Life — July 13, 1911 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE- 59 FLY TIME Reno v years ago Reno was an obscure place on the map. Nobody had ever heard of it. Few could have told in which State it is located. Now it represents one of the big- gest ideas that have recently come to us. Reno is the purgatory of matrimony. It is the half-way house between Hell and Heaven, Or it may be the half-way house between two Hells. We express ourselves in symbols. to mean more than a row of bricks and some arranged in rectangular form—a succession of architectural corridors, & mass of masonry. When we say the “ Vatican” we mean Rome, and Rome now means an area of mental submersion. Between Rome and Reno there is a vast gulf. One means the eternal persistence of a fundamental idea—the idea that men would rather believe than think. The other means the trampling down of fetters, the renaissance of the heart's in- dependence. Reno stands, a growing monument to the errors of the human heart. In America, all roads lead to Reno—and away from it. It is a sanitarium for starvlings, the incubator of hope, a truce between battles. To Bodh Little Shrimp Pluckers S it true, do you suppose, that “an army of childres.” from five years old upward are employed in shrimp cannerics of Florida, as told in Collier's, to pluck the heads off of shrimps, and that “a poisonous acid from this pot.cun of the fish cats constantly into the baby fingers, destroying nails and flesh?” That is as bad a story of child labor as we get even from New Jersey. The Vatican has come ” Were You Ever a Boy? Perhaps You Have Been, and Still Are—The Biggest Men Have Always Been the Most Genuine Boys— Many Never Recover from Boyhood HE boy is a complete institution in himself, without any- thing omitted, so far as we have been able to discover He has all of the modern improvements, and all of the ancient and primitive ones. He has every kind of a germ that h ever been known to start anything. To paraphrase Lincoln. he is full of human nature If you can get him waked up, the boy is always ready, at any hour of the night—or day—to commit any kind of a crin Morcover, he is joyously ready. He never keeps you waiti He will dress as he gocs, if necessary, or if the occasion war- ramts it and there are enough fun and excitement ahead, he will go without any clothes. Every boy—if he is prope boy—is looking for results. Nothing short of a result is of the slightest interest to hit If you ask a girl to do anything, she will want to know immediately who is going to be there, whether they move in the best society or not, what clothes she would better wear, how many trunks she should take along, and whether the whi- mate effect is going to be worth the journey. But if you ask a boy to do anything, all he wants to know is if fi on, Any kind of a struggle suits him if he can see it with his eyes, and if there is blood spilled and considerable wreck- age, so much the better. The more killed the merrier. It is a mistake, however, to say that the boy is wicked. Wickedness implies a conscience—a sen something that you ought not to do. way. On the contrary, anything is there is enough action to it. cept failure. It is just as much of a accuse boys of bei liars. To lie implies that you have some distant regard for the truth, that you have decided between two things. It im plies contrast, a weighing of cause and effect. No boy lies that way. He lies because it is right to lie, because lying is the only proper and necessary and expedient thing to do. It is likewise a mistake to say that the boy is a coward that you are doing No real boy feels this justifiable, so long as Nothing, to a boy, is wicked ex- stake to A SPORTING CHANCE comicbooks.com