Old Grumble on Larrikinism.

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 67, 15 November 1884, Page 3

Old Grumble on Larrikinism.

"Producing another insipidity?" Well, Mrs Grumble, if you choose to give to my writings such a contemptuous appellation, I am. Not that it is one ; the only insipidities I ever did compose were those that you were made the theme of, and which you still keep carefully tied up with a piece of faded ribbon in your workbox ; but those were written before I was married— l write truths now, lam about to express my opinion of the youths of the period. I know I have been too snave, too gentle in my dealings with them (it is my disposition to be amiable), hut this senseless larrikinism which the hoys of the present day indulge in calls for a severe rebuke, and I shall show them that I am no Sterne's " recording k angel" to "drop .a tear" whilst jotting ' down their dclmcjaincies, and so blot out the record of them. I'll use no soft quill to slur- over their misdeeds, but, with the hardest of steel pons and the most caustic of ink, will, in the most forcible language I can use, expose their character ; and, Mrs Grumble, if I cannot find words strong enough to express my disapprobat ion I will borrow some of those expressions you use towards me. At our churches, at'our public meetings, at our entertainmento, " Assemble now from every region, apes of idleness who do commit the oldest sins tho newest ways." Oiir hours of devotion are profaned by their levity, their mischievous presence obstructs our public business, and our pleasures aro spoilt by their discordant yells and silly annoyauccs. Inferior by far in this respect are they to the London street Arab,.for, undisciplined as hois, ho is a critic, and though he shouts, as loudly as his colonial confreres his disapproval of anything inferior, he appreciates all that is clover, while the boys of our towns have tasto for nothing but tlieir own insensate bowlings. The British boy (that is in the colonies) no longer j seeks the manly sports or intellectual amuseruentsof Grumble's boyhood's days, but he has degenerated into a ficiots creature, glorying in deeds the untutored savage would despise, for the savage does not commit acts oF destruction without come reason— a wrong one, perhaps, still he has a reason— but the British boy, who claims to be the descendant of ages of civilization, makes wanton mischief merely from a depraved state, until he has become so repugnant that he is now looked upon as a thing to be shunned and'avoided. That, Mrs Grumble, is my opinion of what aro called our "olive branches," though whoever chose that, species of vegetation as an emblem of youth had more poetry than brains in his composition. Furze limbs, briar shoots, or bramble suckers, wou'd be far more apt as expressing the feelings " these offspring" convey to their parents, and Eden would not have heen such a para- " disc if Adam and Eve had stayed :ong enough to have had children in it, but tlu>y only spent their honeymoon in tho garden, for children are the most prolific source of discomfort Mother Eve has handed down to us, and are fast retrograding, to the monkc3 r 8 mankind first sprung from. May be the loss of the village green, where, when GrqmMe was a boy, the youths of the place assembled for such healthy games as cricket and hare and hounds (which they did by sub : stituting a dog with a tin kettle tied to its tail for the hare and then chasing after it) may have something to do with altering the disposition of the present generation of boys, who have nothing now but the streets to prowl like wolves in, but be the reason what it may, Grumble feels this Quotation a fitting one to those in authority— "Now neighbor, purge you of your scum." Old G bumble.