'Yo-ho-ho!'

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1906, Page 9

'Yo-ho-ho !'

In the early Church (as some' one has remarked) young men went to the x lions ; now many of .them, go to the dogs.- - "The road varies," dike -the shifting channel of the Mississippi, but the ultimate destina^ tion is ever the, same.- For great numbers it is the old story :—: — . " , ' • ' Drink and the devil tiad * done for the rest Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of- rum,'

A change of air is still as confidently prescribed for youthful follies as it is • for ' nerves ' and. brain-fag and wasted tissue. It is (as somebody has said of second marriages) the triumph of hope over experience. Dr. Johnson, when on his tour to the Hebrides, gave this advice regarding one who had begun to •' go the pace ' on the Yo-ho-ho incline that leads to the door with the inscription, ' All hope 'abandon ye who enter here' : ' Let Mm go abroad to a distant country ; let him go to so-me place where he is not known. Don't let 'him go to the devil, where he is known.' But Dr. Johnson wrote before the days of the ' jackeroo ' and of ' colonial experience.' The young man who goes to the dogs under the safeguards of a good home, will soon be mortgaged to Satan when he gores abroad in search of ' experience ' and in the hope of ' reformation.'