Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1856-07-19
YnI1NGANIERICA.

The European visitor to the United States Is
with nothing more impressedin thislandO prodi-
gies than the rapid development of children into
yourg manhood and young wouianhoOd. Such
thing, in fact, as ehiL9reR is, IN this country,
almost wholly unknown There seems to be but
one bound from catnip tea TO mint iulepS, and
from toy Fattles to reviewers Instead of little
girls, we have little women, with all the eoquet-
fish airs of eighteen, cultivatng beaux.
aWonen vhieh are mot quite sOunen,
and as anxious to be oil as they viii be one day
| to be young No donbt these things are wisely
ordered, for the average duration of human life
in America is so much less than in Europe, that
We must begin our manhood at least fifty years
earlier to make itlast as long. Like young colts
and other animals, we are active and frolicsome
ia few weeks after ne are born, and in few
years are all ready for the harness.
An American boy or girl, visiting Great Brit
ain, would be profoundly disgusted with the
mode in which boys and girls are reared there.
He would think the juvenile population greater
than tines. " hich rouse1 our fathers TO the a.
sertion of their Independence. In Great Britain
the young noble or the young commoner of six
teen OF seventeen is still boy, with artcsS, boy
iSh ways, docile and obedient as he was at
five or six. His parents do not think it neCeS-
sary, in order to make man of him, that he
take the bit in his own mouth, and travel wither-
sOever it pleaSeth him. In n well ordered Eng
liSh family, the boys are not permitted to be out
at night, but when the evening shades prevail,
instead of being left to roam abroad and lean
| bad HI bits and tall inio a c2mliany, they take
| up their candIesticks aud march to bed. The
English girl is girl at sixt IN, completes her
education at twenty one, and if she does not
marry as early as our American lasscs, she re-
tains at thirty-five bloom, freshness and yigor
which are not often found even among our school
| girls. We appreciate the infinite contempt and
wrath with which Young America would view
such condition Of society; we have no doubt
that rather than itsclfbe reduced to such state
of bondage, it would draw its bowie knife and
revolver, and make mincc meat of its tyrants.-
We only state the fact, that our Young America
readers may more highly prize the blessings of
their lot in this land of liberty, where all the
men, women and children are perfectly capable
of self-govcTnment. Let them rather pity than
be indignant at those wretched inhabitants 9th
| Old World, whose children are not born like ours
mature in wisdom and virtue, but require train
| ing, intellectual physical and moral, of twenty
ono long years, before they are permitted to act
| tic part of men and women.
! At the same time, it must be admitted that
the home discipline of English life, the treating
of boys boys and of girls as girls, does not as
VIC on this side of the water might suspect, pre-
vent them from becoming manly and vigorous
race. On the contrary, the manhood and STAN
ina ofthc English breed are proverbial. lfthcre
is any thing that John Bull is remarkable for,
| it is for energy and backbone. The men who
first settled this continent the pioneers Of civil
cation and of liberty in these western wiids, aud
who were more heroic, more virtuous, aud ca
pabIe of far greater physical endurance than the
present CadaverouS, dySpeptic, narrOw-shoulder-
cd, breasted and faint-hearted race, were all
reared in AN age when boys were boys and when
! girls were girls, and when growing slowly and
maturing steadily, like the oak, they became rug
ged, long lived, and struck their roots deep in
the soil.-Richmond Despatch.