Does anyone know "If I were a boy again"?

[laywong]

There are hundreds of things I would correct in my life if I were a boy again, and among them is this especial one: I would be more careful of my teeth. Seeing since I have grown up how much suffering is induced by the bad habit of constantly eating candies and other sweet nuisances, I would shut my mouth to all allurements of that sort. Very hot and very cold substances I would studiously avoid.
Toothache in our country is one of the national crimes. Too many people we meet have swelled faces. The dentist thrives here as he does in no other land on this planet, and it is because we begin to spoil our teeth at the age of five or six years. A child, eight years old, asked me not long ago if I could recommend him to a dentist “who didn't hurt"! I pitied him, but I was un- acquainted with such an artist. They all hurt, and they cannot help it, poor, hard-working gentlemen, charging, as they do, like Chester.
I would have no dealings with tobacco, in any form, if I were a boy again. My friend Pipes tells me he is such a martyr to cigar-boxes that his life is a burden. The habit of smoking has become such a tyrant over him that he carries a tobacco bowsprit at his clamp, discolored lips every hour of the day, and he begs me to warn all the boys of my acquaintance, and say to them emphatically, “Don’t learn to smoke ! " He tells me, sadly, that his head is sometimes in such a dizzy whirl, and his brain so foul from long habits of smoking he cannot break off, that he is compelled to forego much that is pleasant in existence, and live a tobacco-tortured life from year to year. Poor Pipes! he is a sad warning to young fellows who are just learning to use the dirty, unmannerly weed.
As I look back to my school-days I can remember so many failures through not understanding how to avoid them, that I feel compelled to have this plain talk all round with you. I take it for granted that I am writing for those sensible lads who mean to have their minds keep the best company possible, and never suffer them to go sneaking about for inferiority in anything. To be young is a great advantage, and now is the golden time to store away treasures for the future. I never knew a youth yet who would be willing to say, “I don't mean to get understanding; I don't wish to know much of anything; I have no desire to
compass to-day more and better things than I knew yesterday; I prefer, when I grow up, to be an ignorant man, a mere passive wheel in the great machine of the universe." The richest rascal that ever lived never started with the idea in boyhood that he would repudiate morals, make money, and avoid ideas!
One of the most common of all laments is this one, and I have heard it hundreds of times from grayheaded men in every walk of life, " 0, that my lost youth could come back to me, and I could have again the chance for improvement I once had ! " What “lucky fellows” you are, to be sure, with the privilege of being about twelve or fifteen years old! Still keeping within your own control those priceless opportunities when the portals of knowledge are standing wide open and inviting you in, and not one adverse spirit daring to hold you back. Don't I wish I could be a boy again! We, who are swiftly stepping westward towards the setting sun, cannot help crying out to you, who are still in the Eastern quarter of life, what
Horace Mann used to sound in our ears when we were as young as you are, " Orient yourselves ! " What we sow in youth we reap in age. The seed of the thistle always produces the thistle. The possibilities that wait upon you who are yet in the spring-time of existence, who are yet holding in your own two hands the precious gift of time, cannot be estimated. Do not forget that a useless life is an early death!
I thank Mr. Longfellow for having written the following lines. When he read them to me I thanked him heartily, and now I do it again, as I quote them for you to commit to memory from these pages: "How beautiful is youth! How bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of beginnings, story without end, (Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!) Aladdin's lamp, and Fortunatus’ purse, that holds the treasures of the universe! All possibilities are in its hands, No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands: In its sublime audacity of faith, ' Be thou removed! ' it to the mountain saith, And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud ! "
I wonder if any of you, my young friends, ever happened to read of a poor, unhappy old man who stood one New Year's night at the window of his dwelling and thought over all the errors of his youth, what he had neglected to do of good, and what he had committed of evil; how his bosom was filled with remorse, how his desolate soul was wrung as he reflected on the past follies of a long life. The days when he was strong and active wandered about him like ghosts. It was too late to retrieve his lost youth. The grave was waiting for him, and with unspeakable grief he bethought him of the time spent in idleness, of the left-hand road he had chosen which had led him into ruinous follies and years of slothfulness. Then he re- called the names of his early companions who had selected the right-hand path, and were now happy and content in their declining days, having lived the lives of virtuous, studious men, doing the best they were able in the world. Then he cried to his dead father, who had warned him when he was a lad to follow the good and shun the evil pathways of existence, "0 father, give me back my lost youth, that I may live a different life from the one I have so long pursued ! " But it was too late now to make moan. His father and his youth had gone together. There the poor bewildered creature stands, blinded with tears, but still beseeching Heaven to give him back his youth once more. Few spectacles are more terrible to contemplate than the broken-down figure of that weeping old man, lamenting that he cannot be young again, for then he would lead a life so different from the one he had lived.
But what a thrill of pleasure follows the sad picture we have been contemplating when we are told it was only a fearful dream that a certain young man was passing through, a vision only of possible degradation, and that Heaven had taken this method of counselling the youth to turn aside from the allurements that might beset his path, and thus be spared the undying remorse that would surely take possession of him when he grew to be a man, if he gave way to self-indulgence and those wandering idle ways that lead to error, and oftentimes to vice and crime. The misery of a life to be avoided was thus prefigured, and the young man awoke to thank Heaven it was only a dream, and resolve so to spend God's great gift of time that no horror, such as he had suffered that night in sleep, should ever arise to haunt his waking hours.
If I were a boy again, one of the first things I would strive to do would be this : I would, as soon as possible, try hard to become acquainted With and then deal honestly with myself, to study up my own deficiencies and capabilities, and I would begin early enough, before faults had time to become habits ; I would seek out earnestly all the weak spots in my character and then go to work speedily and mend them with better material; if I found that I was capable of some one thing in a special degree, I would ask counsel on that point of some judicious friend, and if advised to pursue it I would devote myself to that particular matter, to the exclusion of much that is foolishly followed in boyhood.
If I were a boy again I would practice perseverance oftener, and never give a thing up because it was hard or inconvenient to do it. If we want light, we must conquer darkness. When I think of mathematics I blush at the recollection of how often I "caved in" years ago. There is no trait more valuable than a determination to persevere when the right thing is to be accomplished. We are all inclined to give up too easily in trying or unpleasant situations, and the point I would establish with myself, if the choice were again within my grasp, would be never to relinquish my hold on a possible success if mortal strength or brains in my case were adequate to the occasion. That was a capital lesson which Professor Faraday taught one of his students in the lecture-room after some chemical experiments. The lights had been put out in the hall and by accident some small article dropped on the floor from the professor's hand. The professor lingered behind, endeavoring to pick it up. “Never mind," said the student, "it is of no consequence to- night, sir, whether we find it or no." “That is true," replied the professor; " but it is of grave consequence to me as a principle, that I am not foiled in my determination to find it. ”Perseverance can sometimes equal genius in its results.” There are only two creatures," says the Eastern proverb, "who can surmount the pyramids, the eagle and the snail!”