Year: 1867

club bachelor His tailor trusts him con-
yeniently. He has not particle OF real
ambition or desire to figure in the world.
Ills ideas are contained in the smallest
compass, and represent the merest trifies,
which other men discard with the foppish-
ness of three-and-twenty.


The dangler, however never grows old
in sense. He can only become an old
boy, and from that stage advance TO second
childhood. Unlike the genuine old boy, he
is not thoroughly vicious,-be is a mawk-
ish and insensate fool even at his pleas
ures, for he can only bring himself to sip
them. Want of decision is the basis of
the dangler's disposition. 1t causes him
to dread marriage, and to Autter forever
over the sweets he dare hot pitch upon.--
Amongst men he is nonentity. He has
no part in affairs which demand skill, en-
ergy, or perseverance. He shrinks from
contact with real work, like sick school
girl. His opinions are vacant, and only
escape from not being thought idiotic by
the number of idiotic opinions which sane
persons are allowed to hold without ques-
ton. The dangler is a fool, in short, of
the worst quality. If he only went in for
religion, for capturing beggars, for dane
one might see at least an energy thrown
away but in the dangler there is hope
less and colorless impotence for which
there is no compensative eccentricity.-
Even with women he is not successful
Silly women like him at first, but discover
him after a time clever women, when
they find he has no money, despise him for
his stupidity, although they would easily
forgive his stupidity if his banker respect
ed him. Fortunately danglers are not
over frequent. There are many young
men, and young old men, who approach
from one side or another the peculiariiies
of the type, but happily only few COM
paratively represent it completely. The
dangler is both a noodle and a duffer, and
he never knows it. A joke falls off his
hide as a spent musket-bal would off the
hide of rhinoceros. He is the laughing
stock of his friends, and he has no ene-
mics. He is despised too much to be hat
ed; and yet SO entrenched is he in the
| stronghold of his own conceit, that he i.
far from being miserable and detected
! He walks about in utter unconsciousness o
what is thought or said about him. He
would not believe for an instant that he
was either barren or good for nothing
| Society is too well-bred nowadays ever
to give such information to a man to his
face, and the dangler therefore never suf-
fers the chance of hearing the truth
When the dangler dies no one regrets him.
He is of class that disgust and turn aside
even the affection of mother, which he
is incapable of comprehending or recipro-
eating.


1t is cruel and pitiable 10 reflect that
such creatures are the result of our modern
social system, but every artificial system,
and, indeed, every system must have them.
Mr.. Lewes, in clever criticism on the
Duke of Argyle's " Reign of Law" in the
current Fortnightly, tells us that there are
beings apparently born only to exhibit and
demonstrate the growth of cancer-cells.-
Analogically, we may consider the dangler
as born to demonstrate and exhibit the
growth of moral cancers upon the social
body. He is nearly as bad as the street
evil, despite his neatness and secresy. I,
is possible that the new era will kill him
Ii, as we suspect, current Of free though.
and healthy impulses passes into our veins
by the calm revolution of the Reform Bill
we shall probably find that the danglers
have disappeared before it as midges would
before an east wind. They are partly ol
| foreign extraction, and France has ever
been renowned for her danglers; but in
! England their doom is certain. Already
there is an inclination to detect these i'm
posters and to proclaim them. 1t is better
even that women should sell themselves for
money than marry fellows of this consti-
tuition, who, rickety, mean, and affected,
are unable to love or to hate, to act or to
think.-London ReUieac.