IV. LITTLE ONES. NOR shall I waste your time by more than alluding to the many boys and girls just coming to manhood and womanhood. Vealy and irresponsible, they are here without their option. Thoughtless or thoughtful parents have brought them here and pay the scores. They are innocent and beautiful. Youth is always beautiful. You might sigh for them; but you forget who sighed for you. We all must see the folly of it. Two fragrant Scene. Breakfast-room. youths have just sat down. One of them, the more pretentious, drawls wearily: 'Fashionable life laboweous. Will Lent never come? Monday night a german at Mrs. Brown's, Tuesday night a german at Mrs. Smith's, last night a german at Mrs. Obscew's. Lattah vewy laboweous. Only eight couples; twelve the happy numbaw.' Omelet discussed. Practising on the servant, the young man grows sprightly and patronizing. 'Gawge,' he drawls again, less wearily; 'do you know Miss Peachblow? I saw her on the avenue as I came in. Rawther pooty at times.” Scene, an hour later. Music-room. Three pretty young girls, and one not so young nor pretty, with flat curls round her temples, who seems to be matronizing, announces pleasantly: 'Lecture to-night, girls, I see, by Miss Dickinson.' 'Indeed,' responds one of the pretty three, Miss Wickerson. Want to know. Wonder if she has a waterfall.' You are a human fellow, Jack, and will be astonished when I tell you children do not abound in these places. An honest natural man regards them as the best fruits of mar riage. Not to have them I know you would consider a calamity. You needn't stop reading to count on your fingers your own possessions in that line. I know in a general way your severe ideas of duty, and have no doubt of their fullest realization. Your old-fashioned conscientious habits extend no doubt to family matters as to all others. You know by heart that radical old orthodox sermon of poor Yorick, which Trim read so divinely to Uncle Toby, Walter Shandy, and Dr. Slop, while Obadiah was gone for the forceps, and no doubt you religiously illustrate in all your life its concise summing up: Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in every thing. But times have changed, and orthodoxy is not so muscular, nor ethics so compendious. Life is constantly developing new uses. A little while ago the theories of Malthus were considered impious or ridiculous. Not so now. Their practicability is so far established as to be somewhat realized. At first blush it would appear anomalous that a hundred or two wives and husbands should from year to year eat, drink, and be merry, and bear no ostensible blessings. But the world moves, and progress has defined responsibilities. Essentially eclectic and practical, society has seized and adopted the best rules of all the sciences. Political economy has been ransacked, and its best truths appropriated. So much to do in this world, and so little time to do it in, that inevitably there : must be a division of labor. Classes for every thing, and individuals for every class. Many cooks are sure to spoil the broth. To do any one thing well it must absorb the life. Your stupid Yorkshireman, imported with your lovely Durhams, feeds and curries and combs with a zeal and energy that your scholarly boy Benjamin carries into his search for Latin and Hebrew roots. Nothing, you must know, is so absorbing as fashionable life. Balls and calls and parties and operas and shopping leave little time for any thing else. Nothing you can imagine could be so embarrassing to a life of gayety as children. If by any mischance |