YOUNG MEN'S CLUB.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2554, 15 June 1882, Page 2

YOUNG MEN'S CLUB.

We feel certain that a very large section of the community will see with pleasure the movement now in course of being carried out to establish a Young Men's Club in Christchurch. So far as we can gather, it is not intended to make the proposed clab a vehicle for the promulgation of the religious beliefs of any particular sect, but that it will take up the broad and liberal position of offering to the young men of our city an institution where they can spend their lei are hours rationally, enjoyably, and it is to be hoped, profitably. If we have been informed aright as to the basis of operations, then it is to be hoped the project will receive the warmest support of all. Such a club would indeed bo a boon to many young men who now, after business hours have to choose between going home to their lodgings, or spending the time in a public house. This, it must be admitted, is not a desirable state of things. It does not obtain to so large &

deeree in the other cities of the colony u in Ohriatchwob. Here there are bo many cliques, so many degrees of exclusiveness, so much that is quite too utterly too, that the spirit of sociality pre•valent elsewhere does not exist. Hence, as we say, our young men are perforce driven to the hotels. The club as proposed will supply in some degree this want, and will no doubt be suecessful. But in order to enable it to be so there must he an absence of that patronisiDg which is coneiderod ahsolutely necessary in connection with institutions of this kind. Toung men, after a fagging day of business, don't want to be bored with weak anecdotes of goody-goody people, and dosed like a lot of Sunday school children with tea as flavorless as the speeches made to thorn. Let them have plenty ot illustrated paper?, chess, draughts, billiards, aye even skittles, if they desire it, and then encourage them to form amateur dramatic and mußical societies in connection with the Club, together with a Parliamentary debating society, and then the thing will prosper. But we do hope there will be none of the treating young m«n as if they were children, and not to be trusted to go alone. If the institution starts on these principles it will bo a success ; if it goes on the namby-pamby coddling style, it will, as it then would deserve, be a failure.