Worth Remembering

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, 11 January 1906, Page 1

Worth Remembering

Some thirty years -or more after he had left Cambridge University," Chesterfield looked back with sore regret upon ,the errors and follies of his younger days. He 1 (metaphorically) struck his breast as he made the following confession to his son', for ithe latter' s guid-' ance and warning : ' When I first went to the Univer- ' sity, I drank and smoked, notwithstanding the aversion I had to wine and tobacco, only because I .thought it genteel, and that it made me look a man.'' One sometimes gets good advice from a queer quarter— we remember that Zola once wisely cautioned an inquiring

French maiden not to read the brutal publications of his that are by courtesy called book's. Chesterfield, and even Zola, had within them at least a sufficient relic of Christian sentiment to know that certain things are, socially, ' bad form.' And sundry of our youths and boys and hobbledehoys might do worse than to recall the verdict of the polished British pagan when they fancy that swilling beer and withering fthe bloom* of their early promise with nicotine are necessary, or sufficient, to make them ' look men,'