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قراءة كتاب Almost A Man
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
“I tell you these children are wiser in sin than we older people can imagine. That boy needs to be whipped within an inch of his life, the little reprobate! I’d give him such a lecture as would make his eyes open wide for once. I’d make him understand that he’d better not let me catch him in such mischief again. And I’d tell Mrs. Glenn about it so that she could punish Susie.”
“I really am afraid that the result would not be what we wish. Suppose we go and talk it over with Dr. Barrett. Maybe she can tell us what to do.”
Dr. Barrett received the ladies with cordiality and professed herself willing to aid them in the solution of their problem. She did not appear as shocked as they did, and even smiled a little as Miss Lane, in indignant tones, read aloud the offending note.
“Don’t you think that little rascal should be nearly annihilated?” she asked, turning to the Doctor.
“I think he should be instructed,” replied the latter. “Will you send him to me, Miss Bell?”
“Most gladly, but I don’t believe he will come.”
“Yes he will, if you don’t frighten him beforehand. Don’t say a word to him about the affair, but send him with a note to me and tell him to wait for an answer.”
The next evening Carl appeared at the Doctor’s residence with the note from Miss Bell. “I am to wait for an answer,” he said.
Dr. Barrett only nodded as she wrote on steadily for a moment, seeming too much engrossed in her 7 work to notice him. Then she read the note, thought a moment, excused herself and left the room. Returning immediately she said, “It will be half an hour before the answer is ready. Can you wait?”
“O certainly.”
“Then sit down here and look over the Youth’s Companion while I finish my letter.”
For some moments there was silence and then the Doctor, laying down her pen, turned to the boy and said, pleasantly; “You are Carl Woodford, are you not?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It has been so long since I saw you that you have almost grown out of my knowledge. You are getting to be almost a man. You must be fifteen years old.”
“Not quite. I will be next June.”
“Almost a man,” said Dr. Barrett softly as she looked thoughtfully into the fire. After a moment’s silence she asked, “Carl, what is it to be a man?”
The boy drew himself up with a self-conscious air as he replied.
“Why, to have your growth, and get into business for yourself.”
“Well, that is not quite it,” said the Doctor smiling, “for I have my growth and am in business for myself, and yet I am not a man.”
“Maybe it means having a mustache,” said Carl, with a slight flush.
“That has something to do with it certainly, but Mrs. Flynn has a mustache, and she is not a man.”
“Well, I don’t know how to explain it then,” said Carl.
“You have studied grammar, will you parse the word man?”
“Man is a common noun, masculine gender, third–––”
“What does masculine gender mean?”
“It means male.”
“Then to be a man means to be a male. How does the grammar define gender?”
“The distinction of nouns with regard to sex.”
“Have you studied physiology?”
“Yes’m.”
“Was it the physiology of man or woman?”
“Why, it didn’t say anything but physiology.”
“You studied, then, only those organs in which men and women are alike, as in their muscular and nervous systems, and in the organs of digestion; in fact you learned only of the organs which are for the preservation of the individual. You learned nothing of them in regard to sex, which is termed special physiology.”
A wave of color was creeping over Carl’s face, seeing which the Doctor said:
“As you have never studied this special physiology supposing you try to forget that any one has ever told you anything about it, and let us for a few minutes talk of it as of God’s laws. We believe God to be pure, and we cannot believe that he would make a law that was founded on impurity. It is true we are able to think of his laws in an impure way, but that is our fault, not his. Let us now try to think his pure thoughts after him. If there are two sexes created by the Almighty he must have a pure purpose in creating them. We 9 seldom think how much of beauty and melody and loveliness is due to sex.
“It is because of sex that we are gathered in families and enjoy all the delights of home. It is because of sex that we have ties of kindred, brothers, sisters, father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. Think of the pleasant home gatherings at Christmas or Thanksgiving, or upon family birthdays, with all the relatives, old and young, meeting in love and sympathy; think of the sweet prattle of children in the home; think of the tender ministrations of mother or sister in times of sorrow or illness or death, and remember that these are possible because of sex. Men may build themselves fine club houses where they congregate to smoke or drink or eat together, but these are not homes. Women may go away by themselves into a convent and give up the world, but in so doing they give up the home; for in a real true home there must be parents and children, and this comes through sex. We may go even farther and say with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it ‘we owe our love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. From it,’ he says, ‘springs the love of beauty, around it all beautiful arts circle as their centre. Its subtle aroma pervades all literature, and to it we owe the heart and all that is best within it.’
“We read of knights of old fighting for ‘fayre ladye,’ of heroes who died to save wives and children; 10 we cannot take up a book of poetry without realizing how love of men and women has been the inspiration of the poet in all ages. And this is not all that we owe to sex. In all organic life we find the same force at work. The song of the nightingale is a call to his mate, the chirp of cricket, the song of the thrush, the note of the grasshopper, every charming voice in wild nature are notes of love, and were it not for these, field and forest would be silent. Among the animals we can trace the beauty of form and of covering to the same source. And even in the inanimate world of plants and trees we find sex as the source of life and beauty. The bright tinted flowers are the homes of the father and mother and babies of the plant and without the male and female principle in plants there would be no bud or blossom and no fruit. Remember when you see the beauty of the apple orchard in the spring and the glowing fruit in the autumn that these are the expression of sex-life in the tree.”
“My!” exclaimed Carl, “I never thought of all that before.”
“I presume not, and many who are older than you have no thoughts of sex but those which are low and vile. But when you consider how the same principle reaches through all nature, and upon it depends so much that is beautiful and charming you cannot believe that is in itself vile and unholy, can you? If we are to think God’s thoughts after him we must come to look upon sex as something to be thought of and spoken of only with reverence, never to be jested about or debased in any way. You begin to see that more is involved in the 11 coming into manhood than you had supposed. But we have not gone over the whole matter yet. You have read the first