IRENEUS LETTERS.

THAT DREADFUL BOY.

HE was going from Boston to Old Orchard with his mother. I was sorry to be in the same car with them. His mother seemed to exist only to be worried by this uneasy, distressing boy. He had only one fault-he was perfectly insufferable.

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If I 66 say he was an unlicked cub” I shall offend your ears. Lick is an old English word that means either to lap or to strike. Shakespeare uses unlicked as applied to the cub of a bear; there was a notion that the whelp was at first a formless thing that had to be licked into shape" by the mother's tongue. So it came to pass that the vulgar expression, “an unlicked cub," was fittingly applied to a boy whose mother never gave him the culture essential to make him presentable, or even tolerable, in the society of well-behaved people. The two meanings of the word are not very diverse.

This boy had never been licked into shape. He needed licking. I use the word in its two senses. And the use, if not elegant, is intelligible and expressive, perhaps graphic also. The mother besought him to be still for a moment, but the moment of stillness never came. He wanted something to eat, got it; to drink, and he kept a steady trot through the car; the anxious mother prayed him not to go to the platform, not to put his head out of the window, not to climb over the seats; all in vain. She might as well have entreated the engine.

In travelling, one is often haunted by people from whom he tries to fly. He meets them at the galleries or the dinner

table. The dreadful boy and his mother were in the parlor of the seaside hotel where I had engaged my lodgings. In half a day this dreadful boy was the pest and nuisance of the piazza, the parlors and the halls. His intellectual mother, coddling and coaxing him, sought to win him into the ways of decency and peace, but he rejoiced in showing he was not tied to his mother. The more she reasoned the more he rioted in his liberty.

"I would drown the little plague if I could catch him in the water," said a crusty savage from New York City; "the ill-mannered cur minds nobody and fears nobody."

One evening we were seated in the parlor, in little groups, conversing. Into the room rushed the dreadful boy pursued by another whom he had hit, and both were screaming in play at the top of their voices. As he was passing me I seized him by the arm with a grip that meant business, and said: "Here, my boy, we have stood this thing long enough: it has come to an end." An awful silence filled the room; his mother, frightened, sat pale, and not far away, while I held the culprit and pursued the lecture-" If you do not know how to behave in company, let me tell you the parlor is no place for such romps as we have suffered from you; go out of doors and stay out for such games, and when you come in here, sit down and be quiet." He wriggled to get away, but I led him to the door and left him on the outside.

As I had not been introduced to his mother, I was not supposed to know whose boy it was, and therefore made no apologies for this summary discipline of somebody else's child.

The next day I was sitting on the beach under a sun umbrella, when a party of ladies and the dreadful boy hove in sight, and sought seats near me. I offered my seat to the mother, but she found one at hand, thanked me, and said: "I am under great obligation to you, sir, for taking my boy in hand last evening."

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"It is rather in my place," I made answer, "to apologize for laying hands on the child of another: but I saw he was regardless of authority, and thought to give him a lesson,"

"Thanks: but I would like to tell you of him: he is a dear child, an only child, and his father, often and long away from home on business, has left his education and care to me entirely. I have the impression that the strongest of all influences is love, and that none is so strong as a mother's love: I never speak to him but in tones and words of affection: I never deny him any indulgence he asks: I let him have his own way and never punish him, lest he should be offended with me. I wish that he may not have any thoughts of his mother but those of kindness, gentleness and love. Your sudden and decided measure last night startled me, but its effect on the child was remarkable. He has not yet recovered, and this morning he spoke to me of it, as if a new sensation had been awakened. Will you tell me frankly what your opinion is of the probable result of the system which I am pursuing?"

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It is not becoming in a stranger," I said, "to speak plainly in regard to the domestic management of another, and I hope you will excuse me from expressing an opinion which it would not be pleasant for you to hear."

"But I want to hear it; the good of my child is the dearest object in this world: I have nothing else to live for, but it seems to me that the more I love him the less he cares for me or my wishes, the more unruly and troublesome he becomes. Your decided dealing with him has frightened me in regard to my course of training."

Rather you should say your 'want of training him.' You do not read correctly the words of the wise man, ‘Train up a child,' etc. You are letting him grow up without training, and my fear is that he will be hung-"

"Hung! hung! what do you mean ?”

"Only this, that you are allowing him now to be a lawless, selfish, domineering, disagreeable boy: he has his own way always: he tramples on your wishes now, and will tread on your heart soon and love to do it: such boys are bad at home and worse out of doors: growing up ungoverned, he will defy authority, be hated by his companions, get into trouble, become turbulent, riotous, perhaps an outlaw, and