As it is the custom in fashionable society in New York to prevent the increase of families, it is natural no doubt to try to destroy childhood in those who are permitted to see the light. The fashionable child of New York is made a miniature man or woman at the earliest possible period of its life. It does not need much labor, however, to develop "Young America" in the great metropolis. He is generally ready to go out into the world at a very tender age. Our system of society offers him every facility in his downward career. When but a child he has his own latch-key; he can come and go when he pleases; he attends parties, balls, dancing-school, the theatre and other evening amusements as regularly and independently as his elders, and is rarely called upon by "the Governor," as he patronizingly terms his father, to give any account of himself. He has an abundance of pocket-money, and is encouraged in the lavish expenditure of it. He cultivates all the vices of his grown-up friends; and thinks church going a punishment and religion a bore. He engages in his dissipations with a recklessness that makes old sinners envious of his "nerve." His friends are hardly such as he could introduce into his home. He is a famous "hunter of the tiger," and laughs at his losses. He has a mistress, or perhaps several; sneers at marriage, and gives it as his opinion that there is not a virtuous woman in the land. When he is fairly of age he has lost his freshness, and is tired of life. His great object now is to render his existence supportable.