USED UP.

Dunstan Times, Issue 514, 23 February 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

USED UP.

V lien men are vicious at foity, they arc to young men what the river is tc the brook—the passions are sufficiently under control to escape tho notice of the common observer, but they How on, nevertheless, in one broad and resistless stream. Experience is everything, even in vice, and the man who is a veteran upon town knows infinitely more ol its secrets and its sins than the babbling young idiots who boast of fabulous adventures and achievements. The thorough rake, who, by singular good fortune and, perhaps, caution, has contrived to preserve his health and strength, is at the zenith of his achievements at forty. The experience of the past only aids him in the conquests of the present moment, and lie wars against women with the certainty of always winning. Nothing is more repulsive than his estimate of trie opposite sex. Ho professes indeed, to love and admire them, but with singular consistency his love and admiration are lavished upon those who display most fully the traces of our fallen nature. He does not believe that a virtuous woman exists, and if he happens to meet with one who is undeniably pure, be calls her a vixen or a prude, To do him justice, he has never seen women- acthe best; he was always impatient of the society of decent, people, and found happiness only in circles where the social virtues were not too rigidly enforced. If he has an idea of beauty, it is a low and contemptible one—the heroine of the music hall, the female gymnast, or the bold bar girl, are his Hebes Refincmenftand purity repel him, and he is disarmed and powerless in the presence of a woman befoie whom the best men are proud to abase themselves. His ,conquests, when valued by a just standard, are utterly worthless, and perhaps no man feels a more lofty scorn for a thorough rake than he who has conceived an exalted and just idea of women. But such as his contemptible life is, he has lived it until even for him the world has no .more pleasure to give. The long delayed punishment.comes at last,, .and the rake, whoJlha scoffed at every social tie, who has been a model by which his own sons have shaped their lives, exhibits the melancholy spectacle of a worn out debauchee, the vigor of his physical and mental powers is gone and life has become horribly dark and dreary.—The Civilian.