The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1875-01-21
"MOSTLY YOUNG MEN,
A Sad Story of n Holiday Mt the Capital

A Sad Story of n Holiday Mt the Capital.
1t was Washington dispatch, and it
told very briefly how Christmas was OBJ
served at the national capital. A mere
passing note; statement of a simple fact;
hardly worth more than flying men
tioD. 1t only said "The police re-
port the arrest of an unusually large
number of intoxicated persons, mostly
young men," That was all. A larger
number than usual deliberately extin-
guished their sense of responsibility to
society and to themselves, and having SO
dethroned their reason, went reeling
through the streets, in which condition
they were arrested by the police, and
stored the faculties they had thrown
away, and they had ceased to be dan
gerous to society or themselves. And
they. We're :'mostly young men," Not
much of an item that. To great many
readers who skinned over it, it sug-
gested nothing, the New York Tribune
says. 1t had no special significance to
them. There was nothing in it touching
the financial question; no intimation of
the policy of the administration toward
Louisiana; nothing to throw any light
upon the Pacific Mail business; nothing
but bald statement of quite unim-
portant fact, to wit, that a great many
people were intoxicated, and that most
OF them were young men. Perhaps
some old fellow who knew Washington
smiled n grim, hard smile, and said
"The boys have been having a good
time Christmas. And perhaps some
other sedate person who was never
young, or, if he was, it was so long ago
he has forgotten it, read the two or
three lines and said it was "outrageous
for young men to act SO. But the mass
of mankind slipped by it, as they but
ton up their coats and hasten on when
they meet in the streets any one who
staggers.
Not everybody, though. In great
many homes and to a great many hearts
it meant a great deal more than the
classification of holidays police re-
port. 1t came to them like news of
shipwreck to one with friends at sea.
There was q reading between the lines
that made fathers anxious and mothers
distressed. mostly young men 20
And here was the boy Just ripening into
manhood upon whom his parents looked
with pride, and for whose future they
were SO deeply anxious; could the
father help the involuntary reaching out
to catch him from falling, as he read in
these three words the story of so many
young men down and disgracedl Could
the mother fail to reflect that her boy
was very much like other boys, and that
other boys-the young men in the Wash
ington station house-had mothers, per-
haps just as tenderly solicitous for their
sons welfare as she for hers3 "Mostly
young men % All, how many mother,
when she read II, olarpod closer tn her
bosom the curly head and dimpled
cheeks of her own darling, as if she
would keep him back from manhood,
and from all the storm and stress which
carry down SO many. And then the
mothers, whose darlings with their curls
and dimples, and all the sweet and win
ming ways of childhood, have moved on
out of the radiance of the morning into
the heat and dust of the noontide, whose
boys look level now into mother's-and
perhaps into some ones not a mothers
-eyes--how these sweet, thoughtful
women must have shuddered at the bare
dreadful possibility that some time their
boys might go reeling to the station
house.
"Mostly young men !" 1t is a sugges-
tive, a painfully suggestive statement.
It's the coming of new crop, and a
crop of reckless, dissolute men. Young
men to-day and perhaps with enough
of conscience left to suffer remorse,
enough of self-respect to suffer shame.
but every day growing harder as habit
grows and the senses deaden. There is
no need to write a homily on temper
ance, or preach a sermon. The homily
writes itself, and the sermon breaches it
self. There's no such sickening sight
in all the world as the drunken young
man or boy; nothing so painful to the
sensibilities of man or woman; nothing
that seems 50 harsh, and unnatural, and
shocking. 1t is deliberate flying in the
face of nature and fiinging away the
best gift of God. But the procession
moves along. Thins out rapidly to be
sure toward the end, but the young men
keep stepping in and the ranks are al
ways full. 1t is the thing that fathers
dread for their sons and mothers pray
God their boys may be delivered from,
but it goes right on, and the recruits are
mostly young men" The State can
not stop it, quackery cannot cure it.
Cheerful homes might save many and
in Washington good examples in high
stations might keep many more from
falling. How would it do to try it.