THE MODERN YOUTH.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 206, 22 January 1866, Page 3

THE MODERN YOUTH.

I had another vision. Of a party at koine, when I, a boy, the age of that juvenile photographer, was considered rather a bore, and was only permitted to bother guests half an hour or so after dinner. It was not supposed that I had any entertaining powers whatever. The guests, in the goodness of their nature, would kindly endeavor to entertain me, by giving me au apple, and perhaps telling me a pretty little story, all in simple words of one syllable. After which I was carefully sent to bed before supper. But these modern boys ; they briug you their newspaper to look at ; they photograph you, they play the accompaniments to your songs, they astonish your weak mind with the magnesium light, they sit up to supper, they tell the latest news by the telegram — in fact, they entertain you. When I was a bojr, my stock of play literature consisted of some half-dozen sixpenny books, such as Jack the G-iant Killer, Puss in Boots, the history of Cock Eobin, and an abridgement of the Arabian Nights. I remember that I kept them locked up in a deal box, and was exceedingly chary of lending them, or even letting any one look at them. But boys now-a-days take in their monthly and weekly magazines, correspond with the editor, answer riddles and rebuses, contribute puzzles and engage in chess tournaments b} r correspondence ; nay, the club subscriptions to Mudie's and read all tne sensation novels as they appear. I see some square -capped boys, of not more than fourteen years, going to school every morning reading their penny newspaper. I have no doubt whatever that they read the law and police reports under their desks when they ought to be learning their lessons. Boys and hobbedehoys used to be a nuisance, because they were lumpy, and awkward, and uninteresting ; and because they were too young to share in the conversation of grown-up people. But now-a-days, if boys are voted a nuisance at all — which they will not tamely permit — it is because they are too clever by half, and know a great deal too much. Inwardly and outwardly, the British boy has undergone a great change. Everything about him is in an advanced state. His mind is manly and so are his clothes. Tour modern infant grows so fast that you never can catch him in the jackets. When he emerges from his swaddling clothes, he slips through your fingers and vaults into a tailed coat. He casts aside his feedingbottle and his pap-spoon, to clap a cigar or a meerschaum-pipe in his mouth. The modern youth forces his whiskers, as the modern market gardener forces his asparagus. He has no pause for lay down collars of the old patterns, nor for a round cap with a tassel, such as the boys of the Own Book used to wear. He is a new pattern of boy altogether. Look at the frontispiece of an old Treasury of Knowledge, and see what the British boy was. There is his papa — also of a pattern peculiar to the period — seated at a table with a terrestrial globe, retort, a pair of compasses and a heap of books at his elbow, allegorical of the entire tree of knowledge and the whole circles of sciences. You will observe that this papa wears a high-collared coat a very short waistcoat and tightly-fitting trousers, which, when your paint-box is at hand, you are irresistibly tempted to color yellow. Tour idea of that papa is, that he has always been a papa, and that his whole mission on earth is to teach the use of the globes to his son with rigid, paternal severity ; just as your idea of the boy is that he was born to be a boy like that, and for no other purpose on earth than to be taught the use of the globes and overawed by his papa. Look at that boy. His outline is composed of a series of curves — curves for his cheeks, curves for his arms, curves for his legs, as if his papa had constructed him with a pair of compasses. He is the good old-fashioned sort of boy, who was fond of pudding, who over-ate himself when he went out visiting, who robbed orchards, who had all the complaints of infancy in rapid succession and never missed one on any account : who carried gunpowder in his pocket, who was always in mischief, and who, as regarded" his most honorable curve, seemed to be especially adapted and cut out for chastisement, When I look at portraits of that boy of a past age, I can quite understand how the schoolmasters of the period could not keep their hands off him. The whole physical developement of him was a standing invitation to the cane. If schoolmasters don't flog now, it is not because they have lost faith in the virtues of birch, but because the modern boy is morally and physically repulsive to the cane. Those inviting curves of his have been smoothed down ; his jackets have assumed tails. He wears gloves also, and is thus armed against correction at all points. Intellectually, too, how could you think of administering flagellation to a boy who writes, edits, prints, and publishes a newspaper, or be guilty of the outrage of boxing the ears of a boy who is versed in the properties of nitrate of silver, and knows how to decompose the light of the sun ? I repeat that these boys, when they grow up, ought to be very clever fellows. If there are any new discoveries to be made, any more, secrets to be wrested from nature, those boys ought to be able to accomplish the work without difficulty. They have at their fingers' ends, settled and defined all those important elementary principles which their fathers and grandfathers had to test and settle and define before they went any further. The foundation has been laid for them ; they have bnt.to build the super-structure, and effect novelty by varying the plan. — " Bouncing Boys," in AH the Year Mound.