to be observed; then the spoiled young man and his merry crew begin to draw very short wages on Saturdays; then the foreman begins to look askance as the blinking uneasy laggard enters; and last comes the fatal quiet speech, “You won’t be required on Monday.”  Bad company!  As for the heartbreaking cases of young men who go up to the Universities full of bright hope and equipped at all points splendidly, they are almost too pitiful.  Very often the lads who have done so well that subscriptions are raised for them are the ones who go wrong soonest.  A smart student wins a scholarship or two, and his parents or relatives make a dead-lift effort to scrape money so that the clever fellow may go well through his course.  At the end of a year the youth fails to present any trophies of distinction; he comes home as a lounger; this is “slow” and the other is “slow,” and the old folk are treated with easy contempt.  Still there is hope—­so very brilliant a young gentleman must succeed in the end.  But the brilliant one has taken up with rich young cads who affect bull-terriers and boxing-gloves; he is not averse from a street-brawl in the foggy November days; he can take his part in questionable choruses; he yells on the tow-path or in the pit of the theatre, and he is often shaky in the morning after a dose of very bad wine.  All the idleness and rowdyism do not matter to Brown and Tomkins and the rest of the raffish company, for they only read for the pass degree or take the poll; but the fortunes—­almost the lives—­of many folk depend on our young hopeful’s securing his Class, and yet he fritters away time among bad talk, bad habits, bad drink, and bad tobacco.  Then come rumours of bills, then the crash, and the brilliant youth goes down, while Brown and Tomkins and all the rowdies say, “What a fool he was to try going our pace!” Bad company!

I should therefore say to any youth—­“Always be doing something—­bad company never do anything; and thus, if you are resolved to be always doing something useful, it follows that you will not be among the bad company.”  This seems to me to be conclusive; and many a broken heart and broken life might have been kept sound if inexperienced youths were only taught thus much continually.

October, 1888.

GOOD COMPANY.

Let it be understood that I do not intend to speak very much about the excellent people who are kind enough to label themselves as “Society,” for I have had quite enough experience of them at one time and another, and my impressions are not of a peculiarly reverential kind.  “Company” among the set who regard themselves as the cream of England’s—­and consequently of the world’s—­population is something so laborious, so useless, so exhausting that I cannot imagine any really rational person attending a “function” (that is the proper name) if Providence had left open the remotest chance of running away; at any rate, the rational person would not endure more than one experience.