SOCIALITIES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 583, 20 June 1873, Page 3

SOCIALITIES.

—o—- ( Australasian Sketcher.) The unlovely youth is known to us all. He pervades all outside society, swarms in our streets, our railway carriages, and our places of public amusement; is übiquitous, all seen, and universally abhorred. He is the terror of the unprotected female and the nightmare of the mature man. He dresses himself apparently for the purpose of aggravating sensible people, and his whole bearing and carriage appear to be assumed with the design of keeping the raw alive. It is he who smokes in cabs and gets drunk at the theatre, who walks with brother youths three abreast in our crowded streets and compels ladies to step aside to let him pass, who calls his father by slang names, and wtmld' be prouder of escorting to the theatre a suspected barmaid than his own pretty and innocent sister. The appearance of the unlovely youth is not prepossessing. He is unhealthy, sallow complexioned, and given to pimples—the result of late hours, much tobacco, and more grog. His voice is unusually rusty and cracked, and his manners cannot be described, for the simple reason that he has none. He is more frequently a clerk or shopman than anything eles, but he dresses and conducts himself so as to try and give the impression that he follows a disreputable calling—an actor, for instance (in the belief that the first qualification for the stage is scampishness), a bookmaker, or a professional pedestrian Few things would more vex the soul of an unlovely youth than for anyone to suppose he was earning his bread honestly, leading a virtuous life, and helping, perhaps, to support an aged mother. He would as soon wear baggy trousers and carry Mrs. Gamp’s umbrella as acquire a reputation for respectability. If he went to bed sober at 10 o’clock he would try and make his fellow-clerks or shopmen believe that he went to bed drunk at 3, and he would hold his empty head up an inch higher if he succeeded. The unlovely youth is not peculiar to this age or this country. He always has been, and always will be, here and everywhere, and he -will live, let us hope, to groan over the abominations of his successor's in the next generation. Why, it may be asked, it he has not been unusually prominent during the past month, introduce him as the leading topic in this column ? It may be asked but I imagine it is impossible to answer.