NAUGHTY 'NINETIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 10508, 11 February 1928, Page 4

NAUGHTY 'NINETIES.

GRANDFATHER'S TALES

Wild) OATS ONLY JUT E PEI) DING.

Every now and again somebody aged anything from seventy to a hundred, gets up and raises a. bump on me with a brick because he alleges that I have degenerated, writes Robert Magill.

I don’t mean me personally, but because i happen to be a member of the present generation, and somehow or other we never seern to bo doing the right thing to satisfy those who can remember when ladies in balloon sleeves fainted because a canhorse fell down, and when it was considered a daring exploit for a young man to climb up the side of an omnibus and smoke a cigarette. It is true that there is not so much of the old spirit about, but it costs tweive-antl-six a bottle. Things have come to the point that I am tired of being told that nothing i> ns good as it used to he. I intend to expose these confounded grandfathers and grandmothers of ours once and for all, then to leave them to deserved oblivion in the family album on the, piano. In the first place, dissipation is a doubtful business. The theory that the broad path of vice is paved with roses is a fraud. I should he sorry to see the young man of to-day attempting to bicak any of the records of the performers of the ’Eighties arid ’Nineties, although if it comes to that we can produce a few wild young people who would make those heroes, who used to he regularly thrown out of the Gaiety bar. look like a Sun-day-school class. At the same time the average, Bncchanalian orgy is dreadfully dull. The brilliant inspirations that occur to you alter the sixth cocktail arc really only sparkling because it is a, clever tiling to be able to think at all when one is more or less drunk. WHISK ERS A Nl) Wil ISK V. Mr W’odehoiise’s young man who jumped through a plate-glass window on Armistice night because it seemed a good idea at the time, is a. case in [mint. Probably the real reason for these childish pranks is that over-indul-gence in alcohol tends to send the subject to sleep, and lie lias to do something idiotic to keep himself and It is friends a wake. That’.s how if feds to me, anyhow, a bout three in the morning. I admit that we are more sober, or else that we can hold our drinks better, bill, then we have to. We can’t, sit hack and chuck the reins on the bonnet of the car and let it, go home, bv itself. We have to drive it. a We can play bridge, and you can’t steer a doubled two no-l rumjier to victory if your head is buzzing and von can sec anything up to twenty pips on the seven of spades. Nor is ditiieing the simple tiling it once was. One- false step in a fox-trot, and the couple behind will he crawling up your hack. To arrive muddled at the cloakroom means that you will got. a worse hat than the. one you left there while he who steps off the escalator with both feet first might as well start taking lessons on the harp right away. To hoar these hoys of the old brigade talk you would fancy that London in the' days of the olil Aquarium was a place where brave and handsome, well-dressed and witty young men drank deep with beautiful women who were so (harming that you had to forgive them for being so charming. lint was iti There were several places where liquor could be consumed between Temple Bar and Piccadilly Circus, but they no more represented .London than they do now. It was only the would-he smart young man of the period who led the alleged life and most men were offensively respectable. They had to walk .circumspectly lest they stepped on their side-whiskers, while if they fell by the way-side they usually ruined a guinea top hat. To-day we have as many nighthaunts and they are just as dull. The professional habitues sit round and do cross-word puzzles till a stranger comes in, when they make a valiant attempt to brighten up and throw bread at each other. AN OLD NEWSPAPER. if have before me an old newspaper printed in 1895. An Af. P. was run over by a oal>, but was unhurt. We do tiiose things better nowadays. Three houses in the West End were raided for gamblers. Now we prosecute bogus sweepstake promoters. There are several music-hall shows announced but nobody with modern ideas would tolerate ‘ them, because all the girls wore skins to thenknees. There was an African Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, and having been once there to a cat. show, 1 can only smite tolerantly when I am told that it was the height of doggittess to take a girl down there for Tie dnv so that she could clutch you when the fireworks went oft. Apart from these items, there are many advertisements of liver pills, cures for gout and nerve tonic. The rake-hell of the nieties seems to have |>ccii a shaky, blotchy sort ol hero, anyway Ami there are eight advertisements of cocoa. Cocoa ! There must have been a. sound of revelry by night •when thev were chasing the gluey hours wit'll sticky feet on cocoa. The change is not in London. It is in those people who lament the good old times . Why. even i myself begin to feel that nothing is as -gav as ir used to he be in those days gone bv. \\ ine gives me a lu adaelie. (It always did, as a matter of fact.) WILD OATS OR RICF. PUOIPXG. ,T have regretfully decided that f can’t sing nowadays—shut my I rends fell me I never could. As for women—L’m married. Matrimony makes one settle down to serious business. We become staid and virtuous and we fancy that with our departure the band leaves oft playing and the lightf are . turned down.

Put they are not. The hand plays a different time, and they switch 'on the lights from the wall now, instead of putting a match" to them 1 . T douh if we were ever so naughty as wo think we were in those days of our youth, whether some of, those wild oats' were nothing 'lint material for cold rice pudding. Yet every man likes if to be thought that he lived hard in some distant part hut that he has now reformed. 'Whereas, to be truthful, lie was probably much the same as the majority of us. He looked at it all item a distance and wondered why it was all suppose! to ho so alluring. Having pitied the poor fools who were, frantically trying to have a good time he left Leicester Square *in its drabness and went home to nave an excitin'* game of dominoes in tho Y.M.CvA.'In spite of all this, he still garners the youngsters round his bath-chair and brags in a quavering voice of the wild thimrs he did when he was a lad and deplores the fact that young men are not what they were . Even as T- shall do in my turn when I talk with a twinkle in my eye of those gloriously wicked days that followed the Great Mar. Twns ever thus.