Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1885 — The Old Boys. [ARTICLE]

The Old Boys.

I often worider if the young men of this day enjoy thejnselves as much as we old folks used to when we were their age. I sometimes think they do Cot, because they pay more attention ) their dress than their pleasures, and they seem to take their vices in coarser draughts than their predecessors in the flowery paths of youth and riot. But this may be only the bilious view of a disgruntled philosopher who regrets that the wine has lost the sparkle of twenty years ' ago, though the brand may not have changed, and one night’s indulgence in the delights of the table is followed by a week’s active palpitation of the liver. Positively one every-day young man i 3 a repetition of the other. They are as much alike as Chinamen. It is difficult to tell them apart unless one fellow has a cast in his eye, a limp, or has a broken nose. To me they look as if the same tailor made their clothes, the same bootmaker their boots, and their hair and mustaches were trimmed by the same barber. Their mannerisms have been acquired in the same school, and their slang studied from the same book. They tire me because lam old, and I detest a young fellow who cannot be. original in something—his vices, even, if nothing else be left him. The old crowd, the crop of gay boys that flourished twenty years ago, were more independent. If one fellow appeared with long hair, liis friend would have his own cut short. If (me invented and acquired an odd expression, oath, or otherwise, his right to it was respected. Nobody trespassed upon his preserves, nobody borrowed his property. , His method of lighting a cigar, or lifting his hat, or wearing his necktie was never copied by a friend. Indeed, the man who could not cut his own swathe, who had not brains enough to devise a peculiarity, was barred from our circle. —The Ingleside.