habitual thought and love of God with the living sense of duty be the motive power of your life, I bid you be generous and dare much.

The Love of Duty Tested

This generous sense of duty, this chivalrous ambition of being foremost in all that is good and most pleasing to the Divine Majesty, must be proved and tested by loving, heart-felt, and constant service done to your parents. Unless your boyhood and youth bear these fruits of filial obedience and all most loving duty to father and mother, there is but little ground, if any, to hope that you may ever become a good or a great man. He never was a conscientious, faithful, meritorious servant of his country or fellow-citizens, who was a bad son or an unnatural brother.

If parents only follow the rules given above,⁴4Chapters X., XI. you will have in them such models as you will glory in imitating, such lofty and sweet authority as shall make obedience both easy and honorable. Still must you not fail either in reverence or in dutiful obedience even when they are not patterns of high virtue, or distinguished for culture, refinement, and amenity of disposition.

Obey, then, promptly, joyously, lovingly,—setting before your mind the Eternal Son of God made man, who so obeyed for thirty long years, thereby setting a pattern to the boyhood and youth of all time, whether living beneath the paternal roof, or reared outside of it under proper masters for the exercise of that profession, which they are in due time to honor by all the excellence of manly virtue.

Remember, that, in the old chivalrous ages, there was nothing to which boys and young men, who aspired to the rank of knighthood, applied themselves so readily, as to acquire the praise of obedience. For he alone was deemed worthy to lead, who had long learned to follow; he alone was judged fit to command, who had learned to obey; he alone could hope to attain supreme perfection in any craft or profession, who had sat for years under wise and skilled masters, till he had himself become a thorough master in what could alone raise him to the first rank.

Obedience is Heroic Love

Beside the universally acknowledged necessity of this preparatory discipline to the young, there is in the happiness which such loving submission causes to parents, a something that must appeal powerfully to the frank and generous spirit of boyhood. How many noble boys have we not known who could not brook the thought of disobeying even in the most trifling matters, because they felt themselves how exquisite was the pleasure they gave their parents by their constant and perfect obedience,—their true love making them fear to cast the slightest shadow over this happiness!

We who are grown old and look back with such mingled feelings of regret and pleasure over the past years,—know how sweet above all sweetness, is the memory of a parent’s delight, manifested by loving word or look or caress in approval of generous obedience or duty faithfully fulfilled.

Listen to what one who had searched all the ancient literature of Christendom, as he had explored its castles, palaces, and monasteries, in quest of the records of Christian chivalry, says of this spirit of obedience as practiced by our forefathers:

“The squire of chivalry had to perform the most laborious offices, and the blow which he received on admission to the order was to denote the sufferings for which he had still to prepare himself. Büsching remarks that ‘the habit of obedience, the principle of which was derived from the patriarchal ages, thus learned in youth, was a noble preparation for subsequent command. The progress to knighthood was long and gradual; nothing sudden hurried the boy from an unwarlike service to the life of peril. Every one had to obey and learn, so that step by step he might become familiar with the dangers and troubles of a chivalrous life.’ Equally admirable were the effects of this education in regard to religion and the cultivation of the mind. The saints have shown that the way of holiness lies in obedience and observance of the most minute rules. That furious ardor for bursting every restraint which possesses so many of the moderns, ends, we find, in the subjection of the soul to the passions, or in the loss of reason.”

“No rank was then exempt from obedience. Von Gravenberg relates how his hero, Wigolais, though a king’s son, was bred up like other boys, to discharge every kind of youthful service. The squire and the knight were able to say, like the youth in Athenæus, ‘If a ladder must be mounted, I am a goat; if a blow is to be endured, I am an anvil; for drinking water, I am a frog; for bearing the winter’s cold without shelter, I am a blackbird,—the summer heat, a grasshopper; for walking barefoot any moment in the morning, a crane; for passing a sleepless night, a bat.’”⁵5Kenelm Henry Digby, “Orlandus,” i., pp. 351, 352.

So much on this divine generosity which boyhood can display in the loving obedience paid to parents or to all who hold their place.

The divine Strength and Joy springing from Obedience

Boys do not always, indeed, only a small number do ever, appreciate or understand the force of soul derived from this habit of obedience, especially when it is founded on the supernatural motive mentioned,—imitation of the Incarnate God.

Persons who begin to practice what is known as “mountaineering,”—the climbing of the loftiest mountains and the most inaccessible peaks,—are at first conscious only of the fatigue and the danger accompanying their efforts. But, by degrees, to the sense of danger succeeds that of security, and fatigue diminishes with exercise, while success in ascending one elevation after another, imparts not only delight to the soul, but ever-increasing vigor and power of endurance to the limbs.

Even so has God, the author of our nature, so disposed things, that the discipline of obedience, when generously undergone, imparts to the will power to overcome difficulties seemingly insurmountable.

Dare to be obedient, then, and to emulate in this heroic discipline of self-subjection your Guide and Master, Christ!

Dare also to be temperate and self-denying. This, evidently, was understood to be an integral part of the hardy and wholesome discipline imposed on our forefathers in their boyhood and youth.

One unpracticed in husbandry might complain of the skilled gardener who, when he has fruit trees of great promise, will set about pruning them, lopping off branches on every side, and thereby destroying the grace and symmetry of his favorites. Nay, he does more than that; when springtide calls forth all the loveliness of his garden, and every tree is covered with its sweet blossoms, the gardener will watch each blossom as it falls to give place to the precious fruit,—mercilessly cutting away the flowers and fruits that he deems superfluous or threaten to overload the branches and overtax the vitality of the tree, sparing only the fruit which promises to be excellent, and by its very excellence to compensate for the loss of quantity.

The Pruned Tree bears the Richest Fruit

Boyhood is the fruit tree, covered with the fair and exuberant blossoms of promise. Who would bear fruits of unquestioned excellence, must allow the wise and foreseeing husbandry of a father, a mother, or a master’s hand to prune, and to graft, and to retrench even the sweetest flowers of natural wealth.

A tree allowed to grow up in a rich soil, unpruned and untrained, in its own wild luxuriance, will either run altogether into barren leaf, or produce, year after year, a crop of fruit of decreasing value in savor, in quality, in all real excellence.

So is it with a boy who is allowed to indulge, unrestrained, all his appetites, and to follow without hindrance the bent of all his inclinations.

“The Spaniard”—says Landor—“has the qualities of the cedar, patient of cold and heat, nourished on little, lofty and dark, unbending and incorruptible.” Prescott, in recounting the conquest of Mexico, sets forth the extraordinary abstemiousness and power of endurance of Cortes and his companions. A small ration of bread or Indian corn distributed to each soldier once in the twenty-four hours, was sufficient to sustain the heroic band amid the literally unceasing attacks of the Mexicans who surrounded them on every side; and for months they had to subsist on this, while performing feats of valor and undergoing fatigues which appear incredible to modern readers. But no other nation save one habitually temperate and abstemious to an uncommon degree could have borne up against this accumulation of labor and suffering. Nor has the Spaniard of to-day degenerated from the lofty picture drawn of him by Landor.

Such was also the ancient Republican Roman as painted by Livy, “with a soul that nothing could conquer, an integrity that nothing could corrupt; despising riches, abstinent and patient of labor, of an iron frame and will.”⁶6History, xxxix. 40.

Temperance and Piety go hand in hand

In the heroic ballad poetry which describes the struggle maintained for eight centuries by Christian Spain against the Mohammedan,—the noblest national poetry in existence,—you have all the great virtues of the true man described and illustrated in the lives of numberless warriors. In the poem of the Cid a recreant knight is thus condemned:

It was the custom for all,—for knights, particularly,—to hear mass daily. As this was the commemoration of His sacrifice who refused at the very moment of crucifixion and at the height of his agony on the cross, to drink even the wine and gall which would have made him insensible to pain,—so men who professed to imitate Him in self-sacrifice and denial deemed it monstrous to assist at the divine commemoration otherwise than fasting. Nor was it less inconsistent to assuage one’s thirst before having offered up one’s morning adoration to God.

Would that such custom, together with the deep spirit of faith from which it sprung, was more general among us here in this New World!

In the life of Henry IV. of France, it is related that he was from infancy inured to all manner of hardship. He was made to go with boys of his own age, barefooted and bareheaded, to climb his native mountains. If he could only have retained these habits and all akin to these until his dying day, what a noble record had been his! The brave Du Guesclin, and Bayard, the model knight, were trained in the same healthful school of temperance.

St. Louis in his Boyhood, your Model

These were all men of the world. Let us say one word of another who, while discharging all the duties of a sovereign, a soldier, a father, and a master, showed himself all through life, from earliest boyhood till his too early death, the most faultless and glorious model of every age.

St. Louis, King of France (Louis IX.), had for his companion, friend, and biographer, the Sire de Joinville, from whose life-like portraiture we borrow a few traits.

“The Saint,” says he, “loved truth to such a degree, that even with the Saracens he would not draw back from what he had promised them. As to his appetite, he was so indifferent, that never in my life did I hear him ask for any particular dish, as many rich men do, but he ate contentedly of what the cooks served up to him. He was measured in his speech; for never in my life did I hear him speak ill of any one, nor did I ever hear him name the devil, a name widely spread through the realm, which cannot, I think, be pleasing to God. He diluted his wine by measure, according as he saw the wine could bear it. He asked me in Cyprus why I put no water into my wine; and I answered him the reason was because the physicians had told me that I had a large head and a cold stomach, and therefore need not fear becoming intoxicated. He replied that they deceived me; for if I did not learn in my youth to dilute my wine, and wished to do it in my old age, I should be attacked with gout and pains in my stomach, so that I should never have health; and if in my old age I drank wine by itself, I should become intoxicated every evening, and it was a sorry thing for a man of worth to get drunk.”⁷7Hutton’s translation.

The heroic king carried his abstemiousness much farther than is related of him here. He was only a boy—eleven years old—when he succeeded to the throne in 1226. Still, even at that age,—so carefully had he been brought up by his admirable mother, Blanche of Castile,—he showed himself endowed with the virtues of ripe manhood. He had learned under his mother’s training “to be perfect master in the house of his own soul,” that is, to hold under control his temper, his appetites, and his passions.

Let our young readers not turn away in dismay or discouragement from the perfect virtue of this gentle boy-king, as if it were an ideal too far above the reach of boyish imitation. Such virtue was not so very uncommon in the thirteenth century. Boys of all classes, in town and country, bore stamped upon their features something of the sweet supernatural piety, the modest, open air of unsuspecting innocence that we read of in Aloysius Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka. These were ages of faith, when childhood, boyhood, youth and early manhood were kept as free from the knowledge of all moral evil, as the heart of the rosebud is closed against the outside air till such time as it can unfold itself to the sunlight.

With that candor, simplicity, and childlike humility, were united robust health and a manly eagerness for all discipline that could enable the boy to become the accomplished youth, and the man to be fit for all the duties and responsibilities of his station in life.

Dare to Excel in whatever you do

Boys, moreover, were then trained in the notion that to excel in the avocation to which they were born and trained,—though only that of the craftsman, the farmer, or the shepherd,—was to fulfill the Divine Will, and to render one’s self deserving of the highest reward in the gift of the all-knowing and all-just. They were all taught that the poor carpenter Joseph and his humble companion Mary, though filling only obscure and lowly stations in the eyes of the world, were most dear to the heart of God and most exalted in the reverence of Christian ages. They knew, from the lives of the Saints familiar to them in the household teaching, and enshrined within their churches, or sculptured in stone on cathedral porch, or pictured in the lofty stained-glass windows,—that there were canonized gardeners like St. Isidore, the patron of Spain, canonized craftsmen like St. Eligius of Noyon, canonized shepherds like St. Genevieve, canonized servants like St. Zita and St. Margaret of Louvain, canonized slaves like St. Blandina, and so many others. The very apostles, who were universally revered as the spiritual parents of the Christian world, were fishermen who plied their trade on the Lake of Galilee,—and their Master was, in his day, held by his countrymen to be only a carpenter’s son, and a carpenter himself, a near kinsman of these same Galileans, his first disciples and the apostles of his faith.

So, true manhood in the lowest ranks of Christian society was held to have its ideal perfection in being able to fulfill successfully the labors and duties of one’s calling,—moral and spiritual excellence alone entitling either the peasant or the prince, the craftsman or the king to supreme glory in heaven or supreme honor on earth, to reign with Christ in eternity, or here below to occupy among the multitude of holy men and women a niche over altar or porch in God’s earthly temple.

So, the pursuit of all intellectual and moral excellence necessary to one’s condition and compatible with one’s duties,—all in conformity with His will for whom alone all labored,—such was the conviction which regulated the aim and ambition of every man, woman, and child in these ages of faith, so little known by our modern world.

Why the Boy-King, St. Louis, is proposed as a Model

Do not fancy, therefore, that the lovely figure of the boy-king, Louis IX., is that of one whom you may not and should not imitate. Even though a king in his own right at eleven, he continued to be in all things subject to his mother, the Regent, till his majority. But as he had been from childhood the most loving, tender, respectful, and obedient of sons, so he continued all through his youth and manhood, till that most admirable parent was taken from him.

She had taught him to be gentle, and temperate, and abstemious, and austere in his own private life;—not only abstemious in the use of wine, from which he abstained altogether during entire seasons, and which he never used save in small quantities and mixed with water,—but in all other things. He never would allow himself to taste delicacies of any kind, such as very rare fruits, or fruits when they first began to be sold in the market and were very dear. He wore frequently, and for whole days together, a hair shirt beneath his robes or his heavy armor. King as he was, he was an enemy to extravagance or costliness in dress. On state occasions he appeared with becoming magnificence, just as his hospitality was always magnificent. But outside of such occasions, his dress was of the simplest kind, as his diet was ever of the plainest food.

With all that, he was every inch a king, a statesman, and a soldier, as all the world knows.

You also, who are of the boy-king’s age, must dare to be, like him, most generous in dutiful respect and obedience to your parents and masters; most generous in self-control and self-denial,—in temperance, meekness, modesty, in purity of soul and body, in studiousness, love of labor and self-cultivation, in ambition to be first in God’s favor, and in accomplishing all that is most difficult and heroic in order to become His worthy servants and sons.

Of what you must fear and shun we make no special mention at present. By practicing the virtues above enumerated you will be sufficiently guarded against the evils most to be feared at your age. Besides, what is said in the chapter immediately preceding this, and elsewhere throughout this book, on the obstacles to true manliness of character, will teach you what we would have you avoid and abhor.

We must not leave you, O children of God, without submitting to you, not for the mere purpose of admiration only, but for that of imitation, one instance which you will yourselves, we doubt it not, judge worthy of being honored by a careful remembrance.

If you would look with veneration upon the heroic figures of seven boys,—the sons of a sublime mother,—then turn to what we have elsewhere written.⁸8See the Story of the Suffering of the Seven Machabee Martyrs in “Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church,” chapter xix., p. 201. Here we only relate how a boy ten years old succeeded in a few weeks in conquering himself with a heroism that may well put to the blush so many cowardly men of mature years, who remain the slaves of their passions and evil habits till Death hands them over, chained hand and foot, to the Eternal Judge.

A Lesson for every Generous Boy

The child belonged to parents most gentle and most exemplary in every way, who were sadly distressed by his passionate temper, breaking out at the slightest provocation into fits of rage that bordered on downright insanity. He had at one time very severely wounded his father’s gardener, striking him on the cheek with a pruning knife, because he would not be allowed to mangle a beautiful pear tree; and on another occasion, he well-nigh killed his little sister because she would not give up to him some favorite plaything. At table the boy, if contradicted or thwarted in his taste, would hurl plates and dishes to the floor, or strike his brothers and sisters with whatever was nearest to his hand.

Every imaginable remedy had been resorted to by his parents,—the most loving arts of persuasion, severe bodily punishment, confinement on bread and water; and all had utterly failed to make the slightest impression on a nature that no chastisement could frighten and no tenderness soften. He was sent to school under masters who had had wide experience in training youth both in the Old World and in the New. It was hoped that contact with a large number of other boys, the pious atmosphere of the school itself, and the ascendency of renowned and exemplary masters, would call forth the latent germs of good qualities in the soul of the hitherto incorrigible boy. Besides, he was now of an age to prepare for first Communion, and this religious event, his excellent parents fondly believed, would induce him to practice self-repression and control.

They were sadly disappointed. The boy was exceedingly clever, and outstripped in learning all his companions, when he chose to apply himself. But his fits of application were as irregular and as rare as his fits of outrageous violence were frequent and unaccountable. He could not be admitted to first Communion when the appointed time had arrived, and his masters, after exhausting every method and experiment, sent him back to his parents before the end of the term.

This was a great grief to both father and mother,—to the latter most especially. She fancied that her child’s evil disposition was a secret judgment on herself, and searched her conscience in vain for the dreadful sin that must have drawn down this visitation on her home. She resolved, with the advice of her spiritual guide, to try another year’s schooling under the same revered masters, and was sustained in the eloquent appeal she made to them by the highest religious authority in the diocese. The president of the institution could not resist a mother’s tears, the tears especially of such a mother. And so another trial was given to the froward boy, now beginning his eleventh year.

His parting with his mother was most touching. Folding him again and again to her heart, and covering him with tears and kisses, she told him, before his master, that she prayed God to take him from her rather than allow him to continue obdurate to all teaching and good example. For the first time in his life the boy was seen to weep tears of genuine grief as he returned his mother’s caresses.

There seemed to be, at first, some slight change for the better; but the old temper soon broke forth, fiercer and uglier than ever. Still it was resolved to carry forbearance to its most extreme limits; and things went on from bad to worse, till the time had come for the formation of the first Communion class.

The ungovernable child was then called to the room of the chaplain,—a holy man on whose gentle features holiness and goodness were stamped. “Charles,” said he, addressing the little savage before him, “you have been more violent and insubordinate these last four weeks than we have ever before known you to be. Had there been amendment since school re-opened, you should be now admitted to the first Communion class. As it is, your dreadful violence has made you insupportable to your schoolmates, many of whom threaten to leave if you are allowed to remain here. Your masters say they can do nothing with you. So it has been resolved by the faculty that you shall be sent home to-morrow.... My dear boy, this will break your mother’s heart.”

All of a sudden, at these last words, as if the grief-stricken mother had risen up to reproach him,—the boy fell on his knees in an agony of tears, weeping uncontrollably for several minutes, clinging to the knees of his venerable friend, and hiding his head on his bosom. At length he gasped out painfully, “Spare my mother! spare my mother! It will kill her.... I will change,—indeed I will. Only allow me to prepare for my first Communion; and help me to overcome my temper.”... Here the child broke down completely, and began to weep and sob convulsively. The good chaplain sent for the president and the infirmarian. For the little penitent, in the sudden extremity of his grief, had swooned away, and blood began to flow from mouth and nose. It was feared that he had burst a blood-vessel. Happily this was not so, and a few hours of repose in the infirmary restored the sufferer to his equanimity. But there was a blessed and total change in that ardent and passionate soul.

You, dear reader, who know how potent with God are a mother’s prayers, how irresistible the pleading of her tears, will recall Monica and Augustine, and say that the Creator of that young heart had, at a mother’s supplication, touched its springs of generosity, and awakened in it a new and divine power,—that of self-repression.

From that day forth that boyish life became one uninterrupted series of heroic struggles with self, of heroic victories over self. This is no mere exaggerated assertion. It is a lesson full of loftiest teaching for every one of us, no matter what our age or station.

The chaplain, to help the boy as he had desired, gave him a little note-book, on which he was to mark, twice each day, on opposite pages, his “victories” over self by repressing his outbursts of temper, or his “defeats” whenever he yielded to his passion. Charles was thoroughly and terribly in earnest. The battle for him was during class hours and play-time. He had few, if any, friends among schoolmates or play-fellows. For, with all his ferocious outbreaks of temper, he did not, till that time, give evidence of a single generous quality. His hand and his tongue had been against everybody in the school; and everybody’s tongue and hand seemed to be against him.

So, he was, at first, given but little credit for his earnest desire to improve, and but little encouragement to do well. There were many who had old scores to settle with him, and not a few who were disposed to sneer at his real or assumed self-restraint, and all too ready to sting him by jest and scoff. Nevertheless, after the three first days,—as the marks in his little note-book attested,—he was never once known to give way to angry word or action! All the marks, till the day of his death, were on the side of victory.

This result, however, was not achieved without fearful struggles with his interior enemy. One day, during recreation hours, the chaplain was summoned to the infirmary, whither, it was said, Charles had been carried wounded and bleeding from some fray. Bleeding he was, it is true, but it was a self-inflicted wound. A larger boy had struck and beaten him cruelly for running across the cricket-field and tripping up one of the players, and the poor child had bitten his lip through and through in his desperate effort at self-control.

It was soon evident to all that the child was battling most manfully with his own tyrannical disposition, and to the general dislike succeeded an admiration quite as general. He was seen, before each recitation-hour and each recreation, to visit the Chapel and make a short and fervent prayer for increased strength to overcome himself. There was no affectation in the boy’s piety. He was simple and straightforward in everything. His indomitable courage saved him from the temptation to as well as from the suspicion of hypocrisy.

The months preparatory to the day for first Communion soon passed. Charles, of course, was admitted, to the intense satisfaction of the whole school. His delighted parents had come to be present at the festival, and knelt beside their child at the altar. A happier mother could scarce be found on earth that day. Her face glowed like that of an angel as she received the Divine Gift, and tears of ineffable sweetness bedewed her cheeks; nor was her boy less angelic in his rapt air and with his lively faith in the Great Presence.

It was a day long afterward remembered in the school. The happy parents asked and obtained permission to take their darling home for one week’s rest. The weather was intensely cold, though in the first days of April. The boy caught cold on the way, and was laid up with pneumonia, which carried him away in a few days, preternaturally happy to die in his recovered innocence.

From the first appearance of serious symptoms, his mother felt instinctively that the seal of death was on him, and that the prayer she had made in bringing him back to school, had been answered most mercifully. She watched unweariedly near his bedside till the pure spirit had fled, and then lifting him up in presence of the weeping family and with the aid of the noble father, who at once understood what she would do, she offered him a willing sacrifice to the God of Angels. “Thou gavest him to us, O Father,” she said; “Thou hast most lovingly prepared him for Thyself; accept him as a thanksgiving offering from the grateful hearts of his father and mother.”

Well might the afflicted father often repeat the beautiful lines of a modern singer, as he remembered the bright close of that short life: