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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 99, November 1, 1890 By: Various |
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OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 99. November 1, 1890.
MODERN TYPES. ( BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER. ) NO. XXI. THE AVERAGE UNDERGRADUATE. Those who live much in the society of the very middle aged, hear from
them loud and frequent complaints of the decay of courtesy and the
general deterioration, both of manners and of habits, observable in
the young men of the day. With many portentous shakings of the head,
these grizzling censors inform those who care to listen to their
wailings, that in the time of their own youth it was understood to
be the duty of young men to be modest, considerate, generous in their
treatment of one another, and chivalrous in their behaviour to women.
And every one of them will probably suggest to his hearers that he was
intimately acquainted with at least one young man who fulfilled that
duty with a completeness and a perfection never since attained. Now,
however, they will declare, the case is different. Young men have
become selfish and arrogant. Their respect for age has vanished,
their behaviour to ladies is familiar and flippant, their style of
conversation is slangy and disreputable, they are wanting in all
proper reverence, they are pampered, luxurious, affected, foolish, and
disingenuous; unworthy, in short, to be mentioned in the same breath
with those who have preceded them, and have left to their degenerate
successors a brilliant but unavailing example of youthful conduct.
These diatribes may or may not be founded to some extent in truth.
At the best, however, their truth is only a half truth. So long as
the world endures, it is probable that young men will have a large
allowance of follies, of affectations, of extravagances, and the young
men of to day are certainly not without them. But, in the main, though
the task of comparison is difficult, they do not appear to be at all
inferior in manliness, in modesty of bearing, and in reverence to the
generations that have gone before. Here and there in London the antics
of some youth plunged into a torrent of folly before he had had time
even to think of being wise, excite the comments of the world. But
London is not the school to which one would look for youth at its
best. To find that in any considerable quantity one must travel either
to Cambridge or to Oxford, and inspect the average undergraduates, who
form the vast majority at both these Universities. Now the Average Undergraduate, as he exists, and has for ages existed,
is not, perhaps, a very wise young man. Nor does he possess those
brilliant qualities which bring the Precocious Undergraduate to
premature ruin. He has his follies, but they are not very foolish; he
has his affectations, but they are innocent; he has his extravagances,
but they pass away, and leave him not very much the worse for the
experience. On the whole, however, he is a fine specimen of the young
Englishman brave, manly, loyal, and upright. He is the salt of his
University, and an honour to the country that produces him. The Average Undergraduate will have been an average schoolboy, not
afflicted with too great a love of classics or mathematics, and
gifted, unfortunately, with a fine contempt for modern languages. But
he will have taken an honourable part in all school games, and will
have acquired through them not only vigorous health and strength,
but that tolerant and generous spirit of forbearance without which no
manly game can be carried on. These qualities he will carry with him
to the University which his father chooses for him, and to which he
himself looks forward rather as a home of liberty slightly tempered by
Proctors, than as a temple of learning, moderated by examiners. During the October term which makes him a freshman, the Average
Undergraduate devotes a considerable time to mastering the etiquette
of his University and College. He learns that it is not customary to
shake hands with his friends more than twice in each term, once at
the beginning, and again at the end of the term... Continue reading book >>
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Non-fiction |
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