THE MANNERS OF YOUNG MEN. 49 



pony comes to the door for the girls ; where water is near for boating and 

 fishing, and in winter for the dear delights of skating such is the 

 beautiful home around which the memory will for ever cling. The ideal 

 man can be reared there, one would think that ideal man whom Richter 

 delighted to depict, one whose loving heart is the beginning of knowledge. 



We could paint the proper place for the ideal man to be born in, if, alas ! 

 for all our theories, he did not occasionally spring out of the slums, ascend 

 from the lowest deeps, and confute all our theories by being nature's best 

 gem, without ancestry, without home, without help, without culture. 



The education of boys in cities is beset with difficulties; for the 

 fashionable education may lead to self-sufficiency and conceit, with a 

 disdain of the solid virtues ; or it may lead to effeminacy and foppishness 

 the worst faults of a Canadian. These two last faults are, however, 

 not fashionable or common faults in our day. There is a sense of superi- 

 ority engendered in the " smart young man," so called, which is very 

 offensive. All snobs are detestable ; the Canadian snob is preeminently 

 detestable. 



A young man of fashion is apt to get him a habitual sneer, which is not 

 becoming, and to assume an air of patronage, which is foolish. He has a 

 love for discussing evil things, which has a very poor effect on his mind ; 

 he has no true ideas of courtesy or good breeding; he is thoroughly selfish, 

 and grows more and more debased in his pleasures, as self-indulgence 

 becomes the law of his life. 



His outward varnish of manner is so thin that it does not disguise his 

 inner worthlessness. It is like that varnish which discloses the true grain 

 of the wood. Some people of showy manners are thoroughly ill-bred at 

 heart. None of these men have the tradition of tine manners, that old- 

 Id breeding of which we have spoken. They would be then able to 

 cover up their poverty; but they have riot quite enough for that; and 

 they truly believe these misguided youths that a rich father, a fash- 

 ionable mother, an air of ineffable conceit, will carry them through tin- 

 world. It is astonishingly true that it goes a great way, but not tin- 



wholr \\ 



No youth, hred in a thoroughly virtuous and respectaMo family, grows 

 uj to be very much of a snob, let us hope. Alas! he may boron 

 drunkard, a Lraiiihl'-r, a faihnv. And tln-n we come up standing against 

 that great cnu-l stoin- wall, that unanswered quotinn, " Why have I 

 ' and prayed to no purpose ' " And who shall answer us? 

 the one who -ins 1. a>t ind out, and who gets the moat 



punishiu 



