Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

lOO Crabbed Age and Youth.
Savings Bank after all ; I doubt if he would be
such an admirable son as we are led to expect ;
and as for his conduct in love, I believe firnily
he would out-Herod Herod, and put the whole
of his new compeers to the blush. Prudence is
a wooden Juggernaut, before whom Benjamin
Franklin walks with the portly air of a high
priest, and after whom dances many a successful
merchant in the character of Atys. But it is
not a deity to cultivate in youth. If a man
lives to any considerable age, it cannot be
denied that he laments his imprudencies, but
I notice he often laments his youth a deal more
bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.
It is customary to say that age should be con-
sidered, because it comes last. It seems just as
much to the point, that youth comes first. And
the scale fairly kicks the beam, if you go on
to add that age, in a majority of cases, never
comes at all. Disease and accident make short
work of even the most prosperous persons •