Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1856-01-04
From Life Illustrated.
YOUNG MEN.

rior understanding for man to make
fool of himself. Hence, though they are
bad enough in reality, they affect to be
great deal worse than they are. They
assume vices though they have them not,
and toll after wickedness as philosophers
toll after truth. What throes of anguish
they endure in childhood in learning to
smoke With what fortitude they bear
up against the nausea of early drink -
What pains they take in acquiring the
slang of their set How laboriously they
try experiments in disfiguring their per-
sons until they have attained the precise
ugliness of costume demanded by the
public opinion of the body to which they
belong! How freely they waste in the
evening what they have worked all day
to earn! How resolutely they deny them
selves every rational qualification in or
der to procure irrational With what a
fine nonchalence they sacrifice all their
future possibilities of well-doing and we'll
beingl All because they think it is some
thing great to be perfect fool.
And yet We have some charity for these
deluded creatures. 1t was not altogether
their fault that they adopted faith so
extraordinary. Rowdies, We have OBJ
served, abound most where those sects
have most power that forbid or discour-
age innocent pleasures. All the sons Of
George III. were fast young men; for
George III. was q narrow-minded bigot,
a bigot of routine, who made his palace
the abode of dullness and tedium, and
who kept his children in an unnatural
condition of restraint. 1t is notorious,
also, that the sons of clergymen are apt
to be of the fast species. And there is a
City, not far off, which is celebrated for
two things-quakerism and rcwdyism.-
In Germany, where there are no bigots,
there are no fast young men. In France,
we believe there are few. In American
families, where the sportive impulses of
boyhood are allowed free scope as long
as they are INDUCED innoeently, and where
the young are not nauseated with moral
: instruction and religious observances, and
where the youthful mind is awakened and
fed with nutriment suitable to it, where
genial books are on the shelf, and good
newspapers are on the table-in such
families fast young men are not produe-
ed. Where We see man who makes il
a sin to dance, or walk on Sunday, we
see q man whose children are almost sare
to wiring his heart by their dissipation or
disobedience. Rowdyism, we maintain,
is something unnatural. 1t is the recotl
: from sanctimony. IF there were no mock
saints, there were no mock rogues. Big
otry and rowdyism are unseparable, for
the latter is-to adopt mathematical
term-the complement of the former.
Know this, o teachers of youth, that
if you persuade boy that certain in
nocent act is wrong, and that boy goes
and does the act so stigmatized, he is as
much demoralized as though the act were
really wrong; and every time he does it,
he sinks in the moral scale, and prepares
himself to do the worst acts. That is the
process by which fast young men are
made.
: To these remarks we will add little
personal experience. The writer Of these
paragraphs passed the greater part of bis
youth at a grimly sanctimonious boarding
school. 1t was avowedly sectarian in
stitution, and every effort was made to in
culcate sectarian doctrines. There were
long prayers and Undertakings three
T times day. On Sundays, the pupil:
went TO church twice, had severe drilling
D in catechism, Bible, and moral philoso
ply, and in the evening long palayel
= from the principal of the school. On
feast and fast days there was extra church
going, and additional prayers at home
t On Sundays all play was prohibited, and
no books were allowed to be read except
such as no boy ariU read Voluntarily
The teachers, who worked this system
were well-meaning enough, though ex.
cessively stupid-partly from nature, and
chiefly from college. Well-what moral
results were produced?
We solemnly aver, that in no comlnu-
nifty in which we have since had any
knowledge was there 50 low moral tone
50 much outrageous wickedness, 50 little
regard for the rights of others, such ha-
bitual nastiness of conversation, such q
proclivity for I'll that is most vulgar, hate
fui, and suicidal, such egregrious conceit
ana gross irreverence as in that religious
ooardIng-school. In two days we learn
ed more evil in that school than in all opr
previous life. Tile subject of conyersa-
llon was one which can not here be NAM
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