Then there is the Man of the World. He is a recognised authority on fast
life in London and Bohemian revels in Paris. He is a patron of the
drama, and a perfect mine of unreliable information as to the private
life of the originals of the dazzling portraits which line his
study--and indeed half the studies in the House. The picture-postcard,
as an educative and refining influence, has left an abiding mark upon
the youth of the present day. We of an older and more rugged
civilisation, who were young at a period when actresses' photographs
cost two shillings each, were compelled in those days to restrict our
gallery of divinities to one or two at the most. (Too often our
collection was second-hand, knocked down for sixpence at some
end-of-term auction, or reluctantly yielded in composition for a
long-outstanding debt by a friend in the throes of a financial crisis.)
But nowadays, with the entire Gaiety chorus at a penny apiece, the
youthful connoisseur of female beauty has emancipated himself from the
pictorial monogamy (or at the most, bigamy) of an earlier generation. He
is a polygamist, a pantheist. He can erect an entire feminine Olympus
upon his mantelpiece for the sum of half-a-crown. And yet, bless him, he
is just as unsophisticated as we used to be--no more and no less. The
type does not change.
Lastly, comes the little boy--the Squeaker, the Tadpole, the Nipper,
what you will. His chief characteristic is terrific but short-lived
enthusiasm for everything he undertakes, be it work, play, a friendship,
or a private vendetta.
He begins by taking education very seriously. He is immensely proud of
his first set of books, and writes his name on nearly every page,
accompanied by metrical warnings to intending purloiners. He equips
himself with a perfect arsenal of fountain-pens, rubber stamps, blue
pencils, and ink-erasers. He starts a private mark-book of his own, to
check possible carelessness or dishonesty on the part of his
form-master. Then he gets to work, with his books disposed around him
and his fountain-pen playing all over his manuscript. By the end of a
fortnight he has lost all his books, and having broken his fountain-pen,
is detected in a pathetic attempt to write his exercise upon a sheet of
borrowed paper with a rusty nib held in his fingers or stuck into a
splinter from off the floor.
It is the same with games. Set a company of small boys to play cricket,
and their solemnity at the start is almost painful. Return in half an
hour, and you will find that the stately contest has resolved itself
into a reproduction of the parrot-house at the Zoo, the point at issue
being a doubtful decision of the umpire's. Under the somewhat confiding
arrangement which obtains in Lower School cricket, the umpire for the
moment is the gentleman whose turn it is to bat next; so litigation is
frequent. Screams of "Get out!" "Stay in!" "Cads!" "Liars!" rend the
air, until a big boy or a master strolls over and quells the riot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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